There are those special first movies from untested directors that showcase the breadth of their talent, that let the audience know immediately that this is a filmmaker whose work we ought to pay attention to — your Citizen Kanes, your Night of the Living Deads, your Saws, your Hereditarys. These movies are remarkable not just because they’re so good, but because it’s genuinely pretty hard to come out of the gate swinging like that. Most directors, even our most beloved ones, cut their teeth on franchise films or lesser ideas before launching their passion projects.
It can be jarring to look back on your favorite, most accomplished, most iconic directors’ filmographies to see their humbler beginnings, and nothing is more jarring than finding out a director whose work you otherwise love started their career with something more than a little embarrassing. For every Citizen Kane there’s a Piranha II: The Spawning (see below) hiding somewhere in the depths of a Wikipedia page, or one of the weirder categories in your favorite free streaming service.
Because we love to celebrate how far our favorite talented artists have come, we’re looking back on some of their more embarrassing first efforts. These run the gamut from awful B-horror midnight movies to schoolboy projects to franchise films that cycled through more accomplished filmmakers before settling on whoever was most available at the beginning of their career. Some of these movies have been reclaimed over time by die hard fans, and for the ones that haven’t been, at least the only way to go is up.
Terrible First Movies from Beloved Directors
The good news is all of these directors have made much better films.
Gallery Credit: Emma Stefansky
READ MORE: The 12 Best Opening Title Sequences in Movie History
Movies You Never Realized Were Steven Spielberg Productions
You may not have realized it, but Steven Spielberg has produced a ton of movies he didn’t produce — including the 15 titles below.
