Bluebeard (1972)
The fairytale about a multiple wife murderer is given the lavish costume drama treatment. Featuring Richard Burton at the height of his Bad Actor period in a series of increasingly absurd softcore romps
Invasion (1966)
Minor British alien invasion effort that creates some atmosphere as a village is trapped in a forcefield by a mystery man pursued by two alien women where both parties claim to be alien cops and the other their prisoners
World Apartment Horror (1991)
After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third
The Road (2011)
Filipino variant on the Japanese ghost story (Ring, The Grudge et al). Much more low key than some of the other variants but with moments of undeniably spooky effect and with an ambitious story that takes place across three different decades
Sound of My Voice (2011)
Fascinating film about a cult centred around a woman who claims to come from the future. Featuring an ethereal performance from a then unknown Brit Marling, the film remains ambiguous about her claims. Less a script than a series of often emotionally raw scenes that have been improvised between the actors
Kiss of the Damned (2012)
The vampire film feels creatively played out of recent. The story here is familiar but this is propelled into the watchable by the provocative and stylish direction of Xan Cassavetes (daughter of director/actor John Cassavetes)
I Frankenstein (2014)
An empty-headed work that seems entirely premised around the provision of CGI effects spectacle and actively resists engagement on any other level. A spectacularly ridiculous film in almost every way
Devil’s Due (2014)
A Found Footage film that seeks to overhaul the Satanic impregnation film a la Rosemary’s Baby. Both the Found Footage and the Satanic impregnation genres feel well-mined by now and this fails to offer anything new
Bunker Palace Hotel (1989)
The first film from Enki Bilal set in a decaying luxury bunker where the elite of the future take shelter from a civil war. A film that creates a fascinating world – in which nothing interesting ends up happening
Cross (2011)
A copy of The Expendables (albeit with the addition of fantasy elements) that brings together a line-up of B-action movie actors as a team. While some of the actors shine, the feel is of a cheaper effort earnestly trying to copy its betters
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
One of the essential items in the cult of B-movie director Roger Corman. A cheerfully absurd atomic monster movie that is played by Corman and cast with more seriousness than it deserves
Labyrinth (2012)
Christopher Smith is an underrated genre director but his first venture into tv is disappointing cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story that reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
AE: Apocalypse Earth (2013)
Another of The Asylum’s mockbusters, intended to come out the same time as M. Night Shyamalan’s After Earth. This feels like a cheap planetary adventure that recycles Avatar and Planet of the Apes
47 Ronin (2013)
US film based on a real Japanese historical incident that has been oddly spun out into a Keanu Reeves-starring epic samurai fantasy film. One of the biggest financial flops of 2013
The Nut Job (2014)
I went into this with zero expectations, expecting no more than a work of formula family entertainment and came out gently surprised. Essentially a talking cartoon animals variant on a heist plot, it does the formula likeably and with none of the relentless smart-ass cynicism of too many contemporaries
Cassandra (1987)
An Australian clairvoyance thriller that seems to have substantially drawn its influence from Eyes of Laura Mars. The film was little seen when it came out and the uninvolved direction does little to draw us into what is taking place
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
Zombie Ass: The Toilet of the Dead (2011)
Completely insane gonzo Japanese horror that feels like it is made by a mad scat fetishist involving parasites that emerge out of people’s asses. The film is driven by its outrageously perverse imagery but for all that is haphazard and incoherent when it comes to explanatory rationale
1984 (1956)
The first film adaptation of the classic George Orwell dystopian work. The brilliance of the book only comes through in occasional moments but mostly the film befalls the leaden hand of director Michael Anderson
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013)
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
Tormented (1960)
Bert I. Gordon, a director known for his cheapo 1950s giant bug film, here ventures into the ghost story but delivers it in terms crude and absurdly heavy-handed pop-up effects
Her (2013)
Spike Jonze addresses virtual relationships in this story of a romance between a man and an A.I. A film that is astonishing in its freshness, naturalness and avoidance of any of the cliches that have dogged other treatments.
Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (2014)
Less another sequel than a spinoff of the Paranormal Activity series, this takes place with Latino characters and in a whole different culture and socio-economic strata. While this gives the series a face change, everything else it feels like the shuffling of a well-worn deck of plot cards
Spider Forest (2004)
South Korean horror film that feels like The Sixth Sense crossed with the enigmatic games of Don’t Look Now. The film takes place in a cryptically baffling mandala of dreams, hallucinations and possible deathdream that eventually proves rather absorbing
Battle for Terra (2007)
Animated film that has a remarkable number of similarities to Avatar – even though it was released before. A simplistic variant of the same human colonists vs alien natives plot conducted with corner-cut CGI animation
Godkiller: Walk Among Us (2010)
An ‘illustrated film’ – essentially comic-book panels with voiceover narration. The story about gods inhabiting a burned-out future is far more ambitious than can be crammed into the film
Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)
A film of legendarily bad proportions where a group of Country and Western singers end up in a haunted house. Despite casting some famous horror actors, this is more interested in its excruciating country performances
Beginning of the End (1957)
Giant grasshoppers invade Chicago – what’s not to like? A sterling example of the 1950s atomically enlarged insect film from Bert I. Gordon who found his calling make cheap giant animals/people films during this era.
Dr. Caligari (1989)
The original The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is a classic of silent German Expressionist cinema; this loose remake feels like Eraserhead reconceived with absurd Day-Glo disco decor
The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956)
Dramatic recount of a true-life sensation during the 1950s when an amateur hypnotist claimed that he had regressed a housewife to recall her past life in 19th Century Ireland. The film has an earnestly prostheletysing belief in its own case but sceptical examination pulls holes in its credibility
The Sky Has Fallen (2009)
A low-budget amateur-made zombie film that treads where hundred of other copycats have before. It sets itself apart from these very slightly in that it makes effort to chart a relationship between the leads and in that the zombies behave in puzzlingly non-traditional ways
Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)
The third film based on the roleplaying game. The previous two films were forgettable but this is surprisingly good, taking a far darker tone than the usual sword-and-sorcery adventure and adding considerable moral complexity
The Mysterious Island (2012)
About the ninth film version of Jules Verne’s desert island survival story. This doesn’t add the giant animals/insects other versions do, although we still get a number of wild sf elements the original book never had. Problem though is that the film never adds enough to make proceedings very interesting
Curse of Chucky (2013)
Sixth entry in the Child’s Play series, made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. Contains lots of fanservice and some surprise cameos. This makes an effort to cut back the black humour and go back to being scary
Faust (2011)
Alexander Sokurov, the director behind Russian Ark, turns to the classic story about a man who sells his soul to The Devil. A very different version than we are used to that takes place in an earthy, cluttered Mediaeval world
The Starving Games (2013)
Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, behind parody films like Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie, turn to The Hunger Games. There is all the usual inanity and celebrity mocking of their films, although they do seem to make a film that is only marginally less moronic than usual
Prancer (1989)
An appealing bittersweet film based around the improbable premise of a young girl finding what she believes is one of Santa’s reindeer. In a genre that usually deals in sugary sentiment, this has a much more rewarding downbeat realism
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
Aftershock (2012)
Film in which Eli Roth does everything else except direct. Set in the aftermath of a Chilean earthquake, this feels more like a disaster movie than the horror film it is awkwardly squeezed into being
Walking With Dinosaurs (2013)
Walking With Dinosaurs was an amazing documentary series that recreated prehistoric life with CGI animation. By contrast. the film spinoff is a cutsie animated film with talking dinosaurs. It is a film that is killed by the decision to let the dinosaurs talk with smartass one-liners and contemporary in-jokes
Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome (2012)
Web-series/film prequel to the 2003-9 revival of Battlestar Galactica with a rookie Commander Adama arriving aboard the Galactica. Easily one the best of the Galactica spinoff films to date
Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
Dramatisation of the prickly relationship between P.L. Travers, the creator of Mary Poppins, and Walt Disney during the making of the 1964 film. While the true story may have been cleaned up somewhat, this is a film of enormous charms that is largely made through a triumphant performance from Emma Thompson
A Taste of Fear (1961)
The first of Hammer’s psycho-thrillers – a departure for the studio with them abandoning their Victorian era setting for a contemporary one – in an attempt to copy the success of Hitchcock’s Psycho. Quite a reasonable effort that comes without the improbably contrived plots of some of their later psycho-thrillers
The Hypnotic Eye (1960)
Fascinatingly lurid B movie clearly influenced by Horrors of the Black Museum about women being hypnotised to mutilate themselves. This achieves a rather compulsive atmosphere
Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers (1988)
Construed by prolific B movie hack Fred Olen Ray around its two stars – Gunnar Hansen, the original Leatherface, and Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, this hits a perfect note between bimbos, tongue-in-cheek and cheap gore
Journey to the Center of the Earth (2008)
A mockbusters from The Asylum made to coincide with the big-budget Brendan Fraser film. Resemblance to the Jules Verne book fairly much ends at the title
Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut (2006)
The original version of Superman II became mired in problems over the firing of director Richard Donner. After the rediscovery of the original footage, Donner was able to go offer up a restored version. Seeing the storylines the way they were meant to be and Marlon Brando’s original scenes as Jor-el make for a work that is superior in every way
Instinct (2007)
British psycho-thriller that is a little too laidback to work but does eventually put some effective twists on its audience
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
Bad Milo! (2013)
A comedy about a demon that appears out of a man’s ass!!! This has the dementia to be a potential midnight cult hit but misses the mark by a wide mile and stumbles around obvious targets in predictable ways
Necromania: A Tale of Weird Love (1971)
In one’s efforts to track down all Edward D. Wood Jr’s films, one finally comes to Necromania, which was believed lost for many years … This turns out to be a pornographic film, consisting of little more than serial sex scenes, this far less interesting because it lacks all of Wood’s typical gaffes and ineptitudes
Bloody Pit of Horror (1965)
Not a Marquis de Sade adaptation as this was sold as but an Italian giallo film. Mickey Hargitay (aka Mr Jayne Mansfield) has a ball as a mad bodybuilder aristocrat in red tights devising entertainingly lurid tortures.
30 Nights of Paranormal Activity with the Devil Inside the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2013)
Another crude and witless genre parody in the vein of Jason Friedberg-Aaron Seltzer of Epic Movie, Disaster Movie et al notoriety. I there is anything worse than that it is surely a failed attempt to imitate them
Don’t Look Back (2009)
French actress-director Marina de Van makes a film about a woman who finds her identity being occluded by someone else’s life. de Van creates a superbly paranoid sense of dis-ease that compares favourably to Polanski’s The Tenant
Nightfall (2000)
Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall, about a planet surrounded by six suns that only experiences nightfall once every thousand years, is considered the classic SF short story. On film, it has befallen two impoverished adaptations
Up There (2012)
Rather appealing British comedy set in an afterlife that is conceived as a dreary world of social services agencies and encounter groups. A frequently extremely black and funny but eventually charming film that gets lit up by the eccentricity of its performances
Dark Angel: The Ascent (1994)
One of the better films to emerge from Full Moon, the story of a female demon who escapes to Earth and becomes a vigilante defender of the innocent. Rather well done with Angela Featherstone being particularly otherworldly
Psychomania (1973)
Hard to find Anglo-horror effort that has been long considered an item of must-see fascination for its premise of an undead biker gang, including the central image of the gang leader erupting from the grave on his motorcycle. The film unfortunately has a prosaic dullness that belies such imaginative wildness
Safe Haven (2013)
Weepie romantic chick flick adapted from a Nicholas Sparks novel, included here for a fantastic twist ending. Sparks has stolen much of his plot from Stephen King’s Rose Madder. Even as such, wife-beating as the backdrop to a romance casts a distasteful shadow over the exercise
Poison (1991)
Todd Haynes’ first film, three stories, two of which are fantastic … Being Haynes’ first film, this is less polished than his later work but circles through familiar themes of social outsiders, gay identity and recreations of previous cinematic styles, including one segment that is a mocked-up 1940s mad scientist film
Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon (2013)
Tsui Hark delivers a prequel to his 2010 Detective Dee film. This takes the character back far more to his original nature as a Chinese equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. That is if you can imagine Sherlock Holmes taking place as a flying swordsman film filled with sea monsters and wildly fantastic martial combat scenes (*)
Fright Night 2 (2013)
Supposedly a sequel to the 2011 Fright Night remake but more a loose reworking of the original. This conducts some novel variations such as making Jerry Dandridge into a woman, but is also one of the worst directed horror films in some time
Frozen (2013)
Disney animated film that supposedly adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, although Andersen wouldn’t recognise it. This often feels like a ramshackle assemblage of formula elements rather than the classic it was hailed as
Oldboy (2013)
Spike Lee’s English-language remake of Oldboy is an abortion. Where Park Chan-Wook directed the original with an insane energy, whereas Lee only delivers a formula action film and fumbles the ending
An Adventure in Space and Time (2013)
A film about the origins of Doctor Who made for the series’ 50th anniversary. Packed with pieces of fanservice and origins of iconic aspects. David Bradley gives a moving performance as William Hartnell
Macario (1960)
Mexican film made to celebrate the Day of the Dead wherein Death befriends a poor peasant and bequeaths him a gift of a gourd of healing water. While not terribly sophisticated, this works as a pure and simple fable
I Spit on Your Grave 2 (2013)
These rape-revenge films leave you wanting to conduct the moral equivalent of taking a shower after watching them. This sequel to the 2010 remake also ends up being undeniably brutal and effective
Gamera vs Jiger (1970)
The fifth of the 1960s Gamera films. This comes with inane plotting, sub-par effects and silly monster fight scenes, even a plot stolen from Fantastic Voyage about a submarine journey into the monster’s body
Europa Report (2013)
A groundedly realistic film about an expedition to search for life on Europa that that emerges as a disappointment coming soon after the similar space-based Gravity
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013)
The first sequel to the box-office juggernaut. The surprise is that it spends defies most of the things that made the first film, not to mention has made one of the year’s biggest box-office hits into a parable for Marxist revolution
Hellraiser: Hellseeker (2002)
The fifth Hellraiser sequel and the only one among the last four worth watching. It brings back Ashley Laurence but abandons the Cenobites for a fascinating series of reality bending games
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
Glen and Randa (1971)
One of a handful of 70s films about how the Love Children would inherit the Earth. A fascinating, almost Terrence Malick-like work about innocents drifting through the detritus of civilisation, trying to understand what they see
Screaming in High Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Scream Queen Era (2011)
Documentary about the so-called Scream Queen phenomenon – a series of cheap horror films from the late 80s/early 90s made for the video market featuring a series of starlets who readily got naked and kicked ass. This interviews the principal players and covers the genre with a reasonable degree of insightful candour
The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Mad scientist George Zucco turns his assistant into a zombie so he can steal his fiancee. Despite a wonderfully mad performance from Zucco, the zombie does almost nothing throughout
Beach Babes from Beyond (1993)
Prolific low-budget hack David DeCoteau directs what feels like a very softcore version of a Gidget film crossbred with Earth Girls Are Easy (albeit with the sexes reversed). A film that quickly sinks into awfulness
Escape from Tomorrow (2013)
This has the novelty of being shot guerilla-style at Disneyland and Disney World without permission. Nothing prepares you for the amazingly dark work you get, a surreal hallucinatory drift through the park’s underbelly
How I Live Now (2013)
While the title suggests a self-help manual about someone going to live off the land, this depicts an imaginary invasion of England similar to Red Dawn having been pitched as a Young Adult work
End of the World (1977)
A thorough embarrassment on Christopher Lee’s resume – an early Charles Band film in which Lee is a stranded alien inhabiting the cloned body of priest in a convent of nuns
The Descent: Part 2 (2009)
Neil Marshall’s The Descent was a ferociously effective horror film that proved a sleeper success. This is an unnecessary sequel that only offers up a limited variation on the same jumps
The Devil’s Rock (2011)
New Zealand-made WWII horror film with a set-up – Nazis encountered occult forces in a bunker – that draws heavily on The Keep. Modestly effective and gore-drenched
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947)
A light whimsical short story about a daydreamer is turned into a bloated and ponderous vehicle for the musical and comedy set-pieces of the perpetually wet-eared Danny Kaye
Odd Thomas (2013)
At first glance, Stephen Sommers and Dean R. Koontz seem strange bedfellows, but oddly enough it works – Koontz gives Sommers more story than he is used to working with and surprisingly it is the likeable characters and mind-boggling quirks of plot at the forefront rather than Sommers’ usual CGI bombast
Thor: The Dark World (2013)
Sequel to Thor that earranges the same basic elements much more satisfyingly than the first film – the actors (with the exception of a tranquilised Natalie Portman) seem more at home in their roles and a director who is more confident with the effects and superheroics. That said, it is starting to feel like Marvel is shuffling the same plot ingredients around between films
Movie 43 (2013)
An anthology of comedy skits that sets out to be in as bad taste as possible – you are left astounded how far a film has to go to offend in this post-South Park era
Evil Alien Conquerors (2003)
Comedy directed by Chris Matheson, co-writer of the Bill and Ted films, about two not very bright alien invaders. Imagine Dumb and Dumber meets Earth Girls Are Easy. A film that is wilfully silly
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
Sexcula (1974)
While this Canadian obscurity gives the appearance of being a 70s sex vampire film, it is in fact an X-rated Frankenstein spoof. While the film is not without its moment of complete dementia (mostly involving sex scenes with a gorilla), it eventually fragments into narrative incomprehensibility
Byzantium (2012)
Neil Jordan makes a vampire film that stands at marked contrast to Twilight and Jordan’s earlier Interview with the Vampire. Jordan stamps the class of a mature filmmaker on what might have been a lesser work in another’s hands
About Time (2013)
Time travel film that feels like a romantic comedy version of The Time Traveler’s Wife (with Rachel McAdams in the same role in both films). Played with a good deal of feelgood warmth and likeability by all
Ender’s Game (2013)
I will defend Orson Scott Card as an exceptional science-fiction writer, his controversies aside. While this is an extremely faithful adaptation of his book, it works unevenly as a film and never soars dramatically
Free Birds (2013)
Animated film designed for the US Thanksgiving holiday. With a completely insane plot involving turkeys travelling back in time to stop turkeys being served at the first Thanksgiving
Beneath (2013)
Larry Fessenden makes what seems a formula teens in peril film. Once he gets his cast stranded in a sinking boat menaced by a giant fish and debating who to throw overboard, he develops some remarkably brutal tensions
Crawlspace (2012)
Australian effort that seems to follow the path of Aliens/Resident Evil with soldiers venturing into a laboratory of amok monsters before a Philip K. Dick-ian twist on what we think is happening
Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn (2012)
Web-series, later released as a film, based on the Halo 4 videogame. While the games have a massively detailed backhistory of the universe, this is disappointingly only a low-budget military recruits in training scenario
The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (1998)
Another of the interminable video sequels to their animated classics that Disney made throughout the 90s-00s. This is somewhat better than most of the others
Jack the Ripper (1988)
TV mini-series made for the 100th anniversary of the Jack the Ripper killings. While the show adheres more to the facts of the case of any filmed work up to that point and to have uncovered new evidence, it should be considered fiction
Carrie (2013)
Another pointless 70s remake that replicates the 1976 Carrie almost scene for scene but misconstrues the material by a mile. Crucially, it comes without the sensational casting that made the original, nor a Brian De Palma at the helm
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004)
The fourth of the Tremors films.; It is a surprise that the series has managed to remain consistently enjoyable despite a limited premise. The main spin here is an origin story that takes the series back to the West
Killer Party (1986)
Canadian entry from the classic era of slasher films that hits some occasionally effective notes that sit between horror and prank. The last 10 minutes take an abrupt dogleg turn to become an Evil Dead copy