DAVID NUTTER
The Good: Early X-Files, Space: Above and Beyond
The Bad: Disturbing Behavior
The Ugly: Roswell

Disturbing behavior indeed. The lethal combination of the talented Nutter with a WB series cast member has made the once-reputable director a cause for concern. While the Katie Holmes monster Disturbing Behavior can be chalked up to studio interference and slash-and-burn editing, there are some sins you can't simply wipe away with ten Our Fathers and a couple of Hail Marys. Roswell is one of those that requires repentance on an inhuman scale. Not to mention that this is the one he should have titled Sleepwalkers.

The Quote: "Who put the acid in my spam?" -- Disturbing Behavior.

JONATHAN FRAKES
The Good: Star Trek: The Next Generation, First Contact
The Bad: Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction?, Insurrection
The Ugly: Roswell

From Trek to drek (a.k.a Roswell), Frake's most recent genre efforts are truly beyond relief. Though we dug him both as an actor and a director of The Next Generation and First Contact, the blink-and-you'll-miss-a-scene Insurrection combined with the for-the-love-of-God-make-something-happen Roswell proved the pacing of this guy's career is way off. It is the rare individual who can host a Fox reality series and not hit their career low, but Frakes is just such a man. And yeah, baby, that's fact.

The Quote: "There's gotta be something better for me out there than Roswell." -- Roswell

RICK BERMAN
The Good: Star Trek: The Next Generation, First Contact
The Bad: Star Trek: Insurrection
The Ugly: Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: Voyager

When Rick Berman is good, he is very, very good, but when he is bad, it is blasphemy. Gene Roddenberry's Chosen One ascended to the Trek throne, took the helm, called the play and jumped in the deep end -- and those metaphors are almost as mixed as the quality of his work ever since. Generations broke a Trek movie rule -- don't irrevocably kill off beloved icons. No, not Kirk. He was asking for it. The Enterprise! What kind of an ignominious death was that? Taken out by an aged Klingon cruiser commanded by the Duras sisters? Oh, the humanity! Then there's the disaster that Voyager has turned into, which brings us to...

The Quote: "How many people does it take, Admiral, before it becomes wrong? Hmm? A thousand, fifty thousand, a million? How many people does it take, Admiral?" -- Insurrection

BRANNON BRAGA
The Good: Star Trek: First Contact
The Bad: Next Generation episodes "Aquiel" and "Sub Rosa"
The Ugly: Star Trek: Voyager

When you're Brannon Braga, the trip from Good Genre Guy to Bad Genre Guy isn't even long enough for an in-flight movie. His Next Generation forays included two of the worst episodes that the series ever produced, and this was the guy they put in charge of Voyager? What demon is he worshipping? For Voyager, Braga's worst sins are on the production side. The strong female captain we were excited about? Pathetic. The rebellious, independent Maquis? De-fanged early on. The new Delta Quadrant aliens we were expecting? These are new? And continuity? Well, it's a big word, isn't it?

The Quote: "If I ever hear you talk that way again, I will personally throw you in the brig for mutiny!" -- Voyager

JOHN CARPENTER
The Good: Halloween, The Fog, Escape From New York, The Thing, Assault on Precinct 13, many more.
The Bad: Escape From LA, Memoirs of an Invisible Man
The Ugly: Village of the Damned, Vampires, They Live

Granted, the man (at far right in the photo) has already directed enough classic horror flicks to be considered something of a genre god, but where did it say that he had to stop now? His cheesy-ass remakes and sequels are painful enough (shouldn't life as the creator of the Halloween series have taught him something?), but for one of our editors, it was Vampires that sucked in more ways than one: "After watching ten minutes of Vampires, I turned off the tape, grabbed a pen, and began gouging my own eyes out. I wouldn't have eyes remain in my head that had witnessed such utter crap. Also, gouging my eyes out was a lot more fun than watching that movie." Uh, yeah, what she said!

The Quote: "I dunno what the hell's in there, but it's weird and pissed off, whatever it is." -- The Thing

KEVIN WILLIAMSON
The Good: Scream, Scream 2
The Bad: I Know What You Did Last Summer, Halloween: H20
The Ugly: The Faculty, Teaching Mrs. Tingle

Williamson's the kind of guy who takes the "Find something you do well, and stick with it" motto and applies it to plotlines, dialogue and stock characters galore. While his contributions to the teen horror genre are manifold (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Freddie Prinze Jr, Marisa Coughlin, James Van Der Beek -- hey, that distended forehead screams genre), evidence of the wit and talent that produced Scream is in short supply. Did we mention he forgot the "Find something you do well" part? Two words: Scream 3. And two more: Ehren Kruger. Enjoy the Wasteland, pal. Oops, that was canceled.

The Quote: "Someone has taken their love of scary movies one step too far." -- Scream

BARRY SONNENFELD
The Good: Addams Family, Addams Family Values
The Bad: Men in Black
The Ugly: Wild, Wild, West

From smart and subversive to just plain sucky, Sonnenfeld's evident confusion of Will Smith for a giant dollar sign has resulted in a wild, wild mess. His recent non-genre efforts -- Get Shorty -- have fared much better, and our advice is to get out of the genre altogether and leave poor Men in Black 2 alone. Of course, however, it is folks like The 11th Hour staff that are entirely to blame. "The Internet, and the bad reporting based on the Internet, is ultimately going to hurt the quality of movies," says the director of the upcoming Chippendales film. And those Will Smith title-song raps are going to help it, we presume?

The Quote: "That weak-ass story's the best you can come up with?" -- Men in Black

STEVEN SPIELBERG
The Good: Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T.
The Bad: Jurassic Park
The Ugly: The Lost World

Repent, Steven Spielberg, repent! The man who once made insightful, intelligent sci-fi films now makes insightful, intelligent dramas and piss-poor genre films with even worse commercial tie-ins. Sure, the FX still kick ass, but they shouldn't exist to feed death fantasies of the ultra-blah characters. We miss little Elliot and Roy Neary. The movies may have gotten bigger, but the heart of the genre has been lost.

The Quote: "You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!" -- Jurassic Park

BAD MOVIE PRODUCTION STUDIO: DIMENSION FILMS
The Good: Scream, Scream 2, Mimic
The Bad: Halloween: H20, The Crow: City of Angels, Phantoms
The Ugly: The Faculty, Texas Blood Money, the Children of the Corn sequel series

There's a reason Dimension is so secretive about all their upcoming film projects -- because they suck! While the studio once took chances on cool, original genre fare (most notably the underrated Mimic), they now endorse projects that, when not ripping off older, better genre movies (The Faculty), simply rip off each other (Halloween H20, Phantoms, again, The Faculty). And you can't blame it all on Kevin Williamson: any studio that chooses to endorse the Children of the Corn series while furthering the careers of Clea DuVall and Josh Hartnett really does have a thing for evil kids. Begone, demon! We'll be busy lapping up the quality genre flicks that Artisan has so generously given us these last few years.

Potential Role Model: Artisan Entertainment (The Blair Witch Project, A Stir of Echoes, Pi, the upcoming Ninth Gate)
The Quote: "I know you pride yourself on being the outsider, but aren't you tired of pretending to be something you're not?" -- The Faculty

BAD TELEVISION PRODUCTION STUDIO: 1013 PRODUCTIONS
The Good: The X-Files seasons 1-4, Millennium seasons 1-2
The Bad: Harsh Realm
The Ugly: Millennium season 3, X-Files seasons 5-7

Talk about trusting no one. Watching the last few seasons of X-Files was rather like watching a sadistic child poking at a dead cat with a stick. While Harsh Realm certainly provoked an audience reaction -- shivering, twitching, cancellation, litigation -- we're most upset about the downfall of the once-great X-Files (and, yeah, to a lesser degree, Millennium.) While there are still some decent episodes slipping through the cracks, the departure of the Morgan brothers, James Wong, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa really shows. A once intellectual, witty and scary series has been traded in for a simplistic, shallow model, and the result is just freakin' painful. 1013 was once Ground Zero for TV genre talent, and many -- like Morgan and Wong -- have already moved onto greener pastures. Which brings us to...