"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about," flamboyant filmmaker John Waters has said. "If someone vomits watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation." Just check out the infamous scene in the cult classic "Pink Flamingos" (1972), in which a 300-pound transvestite cheerf
David Cronenberg has perfected the art of making us simultaneously cringe with disgust and stare with furtive fascination. With an early career marked by restless explorations in low-budget horror, he is no stranger to shocking cinema -- in fact, his biggest claim-to-fame may be the notorious explodi
Sex, melodrama, and a raunchy, dark comedy -- audiences can expect to find excesses of all these types in the works of Pedro Almodovar, a Spanish filmmaker whose homegrown popularity rivals that of Luis Bunuel. Born poor and unable to afford tuition to film school (all of which were, at any rate, clo
Another talented chip off the German Expressionist block, F. W. Murnau had a penchant for horror. With "Nosferatu" (1922) he brought the first of countless Count Dracula stories to cinematic light. Murnau made his Dracula as hideous, doomed, and gloomy as later incarnations are suave, elegant, and ta