10 Directors Who Never Topped Their First Film

In the 1980s and into the '90s, Stuart Gordon was one of the standout writer/directors of the horror genre.

Directorial efforts like From Beyond, Dolls and the 1991 spin on The Pit and the Pendulum all won plaudits with the majority of horror hounds, while Gordon's writing work on those films and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Body Snatchers and even, in some quarters, The Dentist received praise.

Of all of the movies for which he was in the director's chair, though, there is no question that Stuart Gordon's finest hour was the Jeffrey Combs-fronted Re-Animator - the 1985 picture that served as Gordon's feature film writing and directorial debut.

Loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's 1922 novelette, the crazed quest of Combs' Herbert West to bring the dead back to life was a triumph of its time, and it's a movie that's still adored by the masses to this day.

While Re-Animator would be followed in 1990 by Bride of Re-Animator, then by Beyond Re-Animator in 2003, those pictures never achieved quite the success of the first entry in this franchise - and part of that may be down to Re-Animator producer Brian Yuzna taking the director's chair for those two follow-up films.