6. Bruno Mattei
Referred to as 'The Ed Wood' of Italian cinema, Mattei was the ultimate Italian hack exploitation director in a sea that was full of them. Nobody I know in Italian cinema perpetrated filmic atrocities quite as bad as Mattei. I believe that an affectionate cult is growing around Mattei and his films. I will never be part of this. He is not inept enjoyable, he is inept bloody awful. Mattei directed a lot of Italian exploitation crap. His actors couldn't act, the dialogue was corny, the gore was lame, and Mattei stole footage and soundtracks from other films (most notably Goblin's soundtrack from Romero's Dawn of the Dead which popped up in the risible Zombie Creeping Flesh). Even Mattei himself said that his films were 'ugly' and he would have liked to reshoot them all. The only fun moment I ever had with a Mattei film was in Violence in a Women's Prison in which a bitch fight breaks out among a sea of human turds. And if that is the height of enjoyment you can get out of a director's oeuvre, his films must be pretty paltry stuff to watch.