The Boogens (1981)
One of the original troglodyte films about creatures lurking underground that was the template for films like The Descent. Well-made as 1980s horror films go but it takes forever before the main action kicks in
Nudist Colony of the Dead (1991)
This holds the distinction of being the world’s first gonzo zombie film – oh and the first zombie musical too. Not many zombies (or nude bodies), the song lyrics are occasionally amusing but the film’s humour is schoolboyish, and the effort amateurish on the whole
Time Changer (2002)
This holds the novelty of being a Christian time travel film but plummets into bad movie stakes when it has a 19th Century professor travel into the present to become appalled at seeing couples kiss on tv and lingerie in store … A great idea for a comedy but then you realise the film is serious
The Monster Squad (1987)
Rather charming effort where the Famous Monsters – Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man, The Mummy, The Creature – are revived and pitted against a group of kids. The film has a great deal of affection for the originals and the encounters are delightful
Tomorrowland (2015)
Despite being another film based on a Disney theme park, I had high expectations of this because of Brad Bird. Alas, the initial promise of a retro-sf work that mainlined the wonderment of Jetsons-styled futurism turns into a surprisingly glum and message-heavy work about how the modern world is a depressing place
The Water Diviner (2014)
Russell Crowe turns director and, as is the case with actors turned director, feels the need to take up an epic historical subject – the aftermath of World War I (albeit with some Magical Realist elements). Crowe wields all the epic flourish and polish, even if the film never truly moves one
Warnings (2003)
A blatant copy of M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs even down to the near-identical title and a similar plot about crop circles appearing on a farm presaging an alien invasion
War of the Gargantuas (1966)
From Ishiro Honda, the creator of Godzilla, this bizarrely features two giant Frankenstein monsters battling it out. A fairly typical Japanese monster movie of its era featuring cheesily ridiculous rubber monsters, copious mass destruction and a largely irrelevant human element
Red Room: The Forbidden King Game (1999)
Extremely twisted Japanese film that plays out like a conceptual mix of Saw and Fear Factor (even though it predates either) wherein contestants are locked in a room and get to challenge each other to engage in more and more extreme acts against the other
Camp Dread (2014)
This pays much homage to the 1980s summer camp slasher film and does a competent re-run of the basics if nothing that turns the genre on its head. On the other hand, it is less interesting when it tries to tap into the reality tv horror fad
Another Me (2013)
2013 brought a spate of doppelganger films. This was overshadowed by the more high-profile Enemy and The Double. Here Sophie Turner plays a schoolgirl who finds her life being overtaken by a mysterious double
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
30 years in the making and the results are sensational. An action film so relentlessly foot-to-the-floor and full of kinetic wildness that it blows all its contemporaries away and sets the bar anew
The Houses October Built (2014)
A Found Footage film with a camera crew searching Halloween attractions for the most extreme haunt only to find something else. The film has a certain effect where we are not entirely sure what is real
Phobia (2008)
Horror anthology featuring four ghost stories from Thai directors. While all the segments vary in approach and style, this is a spooky and above average effort with the real standout being the final segment with an air hostess aboard a plane with a dead body in the midst of a storm
The Bells (1926)
Classic silent movie about a murderer haunted by his guilty conscience. The film’s simplistic morality is rather hard to swallow today but the film is richly directed for its era and creates some wonderfully theatrical effects
Shakma (1990)
Film about a group of students locked in a lab and being hunted by a crazed experimental baboon
Shadow of the Hawk (1976)
Jan-Michael Vincent plays a young man who is reluctantly drawn in by his Native American grandfather’s war against a black sorcerer
Tarzan Goes to India (1962)
The best ever Tarzan films were the series made in the 1960s, which abandoned the cutsie elements of the earlier efforts. This comes with an emphasis on pure spectacle and adventure that is visually amazing
Serpent’s Lair (1995)
A supernatural version of Fatal Attraction where Jeff Fahey is lured into an affair with a neighbour who is a succubus
RPG (2013)
A Hunger Games wannabe with elderly people forced to eliminate one another while inhabiting young avatar bodies inside a virtual simulation. It is a long time since I have encountered a film where the fundamental premise makes no sense whatsoever when you look at it logically
The Voices (2014)
On the scale of weird movies, this is about as out there as it gets – Ryan Reynolds has conversations with his cat and dog who urge him to cut people’s heads off, which continue to talk as he keeps them in his refrigerator. A mind-bogglingly warped film and quite brilliant in its dark funniness when you work out what is going on
Monsters: Dark Continent (2014)
A sequel to the sleeper hit of Monsters; what we instead get is not many monsters and a film about recruits in a Middle Eastern war zone. That said, it is an undeniably well made film
The Dead 2: India (2014)
The Dead was one of the better modern zombie films, depicting the African continent as it succumbed to the zombie apocalypse. This offers nearly the same story but moves the locale to India
The Carpenter (1988)
Odd effort that features Wings Hauser as a polite and charming ghostly handyman who romances the heroine while despatching the people around her. Not a great film but Hauser has never been better
Zombie Honeymoon (2004)
The surprise in seeing this after the tide of gonzo mash-ups and wacky title collusions that has taken over the zombie genre in the latter half of the 00s is that, despite the title, it is a zombie film that is playing itself seriously, emerging as another variant on the zombie relationship drama (*)
The Vampire’s Night Orgy (1974)
Quite possibly the most boring 1970s Euro horror film ever made. Innocent travellers stray into a village of vampires but hardly anything happens in this soporific Spanish effort least of all the title orgy
Hisss (2010)
David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer is a much better director than she is given recognition for. She disowned this work about a snake goddess taken on human form nevertheless creates a film that is equal parts lushly sensual and madcap lunacy
[Rec]4: Apocalypse (2014)
![[Rec]4 Apocalypse (2014) poster](https://moriareviews.com/rongulator/wp-content/uploads/rec-4-apocalypse-2014-poster-896x1280.jpg)
The fourth film in the [Rec] series. This abandons the Found Footage look but without it, all we have is just another zombie film, nevertheless this builds to an intensively gore-drenched climax
Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
The first Avengers film came with a massive anticipation in seeing the characters come together and the snappiness of their interplay; here this seems more flat, while the rest is overrun by wall-to-wall action
Open Windows (2014)
This Nacho Vigalondo film prefigured Unfriended with everything taking place on a computer screen. A far more adventurous film with a wildly entertaining plot about celebrity stalking
Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)
Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead came with a cheerfully black cynicism that was a wonderfully fresh alternative to George Romero amid the 1980s zombie fad – this sequel has a painfully unfunny lameness that could not sit at more removed extreme to that
End of the Line (2007)
Could it be too hard to go wrong in making a film about a doomsday cult hunting people through a subway tunnel? Apparently it is and after a promising beginning, the film churns the cliches with little tension
Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys (2014)
From The Asylum, the same company behind Sharknado. The major surprise is that this is a monster movie that doesn’t place tongue-in-cheek and aim as absurdly as possible. Average in all regards
Comet (2014)
From Mr Robot creator Sam Esmail, this is supposedly set in a parallel universe but is merely a relationship drama that quickly disappears into a puff of its own cutely ironic, self-admiring dialogue
The Age of Adaline (2015)
Aimed at the same audiences as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Blake Lively is a woman who hasn’t aged since the 1930s. This comes with the nostalgic weepiness and solemn self-importance of a work pitched to Academy Awards voters
Raze (2013)
Fifty girls have been abducted and are paired off and forced to fight to the death with their bare hands in an arena – essentially Saw by way of Girlfight. A tautly streamlined and grittily effective effort that succeeds modestly well at everything it sets out to do
The Red Tent (1969)
On the face of it, this is not the most likely of films to be included – a depiction of the ill-fated true-life expedition to cross the North Pole in a dirigible in 1928 – but is for a wraparound wherein the survivor is judged by a tribunal of ghosts. A beautifully made and epical film
Robot Carnival (1987)
One of the earliest works from Katsuhiro Otomo, the cult director of Akira, although he only contributes one episode to an anthology of anime tales with the common theme of robots. The collection contains some impressive and visually striking episodes
The Three Investigators in the Secret of Terror Castle (2009)
The Three Investigators books were an essential part of my youth. This does a fair job of remaining faithful to the stories, albeit with the addition of some grating modernisations, and creates reasonable atmosphere as they investigate a seemingly spooky mansion
Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2014)
Australian zombie film that comes with a hyperactive fierceness and energy that reminds of early Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson. On the minus side, the zombie genre is now so creatively strip-mined that the film never offers anything original
Unfriended (2014)
One of the most unique films in some time – everything takes place across social media (chat sessions, video calls) where the cinema screen is the computer screen. A fairly average supernatural retribution story that generates reasonable tension
Ex Machina (2015)
The field has been open for one work to come and set the benchmark for A.I. films. Alex Garland’s Ex Machina arrives at that work. Rather than flashy effects, this resides in a series of beautifully cool debates and sharply intelligent twists
Ascension (2014)
Fascinating tv mini-series set around the notion of a generation ship – the show explores the scenario in interesting ways then proceeds to put some wild spins on what we think is happening
2019: After the Fall of New York (1983)
One of the more cheesily entertaining among the Italian-made ripoffs of Mad Max 2 during the 1980s (as well as more than a few dashes of Escape from New York). The film works up a moderate head of steam
The Stepford Children (1987)
The second of three sequels to The Stepford Wives. I found the original implausible on any level and this is quadrupled when you get to replacing their children with android duplicates. A film that has been generated without anybody sitting and thinking about the premise on a practical level
Intruder (1989)
A slasher film set in a supermarket! This proliferates in a series of cut/uncut versions and has an amazing cast line-up, including acting appearances from Sam Raimi and most of his regular troupe
Justice League: War (2014)
Another of the DC Universe Animated Films that rewrites the Justice League into DC’s New 52 continuity reboot. This changes the character’s origins and designs to little point
Dark House (2014)
The underrated Victor Salva, director of Jeepers Creepers, takes on the deviltry and occult film where with his ability to conjure eerie jumps and outlandish images produces something original and out of this world
Penguins of Madagascar (2014)
This spinoff from the Madagascar films is a lot more fun that I was anticipating – how could you dislike a film with John Malkovich as an octopus super-villain? Essentially cast as a spy parody, the film has a gonzo insanity that hits in with a manic delirium
Exists (2014)
Eduardo Sanchez, the co-director of The Blair Witch Project, makes a Found Footage Bigfoot film. He makes a solid entry but not one substantially different to the last 238 Found Footage films
The Demons (1972)
Jess Franco rips off Ken Russell’s The Devils, although surely only Franco could take a story about nuns being tortured and witches burned at the stake and turn it into a work of softcore erotica
Tooth and Nail (2007)
Modest post-holocaust film that tries to do something different to the usual action derbies of Mad Max 2 et al, focusing on the survival efforts of a group of young people
Apartment 1303 (2007)
Another J-horror on the bandwagon created by the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudge films. Some promisingly initial scares traipse off into a dull mystery about investigating the past
The Tales of Hoffmann (1951)
One of the greatest of all fantasy films. A reasonable percentage of you are going to switch off when I use the word ballet but I urge you to bear with me and discover this stunningly cinematic Technicolor epic that uses sets in extraordinary ways that no other film ever has
Hard to Be a God (2013)
A modern cinematic masterpiece? A plotless three-hour work that rubs our face in the squalour of the Middle Ages while feeling like people crowded into a narrow room all trying to do cryptic things at cross-purpose
Home (2015)
An animated alien visitor film that is more likeable than anything suggests – it has a bubbly, juvenile pitch but generates a good deal of humour out of the alien fish of water amid human culture routines
At the Devil’s Door (2014)
The second film from The Pact director Nicholas McCarthy. What is happening is kept deliberately vague and elliptical – as you are trying to piece everything together, McCarthy manages to pull some incredibly eerie jolts
Time of the Wolf (2003)
Michael Haneke has risen to great acclaim in recent years; this is one of his earlier works – a slow Tarkovsky-esque work that seems set in a future that is collapsing at the edges. Haneke is a fascinating talent but this is a bit too vague and well free of anything actually happening for me
Baghead (2008)
The second film from The Duplass Brothers, Mark and Jay. Though labelled a slasher parody, it is more of an improvisational comedy that uses the set-up of a backwoods slasher film without much interest in horror
The Time of Their Lives (1946)
An Abbott and Costello comedy. Not one of their monster bashes but a variant on the light comedy that had been popular in the last decade with Lou as an 18th Century ghost haunting Bud Abbott in the present. Can’t say I am a big fan of their humour, most of the slapstick that seems dated today
Boy Eats Girl (2005)
One of wittiest titles of the 2000s zombie revival fad – the suggestion of a high school love story gone really wrong. This actual film is a surprisingly ordinary and unexceptional effort
Hider in the House (1989)
A psycho film with an original premise – Gary Busey as a psycho who builds a hidey-hole in the attic of a house where he spies on and tries to manipulate the lives of the family living there
Song of the Sea (2014)
An Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film – a unique and exquisitely drawn dive into Celtic mythology that comes with wit, humour and the emotional tenderness of a Hayao Miyazaki. This deserves to be seen far more widely than it ended up being
Curtains (1983)
Slasher film that is more like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, this comes with an appealing level of meta-fictionality. Mostly, it is an actor’s film and has been set-up to allow its name cast to do amazing things
Fractured (2013)
Film about an amnesiac man trying to piece his disturbing past together amid a series of surreal nightmares. This ends up not nearly as interesting as you feel it could have been
Sleepaway Camp (1983)
Classic from the heyday of the slasher film. While the plot only recycles Friday the 13th, everything else is above average from the characterisations to the novelty deaths, before the film reaches one of the great unforgettable endings of the cycle
Lurking Fear (1994)
Charles and Albert Band had a success with the H.P. Lovecraft adapted Re-Animator; their attempt to replicate that with another Lovecraft story is lacking Stuart Gordon’s splattery black humour
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
The Secret of Kells (2009)
Beautifully made animated film that won surprise recognition at the Academy Awards. More a festival film than necessarily a box-office one
Miss Meadows (2014)
There is an irresistible appeal to the idea of Katie Holmes as a sweetly smiling Miss Manners dressed in Sunday Best who, in between correcting people’s manners and punctuation, is also a gun-toting vigilante
Insurgent (2015)
Divergent, the first entry in this Young Adult dystopian series, a poor man’s Hunger Games, failed the “I can’t hold any suspension of disbelief” test. This offers more of the same, plus lots of random effects sequences
Queen Kong (1976)
A spectacularly terrible film. Designed to exploit the 1976 remake, this offers up a sex-reversed parody of King Kong – only the Kong producers didn’t see that way and sued to stop the film being released. Robin Askwith, the star of the softcore Confessions films, engages in a romance with a female Kong amid excruciating puns
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1956)
Largely overlooked, this is the first version of the story in colour and has a lavishness that the previous versions lacked. On the minus side, Anthony Quinn’s Quasimodo is no more than a simpleton lacking in pathos
Night of the Living Dead 3D (2006)
Remake of George Romero’s seminal zombie classic. The 3D is no more than a gimmick, while elsewhere they are some radical changes – a white Ben, a lame explanation for the zombies, some far-too-cute in-jokes – that fails to match the effectiveness of the original
Nightmares in a Damaged Brain (1981)
One of the original Video Nasties. In all rather regards, this is a fairly scuzzy looking grindhouse psycho film. Nothing terribly interesting to the show, although it does eventually offer a couple of gory killings, which is what got the censors upset during the day
The Canal (2014)
Ghost story that does an effective job of generating dread and eerieness while also existing in a place that leaves you unsure whether it is all not just occurring inside the lead character’s fraying sanity
The Machine (2013)
A fascinating and well told work about artificial intelligence and mind upload. This is nearly three-quarters of a strong, intelligent science-fiction film even if the third act falls apart
Cinderella (2015)
Live-action remake of the Disney animated film. This varies little from the well-worn elements of the story to the point of over-familiarity but director Kenneth Branagh manages a lush and beautifully staged effort
The Scorpion King 4: Quest for Power (2015)
Fourth entry in the eminently forgettable sword-and-sorcery series, this heads down into bad movie stakes by writing a series of grating quips over everything, while the action scenes exist in the realm of unbelievability that show that nobody is treating anything with the slightest seriousness
Mosquito (1995)
A ridiculous giant bug film, albeit not unentertainingly so. This has been premised solely on the provision of absurd creature effects every few minutes and little else that one can take seriously
Stuck (2007)
Stuart Gordon, the cult director of Re-Animator, makes a film based on a bizarre true incident where a woman ran a homeless man down and drove home with him still impacted through the windshield of her car
The Final Terror (1983)
From the heyday of the slasher film, this seems to be trying to conduct a slasher version of Deliverance. Largely forgotten today and unremarkable but for an amazing cast of before-they-were-famous faces
7500 (2014)
Takashi Shimizu has done commendable work on the Ju-on/The Grudge films and so I anticipated his taking on the airplane-board horror genre. Only he delivers a surprisingly middle-of-the-road handling before reaching a cliched twist ending that truly deserves to be put out to pasture
Crimes of the Future (1970)
The second film from David Cronenberg. Despite the SF title, this is more a work of arthouse surrealism where Cronenberg spends the film documenting strange behaviours in an hilarious deadpan tone that mimics a scientific paper
Chappie (2015)
Neill Blomkamp’s film about A.I. turns into Short Circuit dropped into the militarised future of RoboCop. Of all the rich possibilities in the idea, all we get is a goofy comedy with a pimped-out carjacking robot
Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)
The Slumber Party Massacre was an mundane and unmemorable slasher entry; this is a nonsensical sequel that tries to turn it into a copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Contains some of the bizarrely ridiculous scenes to ever take part in any slasher film of the era
The Alchemist (1983)
One of the earliest films from Charles Band. In the years following, Band went onto produce and occasionally direct a great many often enterprisingly cheap low-budget genre films – this is not one of them
Hard to Be a God (1989)
Adaptation of the Strugatski Brothers’ book about human observers becoming involved in the affairs of a barbarous alien society. Essentially a Star Trek Prime Directive story, the Strugatskis didn’t much like this version
Lurkers (1987)
A painfully dull and uneventful Roberta Findlay film where almost nothing happens. The film is almost redeemed by an effective twist ending ripped off from The Sentinel
Mindscape (2013)
Without Inception there would be no Mindscape, which involves people entering memories rather than dreams plus other similarities but this has has no interest in the SF potential beyond a thriller plot
The BFG (1989)
Animated version of the Roald Dahl tale about the friendship between a young girl and a Big Griendly Giant, this is simply made but has an appealing mix of eccentricity and sweet charms
The Lazarus Effect (2015)
The experiment to bring someone back from the dead has been trod many times before and this Blumhouse production only rehashes it in tired and unimaginative ways
The Turkish Star Wars (1982)
A strong contender for Worst Film Ever. Rather than create any effects, it has simply uplifted footage from Star Wars, while the score is a mismash taken from popular films of the era. The dialogue is so bizarrely surreal it makes the brain hurt trying to understand it
One of Our Spies is Missing (1966)
The third cinematically released film repackaged from episodes of the cultish 1960s spy tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. Despite a scattershot plot that doglegs all over the place, the film is made with a wonderfully droll sense of humour that makes it undeniably appealing
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
Shadow Puppets (2007)
A conceptual puzzle film – people wake up in a facility with no memory of who they are – reminiscent of Cube with the smoke monsters from Lost thrown in. Unfortunately, this is too low-budget to create much mystery and the big reveal is not a terribly interesting one
Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (2013)
One of a number of faith-produced films we have had since the late 90s that concern themselves with the arrival of The Rapture – this one even spawned a trilogy. This is passable if you can palate the relatively light sermonising and at least better written that the Left Behind films
Hot Tub Time Machine 2 (2015)
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten
Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
This rescues the spy film from the silliness of Austin Powers. The film’s sly mocking of its Englishness, with Colin Firth going into action as an impeccably mannered gentleman, along with explosive action sequences is irresistible
The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013)
A documentary about Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki that offers fascinating insight into the working processes of the amazingly genteel, often frank Miyazaki who seems a fount of youthful vigour