Who is the worst movie director of all time?
If you were to ask someone who they thought the worst filmmaker of all time is, you’d get a lot of different answers. Perhaps you hate everything that M Night Shyamalan has made or find Eli Roth’s creative output inexcusable. There are directors out there who many of us believe sent cinema on a downward trajectory, and others who seem to receive lots of praise despite the fact they’re just really not that good.
Is there a way to find an answer to the question of who the worst filmmaker of all time is? Perhaps we can analyse critical reviews and Rotten Tomatoes scores or tally up who has the most Razzie nominations? Yet, at the end of the day, the question of ‘the worst’ is subjective, with many filmmakers who have been placed on such lists or nominated for Razzies still creating pieces of cinema that are, at least technically, good.
Thus, should the ‘worst’ filmmaker of all time be someone who consistently makes films that are bad in terms of their plots and visuals? Movies like the Sharknado series, directed by Anthony C Ferrante, have no redeemable qualities in both their narratives or technical ability, and the rest of the director’s filmography isn’t any better. There are countless films out there that have been churned out by people who have no solid grasp on how to write or direct a movie, leaving a fair few names in the running for the worst filmmaker of all time.
However, there are two men that stand out as infamously bad, so much so they’ve gone down in cinema history for being terrible filmmakers. The first is Ed Wood, whose story was adapted for the big screen by Tim Burton, with Johnny Depp playing the filmmaker. And how could we forget Uwe Boll, who engaged in boxing matches against some of his most brutal critics, taking things to a whole new level.
But why did Uwe Boll fight his critics in boxing matches?
German filmmaker Uwe Boll made many terrible movies in the 2000s, such as House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne. These films cemented Boll as one of the worst directors ever, with each movie earning heavy critical panning. He even directed a comedy called Postal, which featured an alternative retelling of the 9/11 attacks, pushing the limits of humour to the extreme.
Boll received so many negative reviews during this period that he decided to challenge the harshest critics to boxing matches. It was a bizarre idea, but one that cemented him in cinema history as an interesting character, to say the least. The event was called Raging Boll, and the director managed to defeat the five critics he was up against.
When was Ed Wood dubbed the ‘worst director’ of all time?
Wood, on the other hand, didn’t go as far as fighting people who criticised his movies. In fact, it is hard to call the filmmaker one of the worst filmmakers of all time when his movies have such a cult following. The innate campiness of Wood’s movies, like Plan 9 from Outer Space and Night of the Ghouls, have made him an icon of ‘50s indie cinema, and while his movies received a lot of criticism at the time – and sure, none are exactly Citizen Kane – Wood’s determination was admirable.
The main problem with his films was their lack of technical brilliance, mainly due to the fact he worked on very small budgets. Still, his movies are of interest to many people, which suggests that there is something special about his work, even if it’s not exactly what we’d call good. His status as a terrible filmmaker was cemented in 1980, however, when he was posthumously given a Golden Turkey Award for ‘Worst Director of All Time’.
