The Sleeper (2012)
Not to be confused with the Woody Allen film, this is a modern slasher film that pays homage to its 1980s counterparts – in particular, the sorority house slasher as a maniac who deep-breathes down the phone stalks assorted co-eds. Unexceptional in all regards
The Sleeping Beauty (2010)
Catherine Breillat, a director usually known for tackling issues of female sexuality, adapts the classic fairytale in a muddled effort that singularly fails to fly either as fairytale or deconstruction
The Sleeping Woman (2024)
A Spanish film that comes with overtones of I Walked with a Zombie and Patrick where a comatose wife starts to take control of the mind of the nurse who is tending her
The Slipper and the Rose (1976)
A musical adaptation of Cinderella from the Sherman Brothers, behind the hit of Mary Poppins
The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)
Supposedly a feminist parody of the slasher film but one has doubts. For one, the film is lacking in discernible irony and otherwise no different from the other slasher films of the era bar the fact it was directed by a woman
The Smurfs (2011)
Live-action version of the popular Hanna-Barbera cartoon series. In its favour, it is at least slickly polished and comes with far less in the way of irritating smartass humour that one expected
The Smurfs 2 (2013)
The first film was vaguely passable but this is an agonising piece of commercial product that has reduced everything to lazy slapstick sequences, cutsie laughs and smartass lines played for the single-digit age groups
The Snarling (2018)
A werewolf comedy that takes place on the set of a zombie film. Comes with much in the way of homage to An American Werewolf in London
The Sniper (1952)
An interesting early psycho film with an unbalanced Arthur Franz driven to jealousy and picking up a rifle and shooting women whenever he sees couples together
The Snow Queen (1995)
Lightweight British animated adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale made for children
The Snowman (2017)
International production based on a series of books about a Norwegian detective. This flopped badly and was called confusing. Mostly, it is a serial killer thriller that fails to hold you gripped with its unfoldings
The Son of Bigfoot (2017)
The title is misleading as this features no Bigfeet but is an animated film about a family that sprouts all-over body hair and big feet. This quickly falls into the usual formulaic inanities of the modern animated film
The Son of Kong (1933)
The 1933 King Kong is a landmark classic Yhis sequel was quickly produced soon after its success,. While the original created a monster movie fairytale, this plays everything for maximum cuteness – it is essentially King Kong mounted as a children’s film
The Sonata (2018)
A film where a violinist is drawn in to the mystery of a piece of classical music with occult properties, this is a classy and well-made production above the mill of the average horror film
The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011)
Hong Kong director Ching Siu-Tung returns with a Wu Xia film made with extravagant Chinese backing. Wu Xia of the 00s have slowly taken to CGI and Ching readily adapts his moves to this with often breathtaking effect
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1978)
If you don’t know who Karel Zeman is, you need to check out his films – he is quite one of the most extraordinary directors in his blend of live-action and animation. Zeman’s later films are pure animation and tend to be overlooked but are not uninteresting.
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (2010)
A live-action film based on the titular segment from Fantasia. From Jerry Bruckheimer meaning that it is a film of empty-headed special effects that fails to conjure any magic of its own
The Sore Losers (1997)
Film that seems to be trying to cram in as many exploitation elements as possible from UFOs to spree killers, zombies, Women in Prison and rock’n’roll
The Soul Eater (2024)
A French police procedural where detectives are plunged into a series of bizarre murders involving a child sacrifice cult and a folk boogeyman. From the directorial duo who started the whole French Extremism movement with Inside
The Sound Barrier (1952)
David Lean conducts a fictional account of the efforts to build a plane that breaks the sound barrier
The Space Between Us (2017)
Following the huge success of films like Gravity and The Martian that portray space travel with scrupulous realism, this can be considered the Young Adult version. It pays surprising attention to getting its science right; on the other hand, that doesn’t excuse the gaping implausibilities elsewhere
The Space Children (1958)
One of the less remembered films from Jack Arnold who directed a number of 1950s SF classics in which the children of rocket engineers are used by an alien force to sabotage a space launch. Not one of Arnold’s greats but still a modestly effective work.
The Special (2020)
Film about a man who develops an obsession with a mysterious black box that gives him the best sex of his life
The Specials (2000)
An obscure parody about a team of inept and dysfunctional superheroes that was one of the earliest works from a then unknown James Gunn (who not only writes but stars as one of the superheroes)
The Spectre (1963)
A work of brooding Italian Gothic, a loose sequel to The Terror of Dr Hichcock. Featuring oodles of atmosphere and the genre’s indisputable queen Barbara Steele as a wife haunted by a dead husband
The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974)
An obscure item among the fad for Edgar Allan Poe films during the 1960s, this threadbare production features Poe himself investigating sinister happenings at an asylum
The Spider Labyrinth (1988)
Italian giallo with a professor in Budapest investigating a cult of spider worshippers
The Spiderwick Chronicles (2008)
Film version of a popular series of children’s books that has a good deal of fun bringing to life a secret world of trolls and goblins
The Spine of Night (2021)
Surprisingly good animated sword and sorcery film, made with a darker edge and definitely not for children
The Spiral (1998)
The black sheep among the Japanese Ringu films. A sequel released the same time as the first film, this lacks the other’s uncanny atmosphere and was ignored
The Spiral Staircase (1975)
A remake of the classic film noir psycho-thriller. Now the story is conducted in colour and with a name star cast but misses all the atmosphere the original had by a wide mile
The Spirit (1987)
Few people today have an idea of what a huge name comic-book creator Will Eisner was. This was an unsold tv pilot adaptation of Eisner’s most famous creation, the masked hero The Spirit. The pilot is not a very successful effort but at least it makes an effort to get many of the details and zany spirit of the comic right
The Spirit (2008)
A real head-scratcher. Legendary comic-book writer Frank Miller directs an adaptation of the famous Will Eisner comic-book. A completely madcap film that deserves to be rediscovered as a cult classic
The Spirit is Willing (1967)
Here gimmick master William Castle turns his attention away from the usual into making a light fantasy comedy about a family who buy a house inhabited by ghosts
The Spirit of 76 (1990)
Clearly an attempt to copy the success of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, this is a comedy with time travellers visiting the 1970s. Lots of 70s pop culture and faces without any of it being funny
The Spirit of the Beehive (1974)
Visually extraordinary Coming of Age story set during the Spanish Civil War in which a young girl imagines seeing the Frankenstein monster
The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (2004)
Spongebob Squarepants was a sleeper hit on the Nickelodeon Channel that crossed over to find an adult following; this is the first of the film spinoffs. The film comes with a zanily surreal sense of humour that ran through the series that is frequently downright hilarious
The Spring (2000)
TV movie where Kyle MacLachlan comes across a town where the residents have discovered a Fountain of Youth
The Spy in the Green Hat (1967)
The fifth of the theatrically released films based on tv’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. This is one of the more overtly comic films with an entertainingly madcap plot that has Napoleon Solo forced into a shotgun wedding and Jack Palance as a mad winemaker attempting to divert the Gulf Stream
The Spy Next Door (2010)
The further slide downwards of Jackie Chan’s career after being discovered by Hollywood. Here he is a spy left to look after a group of kids with excruciatingly unfunny results
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
The tenth of the James Bond films. This determines to be spectacular in terms of international locales, effects and sets but was also the point where the Roger Moore Bond films became cartoonish spectacles
The Spy With My Face (1965)
The second of the feature films repackaged from the tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., one of the better copies of the James Bond spy fad of the 1960s. Despite the low conceptual horizons of a tv episode, this plays itself with a splendidly droll tongue-in-cheek panache
The St. Francisville Experiment (2000)
A blatant copy of The Blair Witch Project with a group of people armed with video cameras investigating a haunted house
The Stalker’s Apprentice (1998)
British tv psycho film that works through a multi-layered plot of dexterous twists and a handsomely engaging lead actor
The Stand (1994)
The Stand is regarded as Stephen King’s best novel, an epic that depicts the final showdown between good and evil in the aftermath of civilisation. The mini-series adaptation was alas placed into the ham fists of one of King’s worst adapters. Mick Garris
The Stand (2020-2021)
The Stand is in my opinion Stephen King’s greatest book. The question is whether this new mini-series version will improve on the laughably failed 1994 version
The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)
The tv special that George Lucas would have all copies destroyed, a work of legendary badness – a Star Wars Thanksgiving special featuring most of the original cast and a series of variety performances that are mind-boggling in their ineptitude, not to mention complete and utter fumbling of everything that Star Wars was
The Starving Games (2013)
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, behind parody films like Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, turn to The Hunger Games. There is all the usual inanity and celebrity mocking of their films, although they do seem to make a film that is only marginally less moronic than usual
The Steam Experiment (2009)
This offers one of the more original twists on the Saw set-up – Val Kilmer plays a professor who imprisons a group of people in a steam room slowly turning the temperature up as a protest against global warming.
The Stendhal Syndrome (1996)
One of the less effective films by Dario Argento. Another giallo thriller, this has the same flourishes of style in sporadic moments but the plot is even more confusing than usual
The Stepdaughter (2000)
Psycho-thriller with Andrea Roth as a woman who enviegles herself into a household with malevolent intent
The Stepfather (1987)
Great psycho-thriller with Terry O’Quinn as a man determined to marry into the perfect family who then slaughters the family when they fail to meet expectations. This digs into 80s Family Values with scabrous regard
The Stepfather (2009)
Disastrous remake of the classic 80s horror film, which comes shorn of its biting satire on Family Values and turned into just another teen horror film
The Stepford Children (1987)
The second of three sequels to The Stepford Wives. I found the original implausible on any level and this is quadrupled when you get to replacing their children with android duplicates. A film that has been generated without anybody sitting and thinking about the premise on a practical level
The Stepford Wives (1975)
Ira Levin’s original novel wherein the men of a town replace their wives with subservient android duplicates seems to have its satiric point blunted when it comes to the film adaptation
The Stepford Wives (2004)
Frank Oz conducts a remake of The Stepford Wives, which becomes a broad comedy take on the gender wars in the modern world
The Stolen Airship (1967)
Another of the delightful Steampunk adventures from Karel Zeman that blend animation and live-action in unique ways
The Storm Riders (1998)
A solid variant on the Hong Kong flying swordsman genre that contains some epic plotting This is the point where the Wu Xia film discovered CGI effects
The Story of Mankind (1957)
Laughable Irwin Allen film that conducts a tour of human history via stock footage as Vincent Price’s The Devil holds a heavenly tribunal to judge humanity for inventing the atomic bomb
The Story of My Death (2013)
This film’s pitch line – Casanova meets Dracula – had me in the door in an instant, yet the film is a maddeningly dull one – slow, plotless with talky scenes that drag on for minutes at a time. The film has no interest in depicting Casanova the famous lover, while he and Dracula never even talk together
The Strange Case of Angelica (2010)
From the world’s oldest living director ( Manoel de Oliveira who turned 102 when this was released) comes a ghost story that remains soporifically dull and never seems to get started
The Strange Case of Doctor Rx (1942)
One of the mad scientist films of the era – or perhaps more correctly a murder mystery/comedy with an identity disorder. This features an amazing cast, including bad guy Lionel Atwill as a sinister doctor and Shemp Howard, of Three Stooges fame, as a comic-relief detective
The Strange Case of Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle (2005)
BBC production that seems to be a straightforward biopic of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle only for it to take a very strange dogleg into meta-fiction
The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013)
Intended as a homage to giallo cinema, this strips everything else away until the film exists as only a series of fragmentary images and sensations designs to provoke and tease
The Strange Hostel of Naked Pleasures (1976)
Jose Mojica Marins, the cult Brazilian director/actor best known as the demoniac undertaker Ze do Caixao/Coffin Joe, presides over a hotel where the guests meet sinister fates
The Strange Possession of Mrs. Oliver (1977)
An The Exorcist copy made as a tv movie – where The Exorcist shocked audiences with barf bag theatrics and obscenities, this merely has Karen Black shucking her staid fashion sense and buying a sexy red dress. Rather peculiarly, this becomes a possession story as women’s self-actualisation drama
The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968)
Brazil’s Jose Mojica Marins became a cult figure for his Coffin Joe films; this is an anthology sold under the Coffin Joe banner. Without the Coffin Joe presence, all we have is a series of not very well directed pieces that linger on perversity, although the final segment does stand out memorably
The Strange World of Planet X (1958)
1950s British science-fiction entry that draws influence from the Quatermass films. While the title(s) leads you to expect an alien invasion entry, it is in actuality more of a British copy of a giant insect film. A routine effort that is eventually done in by utterly impoverished giant insect effects
The Strangeness (1985)
One of the first women-directed horror films. Also one of the first on the subject of people venturing underground and encountering cave monsters
The Stranger (1973)
Essentially a tv movie version of the Gerry Anderson film Doppelganger in which an astronaut comes around to find he is on a Counter Earth. The premise, an alternate history of sorts, is nonsensical and even then the film abandons it soon in to become a variant on The Fugitive
The Stranger (2014)
Eli Roth produced film made in Chile, this concerns a mysterious stranger to town who turns out to be a vampire that is soon sought and hunted by everybody. A promising premise given a not terribly interesting handling
The Stranger (2022)
A British film about a mother and daughter who open a B&B only to be taken hostage by a mysterious stranger on the run from sinister forces
The Stranger Beside Me (2003)
True crime film based on a woman who was best friends with serial killer Ted Bundy
The Stranger Game (2006)
Routine psycho-thriller where Mimi Rogers’ home is invaded by psycho babysitter David Orth
The Stranger Within (1974)
TV movie with a script from Richard Matheson in which Barbara Eden becomes mysteriously pregnant. The film seems to be a copy of Rosemary’s Baby before it is suddenly turns into an alien impregnation film
The Strangers (2008)
A harrowing home assault film that highlighted the debut of Bryan Bertino, a new director of considerable promise. The surprise about the film is just how much influence it has had on other works subsequently
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
The Strangers was one the sleeper hits of the 2000s. This is the first chapter in a three film reboot. On the minus side, it has been handed over to Renny Harlin, who should be on any worst directors list
The Strangers: Chapter 2 (2025)
The Strangers was an incredibly eerie home invasion story that has become a modern classic. This is the second chapter in a trilogy of reboot films that have been handed over to the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin
The Strangers: Chapter 3 (2026)
The concluding chapter in a desultory trilogy of films based on the eerie home invasion classic The Strangers. The surprise is that this ends up being the best of the three films
The Strangers: Prey At Night (2018)
The Strangers has been cited as one of the best horror films of the 2000s. This sequel emerges as a by-the-numbers entry that plays out no differently than a generic teen slasher film
The Strongest Man in the World (1975)
The third of Disney Dexter Reilly films in which teen inventor Kurt Russell creates a super-strength cereal
The Student of Prague (1913)
Classic German silent film where a man sells his shadow, which then becomes a malevolent doppelganger that torments his life
The Student of Prague (1926)
A classic of the German Expressionist era about a poor student who sells his shadow to The Devil, only to have it become a malevolent doppelganger. As with much of the work to emerge from this era, the film manages directorial effects that still look amazing today
The Stuff (1985)
One of the films of cult director Larry Cohen in which he makes a body snatchers film involving sentient fast food. As to be expected from Cohen, this also becomes a sharp and witty satire
The Stupids (1996)
A mind-bogglingly surreal John Landis film about a family who take everything literally. A completely demented viewing experience in watching as they bumble around trying to puzzle over who is stealing the garbage
The Substance (2024)
An absurdly over-the-top film where aging Demi Moore takes a serum that turns her into a youthful Margaret Qualley. A ridiculous film that for some reason did well at awards season
The Sudbury Devil (2023)
Fascinating film set during Puritan witchery as men travel into the woods to confront a witch, this has many similarities to Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale. Made by an historian who makes everything authentic to the era
The Suicide Shop (2012)
French animated film that is about as far from children’s entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
The Suicide Squad (2021)
James Gunn takes over the Suicide Squad franchise and welcomely rescues it from the dud first screen outing, giving it his characteristically irreverent sense of humour
The Sum of All Fears (2002)
Fourth of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan films, which performs a confusing continuity reset to recast the role with the younger Ben Affleck. The film’s release was delayed by 9/11, which makes the plot about nuclear terrorism on US soil seems absurdly tame in retrospect
The Summer of Massacre (2011)
The unique idea of an anthology made up of five different slasher tales. Unfortunately, the film’s only raison d’etre is serving up serial gore scenes, which have the effect taken out of them because they are all conducted digitally and look biologically preposterous
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023)
Illumination Entertainment, the company behind the Despicable Me films, make an animated film based on the popular videogame franchise. The result was the second highest grossing film of the year
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026)
Sequel to the animated The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which was the second highest grossing film of 2023. From the people behind the Despicable Me films, this exists as little more than eye candy for five-year-olds
The Superdeep (2020)
Standout Russian SF/horror that undeniably captures something of The Thing with scientists encountering a monster in the depths of a deep drilling project
The Supernaturals (1986)
The first film on the theme of zombies from the American Civil War. Not too badly made and with an unusual cast line-up including Nichelle Nichols as a drill sergeant
The Supernormal (1992)
Mind-bogglingly bizarre documentary that conducts a tour of the bizarre practices of Chinese religion
The Survivalist (2015)
An Irish-shot post-apocalyptic drama that could not be further than the demolition derbies of Mad Max et al. This remains contained within a small cabin in the woods and with a cast of three, a man and two women, and emerges with a riveting and emotionally raw grimness
The Survivor (1981)
Australian-made adaptation of a James Herbert novel with Robert Powell as a airline pilot who is haunted following a crash. In the director’s chair, actor David Hemmings kills all atmosphere
The Swan Princess (1994)
Nicely animated film from Richard Rich that tells the story of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in which a princess is turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer
The Swarm (1978)
Irwin Allen had great success in the 1970s with his disaster movies but this killer bee saga with a cast of big name stars uttering ridiculous dialogue and shabby effects proved a bomb that spelt the death knell for the genre