Gor (1987)
Cannon Films adaptation of John Norman’s series of books. The books come with heavy BDSM content but this is a planetary adventure about a professor transported to become a hero on a barbarian planet
Gorath (1962)
One of the other films from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda. This has been incorrectly identified as a Japanese giant monster film but is mostly a colourful space opera about a rogue planet
Gordy (1995)
A really cheaply made and nauseatingly cute ripoff of Babe about a boy who discovers he can talk to a pig
Gorenos (2016)
Low key horror in which a teenager finds his brother has traded his soul to demonic forces. This is modestly effective, where those involved are engaged in a clear effort to make it work
Gorgo (1961)
Superior revived dinosaur amok movie. While the effects are the cut-price man in the monster suit ones, these are expertly achieved and the film comes with a surprisingly poignant twist that makes it stand out
Gormenghast (2000)
I enjoyed Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast books far more than J.R.R. Tolkien. Alas, the sublime texture and eccentricity is completely missing in this BBC tv version, which aims for colourful silliness
Gothic & Lolita Psycho (2010)
Another in the spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. A cartoony OTT vigilante film with a Gothic schoolgirl avenger, featuring ridiculous action and splatter set-pieces
Gothic (1986)
There is a good idea here, exploring what happened in the meeting between Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al at the Villa Diodati in 1816. However this is hijacked by Ken Russell in lunatically over-the-top-mode
Gothika (2003)
Halle Berry is a psychiatrist who comes around to find she has been incarcerated in her own asylum only to then find it is haunted. An improbably contrived set up with some jumps
Gozu (2003)
The modern cinematic madman Takashi Miike makes a uniquely original work that starts out like a Yazkuza film, before taking a turn into the completely surreal and arriving at an admirably twisted ending
Grabbers (2012)
The world’s first Irish alien invasion film – and a sideplittingly funny one too. Imagine a conceptual crosshatch between Tremors and the characters from Father Ted
Grace (2009)
A disturbingly effective story of a mother who gives birth to a baby that is not human. An immensely assured directorial debut that eschews cliche horror effect and becomes a chilling study in psychological disintegration
Graduation Day (1981)
Another entry from the slasher heyday, appropriating a holiday as title. This is fairly tatty as the lowered standards of the slasher genre go, although the cast contains some interesting names in retrospect
Grampire (1992)
New Zealand director David Blyth’s children’s film starring Al Lewis (the grandpa from tv’s Te Minsters) as a grandfather vampire is a toothless oddity that fails to work
Grand Piano (2013)
Essentially a classical music version of Phone Booth with Elijah Wood trapped at a grand piano in front of a concert audience by a sniper. The results prove quite gripping
Grandmother’s House (1988)
A modest, little known horror film about two children who go to stay with their grandparents and finding that they are up to no good. Can be considered a precursor to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit
Granny of the Dead (2017)
A British-made effort that offers the amusing idea of zombified geriatrics on their walking frames. However, the actual film lacks any tongue-in-cheek approach and emerges as excruciating on all counts
Grave Encounters (2011)
Another Found Footage horror film with a reality tv ghostbusting team investigating a haunted asylum. The Found Footage genre quickly became exhausted and this only treads where others have gone before
Grave Encounters 2 (2012)
Grave Encounters was an unremarkable Found Footage film. This much smarter sequel takes its lead from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 in being a meta-fiction that investigates the phenomenon of the first film
Graveyard Shift (1987)
Stylish New Wave film about an existential vampire taxi driver meeting a woman film director who has received a terminal diagnosis. From the underrated Gerard Ciccoritti
Graveyard Shift (1990)
From a Stephen King short story about mill workers facing a giant rat, this has become one of the most ridiculed of all King adaptations. Everything takes place with absurdly over-the-top melodrama
Gravity (2013)
Sensational drama with Sandra Bullock as an astronaut trapped in orbit. The film is scrupulous and thorough about portraying being in space scientifically accurately and the dramatic set-pieces are gripping in tension
Gravy (2015)
Three psychos who imprison the employees of a restaurant announcing they are going to kill and then cook all of them as a gourmet meal. A film made with a devastatingly black sense of humour
Greaser’s Palace (1972)
An Acid Western was a Western made with a psychedelic trippiness. Directed by Robert Downey Jr’s father, this is a surreal work about a Christ-like visitor in a zoot suit who turns up in a Western town
Great White (2021)
An Australian-made survival drama with a group of people who become stranded at sea aboard a life raft while trying to fight off a killer shark that is lurking
Great White Waters (2025)
Anthony Ferrante made the Sharknado films. He returns here to make a serious survival thriller about a woman who is forced by drug dealers to dive and retrieve a stash in shark infested waters
Green Lantern (2011)
This received a lot of bad flak, including from star Ryan Reynolds, but I’m not one of the haters. There is the terrible CGI suit and a miscast Reynolds but it does get a good deal of the comic-book mythos right
Green Lantern: Beware My Power (2022)
Green Lantern is a classic comic-book character but his screen presence were damaged by the Ryan Reynolds film. This conducts a severe reset of the character’s continuity
Green Lantern: Emerald Knights (2011)
Animated film that tells different stories of various members of the Green Lantern Corps (including two stories from Alan Moore). Another of the worthwhile animated DC adaptations
Green Lantern: First Flight (2009)
The DC Universe Original Animated Movies conduct a solid and worthwhile animated retelling of the Green Lantern origin story, which delves into all the aspects of the mythos
Green Snake (1993)
One of the most gorgeous and beautiful of all Hong Kong fantasy films A lush, dreamy work of Wu Xia from Tsui Hark filled with wild, fantastical martial arts scenes
Greenland (2020)
There seems something redundant in 2021 with the world in the grip of a very real apocalypse about watching an old-fashioned mass destruction disaster movie about an oncoming comet impact
Greenland: Migration (2026)
Greenland was a disaster movie on the familiar theme of a comet colliding with the Earth. This is a desultory sequel where the survivors emerge from the shelters to now have to survive in a changed post-apocalyptic world
Gremlin (2017)
Technically not actually a film about gremlins but about a goblin creature that emerges from a box where it will kill a person unless they pass it on to someone they love
Gremlins (1984)
The film about malicious creatures that was the runaway box-office hit of 1984. Director Joe Dante runs amok like a schoolboy with a chemistry kit and gleefully trashes the wholesome innocence of producer Steven Spielberg’s E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
A far less successful sequel to the mega-hit of Gremlins where director Joe Dante brings the gremlins to Manhattan and allows the silliness to go completely over-the-top and into orbit, even breaking the fourth wall
Greta (2018)
Director Neil Jordan delves into the psycho-thriller with Chloe Grace Mortez being stalked by over-friendly senior Isabelle Huppert. Jordan makes an often contrived script into a gripping ride
Gretel & Hansel (2020)
Osgood Perkins emerges as a top director in this dark and extremely adult interpretation of the fairytale. There is nothing about this that can be viewed as a children’s tale any longer
Grey Skies: The Alien Conspiracy (2001)
The first in a trilogy of connected video anthology films that tell stories about alien visitors and abductions
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984)
Maybe the definitive Tarzan film, one that drops the pulp adventure and recasts the story as British arthouse theatre. Superbly mounted and cast. Christopher Lambert has never better in the title role
Greystone Park (2012)
Oliver Stone’s son Sean makes a Found Footage horror film. The haunted asylum has become a thoroughly overused cliche. That said, Sean Stone wrings some undeniably spooky jumps out of the material
Griff the Invisible (2010)
An Australian entry in the spate of superheroes with no powers films a la the likes of Kick-Ass, Defendor and Super. This plays out as a quirky but never particularly funny romantic comedy
Grim Prairie Tales (1990)
An interesting, if not completely successful, attempt to revive the horror anthology – in this case with four tales that all take place in a Western setting
Grimcutty (2022)
A film about Grimcutty, a boogeyman that lurks inside an internet meme and thrives on causing parental fears. This sits on the edge of being almost interesting
Grimm’s Fairy Tales for Adults (1970)
A X-rated, West German-made film that blends together several fairytales in a very adult adaptation. The result should be seen for its sheer bizarreness
Grimm’s Snow White (2012)
Another entry among 2012’s spate of Snow White films following Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman. this was a low-budget mockbuster copycat from The Asylum
Grizzly (1976)
A surprise hit when it came out, this is a blatant copy of Jaws, substituting a killer grizzly bear on the rampage in a national park for a shark. Not a very well made film.
Groundhog Day (1993)
Winning comedy with Bill Murray trapped in a timeloop and forced to repeat the same day over. Murray is at a career-peak best and served by a great script. The surprise is how much the timeloop theme was copied by subsequent films
Growth (2010)
A surprisingly good little film about a group of friends being infected by parasites escaped from a laboratory. Confidant assured horror filmmaking with some way out effects.
Guard from the Underground (1992)
An early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out as a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts as a hulking security guard eliminating people
Guardian (2001)
Utterly generic action film with Mario Van Peebles as a detective tracing a street drug that turns people psychothic before finding he is up against a body-hopping demon
Guardians (2017)
A Russian attempt to create their own equivalent of an Avengers film. The results emerge surprisingly better than you expect and with some standout effects
Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
A triumphal Marvel Comics adaptations that manages to mainline the spirit of the original Star Wars, while in in its wryly, self-deflating culture savvy suggesting a Star Wars rewritten by a 14 year-old Quentin Tarantino
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 2 (2017)
Guardians of the Galaxy was an audience winner with its eccentric humour and effortless charm; this sequel feels buried under bloated production overkill where the charms of the original remain thinly drawn
Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 (2023)
Third of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, this successfully recaptures the nature of the goofy ensemble comedy caper that made the first film such a winner but seemed to be missing in the second
Guardians of the Tomb (2018)
A tomb raiding adventure about the venture into a tomb filled with deadly spiders in search of an immortality serum. A Chinese-Australian-co-production.
Guess What Happened to Count Dracula? (1971)
A forgotten effort made during the 1960s/70s resurgence of the vampire film. One of the first films to depict Dracula in the present-day. The answer to the title question is that he is now running a nightclub in L.A.
Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022)
Guillermo Del Toro offers up a more adult take on the classic children’s story in this beautifully made stop-motion animated film. Winner of that year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Film
Guilty as Charged (1991)
Black comedy in which Rod Steiger sets up a private prison to execute the guilty that get away. Halfway between a vigilante film and a gonzo comedy, this never settles on what it wants to be and only comes out a frenetic farce
Gulliver’s Travels (1939)
The second animated film ever made, an adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s novel (although only the first section in the miniature land of Lilliput). This comes with enormous visual invention
Gulliver’s Travels (1977)
An adaptation of Jonathan Swift’s classic book (or at least the first section) starring Richard Harris as Gulliver, this has been conducted as a mix of live-action and animation
Gulliver’s Travels (2010)
Jonathan Swift’s classic tale of a man in a land of miniature people is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jack Black and outfitted with a series of vulgar and pop culture gags
Gunheavy (2008)
Ingenue effort from debuting director Angelo Lopes depicting soldiers in combat in the ruins of civilisation
Gunhed (1989)
A live-action Japanese-made mecha/transformer film that creates a dark industrial world as setting and fills it with some stunning effects
Gurozuka (2005)
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain, ordinary manner that bleeds the J-horror film of atmosphere
Gutterballs (2008)
Film about a series of gory deaths at a bowling alley, this really pushes an envelope of good taste. This gained attention for makeup effects artist Ryan Nicholson and was the cause of much censorship controversy
Guyver: Dark Hero (1994)
Sequel to the live-action US-made adaptation of the manga about a power-suit superhero. As with the first film, there are lots of rubbery aliens and martial arts fights
Gwendoline (1984)
From the director of Emmanuelle, this is an adaptation of an adult comic-book that replays the lost city adventure with the addition of a mind-boggling softcore fetishism
The Galaxy Destroyer (1986)
An ultra low-budget film about a man on a space journey returning to Earth to find it invaded by aliens. This tries to do Mad Max and Star Wars on the budget of about $1.99
The Gallows (2015)
Though this received a reasonably high-profile release from Blumhouse, it transpires as no more than a Found Footage film about the haunting of a high-school play
The Gallows Act II (2019)
The Gallows was a Found Footage film about a haunted high school play. Blumhouse have yet to have a success to which they are not willing to spin out a sequel
The Game (1997)
David Fincher film in which Michael Douglas is wound into a conspiracy that makes him doubt everything around him. Fincher creates paranoia but the story eventually becomes an improbably contrived house of cards
The Gamma People (1956)
One of the early films from Anglo-horror director John Gilling, this takes place in a fictional Soviet republic and features experiments to create a race of super-children
The Gangster, The Cop, The Devil (2019)
The tough hard-boiled Korean gangster film is a genre of its own. This uniquely has a detective and a crime kingpin deciding to join forces to track down a serial killer. Slated for remake by James Wan
The Gate (1987)
Modest horror film of the 1980s where kids inadvertently open a demonic gateway. Like a juvenile version of Poltergeist, this comes with the bonus of some fairly good effects
The Gateway (2018)
The parallel worlds/alternate timelines theme is one rich in possibilities but this Australian film is one of the least imaginative treatments, serving up only tired good/bad double plots
The Gathering (2003)
Made not long after The Da Vinci Code was huge, a similar archaeological mystery centred around an amnesiac Christina Ricci and a sinister buried church dating back to The Crucifixion
The Gauntlet (2013)
Film with people trapped in a mysterious labyrinth, which may be Hell, where they are required to eliminate one another in order to survive. Aka Game of Assassins
The Gemini Factor (1987)
Modest and well-made British children’s tv mini-series about the mysterious psychic connection between two twins each unaware of the other’s existence
The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979)
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
The Gene Generation (2007)
Modest Cyberpunk film set in a future where gene editing and hacking has become a norm. Bai Ling owns the show as the kick-ass fetish-gear clad heroine
The Gestapo’s Last Orgy (1977)
One of the notorious 1970s Nazisploitation films, this Italian-made entry is one work that crosses way over taboo lines and makes for extreme watching
The Ghastly Love of Johnny X (2012)
A beautifully shot b/w homage to exploitation films that feels like a 1950s rock‘n’roll musical injected with a host of gonzo elements including aliens, UFOs and the resurrected dead
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)
Don Knotts was a popular comic of the era who specialised in a craven fearfulness. Here he plays in a haunted house comedy. Beyond Knotts’ comedic antics, the film never seems very interested in the haunted house aspect
The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947)
One of the most beautiful of all 1940s light fantasy films about the sweet and tender relationship between widow Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison as the ghost of the sea captain in the house she moves into
The Ghost Breakers (1940)
The 1939 Bob Hope comedy remake of The Cat and the Canary was a big hit; here he and Paulette Goddard are put through the same in what is all but a sequel. Hope is on top form again
The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960)
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s. While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects
The Ghost Galleon (1974)
The third of the Blind Dead films about the zombies of blind Knights Templar. This is set aboard a ghost ship at sea and is said to have later influenced John Carpenter’s The Fog
The Ghost Goes West (1935)
A light fantasy comedy with Lucas Donat as the inheritor of a Scottish castle that is haunted by a ghost and the problems faced when the castle is sold to be shipped to America
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
The fourth of Universal’s Frankenstein films where Lon Chaney Jr inherits the role of the monster and makes it into a stumbling brute that lacks the pathos of Boris Karloff. The plot recycles what has now become the cliches of the series
The Ghost of Slumber Mountain (1918)
An early film from Willis O’Brien, the creator of King Kong, where a man finds a telescope that offers a view of the prehistoric past
The Ghost of Yotsuya [Parts 1 and II] (1949)
One of a number of films based on the most famous of all Japanese ghost stories. This is a adaptation made in the neo-realist style of the period that was released in two parts
The Ghost Ship (1943)
The most obscure among the classic horror titles produced by Val Lewton – a beautifully stark and haunted piece about a man trapped at sea aboard a ship with a murderous captain
The Ghost Snatchers (1986)
Hong Kong supernatural film about a new tower block that is haunted because its feng shui is out. This goes well beyond the initial fantasy it starts out as being into moments of out-and-out dementia
The Ghoul (1933)
Creaky but atmospheric British film where Boris Karloff dies but is brought back from the dead by an Egyptian jewel to stalk his heirs through a big old mansion
The Ghoul (1975)
Latter day Anglo-horror film from Freddie Francis that assembles many Hammer regulars in a story where Peter Cushing keeps a cannibalistic son on his country estate
The Ghoul (2016)
Ben Wheatley produced film that soon becomes a first order mindfuck. An detective undercover in therapy could just be a mentally ill man with delusions of being a detective or just as equally be having his reality manipulated
The Giant (2016)
For the most part, this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
The Giant Behemoth (1958)
The director of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms essentially rehashes the same film here with another atomically revived dinosaur this time attacking London instead of New York
The Giant Claw (1957)
1950s monster movie about a giant alien bird. A standard B movie of the era that is shot down by one of the most pathetic and ridiculous looking monsters ever put on screen