Absolutely WORST directors ever.

My top (or bottom) slot goes to Barry Mahon for Santa Meets the Ice Cream Bunny, Rocket Attack USA and Jack and the Beanstalk.

My pick would be Harold P. Warren, director of Manos: The Hands of Fate.

No mention of Ed Wood?

Norman Mailer

Ed Wood was an innovator. He might not have made the greatest films, in fact some of them are really bad...but he made some decent ones too and dared to cover taboo subjects and all on a shoe string budget. I'll take Ed Wood any day over someone like Tarantino.

We might go way back and mention Sam Newfield, said to be the most prolific director of the sound era. His output is somewhat dubious, but he probably made at least 250 movies, nearly all of them deservedly forgotten. One that is not forgotten but lives on in infamy, showing up in late night college presentations (where I saw it a long time ago) is/was The Terror of Tiny Town, a low, low budget western entirely cast with little people.

I'm not sure just what makes someone the worst director, but this one deserves consideration.

C'mon, I give more credit to Warren, who went on to do a film on his own against all odds, with no film education or skills, than I give to someone like Bay, who has all the resources in the world and still churns out crap

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That's one of the better points I've seen made on MoFo. But I'd still rather sit through a Transformers movie than Manos. That is, unless it's MST3K.

To each his/her own. I only saw the first Transformers and that was enough

Another Stakeout
Midsommar
The Human Centipede

I've had cause to run up against a Jerry Warren movie from time to time. I'm both fascinated and appalled each time. Surely Jerry rates a mention in this thread.

Paul Feig. Can't stand his "for that scene go in front of the camera and try to look funny" kind of comedy writing. I saw a few of his films, with the same pattern, and that would have been bad enough if his not-even-trying approach hadn't completely destroyed the concept of a female ghostbuster team.

Then there are directors whose films I strongly dislike (Michael Bay, Luc Besson, Zach Snyder, etc), but I get what make their success, it's less incompetence than focus on one thing and complete disregard -or inability to care- for the others. I'd consider them hacks, because of that demagogic focus on vacuous, flashy imagery that "work" for enough people, but I believe Besson and Snyder are less calculating than Bay, and more like real children that truly want to share an imagery (for its own sake). All these people aren't incompetent, simply competent on one aspect only. Tarantino is borderline this, but still has enough soul for me to like him more than the above. There is a potential movie hidden in his movies.

Then there are directors that simply don't appeal to me. Sorry, Malick, I love long, slow and contemplative movies... only... I like them to have something to say, and to point at something else than their own bellybutton. Again, it's not incompetence. It's just being uninteresting. Like a boring writer with a very pretty handwriting. And we mostly judge the handwriting, there. In fact, I'd put Nolan in that category too, although I also like him a bit better I think. He's also someone who's mastery of style conceals that he has nothing to say, no interesting story to tell. But it also conceals it very well, and very pleasantly. More pleasantly than Malick, in my eyes, because at least he sometimes switches to a different scene, and generally manages to make you believe that a coherent story will emerge. I still see both as bloated egos erecting huge temples to what they think to be great deep thoughts. But in this metaphor, both are very talented architects.

So, a continuum of "putting images in the box" with different degrees of "having a reason to do it". The worst of it being Feig's "look silly and then we'll select some sequences from it and it will be a comedy". Above it, having a very precise idea of the image to make, but the image still being its own -and only- end. Above it, using images to give weight to a thought, but the thought being disproportionately more mundane and flat and boring and trivial (or just dumb) than the self-important style makes it seem. Worst ? Feig.

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Get working on your custom lists, people !

Sorry, but a director who had $2.000 and botched it isn't even half as bad as a director who had $200.000.000 and botched it.

The more money you have, the lazier you get. Artists who have to mind every cent may come up with incredibly creative ideas.

In the end, it doesn't really matter.

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

No mention of Roland Emmerich yet?

There is no way Emmerich did anything as bad as Manos. Besides, I like Stargate. That was my introduction to Kurt Russell.

Actually, it does, because you can still afford decent actors and watchable special effects. The laziness with a big budget creates a dull movie, but laziness with a low budget creates an embarrassing movie. I've never looked at a big-budget lazy movie and literally thought that a child could direct it (without joking).

But, again, going by the Manos example... are the issues with the film a product of "laziness", or just the overall result of an inexperienced "filmmaker", working with inexperienced cast/crew, and with a shoestring budget?

I don't think this is necessarily the insult you think it is. Personally, I would rather give any random child 200 dollars and see what kind of movie they make with it, then watch 95 percent of the big budget films that make it to theatres. I already know what those are going to look like and what stories they are going to tell. But there is no telling what kind of movie some dopey kid is going to make. I'm confident in saying it will frequently be considerably more interesting though.

FTR, Manos, as technically limited as it is, is fairly decent. And I imagine I would consider it better than almost every Roland Emmerich film ever made.

Many reasons to dislike a director's work. But one is the amount of passion. A technically bad director has still directorial "goodness" in my eyes if there is something sincere, authentic, passionate about his or her attempt at making a movie. And this is often the case in extremely naive, clumsy, amateurish low budgets attempts. The "kid's work" analogy is good.

In contrast, a soul-less filmmaker with a lot of money and technical knowledge, applying a book of recipes both for the cinematography and for the thematic marketing, will look much worse, much more "fake" or "dishonest", to me. I'll clearly prefer the former, as an artist and as a movie director.

Something to do with... judging intents, or something ?

Considering that a movie like The Blair Witch Project can be good even though a teenager could potentially write it, I'd have to say that inexperience is a person's own problem. In Manos there was hardly a story and the driving scenes were less entertaining than the boring rock climbing scenes of Lost Continent or the constant Frankenstein walk in The Beast of Yucca Flatts.

It's like the difference between a cheap restaurant pizza and a disaster made by someone who never made a pizza before because it's their first time. He could have made comedic short films instead of Manos, then maybe somebody would've noticed him and set him on a path. Instead, he thought he should jump to the top and make something legendary, and it didn't work. He's as guilty of not using what he had as Michael Bay, except Michael Bay movies have more story and better actors. And I'd rather stare at a CGI apocalypse than a boring road, so I'd still justify Roland Emmerich even though he's a sellout.