8 Worst Films Directed By Oscar Winners
2. Piranha II: The Spawning (1981)
Two decades before he won Best Director for Titanic, James Cameron toiled behind the scenes at Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, working on the special effects for such low-budget pictures as Battle Beyond The Stars (1980) and Galaxy Of Terror (1981) when he was offered an opportunity to direct his first feature.
An in-name-only sequel to 1978’s Corman-produced killer fish movie, Piranha II was never going to rival Citizen Kane, but it was a step in the right direction for a fledgling filmmaker. He used the credit to help get The Terminator made, but later dropped it and said he didn’t consider it his first film.
“Technically, I have a credit as the director on that film,” Cameron explained in 1991. “However, I was replaced after two and a half weeks by the Italian producer. He just fired me and took over, which is what he wanted to do when he hired me.”
The producer in question is Ovidio G Assonitis, an Egyptian-born purveyor of schlock whose previous credits include Exorcist rip-off Beyond The Door (1974) and Jaws rip-off Tentacles (1977). It’s fair to assume that the laughably bad scenes where flying rubber fish attack a boatload of morons were added by Assonitis, while Cameron contributed the underwater footage and several sequences with Lance Henriksen.