There are GREAT filmmakers that consistently make good and great damn movies into cinema around the world.

However, even the great ones fuck up sometimes. This column will explore some turkeys made by good directors. Let's explore!

DUNE (1984) - David Lynch

David Lynch is one of the more intriging figures of influence and force, a maverick with a cult personality upon film with such films as ELEPHANT MAN, BLUE VELVET, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, LOST HIGHWAY, and so on. Nevermind his popular if brief TWIN PEAKS television program.

After ELEPHANT MAN scored a truckload of Oscar nominations and critical raves, Lynch was brought onboard to the film adaptation of the legendary science fiction masterpiece novel DUNE of Frank Herbert's by Italian producer Dino DeLaurentiis. One wonders though where the creative and later trademarked Lynch-ian autuer work is, for honestly I can't seem to find it in this big-budget train wreck. Maybe Lynch was basically made Dino's patsy, or Lynch was WAY over his head, going from small budget features to a $50 million(or $100 million in today's money) picture, or something.

Lynch's DUNE is a movie that on one hand, Lynch is trying to work his magic, but on the other, the movie is trying to be like the epic LAWRENCE OF ARABIA of sci-fi film on the wake of STAR WARS. Either way fails on their own, and as a cohesive narrative, its a mess. Lynch reportedly assembled his true director's cut with the Theatrical edit, and then washed his hands of the whole affair. To this day, he refuses to speak about it, and honestly I don't blame him. On his LYNCH ON LYNCH book, which I recommend for both Lynch and movie fans, DUNE is the least-covered movie of his career, with Lynch mostly remarking about the sets. What does that tell you?

HOOK (1992) - Steven Spielberg

You know, this had the potential to be a winner. A whimsical adult fantasy about a father that finds out that not only did Peter Pan actually exist, but that HE is the gayest-looking children's literature hero out there.

Well, thats the only nice thing I'll say about it.

Why did this movie absolutely fail? Maybe Spielberg's trademarked whimsical approach fails to compute as the formula usually is expected to produce. Maybe he made the fatal flaw of letting Robin Williams being Robin Williams(a mistake that Barry Levinson paid dearly for in his TOYS flop from the same year), or that the "Lost Boys" look like a bunch of silly-ass "rad" punks. Okay, thats another good thing, for me to laugh at shit from the past that people thought was "cool"(I mean, skateboarding kids? )

Then again, maybe Spielberg gave us way too much sappy melodrama for us to digest, which in result made me wanna vomit, from the son who hates his father because he didn't attend the baseball games(yet the kid sucked in playing baseball. I don't blame the father actually!) to some stuff about the past....

Again, imagine if Spielberg didn't have Williams, the sap, and melodrama? Interestingly enough, Williams was a last-minute casting after Kevin Kline was forced to drop out. You know, he would have been good....but the movie was still fucked probably.

WHITE SQUALL (1996) - Ridley Scott

Sir Ridley Scott is one of the great visual storytellers of all time. But after flops in the 1980s like the masterpiece BLADE RUNNER, the pretty if unfortunately butchered LEGEND, and the undistinguished BLACK RAIN and SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME, his career was on the fritz. Save for THELMA & LOUISE, his career in the 1990s was, quite frankly, fucked.

WHITE SQUALL was his first movie after his decent 1492 picture.

However, if you thought I bitched about the melodrama in HOOK....please! SQUALL involved some lame adventure drama about some rich white kids in the 50s that go sailing, and then some bad shit happened. However, at that point, I was rooting for the kids to be exterminated.

To think that THE DUDE, Jeff Bridges, wasted his time with this failure of a movie...and Ridley Scott thankfully took time off after this and the quite awfully-bad-also G.I. JANE to recharge his creative batteries, then came GLADIATOR, that major hit movie that not only saved his career, but resurrected it artistically as well.

However, WHITE SQUALL should be avoided like a hurricane.