Ranking Legendary Directors' First Movies

Jaws launched the summer movie season in 1975, and in its wake came rip-offs like Orca, The Deep, and the best of the bunch, Joe Dante's Piranha, with a 69% Tomatometer score (nice). But we're not here to talk about that movie, we're here to talk about its sequel — Piranha II: The Spawning. Gee, with a title like that how could it possibly be bad (sarcasm)? And these aren't just mutated killer fish, they're mutated killer flying fish! 

Despite that Oscar-caliber setup (more sarcasm), Piranha II only managed a 6% critics score and 11% audience score. In other words, this film stank like week-old fish. That should've been a career killer, but its first-time filmmaker somehow survived, and for that, we're grateful. Who was it, by the way? James Cameron, whose second film, The Terminator, did significantly better. In fact, it's his highest-rated movie ever. Not surprisingly, Piranha II: The Spawning is his worst. But with three Oscars to his name and more than $7 billion in total global grosses, we'd say the Titanic and Avatar director has recovered nicely.

Some filmmaker's careers are bookended by masterpieces, while others peak in the middle. So far, Francis Ford Coppola belongs in the latter category. His most recent directorial effort, 2011's Twixt, earned an abysmal 26% score, while his first film, Dementia 13, earned a so-so 63% Tomatometer score. Still, that's pretty good considering the 1963 horror film — one about an ax-murderer running loose at a castle — came from the Roger Corman school of B-movie schlock and was supposed to make a cheap profit, nothing more. 

Hard to believe that same director would go on to make some of the greatest films of the 1970s ... or ever. We're talking The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation, and Apocalypse Now. That's an unparalleled seven-year run (which doesn't include his Oscar-winning screenplay for Patton), as not even Steven Spielberg or Martin Scorsese could match Coppola in the '70s. But sometimes the brightest stars also burn out the fastest. So it is with Coppola, whose brilliant but inconsistent career all started with Dementia 13.

Martin Scorsese is considered by many to be one of the greatest film directors of all time. Known for his audacious camera work, roller coaster-paced editing, and uncanny ability to inspire mesmerizing performances, Scorsese has directed Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and more masterpieces than we have space to list here. Where did it all begin? With a brilliant bravura debut? A timeless tour de force? Actually, not really. 

Who's That Knocking On My Door? is ... good, not great. At least when compared with Scorsese's work to come. With a 70% critics' score and a 61% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, Who's That Knocking On My Door? gives us a taste of Scorsese's future genius with its tale of a tough guy (played by frequent Scorsese collaborator Harvey Keitel) who falls for a bohemian blonde. There's the macho guy with anger management issues, the dynamic visual style, and the dreamy, angelic blonde. Everything that would come to define Scorsese is on display in Who's That Knocking On My Door?, though the film is for Marty purists only.

Conventional wisdom says blockbuster movies have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. If that's true, Christopher Nolan has made billions ($4.9 billion to be exact) raising the lowest common denominator up an IQ point or two. You don't need a PhD in quantum mechanics, game theory, or dream interpretation to enjoy his films, just a lack of distractions and probably subtitles (Mr. Nolan, turn the background noise down and the dialogue up on your movies, pretty please?). 

Anyway, Nolan's predilection for being non-predictable started with his very first film. You may think it was Memento, but that 2001 indie thriller is the movie that got Nolan noticed by big studios (and eventually got him his game-changing Batman gig). However, his first film was actually the super small-scale Following. How small? The 69-minute runtime barely qualifies for feature length, while its $240,000 worldwide was probably less than The Dark Knight earned at a Saturday matinee in Pasadena. Still, Following's 81% critics' score and 85% audience score showed the movie world that Nolan was a filmmaker to follow.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ... no, even farther away ... there was THX 1138. In one of the biggest ironies in Hollywood history, the blockbusteriest of blockbuster movie directors, George Lucas, actually started as an experimental filmmaker. His debut film, THX 1138, is true to his underground roots. But while plenty of film fans have seen it since 1971 (given the filmmaker would go on to create Star Wars and Indiana Jones), that wasn't the case during its release. 

With its bleak, dystopian, and yes, highly experimental worldview that's far removed from Star Wars' sunnier aesthetics, Lucas' THX 1138 only managed a $5,000 worldwide box office. That's not a typo. We're surprised he ever worked again, but luckily for Lucas, 1973's American Graffiti earned 280 times THX 1138's numbers, and he's yet to direct a bomb since. While THX 1138's box office numbers are pitiful, people who've watched it since have enjoyed it, giving the Robert Duvall-starrer an 86% critics' score and 74% audience score.

Steven Spielberg's first film is not the 1975 fish-in-the-water thriller Jaws, though it's the film that practically invented the summer movie season and launched Spielberg into the stratosphere. Jaws was actually Spielberg's third feature film and his second theatrical release. His first two films may seem like small potatoes compared to the ones that would come, but watching them now shows that Spielberg had an uncanny cinematic intuition from the start.

With an 88% critics' score and 84% audience score, Duel is a 1972 made-for-TV movie that rises far above its small budget and silly plot (a man is stalked by an unseen, psychotic semi-truck driver whose big rig roars like a Tyrannosaurus) largely thanks to Spielberg's inventiveness. His success on Duel earned him his first theatrical directing gig, 1974's Goldie Hawn-starring The Sugarland Express. With an 85% critics' score and 66% audience score (albeit an uncharacteristically anemic $7 million), The Sugarland Express impressed Universal Studios enough to send the 20-something Spielberg to Martha's Vineyard to film Peter Benchley's best-selling shark novel. Good call.

Few directors command the kind of clout to have their pictures billed as "So-and-So's Ninth Film." In fact, pretty much only Quentin Tarantino has that kind of brand equity. That wasn't always the case, as Tarantino's films weren't really numbered until 2003's Kill Bill: Vol. 1, the fourth film by Quentin Tarantino. The first film by Quentin Tarantino naturally wasn't billed as such, but it's still the stuff of legend thanks to the career it spawned. 

Released in 1992, Reservoir Dogs established Tarantino as a director to watch. It showed his penchant for outrageous violence, outstanding dialogue, and outlandish characters. It also featured, arguably, his most famous scene — Michael Madsen torturing a cop with Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle with You" in the background. With a 94% audience score and 92% critics' score, Reservoir Dogs is second only to "The 2nd Film by Quentin Tarantino", Pulp Fiction, on Tarantino's Tomatometer ranking, though both are bested by True Romance, which QT wrote but Tony Scott directed.

Sam Raimi's debut film may be the most impressive of them all. Every director on this list would go on to have a legendary career, and Raimi is no exception, with $3.3 billion in global earnings, including the historic, game-changing Spider-Man series. However, Raimi's debut film wasn't simply a marker of great things to come — it was a historic, game-changing film in its own right. The Evil Dead may be the most famous cult film of all time, inspiring horror filmmakers for decades to come. 

The Evil Dead established all of Raimi's trademarks, including shaky cams, fast zooms, a delicate balance between horror and comedy, Raimi's 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88, and the gratuitous physical decimation of Bruce Campbell, all of which Raimi would embrace for the rest of his career. It's also every bit as frightening and fresh as the year it was released. While the Evil Dead franchise would eventually trend more towards silly comedy, the original is a straight-up horror movie, and it's one of the scariest ever made. The film's poster even features a glowing quote — "The most ferociously original horror film of the year" — by none other than Stephen King. 

With a 95% critics' score and 84% audience score, The Evil Dead is second only to Raimi's pseudo-sequel/remake Evil Dead 2 on his Tomatometer chart, while the movie's $29 million lifetime worldwide box office gross earned back 77 times its budget.