Tam-Lin (1971)
The only film ever directed by actor Roddy McDowall. Based on a folktale, it is the story of two lovers trying to escape when one is in thrall to the Queen of the Fairies. McDowall creates a lush film that is oddly ponderous and non-fantastical but what a cast he assembles
Firequake (2014)
A Syfy Channel disaster movie that follows the formula with little variation about a geo-engineering project to tap clean energy from the Earth that goes amok creating firequakes
Batman: Bad Blood (2016)
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Films. This is less a Batman film than a Batman Family film, a mixed effort that sidelines Batman for much of the show
Frankenstein (2015)
This is an intriguing low-budget film that sets out to offer a modernised retelling of Mary Shelley. If nothing else, it gives the oft-told story a very different spin than usual
The Jungle Book (2016)
Live-action remake of the Disney film that gives the animals life through top of the line CGI effects. The results are impressive aided in large part by near-perfect voice casting
Jack’s Wife (1972)
One of the least known of George Romero’s films. Made not long after Rosemary’s Baby, this concerns itself with bored suburban housewives dabbling in witchcraft. Aka Season of the Witch
Random Quest (2006)
BBC tv play adaptation of a short story by John Wyndham that also furnished the earlier film Quest for Love about a man finding himself in an alternate world. Despite this version being more faithful to Wyndham, the earlier film makes the central relationship work better
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)
NOT the Tim Burton film, this is one of several earlier versions of the Sweeney Todd story. Crudely made, it is lit up by the lurid melodramatics of the forgotten British horror actor Tod Slaughter
Dominique (1978)
A creaky old-fashioned psycho-thriller – one that draws heavily on Les Diaboliques and a contrived plot to drive somebody crazy – that came out the same year as Halloween and feels a whole world apart
Parallels (2015)
Smart and fascinating venture into the alternate universe hopping theme that suggests something of what the underwhelming Sliders should have been. Originally made as the pilot for a tv series, this comes with much intriguing backstory set-up for a potential series
The Invitation (2015)
Karyn Kusama returns to screens with a film about a sinister dinner party. This resides in usual horror effects than it takes place in brooding, unsaid things and a palpable sense of something terrible about to happen
Hardcore Henry (2015)
An intense kick of pure adrenaline. Imagine a version of The Six Million Dollar Man shot First Person Shooter style by hyper-adrenalised parkour junkies dragging the audience through a series of death-defying stunts
Navy Seals vs Zombies (2015)
About the only ‘vs’ titled zombie film to take itself seriously. I have no time for films about the glory of military heroism, but this must be commended as one of the few films where the soldiers feel like a real trained combat unit
Planet of Dinosaurs (1977)
Modest effort featuring some stop-motion animated dinosaur effects that are reasonably accomplished for the pre-CGI era. On the other hand, it seems a professionally-made amateur production designed to highlight effects and with not much beyond that
I Vampiri (1957)
The Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s was filled with works of amazing visual flair – this is where it started. Although this is more a 1940s mad scientist film, it comes with all the decaying old castles and beautifully moody b&w lighting
Genuine (1920)
One of the lesser films made by the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene. Wiene employs the same stark angular sets and exaggerated shadows in the tale of a predatory femme fatale
Big Driver (2014)
Stephen King’s version of I Spit on Your Grave. What kills the film is the plot device that involves the heroine having imaginary conversations with dead bodies and her GPS
Cabin Fever (2016)
A remake of Eli Roth’s first film? Why, given that the original only came out 14 years ago, is anybody’s guess. This literally recycles the original’s script but is deaf to its sarcastic humour of the original
Midnight Special (2016)
This feels like a reworking of late 70s/early 80s sf films like Starman and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Much of the film is based around a series of amazing happenings but its crucial failure as science-fiction is the lack of explanations for why these are happening
Visions (2015)
Another effort from the near-ubiquitous Blumhouse horror company. A film that teases many things – occult rituals, cultists after the pregnant heroine’s baby – that prove red herrings as it eventually telescopes down to a frustratingly ordinary explanation
Monster (1979)
Obscure 1970s film about a monster emerging from a Colombian lake. The film taps a bunch of subplots and cliche themes but fails to make any of them even remotely interesting. The entire show though is plunged into bad movie stakes by the emergence of the ridiculous monster at the end
Superman: Brainiac Attacks (2006)
Spinoff of the 1990s animated Superman tv series, made as tie in for Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns Some good action, negligible use of the characters unlike the DC Universe Animated Original Movies that began the following year, at best a routine episode of the tv series
UFO: Target Earth (1974)
Interest in UFO phenomena peaked in the 1970s with numerous books seriously studying it and twice as many crackpot ones. While there had been various flying saucers in 1950s alien invasion cinema, this obscure and rather dull oddity was the first fictional film investigating the phenomena
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip (2015)
The end of Western civilisation is surely upon us that studios have devoted multi-million dollar resources to making four of these films and that audiences flock to them despite universally terribly reviews. Ok so maybe I hated this one marginally less than the preceding three
Army of Frankensteins (2014)
This comes with an insane mash-ups of ideas – modern day Frankenstein monster is thrown back in time to the Civil War (in a process that also creates multiple copies) and ends up fighting on the Northern side
Southbound (2015)
Another in the spate of multi-director anthologies that have become popular in recent years – The ABCs of Death, V/H/S et al. This is set around the common locale of a desert highway where all five tales hover in an eerie twilight zone where the everyday world has stepped over into the uncanny
The Time Machine (1978)
Largely forgotten adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel made for tv. While other versions place the story in Victorian England, this has been Americanised – where the time traveller is a weapons designer and journeys back to the Wild West. What kills the film is a painful cheapness
Killdozer (1974)
This tv movie’s premise – “a killer bulldozer” – has had it slotted into bad movie stakes. It was clearly intended as a copy of Duel and its killer truck premise but lacks Steven Spielberg as director
Frankenstein 2000 (1992)
Supposedly a modernised version of Frankenstein, although what a story about a woman in a coma who uses psychic powers to resurrect a slow-witted handyman to exact revenge has to do with Mary Shelley’s classic is anybody’s guess
The Robot vs the Aztec Mummy (1958)
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)
It took DC Comics the better part of a decade to catch up with the massive success Marvel Comics are having on screen in crossing their characters over. Zack Snyder comes to the party offering up THE biggest headline double-bill in superherodom
Allegiant (2016)
The Divergent series is a fundamentally implausible scenario for people that think horoscopes are a profound insight into human nature. This is the most interesting of the films and gives us an imaginative future world
Stripped to Kill (1987)
The very first film with the plot of a woman cop going undercover in a strip club. The police procedural plot and psycho element takes a very clear backseat to the stripper set-pieces, some of which are imaginatively staged. On the plus side, the film is directed by a woman
Diplomatic Siege (1999)
One of the numerous action films to use a variant on the Die Hard scenario (with an added nuclear threat). For once, this has an okay script and a sense of humour but is killed by a fatal miscasting of its two leads
Garden of the Dead (1972)
A zombie film made not long after Night of the Living Dead with a wild premise – the prisoners on a chain gang get high inhaling formaldehyde, which causes them to rise from the dead after being shot in an escape attempt
After Midnight (1989)
Modest and effective horror anthology from the two brothers responsible for Pitch Black and the Ewoks tv movies. Featuring a quarter of stories, all of them are strong efforts generating a more than reasonable degree of tension throughout
Late Phases (2014)
A highly original treatment of werewolf themes that begins with the unique premise of ‘Werewolf in a Retirement Village’ and features a hero who is an aging blind man
The Little Prince (2015)
On its own terms, a frequently lovely film. The director made a big thing of how much he loved the Saint-Exupery original but makes a completely different story with only occasional Little Prince interludes
10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Sequel in name only to Cloverfield, this takes place in a survival shelter where an unspecified catastrophe has happened outside but we cannot be certain what or even if anything at all. Okay but films like Take Shelter and The Divide did this much better
The Diabolical (2015)
This gives all appearance to being another copy of Insidious – a ghost story with an evil-sounding adjective for a title. The film settles in in predictable ways; then throws the ghost story angle on its head with a surprise SF twist
Kung Fu Zombie (1981)
One of the weird mash-ups of horror and martial arts popular in Hong Kong during the late 70s/80s. Despite a great title, this suffers from an emphasis on frenetic slapstick and caricatures
Zeta One (1969)
This wants to be a little of everything – part 1960s spy film, part British sex comedy, and another part an sf film involving invading alien women – and proves none too satisfying at any of them. The softcore scenes featuring semi-clad alien women are fairly much allowed to overrun the show
Desert of Blood (2008)
Vampire film that takes place South of the Border. This is low-budget and has with the potential of doing something original in its hands but that never quite arrives
Demon City Shinjuku (1988)
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Wicked City and Ninja Scroll, concerning a suburb of Tokyo that is transformed into a borderland zone inhabited by demonic forces
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)
A massive letdown of the year. A sequel that brings back several of the original cast and gives it to Yuen Wo-Ping to direct but is merely slickly paced, uninspired action that substitutes CGI for the graceful wirework of the original
Zootopia (2016)
A really good Disney animated film set in a world that imagines what might happen if animals lived in cities, this is an ingenious reworking of the talking animals premise that overflows with visual ingenuity and warm humour
Contracted: Phase II (2015)
Contracted was a modestly effective film that depicted its heroine’s progressive meltdown due to a deadly infection. This is a sequel so sub-par you doubt it would even been released without connection to the first film
Cell Count (2012)
People are locked in a facility and undergoing biological meltdowns. A film that is driven by a series of wild effects at regular intervals but falls down when it comes to its poorly constructed mystery
Recreator (2012)
Unknown, no-name film that proves an unexpected surprise. Three friends go camping on an island are are stalked by cloned doppelgangers of themselves. Economically constructed, full of twists and undercurrents and a fine set of double performances
The Fantastic Water Babes (2010)
Hong Kong cinema specialises in a type of frenetic, high-energy slapstick. This – a romance set around a swimming competition in which the girl thinks she has been blessed by a water god – is not one of the more inspired
The Veil (2016)
This has a great premise – a camera crew revisiting the site of a cult mass suicide stir up the ghosts of the cult members – and a director who I always maintained had much untapped potential. Alas, the finished result seems to slip by his hands
Harbinger Down (2015)
After being hired by The Thing remake and having his work replaced by CGI, makeup effects artist Alec Gillis made his own homage. With modest resources, he does a far better job of capturing the outlandishness of the original
Gods of Egypt (2016)
This could be considered the Michael Bay version of Ancient Egyptian mythology, a film buried under numbing CGI overkill. For all that, Alex Proyas gives it a loopy grandeur that you can’t entirely dislike
Earthrise (2014)
Low-budget SF film about a space expedition from Mars to Earth where before you can say Solaris the crew start to experience hallucinations of their loved ones. Sort of The Crazies in space
Lost Woods (2012)
Bigfoot film made by two brothers using a non-professional cast and crew, which emerges better than you might expect and generates passable tension
The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988)
The very first ever team-up between Marvel Comics characters on the screen in which Bill Bixby’s Hulk meets Thor. The film has a camp reputation because of its Thor who resembles a Swedish bodybuilder
10.5 (2004)
Disaster mini-series based around the great belief that a super-earthquake will come and pitch most of California into the ocean. Despite devoting some four hour of screen time to it, the drama feels painfully padded at times, while the special effects sequences come out as not very special
Digging Up the Marrow (2014)
Adam Green, director of the Hatchet films, makes a Found Footage film about the search for an underground world of monsters. The monsters, when seen, are quite imaginative
Martyrs (2015)
Martyrs was one of the most grimly disturbing films of the 2000s; this English-language remake, which waters everything down and rewrites the ending to have one of the girls bursting in to save the other with a shotgun counts as surely one of the great all-time cinematic bad ideas
The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015)
A fascinatingly different and original work. A scrupulous effort is made – from the dialogue and clothing – to place us inside a 17th Century setting dominated by insanely legalistic religious superstitions and fears, at contrast to which there lie a series of phantasmagoric visions of witches
The 25th Reich (2012)
Time travel, Nazis in UFOs and a Nazi-ruled alternate timeline, giant robot spiders – ok, I’m sold. A surprisingly good little film where the fact that this is also made on a low budget and with a good deal of conceptual constraint makes it all the more creative an effort
Aliens Vs. Avatars (2011)
This seems amusingly construed as a mash-up between two of James Cameron’s most famous titles … what we get is a painfully cheap film about people being pursued through the woods by an alien creature
Julia’s Eyes (2010)
Produced by Guillermo Del Toro, this Spanish film is an extremely good work about a blind woman stalked by a killer, featuring a script of sharp twists and grippingly suspenseful directorial set-pieces
Encounter with the Unknown (1973)
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)
It is a surprise that the Tremors series has managed to get so much out of a slim premise and to remain consistently enjoyable. Coming a decade after the last entry, this still remains enjoyable with the benefit of CGI outfitted Graboids and Michael Gross back in fine form
Some Kind of Hate (2015)
Troubled teenager is sent to a reform camp only to find he has raised a force that is exacting brutal vengeance against his bullies. This feels like one of the underdog gets supernatural comeuppance films that we had after Carrie but is rather well made on all fronts
Midwinter of the Spirit (2015)
Very impressive British mini-series about a woman exorcist. This dispenses with the usual head-turning, barf-bag theatrics and feels like the first theologically thought out work of its type, one that largely eschews horror effect to come together as a superbly well-written story
Stung (2015)
Likeable variant on the giant bug film – concerning giant mutated wasps, no less. This is largely predicated around some accomplished creature effects and having something gooey happening every few minutes
The Last Broadcast (1998)
One of the very first Found Footage films, predating The Blair Witch Project, although this is less people running around the woods with cameras than an investigative mockumentary
Dinosaur Island (1994)
A collaboration between B-budget hacks Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski. Made not long after Jurassic Park, the two have simply made one of their usual softcore T&A films and slapped the word dinosaur on it
Platoon of the Dead (2009)
A painfully amateurish zombie films – the entire show has been shot in someone’s house. There are only two gore effects throughout and the titular platoon the soldiers is limited to only three in number
The Throbbit (2015)
An excruciating fan-made parody of The Hobbit films filled with amateur actors delivering performances in ridiculous falsettos. What makes this mind-boggling is its realisation it can’t compete with Peter Jackson on effects, resulting in things like Smaug played by a drag queen
Deadpool (2016)
Maybe the smartest and wittiest of the modern Marvel Comics adaptations, this takes every opportunity to deflate its own seriousness, not to mention frequently breaks the fourth wall with side-splitting results
And Then There Were None (2015)
Lush, beautifully produced version of the Agatha Christie murder mystery from the BBC to celebrate Christie’s 125th anniversary. The story is a chamber mystery with guests in an isolated house being bumped off – sort of Big Brother with dead bodies
Petals on the Wind (2014)
Sequel to the Lifetime channel adaptation of Virginia C. Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic. Andrews’ prolific output of Gothic melodramas are really the horror equivalent of daytime soap operas. Though marginally better, this drowns in the same stultifying blandness as its predecessor
Pesticide (1978)
One of the films from cult director Jean Rollin. This is a zombie film, clearly influenced by Night of the Living Dead, but with a uniquely French spin – the zombies are caused by drinking toxic wine
The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)
Interesting little film that has gained a small cult reputation, a True Crime work based on a series of unsolved killings conducted by a masked figure in a small Southern town in 1946. A solid, quasi-documentary-like depiction that adheres to the facts for the most part
The Tenderness of the Wolves (1973)
Interesting portrait of a true-life serial killer that was produced under the auspices of Rainer Werner Fassbinder concerning a vampire-like gay killer who operated in Germany during the 1920s. Not without some shock value, this is more arthouse film than it is horror
Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs (2015)
Despite the disappointment that it is not a Western but set modern-day. This enlivens a formula plot quite well and provides dinosaur effects that range between the surprisingly good and the occasionally ropy
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2016)
Based on the book that led a publishing phenomenon in which literary classics are mashed up with monsters, this has the difficult balancing act – that of making Jane Austen’s Regency romance sit alongside zombies – nevertheless manages to play both with an impeccably straight-face
Monster Hunt (2015)
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
Liza, The Fox-Fairy (2015)
A head-scratchingly odd effort – a woman who stayed inside all her life goes in search of love only for the jealous ghost of a 1950s pop singer to kill every man who looks at her
Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984)
Forgotten 1980s obscurity about aliens come to Earth in search of rock music that feels like someone attempted to conduct a version of Grease for the Star Wars crowd. Filled with utterly excruciating slapstick humour and bland songs from bands that nobody has heard from again
Monster from Green Hell (1957)
Possibly the worst film to be made out of the 1950s giant bug cycle concerning giant wasps marauding in Africa. All the dramatic scenes are composed of scenes cannibalised from other adventure films, while the effects have a shoddiness that frequently reduces you to laughter
I Eat Your Skin (1964)
The greatest distinction this has is that it was released on a double-bill with I Drink Your Blood. While I Drink‘s vision of rabid hippies was highly entertaining, this is a dreary and uninteresting voodoo film
The Peanuts Movie (2015)
The comic-strip Peanuts is a wryly whimsical depiction of childhood. The movie version has been taken up by Blue Sky Studios, the ones guilty for the repetitive sequelitis that most modern animation has descended to – somehow you suspect that Charles Schulz’s intention wasn’t to reduce it to a series of slapstick set-pieces
The 5th Wave (2016)
Wannabe in the fad for Young Adult films. An alien invasion story that takes place without drama or engagement in anything that happens. This seems more interested in its teen love triangle than combatting the alien threat
The Boy (2016)
There is a certain appeal to the premise – nanny is expected to tend a doll that everyone pretends is real only to discover it might be alive. Director William Brent Bell but he redeems himself in terms of creepy atmosphere only to blow it with a lame twist ending
Jem and the Holograms (2015)
The original animated series was one of the pop oddities of the 80s – part teen pop fantasy, part superheroics and secret identities. This live-action remake is an object lesson in how to strip all the fun elements out a series
Patient Zero (2012)
This comes with a good premise – people must escape from a biological containment facility after the release of a virus that turns the infected homicidal. Essentially a low-budget version of The Crazies, this is a film that would have been improved by a studio budget
Mutant Vampire Zombies from the ‘Hood (2008)
There is a great title and the germ of a good idea here – two rival street gangs and a white cop are forced to set aside their difference and cooperate to deal with the zombie apocalypse. Alas, as a directorial outing from the writer of the Sharknado films, this emerges cheaply and tattily
Rift (2011)
This is possibly the worst haunted house (or in this case apartment) film ever made. In a genre where the effect is heavily dependent on mood and atmosphere, the filmmakers make the brave attempt to shoot the entire thing with natural lighting and by eschewing any effects
Kite (2014)
English language adaptation of an anime. The original was controversial for its copious sex and violence; here we get an anodyne action movie that is no more than The Punisher cast with a teenage girl
Avengers Grimm (2015)
The Asylum’s response to Avengers: Age of Ultron. Not having their own superheroes, they have ingeniously created an adventure involving various fairytale princesses – a great idea that befalls miserable execution
Hotel Transylvania 2 (2015)
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
The Pact II (2014)
The Pact was a modest and rather effective ghost story about a serial killer hiding inside the walls of a house. This seems to be straining to find some way to justify any relevance a sequel – for one, where do you go with the premise? Another killer hiding inside a different family home?
The Lady and the Monster (1944)
The first screen version of Donovan’s Brain about a brain in a jar exerting mental control over a man’s will. This has been considerably changed to become one of the era’s mad scientist films
It’s All About Love (2003)
An SF outing from Thomas Vinterberg that proved a flop with audiences. It is never satisfying as an SF film but you cannot deny it is directed with a beautiful and sophisticated cool that draws you inside it
The 27th Day (1957)
A classic of 1950s Reds Under the Bed anti-Communist hysteria in which aliens give selected humans capsules capable of obliterating all life, which quickly pits East against West in a race to obtain them. Clearly influenced by The Day the Earth Stood Still, this is better than most
Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014)
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film