Scarecrows (1988)
An overlooked effort from the direct-to-VHS era concerning itself with a field of undead scarecrows. Amid the numerous zombie and splatter effects efforts of the day that were being churned out, this settles in with an unusual atmosphere that is often hard to shake
Scared Stiff (1953)
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
Scared Stiff (1987)
An incredibly bad film from the heyday of the VHS era. The incoherent plot involves hauntings and a voodoo curse before arriving at a totally surreal ending
Scared to Death (1947)
Bela Lugosi poverty row cheapie where he plays a sinister hypnotist. The only film Lugosi made in colour
Scared to Death (1980)
A blatant copy of Alien (one of the first of many such), albeit brought down to Earth. Novice director William Malone, later to make House on Haunted Hill, is a far cry from Ridley Scott
Scarlet (2025)
Mamoru Hosoda conducts the bizarre notion of an anime version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. It is a Hamlet that Shakespeare would barely recognise, following a heroine as she makes a journey across the afterlife
Scars of Dracula (1970)
The sixth of the Hammer Dracula films and generally regarded as the low point of the series. It feels as though nobody involved seemed to be making an effort anymore.
Scary Movie (2000)
The first in a popular series of comedies, this spoofs the recent hits of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer in the most vulgar and witless way possible
Scary MoVie (2013)
Just when you thought that this witless and unfunny series has died off, it drags itself out of mothballs for another outing. As with the other entries, it is a bunch of recent movies overrun with crude, moronic gags
Scary Movie (2026)
The Wayans Brothers and most of the regulars return to revive the franchise to make more crude farce of the Scream and Halloween revivals and other horror films to come out in the last few years
Scary Movie 2 (2001)
The first of the Scary Movie sequels. The Wayans Brothers extend the gag beyond the slasher movie to take on the ghost story and exorcism film while aiming squarely for Lowest Common Denominator humour
Scary Movie 3 (2003)
David Zucker takes over the reins of the franchise from the Wayans Brothers. With a lack of big scary movies in 2002 to parody, the film takes a scattershot approach, parodying any film at all
Scary Movie 4 (2006)
Fourth of the Scary Movie films and the usual crude inanity, although under David Zucker the movie parodies have expanded well beyond what can be labelled scary movies any longer
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (2019)
Based on the popular series of children’s horror tales, this Guillermo Del Toro written/produced effort borrows the idea from the Goosebumps film of having the stories come to life and the idea from Stranger Things and It with a group children fighting against them. On screen, the finished result never quite seems as much as it promises to be
Scary Tales (2001)
A low-budget horror anthology that is rough around the edges but shows promise
Scary True Stories (1991-2)
A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories
Scavengers (2013)
A low expectation effort, a space opera about the crew of a salvage vessel, that ends up being quite a bit better than the B-budget film it is
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills (1989)
Director Paul Bartel and a reasonable name cast make a comedy about the sex lives of the Beverly Hills elites
Schizo (1976)
UK. 1976. Crew Director/Producer – Pete Walker, Screenplay – David McGillivray, Photography – Peter Jessop, Music – Stanley Myers, Makeup Supervisor – George Partleton, Art Direction – Chris Burke. Production Company – Peter Walker (Heritage) Ltd. Cast Lynne Frederick (Samantha Gray Falconer/Jean Longmarsh), Jack Watson (William Haskin), John Leyton (Alan Falconer), Stephanie Beacham (Beth), John […]
Schizoid (1980)
An early release from Cannon Films, a psycho film featuring a very weird Klaus Kinski as a sinister psychologist
Schizopolis (1996)
One of the most obscure films in the oeuvre of Steven Soderbergh, a strange and head-scratchingly surreal satire of workplace and domestic life
Schlock (1973)
The very first film from John Landis, a rather amusing spoof of revived caveman films, As with many of Landis’s films, has a substantial level of playful in-joking and genre in-referencing. Mostly, it plays out with an appealingly nonsensical absurdity
Schock (1977)
The last film from the great Mario Bava – an uncanny effort filled with some strikingly spooky scenes that leaves you uncertain whether what we are seeing is a haunting, a possession or is taking place in a mad woman’s fraying mind
School Spirit (1985)
In the vein of frat house comedies like Animal House and Porky’s, an embarrassingly cringey film about a teen who is killed while trying to get laid and insists on returning to finish the job
Schramm (1993)
Jörg Buttgereit made the notorious NEKRomantik films and is a director about an uncompromising and determined to outrage as possible. This inevitably falls in the shadow of NEKRomantik but is a grim and disturbing in its own right in its kitchen sink depiction of the life of a serial killer
Science Fiction Volume One: The Osiris Child (2016)
A film naming itself after an entire genre either has massive ambition or huge pretensions. Beyond the grandiose title, this is not much more than a better budgeted version of an 80s planetary adventure
Scintilla (2014)
A modest effort that has studied well at the Ridley Scott school of people being stalked in the dark. The film produces a genuinely unearthly and alien creation. The main problem is that the film is severely underwritten and fails to do much after coming up with such an original creature
Scissors (1991)
Impressive psycho-thriller from Frank De Felitta that plays out with the silent logic of a nightmare as a young unknown Sharon Stone finds herself a prisoner in an apartment
Scoob! (2020)
An animated film revival of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? This also makes an misguided attempt to build a shared universe among assorted Hanna-Barbera characters
Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004)
Sequel to the live-action Scooby-Doo, this is at least a better film than its predecessor, being more polished in its slapstick and effects but still has no more ambition beyond being a silly no-brain film
Scooby-Doo (2002)
The live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Scoop (2006)
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
Scorched Earth (2018)
This looked promising but is no more than an unoriginal rehash of the cliches of the Mad Max film – at heart a Western with only token effort made to rewrite the elements in SF terms – and no greater ambition beyond being cable filler
Scorpion King: Book of Souls (2018)
The Scorpion King films are such a low expectation series that it is hard to drum up enthusiasm for a fifth entry. The rehashes stock sword and sorcery cliches and passes its time forgettably
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010)
An Edgar Wright directed comic-book adaptation made in a bewildering restless visual style that feels like two different films happening at once, one a sweet nerd romance and the other a completely gonzo superhero film
Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
There is something appealing to the film’s premise – of boyscouts with their knowhow and do-gooder mentality being the best equipped to survive the zombie apocalypse.But this a film not nearly as clever as it thinks it is being
Scre4m (2011)
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson return to the Scream franchise to turn out the fourth and best sequel yet. The opening scene alone is the funniest one has seen in a film in some time
Scream (1996)
Wes Craven and scriptwriter Kevin Williamson make a witty homage to the 1980s slasher film, turning the genre on its head by having the characters perfectly aware they are in a horror film and of the genre’s cliches
Scream (2022)
Following the recent reboot of the Halloween franchise, many of the original cast and a new directorial team resurrect Wes Craven’s Scream franchise in some undeniably appealing ways
Scream 2 (1997)
Wes Craven’s Scream was a clever and witty homage to/deconstruction of the slasher film of the 1980s; for the sequel, he and Kevin Williamson naturally turn to deconstructing the slasher sequel
Scream 3 (2000)
By the time of this third film and the departure of screenwriter Kevin Williamson, creativity in the Scream series seems to be flagging even though this has critic-proofed itself by calling itself a parody of a sequel
Scream 7 (2026)
The Scream series drags itself for another sequel but at least performs a course correction by bringing back original screenwriter Kevin Williamson in the director’s chair, along with appearances of many past cast
Scream and Scream Again (1970)
Cult Anglo-horror film with a series of vampire killings that lead to Vincent Price trying to replace bureaucrats with androids
Scream for Help (1984)
Often wrongly pegged as a slasher film, this is more of a 1940s psycho-thriller with slasher sensibilities. The notorious Michael Winner directs with typically crude and unsophisticated effect
Scream of the Banshee (2011)
An utterly formulaic Syfy Channel filler monster movie about the resurrection of a banshee. A film that is only based around the provision of effects-driven dispatches every few minutes
Scream Pretty Peggy (1973)
A psycho-thriller that offers up the plot of Jane Eyre by way of Psycho. With Bette Davis rising to form as an alcoholic mother
Scream Queen! My Nightmare on Elm Street (2019)
A documentary that discusses the gay subtext in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge and how lead actor Mark Patton claims it ruined his career
Scream VI (2023)
The sixth entry in a series that began as a smart and clever parody/deconstruction of the slasher film. Now this has become just another teen franchise film that has forgotten all the meta margin notes.
Screamers (1995)
Modest and underrated Philip K. Dick adaptation that builds reasonable atmosphere during its journey across a planet and doubt as to who among the party might be one of a breed of evolving androids
Screamers: The Hunting (2009)
Disappointing sequel to the modest original that does little but revisit and re-run the first film’s scenario with little to add to it
Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era (2011)
Documentary about the so-called Scream Queen phenomenon – a series of cheap horror films from the late 80s/early 90s made for the video market featuring a series of starlets who readily got naked and kicked ass. This interviews the principal players and covers the genre with a reasonable degree of insightful candour
Screams of a Winter Night (1979)
Obscure horror anthology from the great era of regional drive-in cinema. The stories lose any potential due to incredibly dreary direction
Screamtime (1983)
A British horror anthology made up of three stories from director Michael Armstrong. As always the episodes are variable but the episode with the killer Punch and Judy dolls stands out
Scrooge (1951)
This is usually regarded as one of the best versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a British-made production starring Alistair Sim
Scrooge (1970)
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney as Scrooge, this is made on a big budget, leading to an extravagant and often over-produced film
Scrooged (1988)
A modernised version of A Christmas Carol that seems to have been construed in the shadow of Ghostbusters right down to casting Bill Murray as Scrooge
Se7en (1995)
Classic serial killer film from David Fincher, a superb effort from the casting to a script that seems weighted by the moral ills of the 20th Century to the unforgettable twist ending
Sea Fever (2019)
The title suggests more a sea adventure but this is a surprisingly good monster movie about the crew of a fishing vessel attacked by a sea creature and infected by parasites.
Sea of Dust (2008)
An almost interesting low-budget film with artistic pretensions that invokes the mythic Christian figure of Prester John
Sea of Love (1989)
Standout thriller with great scripting and performances where detective Al Pacino goes undercover in the dating scene to track a killer and comes up against a sultry Ellen Barkin
Seance (2000)
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa conducts a remake of the British thriller Seance on a Wet Afternoon. Where the original was a mundane film that depicted a kidnap scheme involving a fake medium, Kurosawa builds this out as an actual ghost story
Seance (2021)
Adam Wingard’s regular scriptwriter Simon Barrett directs a revival of the girls’ boarding school ghost story. I had very high expectations of this
Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
Standout thriller with Kim Stanley as a medium who fakes a child kidnapping with husband Richard Attelborough to prove her powers
Séance: The Summoning (2011)
Fairly by-the-books possession and exorcism film that does have the novelty of playing out in a morgue and where the entire cast has been pared down to four. There also seems an earnest strain of belief in Christianity/Catholicism that runs throughout
Season of the Witch (2011)
Medieavel fantasy action film with Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman assigned to escort a witch who may be able to deliver the land from the Black Plague. The wider moral issues of the film are buried under action and CGI
Seattle Super Storm (2012)
Another formulaic Syfy Channel B-budget disaster film. The film’s sole distinction is a more outlandish premise than usual – where the storm appears initially to be caused by a UFO that has been shot down
Second Sight (1989)
An attempt to copy Ghostbusters concerning a psychic detective agency that degenerates into painfully bad slapstick
Second Time Lucky (1984)
One of the most excruciatingly painful films ever made – a softcore comedy in which God and The Devil make a bet to replay the Garden of Eden by reincarnating Adam and Eve throughout history. Filled with ghastly over-the-top performances and much eye-rolling innuendo
Seconds (1966)
An astonishingly bleak John Frankenheimer film in which a disillusioned middle-aged man is contacted by a secret organisation that rejuvenates him to become Rock Hudson
Seconds Apart (2011)
A wonderfully cool film about malevolent twins with psychic abilities. that is an astonishingly assured effort where the various set-pieces come with the confidence of a director who has been working in the genre for years
Secret Beyond the Door (1948)
Fritz Lang made this psychological thriller during his American period – a retelling of the Bluebeard story by way of Rebecca. Lang delivers an times stunning evocation of film noir
Secret Headquarters (2022)
A kid makes the discovery that his father is a superhero and he and his friends amuse themselves with the cool gadgetry in his secret headquarters, before being required to defend it against a villain
Secret of the Telegian (1960)
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
Secret Smile (2005)
Creepy UK tv mini-series with David Tennant as a psycho boyfriend obsessed with Kate Ashfield
Secret Window (2004)
Stephen King adaptation with Johnny Depp as a writer in a cabin in the woods harassed by mysterious stranger John Turturro. Screenwriter David Koepp directs a marvellously chill Turturro with lots of twisty surprises
Secrets of a Psychopath (2015)
Director Bert I. Gordon was at his heyday in the 1950s, making cheap giant monster films like The Amazing Colossal Man and Earth vs the Spider. Gordon returns here at the age of 93 (making him one of the world’s oldest directors) with this rather sordid little psycho film
Sector 7 (2011)
South Korean monster movie set that only rehashes the cliches set down by Alien/Aliens. On the plus side, the CGI monster looks great and there are some particularly imaginative set-pieces with it but the film is at best only a rehash of Deepstar Six on an oil rig
See No Evil (1971)
Tense psycho-thriller with Mia Farrow as a blind woman stalked through her home by a killer who has slaughtered her family
See No Evil (2006)
Modern slasher film where the sole note of distinction is the wrestler known as Kane cast as the hulking killer. Outside of a moderate level of brutality in the despatches, there is little here that stands out from the genre’s cliches in any way
See No Evil 2 (2014)
The Soska Sisters make a sequel to the 2006 slasher film. You cannot help but think that a sequel to such an average film is the sisters batting well below their capabilities. The surprise is that in their hands the result follows such traditional genre patterns
See No Evil: The Moors Murders (2006)
True Crime mini-series based on the infamous Moors Murders of the 1960s and one that seems determined to conduct the least interesting account of the murders possible
Seed (2007)
Uwe Boll ventures into Torture Porn territory with this tale of a brutish serial killer who returns from the electric chair on a trail of vengeance against his condemners
Seed of Chucky (2004)
The fifth and most enjoyable of the Chucky films, this amplifies the black humour to an outrageously funny level, while conducting an hilarious meta-fiction with Jennifer Tilly playing herself
Seeding of a Ghost (1983)
A completely deranged film from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers involving the resurrection of a dead wife to exact retribution. Full of ghost sex, gore and madcap creature effects
Seedpeople (1992)
Full Moon Entertainment produce a cheapo B-budget copy of Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Seeds of Destruction (2011)
Cheap Syfy Channel CGI disaster spectacle about runaway plant roots – from the Garden of Eden, no less – growing to endanger the entire planet. Utterly formulaic and seeming to consist of no more than canned pieces of cliche action
Seeing Heaven (2010)
A gay version of Don’t Look Now – a film that takes forever to go anywhere and fails to wind its twists up to anything interesting
Seeking a Friend for the End of the World (2012)
The End of the World seems the least likely backdrop for a romantic comedy. Newcomer Lorene Scafaria seems less interested in depicting social collapse than in making an insipid romcom road movie with two leads who fail to strike up any connection
Seizure (1974)
The first film from Oliver Stone and a head-scratching puzzle as a writer is haunted by various supernatural figures from out of his imagination
Self/less (2015)
Tarsem Singh is one of the most extraordinary visual stylists at work today. The disappointment here is that he has abandoned this to make a regular chase and shootout film that any other director could have. What we get is an uncredited rehash of the Rock Hudson film Seconds stripped down to an action film
Selfie from Hell (2018)
The selfie is such a concept of the moment that I suppose someone had to make the first selfie horror film. The film suffers conceptual confusions and what starts out akin to something like Ring slides into more of a variant on The Den with sinister strangers stalking the heroine online
Sella Turcica (2010)
Horror film about a soldier returned home from conflict strangely ‘changed’ reminiscent of the classic Dead of Night. From the director of August Underground films.
Send Help (2026)
Sam Raimi returns with a desert island drama but things soon get twisted. Think Cast Away by way of Misery – but where Annie Wilkes gets to be the sympathetic heroine
Sensation (1994)
Kari Wuhrer stars in a tawdry erotic thriller as an art student who gains clairvoyant abilities and gets caught up in solving a murder
Sensation (2021)
Film in which a man is inducted into a secretive organisation that reveals he has superpowers
Senseless (1998)
Comedy vehicle for Marlon Wayans in which he becomes a test subject for a sense-heightening drug. Marlon’s natural comic energy far exceeds the slightness of the premise
Seobok (2021)
Quite good Korean film about a clone with vast psychic powers, this mounts to a climax that captures something of Akira
Seoul Station (2016)
Train to Busan was a massive breakout hit from South Korear. Overlooked in the buzz was this animated prequel from the same director released at the same time. The zombie film and animation are an uneasy mix but this works well, if not with the same kick as Train to Busan
Separation (2021)
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, returns with a ghost story where a widower and daughter are haunted by his ex-wife
Serendipity (2001)
Romance film where John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale meet and leave their details on random items in the belief luck will bring them back together