Hobo With a Shotgun (2011)
Another of the Grindhouse mock trailers gets it own film. This hits in with a wonderfully enthusiastic B movie energy and buckets of gore that remind of early Peter Jackson
Horror
Hokum (2026)
Irish director Damian McCarthy impressed a good deal with Oddity. In his equally spooky follow-up, writer Adam Scott travels to a hotel in Ireland only to become trapped in a haunted suite
Hold That Ghost (1941)
The fourth of Abbott and Costello’s films, a knockoff of the then recent hit of the Bob Hope remake of The Cat and the Canary involving much comedic running around a supposedly haunted mansion
Hold Your Breath (2024)
This has quite a few similarities to the underrated The Wind with Sarah Paulson as a mother in the 1930s Dustbowl seeing possible supernatural figures amid the dust storms, which could just as easily be fraying sanity
The Hole (2001)
British psycho-thriller about teenagers trapped inside a bunker. This does an interesting mid-film twist to offer an entirely different version of the story but never rises above the middle-of-the-road
The Hole (2009)
One of the less known films of Joe Dante. A 3D work that just predates Avatar, it is a YA horror story in the vein of The Goonies or Dante’s own Explorers crafted with care and affection
The Hole in the Ground (2019)
An Irish film that creates quite a reasonable degree of atmosphere in its story of a mother who believes her son has been replaced by something else
Holidays (2016)
Another in the spate of multi-director horror anthologies with each episode here being set around a holiday. As with these films, some of the episodes work well, some end with a puzzled WTF and most fall somewhere in between
The Hollow (2015)
One doesn’t have high expectations of a Syfy Channel film. On the other hand, director Sheldon Wilson surprises and creates a highly original monster and moments of considerable tension
Hollow Creek (2016)
Although effort is made to sell this as a horror film and there are some ghosts, this is far more of a missing woman thriller. A directing/writing debut for Guisela Moro who plays the abducted woman
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)
Construed by prolific B movie hack Fred Olen Ray around its two stars – Gunnar Hansen, the original Leatherface, and Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, this hits a perfect note between bimbos, tongue-in-cheek and cheap gore
The Hollywood Strangler Meets the Skid Row Slasher (1979)
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
Holocaust 2000 (1977)
An Italian exploitation copy of The Omen industrialist Kirk Douglas fighting the coming of the Anti-Christ. Here bizarrely enough The Beast manifests as a nuclear power plant
Holocaust Cannibal (2014)
Bill Zebub is possibly the most offensive filmmaker at work today. This largely plotless film features topless Nazi women fighting cannibal tribes, giant bugs and a Bigfoot
Holy Hell (2015)
An outrageously demented low-budget film guaranteed to offend nearly everybody. This takes inspiration from Hobo With a Shotgun with a Catholic priest wielding a gun seeking revenge
The Home (2025)
A ridiculous film where petty criminal Pete Davidson is given a job at a retirement home only to discover that sinister activities are occurring all around him. From the director of The Purge films
Home Sick (2007)
The first film from Adam Wingard from which it is hard to guess he would be a major director. This is a very amateurish work, nevertheless comes with an undeniable enthusiasm for the genre
Homebodies (1974)
A wonderful little largely unknown film where the seniors in an apartment building due to be demolished group together to take revenge on the real estate developers
Homeless Joe (2009)
A low-budget film about a homeless man who has been turned into a serial killer by a series of experiments designed to create urban mayhem
Homicidal (1961)
William Castle gained fame for his horror films made with a series of promotional gimmicks. With the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Castle made a blatant copy here, the first of his psycho-thrillers
The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
A film based on true-life killers Martha Beck-Raymond Fernandez who lured and killed women from Lonely Hearts ads. This comes with an incredible rawness and an unforgettable performance from Shirley Stoler
The Horde (2009)
This could be The Raid reconceived as a zombie film (and a few dashes of Assault on Precinct 13). This never reinvents the basics, just delivers a ferociously entertaining survival film
The Horde (2016)
A Backwoods Brutality film that becomes quite gore-drenched. Written by its leading man Paul Logan who casts himself as a perfect action hero wading in to kick hillbilly ass
Horny Teenagers Must Die! (2024)
A slasher film that certainly grabs your attention with a sensationalistic title. While not without occasional amusements, this is mostly amateurish
The Horrible Sexy Vampire (1970)
Work of 1970s Euro horror from Spain that comes influenced by the Hammer Dracula films. The rather dreary film on show belies the sensational promise of the English-language title
A Horrible Way to Die (2010)
Adam Wingard has been a director on the rise in the last few years, although his films often feel as though they could have been more than they are. This mumblecore serial killer film is his most satisfying and fully achieved work so far
Horrid (2009)
A low-budget regionally made film about a zombie outbreak. This does better than most of the vast horde of low-budget zombie films that came out in the late 2000s
The Horror at 37,000 Feet (1973)
TV movie that combines the mid-air disaster film of Airport with the 1970s occult fad with a line-up of name actors dealing with druidic stones that exude evil in the midst of a plane flight
Horror Express (1972)
Wonderfully madcap film with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing travelling aboard the Trans-Siberian Express in the 1900s realising they are facing a body-hopping alien
Horror High (1974)
This could easily have been titled I Was a Teenage Jekyll and Hyde where a bullied teen creates a formula that brings out his dark side to take revenge on his tormentors
Horror Hospital (1973)
Bizarre entry from the Anglo-horror cycle with Michael Gough as a mad scientist creating zombies and driving a deadly armoured Rolls Royce
Horror in the High Desert (2021)
A modest Found Footage film that builds up an effective mystery about the disappearance of a hiker in the Nevada backwoods. Three sequels followed.
Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019)
A documentary about African-Americans in the horror genre that covers everything from the earliest depictions through the Blaxploitation film to the rise of Black filmmakers
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)
The fifth and worst of Hammer’s Frankenstein films. In a play for younger audiences, Peter Cushing was dumped in favour of Ralph Bates in a retelling of the original and an unfunny comedic approach
The Horror of It All (1964)
For all that Hammer’s Terence Fisher was raised to the status of cult director, there are efforts such as this unfunny Old Dark House comedy that reveal that he was not always on form
The Horror of Party Beach (1964)
A Z movie classic that combines some of the most absurd looking mutant monsters ever created with the era’s fad for beach party movies, including appearances from a wannabe Beach Boys band
The Horror Show (1989)
Routine executed killer comes back from the electric chair film made to exploit the success of Wes Craven’s Shocker. In some places this was sold as another of the House films
The Horror Vault (2008)
A compilation of short horror films from Denmark
Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)
A highly entertaining Herman Cohen production where Michael Gough plays a mad crime writer who employs a series of cruel sensationalistic deaths for his victims
Horsemen (2009)
Serial killer thriller that brims with much Biblical imagery about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and passes through assorted increasingly improbable twists without much affect
Host (2020)
The first major genre film made during the Covid lockdown, a modestly effective work that borrows the basics of Unfriended for a story about a séance being held over a Zoom call
Hostel (2005)
The film that put the term Torture Porn on the map. Eli Roth determines to push boundaries with one of the most brutal films ever seen in mainstream release in the tale of tourists made prisoners at an East European hostel for paying clients to torture
Hostel Part II (2007)
Eli Roth’s sequel to his earlier hit, this emerges as a pallid copy of its predecessor, having merely changed the sexes of the protagonists and lacking the original’s gut-churning impact
Hostel Part III (2011)
Third in the Hostel series, an indifferent piece of formula hackwork minus Eli Roth where suspension of disbelief is constantly being disrupted by absurdly contrived scenes
Hostile Intent (1997)
An oddity that seems to start as a film about IT espionage and then becomes a survival horror with a paintball team on a corporate retreat being hunted through the woods
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1929)
An incredibly good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. Thought lost for many years, this was made at the height of German Expressionism and has a vividness that other adaptations lack
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
The first in a series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, who became the definitive Holmes for many years, and a reasonable adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Hammer Films’ one and only Sherlock Holmes adaptation. It is beautiful to see the opulence of early Hammer productions brought to bear giving the story unusually effective life
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1978)
Adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes novel made as a comedy vehicle for Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Given the duo’s reputations as comics, the results are fairly excruciating
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1983)
Given lavish period settings and featuring a sterling cast line-up of British talent from the day, this is probably the most faithful film adaptation of the Conan Doyle story
The Hound of the Baskervilles (2000)
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
The Hound of the Baskervilles (2002)
A new and extremely good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story featuring Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This offers some radical shakeups of the story and characters
Hounded (2022)
Another variant on The Most Dangerous Game scenario. This has the amusing idea that the British aristocracy, having had fox hunts cancelled on them, have taken up hunting the working class and immigrants
Hounds of Love (2016)
Australian film about a couple that abduct and imprison a teenage girl. This received some very good notices in theatrical release but as a horror film, it soft pedals and seems to avoid most of its horror element
House (1986)
Amiably silly haunted house film with William Katt fighting rubbery pop-up monsters. This doesn’t take itself too seriously. A minor hit that produced three sequels.
House II: The Second Story (1987)
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
House (1977)
Very strange Japanese ghost story that has been rediscovered as a cult classic. It resembles a film like Willy Wonka turned into a haunted house film where the intention seems to have been to be a bizarre and wacky as possible
House at the End of the Street (2012)
Psycho-thriller that plays out like a creaky old deranged relative in the cellar film retooled as a teen romance until an absurd mid-film conceptual twist irredeemably kills the film off
The House By the Cemetery (1981)
One of the key films in the cult of Lucio Fulci. Imagine a version of The Amityville Horror with the addition of zombies, mad scientists and a gore-drenched death every few minutes
House By the Lake (2017)
A strange film about parents who become concerned when their young daughter insists she has an imaginary fish man companion. This arrives at a head-scratchingly WTF ending
The House in Nightmare Park (1973)
Amidst the Anglo-horror cycle of the 1970s, there was this throwback to the 1940s styled Old Dark House comedy. Made as a vehicle for comedian Frankie Howerd, this only demonstrates how creaky the genre was
House IV (1992)
The fourth and last in the series of 1980s horror comedies that began with House produced by Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. This brings the first film’s William Katt back to round the series out
The House Next Door (2006)
A largely routine haunted house film where Lara Flynn Boyle plays a wife who becomes certain that the house next door is parasitic and preys upon people’s minds
House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Rob Zombie’s debut film was propelled into an infamy it didn’t deserve it was banned by its distributor. Zombie only slavishly rehashes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a constant posturing for shock effect that becomes tiresome
House of Dark Shadows (1970)
The first film based on the cult Gothic tv soap opera Dark Shadows, this is designed to highlight the series breakout character of Jonathan Frid’s vampire Barnabas Collins
House of Darkness (1947)
A minor British ghost story about a composer who looks in and sees the lives of the inhabitants of a haunted house replayed. This comes with some modest effect
House of Darkness (2022)
Neil LaBute conducts a vampire movie take on the war of the sexes that comes with a satisfying bite. Justin Long gets more than he bargained for when he accompanies the girl he picks up in a bar home
House of Dracula (1945)
The third of Universal’s monster bashes, a successor to the previous House of Frankenstein. These Universal crossovers felt contrived in their reasons to bring the monsters together but this works better than the others
House of Evil (1971)
One of four cheap Mexican films that were the last works an 81 year old Boris Karloff appeared in. Here he presides over relatives gathered for the reading of his will as they are killed by malevolent toys
House of Frankenstein (1944)
The second of Universal’s team-ups of their in-house monsters and superior to the first of these, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Despite some imaginative moments, the script has a stitched-together improbability
House of Last Things (2013)
Unusual and interesting ghost story that draws heavily on Don’t Look Now and proves fascinating in its teasing maze of visual clues, before heading off into a surreal game of identity exchange
House of Mirrors (2012)
Low-budget psycho-thriller about amnesia that tries hard in many areas but fails to generate enough contortion in terms of plot twists to make the show work
House of Mortal Sin (1976)
From British director Pete Walker who specialised in films about insane authority figures slaughtering Swinging Sixties youth – in this case, he caused a considerable stir with a film featuring a psychopathic Catholic priest
The House of Seven Corpses (1973)
Film with an interesting B movie cast line-up where a film crew inadvertently end up enacting rituals from a book that resurrect a corpse while shooting at a mansion
The House of Snails (2021)
A Spanish horror film that develops some reasonable effect in its story about a writer who moves to a small town only to find the locals are keeping sinister secrets
The House of the Dead (1978)
Not to be confused with the Uwe Boll videogame adaptation, this is an obscure but not entirely uninteresting horror anthology from the 1970s that tells several tales set around a funeral parlour
House of the Dead (2003)
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
The House of the Devil (2009)
The film that gained attention for Ti West as a director, a slow burn work where Jocelin Donahue is hired for a babysitting job only to find sinister things going on when she arrives at the house
House of the Long Shadows (1983)
Cannon Films make an Old Dark House film that brings together an aging Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine. This denoted the end of the Anglo-horror era but is not nearly as worthy as you feel it should have been
The House of Usher (1960)
The first and best of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adapations with Vincent Price. Corman was piggybacking on the Gothic revival sparked by Hammer Films and creates a superbly brooding work that is the best adaptation of the story yet
The House of Usher (1989)
This makes an interesting attempt to tell a modern-day version of the Edgar Allan Poe story but the film’s emphasis on cheap shock effects is a far cry from Poe’s masterful mood of despair and desolation
House of Usher (2008)
Edgar Allan Poe would probably have difficulty recognising his short story, which has been turned into a work of softcore gay erotica in the hands of director David DeCoteau
House of VHS (2016)
Group of backpackers at a chateau find an old VCR that mashes up genres and sucks them inside. There’s a good idea for a horror film somewhere here but it ends up with terrible execution
House of Wax (1953)
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.
House of Wax (2005)
Despite borrowing the title, this has the no connection to the 1953 film with Vincent Price as a mad waxworks curator and is a modern slasher film. Nevertheless, director Jaume Collet-Serra does come up with some very inventive dispatches
House of Whipcord (1974)
The best film from UK director Pete Walker. All of Walker’s film have a horror of ingrained institutionalism. This, concerning a private prison where morally lax women are abducted and tortured, is depicted with an extraordinary cruelty
House on Haunted Hill (1959)
One of the key films from William Castle, the P.T. Barnum of the horror genre. Castle always approached horror like a carnival barker. Castle does not have much style but the luridness of his shocks proves entertaining
House on Haunted Hill (1999)
The announcement of the remake of The Haunting was followed by this remake of the 1959 William Castle film, which turns out far more unpretentious and altogether more fun than the bloated flop of The Haunting
The House on Skull Mountain (1974)
Modestly effective Blaxploitation take on House on Haunted Hill that concerns voodoo rites being conducted in a big old Southern mansion
The House on Sorority Row (1982)
A slasher film from the classic 1980s heyday set during a party at a sorority house. This has been praised as being one effort that is well above the rest of the genre.
House on the Edge of the Park (1980)
From the director of Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato, comes this home invasion thriller that rips off The Last House on the Left. This was listed as a Video Nasty back in the day
House Red (2022)
Intriguing and well made film where two tourists seeking to patch up a troubled relationship volunteer at am Italian vineyard – only to find sinister things going on
House Shark (2017)
The gonzo killer shark film has gained its own genre in recent years, popularised by Sharknado. This concerns a shark that emerges out of toilets and prowls around suburban living rooms
The House That Dripped Blood (1970)
Another of the Amicus horror anthologies from a series of stories by Robert Bloch. An okay effort, mostly being remembered for Jon Pertwee’s turn as a comic vampire
The House That Jack Built (2018)
Lars von Trier, who I would argue is the best director at work in the world, makes a film about a serial killer. The results, as you might expect from von Trier, are outrageous, blackly funny and challengingly provocative
The House That Screamed (1969)
From the almost unknown Narciso Ibañez Serrador, this is essentially a giallo thriller made with the lush sensibilities of a Hammer film. Set in a girl’s boarding school, this substantially prefigures Suspiria
The House That Vanished (1973)
Spanish director Jose Larraz gained a small cult reputation for his work amidst the 1970s Anglo-horror cycle. This is a psycho film where a model is stalked after witnessing a murder
The House That Would Not Die (1970)
A routine haunted house film that was made as a tv movie,. One of the several early genre works made by celebrated tv producer Aaron Spelling.
The House Where Evil Dwells (1982)
US-made ghost story set in Japan with a couple moved into a house haunted by a dead samurai, his wife and her lover. Not a patch on any of the classic Japanese kaidan eiga
Housebound (2014)
An NZ-made haunted house comedy that runs through a frenzied array of genre plot devices, a couple of minor jumps and some easy middle-of-the-road laughs leaving you feeling there should have been more to it