The Vampire Bat (1933)
Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray star in a film about a mad scientist conducting a series of vampire bat killings. A minor but watchable entry in the Golden Age of Horror.
On the Silver Globe (1988)
Andrzej Zulawski, known for the demented Possession, makes an SF film about planetary colonisation. The spirit of Andrei Tarkovsky hangs over the film, which is long and philosophically rambling. What you cannot deny is the film’s epic scope and the mad splendour of Zulawski’s visuals
Body Bags (1993)
A pilot for a never sold horror anthology tv series featuring John Carpenter as a pun-cracking narrator. The two Carpenter directed episodes have some tension, while Tobe Hooper’s third episode has a clumsy heavy-handedness
Riddick (2013)
The third Riddick film abandons the dark space opera of the less popular Chronicles of Riddick and tries to return to the planetary survival story of Pitch Black. Despite the effort showing at times, the film gets to be a good deal of fun when it gets to the scenes of Riddick outwitting the mercenaries
Ju-on: Old Lady in White (2009)
The better of two spinoff films made for the tenth anniversary of the Ju-on/The Grudge series. The series is suffering over-familiarity, but this manage to create moments of uncanny spookiness
Ju-on: Girl in Black (2009)
One of a duo of spinoff films made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Ju-on/The Grudge series. Seven films in and the series is starting to resemble much of a muchness
I’m a Cyborg, But That’s Ok (2006)
After the ultra-violent Oldboy, Park Chan-wook puzzled everyone by next making this frothily surreal comedy about a girl in an asylum who believes she is a cyborg
Zebraman (2004)
Head-scratching effort from Japan’s Takashi Miike about a schoolteacher who gains superpowers after putting on a costume from his favourite superhero tv series. Miike never seems to be mounting a parody, while the film is too low-budgeted to ever work in terms of kick-ass superheroic action
Back from Hell (2011)
A possession film that takes the Found Footage approach. This takes the traditional approach of Catholic priests intoning exorcism rituals etc and fails to do anything interesting
Phantom of the Opera (1943)
The second film version of the story, lavishly remaking the classic 1925 Lon Chaney version in sound and colour. Alas, all this serves to do is stuff and mount the story. With the addition of a sympathetic backstory and cast with a wimpily diminutive Claude Rains, Chaney’s magnificently mad Phantom comes across like an indignant fox terrier
Ganja & Hess (1973)
Fascinating Blaxploitation vampire film. In contrast to the more popular and cheesier Blacula, this is arty, oblique, almost an experimental film that manages to offer a unique take on the vampire film
Captain America (1944)
Captain America’s first screen appearance was this 15 chapter serial, although about the only common element with the comic is the costume. On the plus side, the action and cliffhangers are good, while Lionel Atwill chews scenery in grand style as the villain
Vampire (2011)
Technically not a vampire film at all, rather about a kind and caring serial killer with a blood-drinking fetish who frequents suicide support boards looking for victims. A remarkable film, shot in a plain, unaffected manner and managing to discover an extraordinary intimacy between the characters
Time of Eve (2010)
Fascinating anime about a cafe for androids. Imagine a cross between an Isaac Asimov Robot story and Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes. The film opens up in a series of episodes that tell stories of human-robot relations that hold a lovely tenderness
Jekyll (2007)
Doctor Who writer/producer Steven Moffat’s modernised Jekyll and Hyde reworks the story in fascinatingly radical ways, while James Nesbitt gives a gleeful rafter-rattling performance
A Haunted House (2013)
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
Frankenstein and Me (1996)
A charming Coming of Age story about kids who think they have discovered the Frankenstein monster. Comes packed with numerous genre homages and quotes
Pennies from Heaven (1978)
Dennis Potter was the greatest writer to ever work in televisio. This mini-series is one of his most celebrated works, featuring characters bursting out into lip-synched Golden Oldie songs, making biting contrast to their downbeaten lives
You’re Next (2011)
Adam Wingard directs a home invasion thriller in a similar vein to The Strangers. This is a film that strips everything extraneous away and simply lets Wingard go for broke and give the audience a brutal and intense workout – at which you cannot deny he succeeds most satisfyingly
The World’s End (2013)
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the trio behind Shaun of the Dead, return to conduct a very similar effort – the story of a pub crawl that is affectionately mocking the characters’ nowhere lives, before taking an abrupt dogleg turn to become a comedic take on the alien body snatchers film
Tarzan’s Fight for Life (1958)
Third of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films, the second in colour and to be shot in real African locations
Maniac (2012)
Controversial remake of the 1980 psycho film. The remake’s unique take is that everything is shot in first-person from the point-of-view of the killer.
Suing the Devil (2011)
A Christian-made film based on the intriguing idea of Satan on trial in a courtroom. A film that in its bad acting, laughable dialogue and lack of conviction rivals The Room in bad movie stakes. The usually worthwhile Malcolm McDowell, who for some reason also produces, gives one of his worst performances
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones (2013)
A Young Adult fantasy adaptation that fells a Harry Potter wannabe repackaged with the brooding teen romanticism of the Twilight series, all under a director whose indifferent handling fails to animate any of the material
The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh (2012)
Rue Morgue magazine editor Rodrigo Gudiño makes his directorial debut with an old-fashioned ghost story that is a slow, moody ambiguous single-person drama
It’s a Disaster (2012)
Imagine This is The End with four hipster couples instead of a bunch of Hollywood celebrities barricaded in a house. A likeable, if never side-splitting, End of the World comedy with a finely tuned ensemble cast
Kick-Ass 2 (2013)
A much better sequel that gives the characters a thorough workover while making clever play out of the contrasts of masked superhero and reality that ran through the first film
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters (2013)
This sequel is marginally better than the first film (largely due to Chris Columbus no longer being in the director’s chair), being more dramatically engaged and with effects that feel less like random eye candy. That still doesn’t disguise the fact that the Percy Jackson series is no more than a lightweight and forgettable Harry Potter knockoff
The Prowler (1981)
An effort from the heyday of the 1980s slasher film. Made with slightly more directorial competence that most of its contemporaries, a level of gore that caused censorship issues in some countries, although this proves weak when offering script rationale for proceedings
The Chair (1989)
One of a spate of killers returned from the electric chair films that came out around the time of Wes Craven’s Shocker. The film is all build-up and almost no delivery, although is enlivened by an undeniable sense of humour
Tarzan the Magnificent (1960)
The second Tarzan film from producer Sy Weintraub who threw out the custie elements of the Johnny Weissmuller films, while going to Africa to shoot rather than a studio backlot. The effort makes a satisfying difference
Sharknado (2013)
This arrived as the same instant full-born bad movie cult sensation. Although you cannot help but feel that the people who ridiculed the film are missing out on the joke – in not seeing that it has been made as something intentionally absurd
The Smurfs 2 (2013)
The first film was vaguely passable but this is an agonising piece of commercial product that has reduced everything to lazy slapstick sequences, cutsie laughs and smartass lines played for the single-digit age groups
World of Cars: Planes (2013)
A spinoff from Pixar’s Cars series (although is not in itself a Pixar film but comes from Disney) that sets out to do the same with anthropomorphic planes. Amiable, even likeable but more a wannabe that seems like it is trying to be than actually hits the cleverness and creative heights of Pixar
Elysium (2013)
The second film from Neill Blomkamp. As in District 9, he starts out making a savage and biting social critique about social privilege and financial elites only to let the film descend into action moves in the third act
Spooks Run Wild (1941)
The East Side Kids, a popular comedy group during the 1940s/50s, conduct a variant on the Old Dark House film featuring a sinisterly lurking Bela Lugosi … The East Side Kids’ films were made on impoverished budgets – this one of their better but still aimlessly circles around creaky and dated gags
The Thompsons (2012)
The Hamiltons was an unusual film about a strange family who were eventually revealed to be vampires. By the time of this sequel, all the interesting elements of the original have been eliminated and all that we have is a film of tired poses that fails to add anything to the overworked vampire genre
Count Dracula’s Great Love (1972)
A copy of the Hammer Dracula films starring Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy. Naschy makes an okay but mundane Dracula, while the film never seems much more than lots of running around an abandoned asylum and softcore tumblings
The Theatre Bizarre (2011)
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment
The Alien Saga (2002)
Documentary about the making of the Alien series (although only covers the first four films). Contains some fascinating behind-the-scenes footage and anecdotes, interviews and cut material
The Wolverine (2013)
While this received a good deal of fan buzz, I must admit to being disappointed. It strips much of the superheroics and mutant cameos of the other X-Men films until it feels more like a Westerner in Japan thriller like Black Rain or even a routine film noir plot that happens to be cast with Wolverine
Varan the Unbelievable (1958)
Japanese monster movie from the same team that created the original Godzilla. The English-language version has simply kept the effects scenes and cut everything else, replacing it with scenes of the US military ordering the Japanese about
It’s Alive (2008)
Larry Cohen’s 1974 cult classic about a killer mutant baby gets the remake treatment. Even though Cohen co-writes the script here, the remake manages to wring anything interesting out of the original
Andromina: The Pleasure Planet (2000)
Work of softcore erotica that gives the old 1950s B movie plot of astronauts encountering a planet inhabited only by women an Adults Only workover. Aside from the obvious reasons to watch this, the SF content is entirely negligible
Taichi Zero (2012)
From the high-profile release this had, I was expecting it to be a Wu Xia epic – instead we get what feels like a martial arts film by way of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World where instead of amazing us with the fight scenes the director seems in love with self-conscious cuteness of his own visuals
No One Lives (2012)
This second English-language film from Japan’s Ryuhei Kitamura came with a good deal of promising advance buzz but upon being seen emerges as a strictly average psycho film that never offers anything outstanding in terms of twists or suspense, nor pushes its audience in any way
Invasion USA (1952)
An amazing Communist Scare film from the 1950s depicting a Soviet invasion and atomic bombing of the US. This writes its fears of the Communist treat in loud and red-bloodedly alarmist tones
Upside Down (2012)
The frustration of a film that has a scientifically nonsensical premise – two planets where gravity is oriented in opposing directions – that is also surprisingly imaginatively made. This creates some genuinely amazing visuals and designs of the two worlds and showing the people on them interacting
Sightseers (2012)
The third film from Ben Wheatley who here makes a black comedy about two tourists on a murder spree, eliminating those they don’t like. A film that digs into British class and provincial small-mindedness with scabrous regard
Turbo (2013)
The 24th film from DreamWorks Animation – the studio that once offered a reasonable challenge to Disney is now starting to slip into the bland formula of competitors like Blue Sky. While passable, this feels like a film substantially lacking in originality and where you can predict its every move
Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
The Factory (2012)
A Dark Horse Entertainment film that traipses through a tired serial killer plot that comes out resembling a weak episode of CSI before a frankly unbelievable twist ending
6 Degrees of Hell (2012)
A horror film set around a haunted house attraction that is made with near-total amateurishness. The film seems to have multiple plots happening all at once and becomes impossible trying to figure out what is happening
The Terrornauts (1967)
SF effort from the UK’s Amicus Films with an ambitious plot about communication from the stars that manages to prefigure films like Contact and 2001. On the other hand, the film fails is in its pitiful and utterly inadequate special effects
Macabre (1958)
The first of William Castle’s films set around outrageous promotional stunts – here he took an insurance policy out against audience members dying of fright. The film entirely belies its promise to scare an audience to death
R.I.P.D. (2013)
This feels like someone has simply copied the idea of a secretive law enforcement agency from
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1984)
A painfully cheap entry in the 1980s fad for sword and sorcery films.
The Conjuring (2013)
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
The Vulture (1967)
Possibly the most conceptually demented film to come out of the 1960s-70s Anglo-horror cycle – one part The Fly, one part a witch’s retribution film about a man who transforms into a vulture creature after teleporting into his ancestor’s grave whereupon he is driven to enact a centuries old curse
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired. On the other hand, the film is written with a randomness that makes it impossible to understand anything that is happening
The Loved Ones (2009)
Australian black comedy about a guy imprisoned to be a girl’s perfect prom date. The film takes to horror with enthusiasm and is owned by two fantastic performances from the women of the show
Berserker: The Nordic Curse (1987)
Justifiably obscure 1980s video release that has been intended as a copy of The Evil Dead concerning possible Viking berserker spirits amok in backwoods Utah. Cheap and routine on almost all counts
A Fire in the Sky (1978)
TV movie about an impending asteroid collision that was intended as a copy of the big-budget disaster movie Meteor but is actually a far better film. The science and Civil Defence reaction is written with an impressive credibility
V/H/S/2 (2013)
Sequel to the modest success of V/H/S, an anthology of short Found Footage horror films featuring a different line-up of genre directors. The episodes are competent at best, none standout and mostly forgettable
Pacific Rim (2013)
Giant mecha robots beating the crap out of giant monsters – what’s not to like? In comparison to the Transformers films, Guillermo Del Toro looks to find the soul of the robot jock – in essence, Transformers for grown-ups
The Poughkeepsie Tapes (2007)
Another Found Footage film, a mix of interviews and video footage supposedly recorded by a serial killer. Despite some initial amateurishness, the film soon gets a disturbing grip on you in depicting the astonishing cruelty and fiendishness of the killer
Scared to Death (1980)
The directorial debut of William Malone later to make House on Haunted HillAlien (one of the first of many such), albeit brought down to Earth. As a novice director, Malone is relatively crude and far removed from the masterful style of Ridley Scott
The Dark Crystal (1982)
The film that Jim Henson chose to make as successor to The Muppets. An astonishing technical leap beyond Muppetry to create an entire fantasy world in living, breathing detail all only inhabited by puppets
Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals (1977)
A bizarre cross between the softcore Emmanuelle films and the Italian cannibal film. It seems perverse to be watching beautiful bodies one minute and next showing their insides being spilled
Vampire Hookers (1978)
Filipino exploitation film that has a reputation as something more trashy than it is. A dull and aimless effort where an aging John Carradine delivers a largely incoherent performance as the head vampire
When Time Becomes a Woman (2012)
How interesting can a film be that consists of nothing more than two people talking? The answer is surprisingly good. Boasting that it is Jordan’s first SF film, this produces an extraordinary series of conceptual reversal twists while never venturing beyond being a man and a woman talking on a beach
The Brass Teapot (2012)
Comedy with a head-scratching premise where a couple discover a teapot that produces money whenever they hurt themselves. Such a loopy premise could work as a black comedy but this plays itself as a frothy light fantasy
Planzet (2010)
Anime that has clearly been modelled along the lines of Neon Genesis Evangelion Initially, the animation is conducted with a dazzlingly realistic textured look but once the giant robot action scenes take over, these seem increasingly absurd in their anthropomorphism
Lake Mungo (2008)
An Australian Found Footage film about a haunting. Rather than the intense spookiness of Paranormal Activity, this is more a mockumentary that is constantly turning what we expect is going on on its head
Despicable Me 2 (2013)
Despicable Me was a charming lightning in the bottle hit. Here Illumination Entertainment merely recyclethe familiar and already the cute sweetness and gags of the original are starting to feel like processed formula
Extraterrestrial (2011)
This, the second film from Nacho Vigalondo, is a head-scratcher, Though it is ostensibly an alien invasion film, Vigalondo instead creates a comedy of errors
Chained (2012)
Jennifer Lynch, daughter of David, makes an extraordinary work about the relationship between a serial killer and his young male companion. A film that eschews big dramatics with startling effect. Vincent D’Onofrio gives one of his best performances
The Pact (2012)
Modestly effective film about a haunted suburban house. Debuting director Nicholas McCarthy produces a number of accomplished and eerie scares that stand him as a promising new name. The film weakens in the last act when trying to tie everything together with an improbable rationale
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989)
Anime film based on Winsor McCay’s celebrated comic strip about a boy’s adventures in dreams. Despite a script from Ray Bradbury, the film waters the comic-strip down to the formula of the modern children’s film
Torment (1986)
Very obscure and forgotten psycho film from the 1980s that, while not aiming particularly high in its horizons, nevertheless manages to generate a reasonable tension and creepiness
Black Rock (2012)
Wilderness survival horror in the same vein as Deliverance but with a Chick Flick spin. This starts promisingly but director/star Katie Aselton fails to push the survival scenes for anything dramatic
Creep Van (2012)
Imagine a slasher movie version of Duel – a film about an unseen driver and a van outfitted with a series of novelty killing attachments. A film driven by its gore set-pieces that tends to drag when it comes to the comedy relief
Night of the Demons (2009)
Another pointless remake of an 80s horror film. The original was a cheap Evil Dead ripoff driven by cheesy effects; this provides more professional effects but only becomes a slickly produced assemblage of cliches we have seen dozens of times before
Alligator II: The Mutation (1991)
The 1980 Alligator was amusing but this hardly one of the sequels the world was burning to see. An utterly formulaic copy that is killed by impoverished giant alligator effects
World War Z (2013)
You wonder what this can do with such an overworked genre as the zombie apocalypse. It is not a film that reinvents the wheel for the genre but spins the basics out into an exciting, international locale hopping survival story
Monsters University (2013)
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
Clonehunter (2009)
SF neo-noir that suffers from a painfully low budget (particularly when it comes to its CGI) but transcends this with a consistently intelligent story and a world created with a reasonable sense of verisimilitude
Murder By Moonlight (1989)
Murder mystery set on a moonbase. Aside from assuming the Soviet Union would exist in the future and the datedness of its technology, this creates a surprisingly credible lunar environment set amid East-West tensions. Brigitte Nielsen even gives something approaching a performance
Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death (1989)
The film that Bill Maher would prefer to forget. Beyond the deliberately absurd title, this is an amusing spoof of the jungle adventure and contains a far cleverer degree of wit than you expect
The Final Storm (2010)
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
Red: Werewolf Hunter (2010)
Syfy Channel film that seems to offer the intriguing premise of a Modernised Little Red Riding Hood but only deals with this in the vaguest ways. Otherwise this is a standard werewolf film and contains maybe the crappiest CGI wolf transformation scenes ever
Nude Nuns with Big Guns (2010)
Film in the faux grindhouse style created by Tarantino and Rodriguez made as homage to the so-called nunsploitation genre. While operating on a low-budget, this has a great pulp energy that delivers in aces on all three title promises
Man of Steel (2013)
Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
Dark and Stormy Night (2009)
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
This is The End (2013)
Several well-known actors hole up in a Hollywood mansion as the Biblical Apocalypse hits. While at first seeming a self-congratulatory exercise, this emerges as a raucously funny ensemble drama where each of the actors play to great strength. Seth Rogen may yet earn forgiveness for The Green Hornet
Amityville: The Evil Escapes (1989)
The fourth and one of the worst of the numerous Amityville films. This reduces everything to a series of crude and increasingly more preposterous, eventually laughable, shocks
Castle of Evil (1966)
At initial face value, this appears to be a 1960s revival of the Old Dark House film with a hooded figure killing a cast assembled at gloomy old mansion, but then takes a turn for the bizarre with an unexpected science-fiction twist mid-film
Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer (2010)
A children’s fantasy adventure that never strays beyond the environs of an American high school and comes with the lowbrow slapstick, excruciating comic caricatures and incredibly bad effects
The Purge (2013)
Film based around the improbable concept of a future where on one night of each year all crime including murder becomes permissible. While this promises a rich vein of satire, the film only emerges as a variant on Straw Dogs
After Earth (2013)
Enough with the M. Night Shyamalan bashing. Here Shyamalan pulls off a solid and interesting planetary adventure where the only real misstep is that much of the film rests on the non-acting shoulders of Jaden Smith