8 Worst Films Directed By Oscar Winners
When good directors turn bad.
Everybody can name at least one A-list actor who started out in Z-grade trash, but far more interesting are the directors who either graduated from exploitation movies shot in three days to $200 million Oscar winning epics or fell from grace after receiving an Academy Award and ended up trying to recapture former glories.
You watch their lesser-known films looking for some trace of that garlanded filmmaker, some hint that the person behind the camera has a golden statuette in their home, but usually you have to remind yourself that it’s the same guy who won an award for such and such.
These films aren’t just misfires – several of them are (quite rightly) permanent fixtures of All Time Worst lists and the fact that Oscar-calibre talent was attached ensures their afterlife as a cult oddity. We are talking everything from backyard monster movies to big budget studio flops, the kind of films that were shredded on release and have amused bad movie aficionados ever since.
On the one hand, they’re the pictures you can’t imagine being made in an increasingly conservative Hollywood and provide some much needed relief from the predictability of the film industry.
On the other…. well, see for yourself.
8. The Terror (1963)
This legendary cheapie is credited to Roger Corman, who cheerfully admits that four uncredited directors worked on the film, including Francis Ford Coppola (Best Director, The Godfather: Part II) and Jack Nicholson (Best Actor, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Terms Of Endearment and As Good As It Gets).
Shot mostly on sets left over from Corman’s The Raven, The Terror’s rushed production means that its plot is barely coherent. According to Boris Karloff, Corman had only “the sketchiest outline of a story” and during filming was constantly grabbing shots of him walking through sets that were torn down moments later.
Corman’s first cut of the movie was reportedly so incomprehensible that he brought co-star Dick Miller back in for reshoots that attempted to flesh out the story and explain the plot. They didn’t help much – to this day, Miller maintains that the film doesn’t make a lick of sense.