10 Genre Directors Who Stepped Out Of Their Field (And Failed)

One would assume Brian De Palma launched his career with an arthouse project or one of his early Hitchcock riffs such as Sisters; the plot and the camera work was dazzling, with stupendous set-pieces, but there was just something sleazy about it.

But De Palma had actually had a name for himself in the 60s working in the counterculture movement. His earliest films, Hi, Mom!, Greetings and Get to Know Your Rabbit earned him great notices, with Vincent Canby hailing him as a " very funny filmmaker. He's most funny, so far, anyway, when he's most anarchic."

But he soon left comedy to become the self-proclaimed "American Goddard", keeping that anarchic sense of humour but honing his abilities behind the camera.

When Warner Bros. looked to adapt Tom Wolfe's satirical class warfare novel Bonfire of the Vanities, they first called upon a more suitable director: Mike Nichols. But Nichols lobbying for Steve Martin in the Tom Hanks role led to the studio moving on.

De Palma may have seemed like an odd pick, but he had spent his days taking potshots at the upper class in his early years. Unfortunately, the studio did the one thing to comedy that is guaranteed to ruin it: put a muzzle on it.

Warner Bros. refused to buy into Wolfe's biting satire completely, rendering the material toothless.