9 Horror Directors Who Deserve An Honorary Oscar

Joe Dante’s verdict on Ed Wood mirrors his own career: “His movies all have a certain consistency and you have to probably say this guy was an auteur of sorts because you can recognise his movies. That’s quite an achievement in this day of homogenized movies, where people’s personalities are not really encouraged to shine on film.”

With Piranha, The Howling and Gremlins, Dante developed the tongue-in-cheek, cine-literate horror movie that would later inform the work of such filmmakers as Rob Zombie, Eli Roth, Adam Green and Robert Rodriguez. In these films, you’ll find a playful sense of humour, a ton of movie references and a cameo from some genre veterans. How many other filmmakers would think to reunite Miller with Jackie Joseph, his co-star in The Little Shop Of Horrors (1960), the way Dante did in Gremlins?

Like all the best artists, his themes endure – the corporate satire in Gremlins 2, for instance, seems more relevant now than it did in 1990 (also, how many filmmakers can say they were satirizing Donald Trump a quarter of a century ago?) Even when he turned his hand to family fare with Innerspace and Small Soldiers, he was ahead of the curve, prefiguring the later spirit of Pixar’s animated films.