9 Horror Directors Who Deserve An Honorary Oscar

If you’re a horror filmmaker, don’t bother writing that Oscar acceptance speech: not only has no horror picture ever won Best Picture, but no genre filmmaker has ever won Best Director.

The closest horror ever came to recognition was at the 64th Academy Awards, when The Silence Of The Lambs received all the major trophies (Actor, Actress, Screenplay, Director, Picture), but that movie was marketed as a “psychological thriller” lest it be tarnished by association with Silent Night Deadly Night 5: The Toy Maker, released the same year.

Lambs was directed by Jonathan Demme, who graduated from Roger Corman’s schlock shop, as did future Oscar winners James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson. It was for helping launch their careers (and those of many others) that Corman received an honorary Oscar in 2009.

Though he was never going to stretch the boundaries of cinema by making pictures like Attack Of The Crab Monsters, Corman’s influence on the horror genre – and on filmmaking in general – is not open for debate. Another of Corman’s disciples is Monte Hellman, who later fought to get Reservoir Dogs made, so you can feel his influence even without watching his films.

Corman’s not the only filmmaker to leave a cultural footprint, but unlike him, his colleagues aren’t likely to find themselves feted at awards parties. Here are 9 horror filmmakers who deserve mainstream recognition.

When a killer wearing black gloves stabs a young woman to death in close-up moments before binding her with a cord and hanging the body in mid-air to the accompaniment of a thunderous Goblin score, the viewer has no doubt that they’re watching a film directed by one of the most distinctive filmmakers in Italian cinema.

So distinctive are his set pieces, in fact, that his gialli had a profound impact on several American filmmakers. In Deep Red (1975), Argento’s POV camera prowls through dark corridors in much the same way as it would years later in Halloween (1978), and it’s not difficult to imagine Michael Myers as the Americanized version of that film’s black gloved killer. Also, note the similarities between Argento’s kill scenes and those in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies. Doesn’t the lopped off arm in Tenebrae look familiar?

As a producer, Argento was instrumental in getting George Romero’s Dawn Of The Dead (1978) made and is indirectly responsible for that film’s enormous impact on the genre. He’s also fostered some amazing talent, including Lamberto Bava, who he hired to direct fan favourite Demons (1985) and Michele Soavi, whose horror pictures owe no small debt to Argento.