Death Tunnel (2005)
Horror film set in the haunted tunnels beneath an abandoned hospital that seems all horror posturing without the benefit of an actual plot
Death Valley (1982)
Essentially a slasher movie version of Witness where a family driving through Death Valley are pursued by a killer after the young son sees his face
Death Warmed Up (1984)
The first horror film from New Zealand, a gore drenched effort about a mad scientist creating zombies. Directed by much energy even if it suffers a complete lack of plot
Death Warrant (1990)
A Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle set in a prison that becomes an interestingly stylised realm in a wild plot featuring serial killers and organ harvesting schemes
Death Weekend (1976)
A reasonable and effective Canadian entry in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with Brenda Vaccaro on a weekend getaway with a boyfriend as they are brutaised by three petty hoods
Death Wish (1974)
The original vigilante film that spawned several sequels. This has a crudely effective, red-blooded focus – to get one enraged at the lowlifes that would attack a man’s family and then cheer on seeing said lowlifes being killed
Death Wish (2018)
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man sorting things out with a gun?
Death Wish II (1981)
The first of several sequels to the hit Charles Bronson vigilante film, the first under Cannon Films. While the first film had some interesting things to say, this mostly repeats the original while taking some turns to the nastily exploitative
Death’s Roulette (2023)
A Mexican-made variant on one of the Saw films where a group of diverse people are locked into a room and must select one of their number to die otherwise everybody will be killed
Deathgasm (2015)
Outrageous New Zealand-made effort that fondly recalls the 1980s splatter comedies of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson et al. This often feels like former teen metalheads looking back and puncturing the pretensions of their youth
Deathmaster (1972)
Robert Quarry gained a fame in the early 70s and was regarded as the American Christopher Lee on the basis of the Count Yorga films. This was one of the works he made where he plays the leader of hippie cult who is a vampire
Deathsport (1978)
Terrible film made to exploit the success of Death Race 2000 with David Carradine as a mystical post-apocalyptic Range Guide. This is however a post-apocalyptic action film that prefigures much of Mad Max 2
Deathstalker (2025)
A remake of the popular 1980s sword and sorcery film that was originally produced by Roger Corman. This version is directed by makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski who fills it with an amazing range of creature effects
Deathtrap (1982)
Adapted from an Ira Levin play, this is an hilarious parody of the whodunnit with Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve engaged in a series of games trying to outsmart the other amid a series of brilliant whiplash reversals
Deathwatch (1980)
Quietly understated French SF film set in a future where all illness has been abolished and a woman becomes a media sensation when she is diagnosed with a terminal condition
Debug (2014)
Actor David Hewlett directs a B-budget film where a team of convicted hackers are sent to clean out the computers on a spaceship only to come up against a malevolent A.I.
Deceit (1989)
Albert Pyun film that takes place entirely in a warehouse where a woman is taken prisoner by a man who may or may not be an alien. As with much of Pyun’s output from this period, this is cheap and eventually incoherent
Deceiver (1997)
A police interrogation film that becomes a psycho-thriller as suspect Tim Roth turns the interrogation back on the detectives. Despite a strong cast, the film eventually strains plausibility
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
A Woody Allen film in which he plays a writer on his way to receive an award. The film drifts in and out of a series of vignettes and stories he has written, including a number of fantastic interludes, with highly amusing effect
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
A killer shark film by way of Jurassic Park. The perpetually terrible Renny Harlin creates something almost watchable that vies between moments of tension and the entertainingly absurd
Deep Blue Sea 2 (2018)
For some reason, nineteen years years later, someone has decided to produce a sequel to Renny Harlin’s unintentionally funny killer shark film only to give it a pitiful budget that causes it to sink well into bad movie stakes
Deep Blue Sea 3 (2020)
After the genuinely terrible Deep Blue Sea 2, all it took to improve the Deep Blue Sea series was a better director. This no more than a B movie but is certainly halfway watchable
Deep Dark (2015)
A weird and twisted film about a failed artist who develops a relationship with a hole in a wall. Imagine something that falls between Barton Fink and the Radiator Girl sequences from Eraserhead
Deep Impact (1998)
Big serious attempt at creating an asteroid collides with Earth film, this came out the same year as Armageddon. Despite arraying much acting talent and effects artistry, this disappears into a melodramatic blandness
Deep in the Woods (2000)
Stylish French slasher film about actors being stalked as they put on a performance of Little Red Riding Hood at a country estate. The fairytale is adeptly wound in and out as metaphor.
Deep Red (1976)
A giallo thriller from Dario Argento as David Hemmings is witness to a murder and tries to find the killer. As with Argento’s films of this period, this is focused around a series of stylish and sadistic dispatches
Deep Red (1994)
A confused and incomprehensible film in which Michael Biehn is drawn in to the hunt for a girl whose blood contains an immortality virus
Deep Rescue (2005)
This has an interesting premise of a returning space shuttle that crashes and sinks at sea and the attempts to rescue it. Alas, this has the misfortune of being produced on a minuscule budget and with pitiful effects
Deep Rising (1998)
Early Stephen Sommers film that feels like it has been mounted as Alien meets Titanic. Between the ridiculous one-dimensional writing and Sommers’ CGI overkill, this heads well into bad movie material
Deep River Savages (1972)
The first of the Italian cannibal films, which became the most extreme niche in the horror genre. This acts more as a cod-anthropological study about the natives but does come with its fair share of stomach-churning scenes
Deep Space (1988)
An enterprising B-budget copy of Alien from prolific director Fred Olen Ray, this amusingly transfers the basics of Alien down to Earth and replaces the crew of the Nostromo with Charles Napier as a tough, grizzled LAPD cop
Deep Water (2026)
The perpetually terrible Renny Harlin makes a halfway watchable film about the survivors of a plane crash at sea trying to stay alive as the sinking plane is surrounded by sharks
Deepstar Six (1989)
Entertainingly cheesy monster underwater film from Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. One of several such Aliens located underwater films that came out the same year that James Cameron made The Abyss
Deerskin (2019)
Another of the strange surreal deadpan films from Quentin Dupieux about a man who buys a deerskin jacket that then speaks and urges him to eliminate everybody else who is wearing a jacket
Def by Temptation (1990)
Part of an attempt to revive the Blaxploitation film, a gospel horror film of sorts in which a young African-American divinity student fights the demon Temptation
Defcon 2012 (2010)
Amateur low-budget production about mysterious happenings in the aftermath of an alien invasion. This has many ideas but none of them much coalesce into a plot
Defcon-4 (1985)
A breath of originality in a decade overrun with Mad Max copies, a clever and original little film in which the crew of a space station return to Earth after the nuclear holocaust
Defending Your Life (1991)
Albert Brooks directed/starring comedy in which he plays a man in the afterlife on trial, required to defend the dull and ordinary life he led, at the same time as he begins a romance with Meryl Streep
Defendor (2009)
One of several films that came out around the same time, including Super and Kick-Ass, about ordinary people who believe they superheroes. Woody Harrelson gives a winning performance as the comically inept title character
Deja Vu (2006)
Tony Scott directed time travel film with Denzel Washington viewing and then entering into events of the past in an effort to stop a terrorist bombing. Action driven as you might expect with Jerry Bruckheimer as producer
Delete (2013)
The return of the talented Steve Barron after a decade’s absence in a film that was shot in my own backyard (literally). Disappointingly, all we get is a work that unimaginatively rehashes cliches about amok A.I.s
Delgo (2008)
This attempted to do something different to the usual formula US kiddie animation film and creates its own fantasy world. Unfortunately, while the ambition is admirable, the film flopped badly
Delicatessen (1991)
In their debut, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro make an hilariously eccentric and unclassifiable film about the inhabitants of a strange apartment building
Delirious (1991)
Comedy in which John Candy wakes up inside the world of the tv soap opera he writes. This feels like it misses most of the possibilities inherent in its idea
Delirium (1987)
The great Mario Bava was the man who essentially created the giallo film. Here his son Lamberto makes an entry, which rehashes much of Mario’s seminal Blood and Black Lace, albeit more crudely
Delirium (2018)
Blumhouse film that stars Topher Grace as an asylum detainee who is released to home detention and may or may not be hallucinating seeing figures inside the house
Deliver Us From Evil (2009)
Danish film that is largely an uncredited remake of Straw Dogs (and a far better effort than the official remake a couple of years later). This has a dark, unrelenting bite that savagely indicts a racism at the heart of modern Denmark
Deliver Us From Evil (2014)
Scott Derrickson’s supposed true-life account of a NYPD cop turned exorcist rehashes every hackneyed possession cliche the horror genre has, yet there comes a point where the film attains an odd conviction
Deliverance (1972)
Harrowing wilderness survival film from John Boorman about four men on a trip downriver that fall afoul of hillbillies. A classic that was highly influential on the formation of the Backwoods Brutality genre.
Delivery (2013)
This was the first Found Footage film to deal with the Satanic pregnancy theme, prefiguring the more high-profile Devil’s Due. This draws on the plotting conventions and cliches laid down by Rosemary’s Baby in every way
Dellamorte Dellamore (1994)
Cult Italian film with Rupert Everett as a cemetery keeper facing the resurrected dead. This has an hilariously off-the-wall mix of black, deadpan humour and artiness, plus Everett at his laconic best
Deluge (1933)
The world’s first disaster movie concerning a worldwide flood. This has some extremely impressive effects for the era showing New York being drowned. Less interesting are the dramatics in the ruins
Dementia 13 (1963)
The second film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, a psycho-thriller made for Roger Corman where Coppola shows the glimmerings of style that made him a major director a decade later
Dementia 13 (2017)
Dementia 13 was a routine psycho-thriller elevated by the hand of a young Francis Ford Coppola. This remake adds ghosts and a home invasion to the mundane original, but fails to come anywhere near Coppola’s style
Demolition Man (1993)
One of Sylvester Stallone’s better films, a satirically funny work where he plays a contemporary police officer unfrozen in a future overrun by Political Correctness to chase down criminal Wesley Snipes
Demon (2015)
A unique and original Polish film that throws out all the possession cliches and is instead about a man possessed by a Jewish dybbuk – the spirit of a girl killed during the Holocaust – on his wedding night
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
Demon Pond (1979)
Forgotten Japanese film about a man searching for a friend finding a village where a bell must be struck to prevents creatures escaping from a pond. Beautiful, bizarre and quite unlike any fantasy film you have seen before
Demon Seed (1977)
Adaptation of an early Dean R. Koontz novel about an A.I who imprisons a woman in her own home with the intention of impregnating her. A variant on Rosemary’s Baby conducted far more tastefully than you might think
Demon Tongue (2016)
One hoped this might have taken the approach of featuring a demonically possessed tongue but more mundanely uses tongue as meaning language. In reality, this is a poorly made film about a team of ghostbusters searching a haunted bar
Demonic (2015)
James Wan has an exemplary track record in one’s opinion, you think this would extend to anything he produces. Here all we get are series of tired haunted house cliches before a twist ending that makes no real sense
Demonic (2021)
Neill Blomkamp, the director of District 9, returns with a possession film that uniquely takes places in Virtual Reality as Carly Pope must use a device that enters her comatose mother’s dreamspace
Demonic Christmas Tree (2022)
Yes, exactly what the title announces – a film about a possessed killer Christmas tree. A rather amusing Christmas horror entry from prolific low-budget British producer Scott Jeffrey/Scott Chambers
Demonic Toys (1992)
An entertaining B-budget film about malevolent toys from low-budget producer Charles Band, known for the Ghoulies and Puppetmaster films. One of the first works from screenwriter David S. Goyer
Demonlover (2002)
Corporate thriller in which Connie Nielsen discovers an underground of snuff S&M. This develops a compulsive hold but its pullback to kneejerk moralism is dissatisfying
Demons (1985)
Italian horror directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento, an Evil Dead-inspired work about the possessed dead taking over a cinema, all conducted with a ferocious enthusiasm
Demons (2017)
Miles Doleac is better known as an actor but also has a number of credits as a director. Here he both directs and stars as a former priest haunted by an exorcism gone wrong
Demons of the Mind (1972)
This is one of the rare failures from Hammer Films, a not uninteresting work set during the early era of 19th Century psychology and directed with some vivid effect
Depraved (2019)
Larry Fessenden has become a horror director who has made some fine work that remain under the commercial radar. This is his modernised take on the Frankenstein story
Deranged (1974)
One of the better among several films based on the activities of the true-life body snatcher and necrophile Ed Gein. Roberts Blossom gives an amazingly creepy performance
Des (2020)
Excellent British tv mini-series that tells the story of true-life serial killer Dennis Nilsen who preyed on gay men in London in the 1980s. David Tennant gives an electrifying performance in the title role
Descendants (2015)
This has an appealing premise – the children of all the Disney villains have grown up and go to school together. This is promptly killed by the awfulness of the film itself, which is essentially High School Musical set in the Disney universe
Descendants 2 (2017)
Sequel to the painfully bad Disney Channel film that copied the success of High School Musical and featured the teenage children of classic Disney animated villains. This is just as empty-headed and unwatchable
Desecrated (2015)
Yet another effort about teens running around the backwoods being stalked by a madman. This does better than most with the psycho of the show being an original character, given an intense, domineering performance from Gonzalo Menendez
Desecration (1999)
This is a surreal and plotless Catholic horror film from Dante Tomaselli that seems full of fairground horror house jumps and overloaded with tortured Catholic imagery but makes no real sense
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
Desierto (2015)
Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas makes a film about Mexican illegal immigrants being hunted by a white vigilante in a Most Dangerous Game scenario. The film came out just after Trump’s famous wall campaign speech
Desperation (2006)
Halfway reasonable Stephen King adapted tv mini-series. This has been placed in the directorial hands of King’s worst adapter Mick Garris who at least holds his worst tendencies in check
Despicable Me (2010)
An animated effort about a mad scientist and three orphans. One entered this with zero expectation only for it to unexpectedly emerge as a side-splitting and completely charming pleasure
Despicable Me 2 (2013)
Despicable Me was a charming lightning in the bottle hit. Here Illumination Entertainment merely recycle the familiar and already the cute sweetness and gags of the original are starting to feel like processed formula
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Despicable Me was a delightful debut for Illumination Entertainment but has come close to making the studio a one-hit wonder they have milked that one hit for all they can
Despicable Me 4 (2024)
More from the world’s cuddliest super-villain and those manic ritalin-deprived kids that are the Minions. Is there are life and creativity left in a franchise that has been milked for six films now?
Destination Inner Space (1966)
A B movie that essentially locates The Thing from Another World underwater with an alien monster invading a sub-oceanic research laboratory. Not dissimilar to a host of B movie copying Alien in the 80s/90s
Destination Moon (1950)
The film that started the great 1950s age of science fiction. A bold exciting work from George Pal and Robert Heinlein that says the Moon is our to conquer and lays out a credible road map about how to do so
Destination Moonbase-Alpha (1979)
A two-part episode of the Gerry Anderson tv series Space: 1999 that was repackaged as a feature film to take advantage of the late 1970s post-Star Wars SF boom
Destiny (1921)
An early Fritz Lang film clearly influenced by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance in which Death offers a woman visions of her and her lover reincarnated throughout different eras of history
Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995)
Would be quirky, surrealistic indie film with lovers on the run in Las Vegas. Quentin Tarantino appears as the spirit of chance from an interdimensional swimming pool
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
Destroy All Neighbors (2024)
A black comedy that comes in a very broad tone concerning an ordinary man trying to record an album who accidentally kills people around him only for them to refuse to stay dead
Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame (2010)
Tsui Hark returns to form in this lush Chinese-backed historical drama where his wildly fantastical martial arts combine with the story of the true-life detective De Renjie/Detective Dee
Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (2018)
The third of Tsui Hark’s films based on the historical figure of De Renjie/Detective Dee. While the other films were rooted in a relative realism, Tsui lets all restraints loose here and goes way over the top
Detention (2011)
A film with insane creativity and spilling over with snide pop culture wit. Like a mash-up of Bad Kids Go to Hell, John Dies at the End and Back to the Future written by a love child of Kevin Williamson and Diablo Cody
Detention of the Dead (2012)
Another entry in the zombie comedy field. This has essentially been conceived as a retread of The Breakfast Club but with the addition of zombies
Deterrence (1999)
A thriller with Kevin Pollak as the US President caught at a diner by a blizzard where he is faced with the hard choice of whether or not to launch a nuclear attack on Iraq
Detroit Driller Killer (2020)
An uncredited remake of Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer, this is the single worst film I have seen in the last few years. It is surely the horror equivalent of The Room
Deus (2022)
This has distinct overtones of 2001: Space Odyssey and Event Horizon about an expedition to Mars to investigate a mysterious black sphere – only to find that it offers a gateway to Heaven
Devil Doll (1964)
One of the better works on the theme of the malevolent ventriloquist’s dummy with a life of its own. Made with some modest effect.
Devil Girl from Mars (1954)
British entry in the 1950s alien invader genre with a female invader come to Earth to select male breeding specimens. The invader looks like a dominatrix from outer space who comes accompanied by a ridiculous robot
Devil in the Flesh (1998)
One of the better copies of Fatal Attraction with Rose McGowan as school pupil with a crush on her teacher who proceeds to ruthlessly eliminate all in her way
Devil in the Flesh 2 (2000)
Inferior sequel to the modest Devil in the Flesh which had Rose McGowan as a psychopathic schoolgirl. Recast with Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, this is now a routine slasher effort