Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005)
Fourth of the Harry Potter films and one that feels much more seamless and sure of itself as a story. The problem is the absurd contrivation of J.K. Rowling’s weak story that wheels out every sports movie cliche in the book
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
Sixth of the Harry Potter films, this feels like a step back from what its predecessor built up. The film suffers from trying to cram all of J.K. Rowling’s book into its running time and ends up being frustratingly mannered
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
The fifth and in my opinion the best of the Harry Potter films. It is the first film where we see the darkening of emotions and the children growing up as storm clouds gather. Much of the show is stolen by Imelda Staunton
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
The third Harry Potter film where it seems all that it took for the series to become quite good was the exit of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the entry of a new director in Alfonso Cuaron
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
The first of the Harry Potter films. The first is the weakest and lumbers due to being placed in the hands of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus who allows visual effects wow and simplistic emotional cues to dominate
Harvest Lake (2016)
This starts out seeming a backwoods horror before plants in the woods start erotically influencing the characters, resulting in a series of provocative scenes that combine plants and sex
Harvey (1950)
Wonderfully charming classic with James Stewart who has an invisible 6’3″ rabbit companion. The film proves absolutely winning with its standing up in favour of the right to be eccentric
Hatchet (2006)
This was Adam Green’s homage to the Friday the 13th series that comes with the virtue of a high level of gore and a sense of humour. This was subsequently spun out to several sequels
Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970)
Mario Bava essentially created the giallo film. Here he returns to the genre with an entry about an man obsessed with killing brides that comes filled with exquisitely stylish surroundings and directorial set-pieces
Hatchet II (2010)
Hatchet was a homage to the 1980s slasher film that had a mild amusement. In the sequels, Adam Green upped the number of genre cameos and in-jokes, while pushing the gore effects to an extreme
Hatchet III (2013)
Third in the series of slasher homage films where Adam Green steps back from the director’s chair. This ups the gore content and number of genre cameos, otherwise is fairly much the same as before
Hatching (2022)
A fascinatingly creepy Finnish film in which a young girl adopts and bonds with a grotesque bird-like creature, which proves murderous at the same time as it starts to become more human-like
Haunt (2014)
A modern ghost story that aims for a slow, delicate atmosphere. Noble ambitions but what we end up with is a film that fails to produce any boo moment that makes us leap out of our seats
Haunt (2019)
A directorial outing from the screenwriters of A Quiet Place produced by Eli Roth set around a Halloween haunt. This avoids the pitfall of other Halloween haunt films and creates some effective games of reality and illusion
Haunted (1995)
An old fashioned Victorian ghost story based on a James Herbert novel, this suffers a very laidback pace but is redeemed by its left field twist ending. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola
Haunted Changi (2010)
A Singaporean entry in the Found Footage genre with a camera crew searching a supposedly haunted abandoned hospital. Constant hyped build-up without much payoff
Haunted Honeymoon (1986)
Both directing and starring here, Gene Wilder attempts to revive the Old Dark House comedy. By the 1980s, this was datedly creaky, while Wilder’s comedy mugging histrionics are excruciating to sit through
Haunted Mansion (2023)
The second attempt to spin a film off from the Disney theme park ride, this comes in a more serious tone than the prior Eddie Murphy film but still emerges as lightweight in terms of horror
Haunted Summer (1988)
Another version of the events at the Villa Diodati in 1816 with Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al. With the material in the script, this should have been a far more interesting film than the dull affair it is
Haunter (2013)
Vincenzo Natali tackles the ghost story, turning everything on its head in a series of mind-boggling twists. One of the few post-Sixth Sense films to take the film’s big twist as its starting point and build from there
Haunting of the Queen Mary (2023)
A ghost story that takes place between two eras set aboard the real-life cruise liner Queen Mary, this conducts a variant on the ghost ship story with some reasonable effect
Haunts of the Very Rich (1972)
From the Golden Age of TV Movies, a name cast line-up arrive at a luxurious resort only to become trapped there and caught up in increasingly mysterious happenings
Have Mercy On Us All (2007)
French thriller about police investigating a killer who is infecting victims with the bubonic plague and leaving Mediaeval clues, all part of an elaborate revenge scheme
Have Rocket — Will Travel (1959)
Full-length comedy from The Three Stooges where the idiots are janitors at a space centre who accidentally launch themselves into space. One of several Space Age films where popular comics where launched into space
Hawk & Rev: Vampire Slayers (2020)
An appealingly witty comedy where two losers set out to become vampire hunters with fumblingly inept results. Written and played with a snappy, sarcastic appeal
Hawk the Slayer (1980)
British-made sword and sorcery adventure in the early 80s fantasy cycle. This suffers from a cheap and impoverished budget that makes everything look tatty
Häxan (1922)
A bizarre pseudo-documentary from the silent era that claims to recount a history of Satanism and witchcraft. Much of the film’s thesis is spurious but the results are facsinating
He Dreams of Giants (2019)
Lost in La Mancha was a documentary charting the collapse Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Gilliam later finished the film and brought the same documentary-makers back to chart the process here
He Knows You’re Alone (1980)
A derivative and fairly lacklustre entry in the 1980s slasher film that is clearly imitative of Halloween featuring a killer who stalks brides-to-be
He Never Died (2015)
Henry Rollins is a man who may be immortal. Sort of like a dark version of The Man from Earth, this is made by the wittily phlegmatic indifference of Rollins’s performance and fascinatingly littered clues about who he might be
He’s Out There (2018)
Cabin in the Woods drama with Yvonne Strahovski and her children terrorised by a hulking masked maniac. Tension and suspense that feels served by a conveyor belt
Headgame (2018)
This feels like one of the numerous copies of Saw with eight people locked in a warehouse with video cameras implanted in their foreheads and told to that only one of them can leave alive
Headspace (2005)
Modest and effective horror film about a teenager who starts to gains expanded mental abilities – but where this also appears to unleash monsters
Heart and Souls (1993)
Likeable light fantasy comedy where Robert Downey Jr is possessed by four disembodies souls and sets out to help them achieve their purpose. Filled with some great performances.
Heart Condition (1990)
Light fantasy oddity with Bob Hoskins as a racist slob of a cop who receives a heart transplant and suddenly gets a deceased Denzel Washington as a ghostly companion
Heart Eyes (2025)
This is a film that manages to be both a slasher film and a romantic comedy, two genres that do not at all seem to go together but are made to with undeniably appealing results
Heart of America: Home Room (2002)
One thing you don’t associate with Uwe Boll is a concern for social issues. Made in the aftermath of Columbine, this is an early Boll film that is a surprisingly solid attempt to address the scourge of US school shootings
Heart of Midnight (1988)
Highly confused psycho-sexual thriller in which Jennifer Jason Leigh inherits a nightclub and begins to experience hallucinations after moving in. It is not at all clear what is going on
Heart of Stone (2023)
A spy action film starring Gal Gadot as a double agent. The film had its air stolen by Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning, nevertheless is filled with exhilarating action sequences and should have had a higher profile
Heartbeeps (1981)
This is considered the film that torpedoed Andy Kaufman’s film career – a dippy romance between two robots. This gets very silly but the film has undeniable charms
Heartless (2009)
Fascinating British film about pacts with an ambiguous Devil figure. The film largely exists to push protagonist Jim Sturgess into as many morally uncomfortable places as possible
Hearts and Armour (1983)
Italian-made entry in the early 80s fantasy fad, a sometimes well made, sometimes sprawling Mediaeval saga about love between opposing sides of the conflict
Hearts in Atlantis (2001)
Another in the spate of serious Stephen King adaptations that seeks to avoid the horror label. Although psychic powers do feature, this is more of a wistful 1960s Coming of Age story
Heartthrob (2017)
Film about a high-school stalker from Chris Sivertson, who breathes life into the cliches and has good central performances on hand to make the familiar plot seem fresh
Heatseeker (1995)
Another of Albert Pyun’s cyborg films set around a kickboxing competition where Pyun seems to have cut costs by using real competition footage with dramatically dull results
Heaven (1998)
New Zealand-made film about criminal dealings also involving clairvoyance in a series of daring editing schemes that recall something of Don’t Look Now
Heaven Can Wait (1943)
An entry in the 1940s light fantasy films in which compulsive womaniser Don Ameche arrives in the afterlife where he tells his life story to The Devil
Heaven Can Wait (1978)
Warren Beatty co-directs/stars in a remake of the afterlife film Here Comes Mr Jordan. Amiably lightweight but this was over-praised at the time, inexplicably receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture
Heaven Only Knows (1947)
A 1940s light fantasy with Robert Cummings as an angel comes down in a Western town to help bad guy outlaw Brian Donlevy redeem his ways
Heaven Ship (1918)
The first serious film about spaceflight, a silent epic from Denmark about astronauts arriving on Mars and encountering a hippie Utopia. Worth watching for the quaint amusement of what it imagined would be
Heavenly Creatures (1994)
Peter Jackson emerged to wide acclaim with this film based on a true-life New Zealand murder. It is also a film of absurd pretensions where Jackson seems less interested in the real incident and more distracted by effects trickery
Heavy Metal (1981)
Cult animated film that adapts several stories from the adult fantasy comic-book Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal. These vary but in its better moments that has a trippy cult hallucinatory quality
Heavy Metal 2000 (2000)
Sequel to the animated Heavy Metal that failed to attract the same cult audience that its predecessor did. Telling only one story instead of several, it only offers a routine space opera adventure
Heavy Traffic (1973)
The second film from animator Ralph Bakshi, follow-up to Fritz the Cat. As opposed to Fritz‘s surreal trippiness, this is more down-to-earth and sees Bakshi conducting a loose, bawdy trip through his own childhood in Brooklyn
Hectic Knife (2016)
A clear winner for the Worst Film of 2016. Made by people who have given up any attempt to make a good film and have instead inserted a wilful inanity that is agonisingly unfunny
Held (2020)
A bizarre thriller where a husband and wife are imprisoned in a luxury house and forced upon threat of torture to improve their marriage
Hell (2011)
A Roland Emmerich produced film that takes place in a future that has been catastrophically affected by a ten-degree rise in temperatures worldwide
Hell Asylum (2002)
A cheap and tatty horror film set in a haunted asylum that was one of several similar films in the early 2000s that set out to exploit the then newly arrived fad for reality tv
Hell Baby (2013)
From the creators of Reno 911, a comedy spoofing possession, exorcism and diabolical pregnancy cliches. This assembles material that feels as though it should have been funnier than it is
Hell Comes to Frogtown (1987)
Madcap film that offers a wacky take on the post-apocalyptic action film with Roddy Piper as one of the last fertile men in a world that has been overrun by mutant frogs
Hell Fest (2018)
We have had several horror films set around Halloween haunts in recent years. This effort produced by Gale Anne Hurd is well above average and generates quite a degree of tension
Hell Hole (2024)
The Adams Family have been one of the most interesting creative talents in recent years – a family who perform all the functions on their films. Here they reinvent the Alien-inspired monster movie with highly entertaining results
Hell Night (1981)
An entry in the 1980s slasher movie fad and featuring Linda Blair. Here a group of students are forced to spend a night in an old dark house. Slightly better than the average
Hell of the Living Dead (1980)
This was one of the entries from the 1980s heyday of the Italian zombie film where people were copying Dawn of the Dead but pushing everything to a gore-drenched extreme
Hell Town (2015)
This has a witty idea – a parody of a soap opera combined with a slasher film. This is amusing, but the rest of the film consists of frenzied caricatures and a dearth of laugh out loud moments
Hell’s Ground (2007)
A Pakistani copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Backwoods Brutality film, all served up with reasonable vigour. It is fascinating seeing the genre tropes translated between different cultures
Hellbender (2021)
Another of the family efforts from The Adams Family – John Adams, Toby Poser and daughters. This is a unique and original film about modern witches living in backwoods New York
HellBound (1993)
Hysterically bad film where Chuck Norris turns one-man fighting machine and goes all out to save the world from the Anti-Christ calling down the Armageddon
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
The first of the Hellraiser sequels. This lacks Clive Barker’s original dark obsessive vision but is worthwhile in its own right, expanding the scope of the story out into a magnificent vision of Hell
Hellboy (2004)
The first of Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptations of Mike Mignola’s comic-book about a demon superhero. Not as good as the sequel, the film’s ace in the hole is Ron Perlman in the title role
Hellboy (2019)
Reboot of the Hellboy series promisingly comes from Neil Marshall but is also made by Millennium Films who have a habit of buying up previously successful properties and churning out cheaper spinoffs
Hellboy Animated: Blood and Iron (2007)
The second of two animated Hellboy spinoffs, this renders what might have been impressive superheroics had they been conducted in live-action down at the level of children’s animation
Hellboy Animated: Sword of Storms (2006)
The first of two animated Hellboy spinoffs with the live-action actors returning to voice their parts. This is the better of the two animated films, developing a weirdness as it takes Hellboy inside a Japanese spirit realm
Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
In the second and the best of his two Hellboy films, Guillermo Del Toro expands the first out with an amazing menagerie of eccentric and offbeat creatures
Hellboy: The Crooked Man (2024)
After a disastrous reboot of the Hellboy franchise, Millennium Media get it right, employing the comic’s creator on script, taking the series into wild directions with Hellboy up against Appalachian folk horrors
Helldriver (2010)
A mind-bogglingly wacky entry in the gonzo Japanese splatter film featuring a crazed bloodbath as Japan is overrun by zombies. This goes frequently nuts featuring vehicles and plans made up of zombie bodies
Hellgate (1989)
Frequently ridiculous low-budget horror film set in a Western recreation town where the owner has resurrected his daughter from the dead
Hellhole (2022)
This Polish film starts out seeming like a possession film set in a monastery but rather pleasingly keeps turning all the expectations on their head with increasingly wilder effect
Hellions (2015)
The return of director of Pontypool should be anticipated. But this kills a near-foolproof premise – masked children come after a heroine on Halloween night wanting her unborn baby – with a pink lighting scheme
Hellmaster (1992)
Typical 1990s video release with mad scientist John Saxon creating zombie experiments amid entertainingly gooey meltdowns and a title intended to make you think this is a Hellraiser film
Hellmouth (2014)
Visually extraordinary film where Stephen McHattie takes a job as the keeper of a cemetery on the edge of the netherworld. Shot with a visual scheme unlike anything you have seen before
Hello Again (1987)
A frustratingly insipid light fantasy comedy with Shelley Long as a housewife who returns from the dead where she proceeds to turn the life of her family into chaos
Hello Down There (1969)
Director Jack Arnold was one of the great voices of 1950s SF cinema. Here he turns to making a none-too-funny comedy set in an underwater habitat. Featuring a teenage Richard Dreyfuss
Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)
Unrelated in any way to the slasher film Prom Night, this plants tongue in cheek as it tries to imitate the A Nightmare on Elm Street films in its story of a vengeful undead prom queen
Hellphone (2007)
A French film about a teenager who buys a demonic cellphone and is able to use it to enact comeuppances against the people in his life. A 976-Evil for the cellular era
Hellraiser (1987)
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
Hellraiser (2022)
A valiant attempt to remake Clive Barker’s glistening and brilliant original that only emerges as a better made version of one of the sequels. This has a disappointing tameness that would never have inspired a series of sequels
Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth (1992)
The Hellraiser sequels begin their descent to mediocrity. Clive Barker’s original vision of dark, forbidden pleasures has been watered down and the Cenobites become little more than campy variations on Freddy Krueger
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Fourth of the Hellraiser films. This attempts to tell a story set in three different eras but was subject to much studio interference that waters the vision down to something forgettable
Hellraiser: Deader (2005)
Seventh and worst of the Hellraiser films. Clive Barker had departed three films ago and the copyright taken by a company that specialises in cheap sequels. This blurs reality and illusion so much it makes no sense
Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
The fifth Hellraiser sequel and the only one among the last four worth watching. It brings back Ashley Laurence but abandons the Cenobites for a fascinating series of reality bending games
Hellraiser: Hellworld (2005)
The eighth of the Hellraiser films. By now a long way from Clive Barker’s original vision and no more than a haunted house story where the Cenobites occasionally turn up. With a young unknown Henry Cavill
Hellraiser: Inferno (2000)
Fifth and best of Hellraiser sequels after Clive Barker bowed out. Scott Derrickson made his directorial debut here and infuses the series with some of the wild imagery and perverse darkness that Barker gave the original
Hellraiser: Judgment (2018)
The ninth Hellraiser sequel. Most of the others are a far call from Clive Barker’s original. This demonstrates that all hope is not lost in a wild and imaginative opening sequence
Hellraiser: Revelations (2011)
The ninth of the
Help! (1965)
After the success of The Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, The Fab Four were quickly packaged in this follow-up. The free-wheeling amiability of that film has become a surreal plotless absurdity where nothing seems too silly
Help! I’m a Fish (2000)
Okay if never standout Danish-made attempt to copy a Disney animated film concerning the underwater adventures of three children transformed into fish
Hemoglobin (1997)
Dan O’Bannon scripted film that is uncreditedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about family horrors and creatures lurking beneath the graveyard. Aka Bleeders
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986)
An immensely disturbing film loosely based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. John McNaughton directs with a chillingly understated ordinariness and Michael Rooker has never been better in a role.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer Part II (1996)
A sequel to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer that lacks the raw and disturbing quality of its predecessor both in its direction and in the recasting of anonymous Neil Giuntoli as Henry