The Giant Gila Monster (1959)
A cheap and impoverished entry in the 1950s fad for giant animal movies with the giant monster being unconvincingly represented by an optically enlarged lizard
The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
From Bill Rebane, a film about a rampaging giant spider (having emerged from a black hole we are told). This has a bad movie reputation, although on most accounts it emerges as strictly average
The Gift (1990)
A modestly made BBC mini-series concerning a boy who discovers he has the titular gift of clairvoyant visions and how those around him try to exploit this
The Gift (2000)
An uncommon misstep from Sam Raimi. Despite the fact he has a sterling cast onboard and a script from Billy Bob Thornton, the medium thriller plot rehashes comes out fairly bland
The Gift (2015)
Blumhouse thriller about an old school friend who inserts himself into the lives of a successful couple and proceeds to stalk them. This produces several effective twists but ultimately feels too mannered
The Gingerdead Man (2005)
One of the most ridiculous title creature to ever inspire a horror franchise – a possessed gingerbread man. From low-budget producer Charles Band, this rips off the Chucky series but with baked goods instead of a doll
The Girl from Monday (2005)
Hal Hartley was one of the foremost independent directors of the 1990s. Here he makes a film set in satiric future dominated by the advertising industry featuring a visit from an alien girl
The Girl in a Swing (1988)
A cryptic ghost story based on a novel by Watership Down author Richard Adams, featuring Meg Tilly as a newlywed bride who is haunted by events from her past
The Girl in the Photographs (2015)
The last film that Wes Craven is credited with (as producer) – a slasher film more interesting than most. Not to mention features an outrageously obnoxious performance from Kal Penn
The Girl in the Trunk (2024)
A thriller that comes with an identical premise to the earlier Trunk about a girl who is abducted and locked inside the trunk of a car from where she tries to affect an escape from her abductor
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)
Mamoru Hosoda delivers an appealingly sweet anime about a girl who discovers that she has the ability to travel through time. Based on a popular Japanese Young Adult novel
The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)
The zombie film has become a creatively exhausted genre in recent years. This is an effort that completely changes the game with fiercely original effect, anchored by one of the best child performances in some time
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)
Strong and dramatically absorbing Swedish thriller featuring one of the most original and provocative heroines on screen in some time. A word of mouth hit that later underwent a lesser English-language remake
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
David Fincher’s English-language remake of the Swedish film is capably made but a lesser shadow of something that worked perfectly the first time. In particular, Rooney Mara is no substitute for Noomi Rapace
The Girl with the Hungry Eyes (1993)
Based on a short story by Fritz Leiber, this is a low-budget vampire film that quickly collapses amid its absurd artistic pretensions
The Giver (2014)
Another adaptation of a classic Young Adult book, this merely substitutes well-worn dystopian tropes and comes out feeling like Divergent by way of Pleasantville
The Gladiators (1969)
Film from the muchly underrated Peter Watkins about a future where nations maintain peace by holding televised war games. As always with Watkins, this is stark, potent and highly politicised
The Glass Bottom Boat (1966)
Comedy where Doris Day is a NASA employee drawn into spy shenanigans. It feels as though Day has been cast in a Jerry Lewis role and the whole film is nothing more than a series of slapstick set-pieces
The Glass House (2001)
A modest and reasonably effective psycho-thriller about a brother and sister who are adopted after the death of their parents only to find their step-parents have sinister intent
The Glass Slipper (1955)
A live-action version of Cinderella starring Leslie Caron. This is a rather staid version with ballet sequences where the magic and romance never much ignites
The Glow (2002)
This rehashes the basic set-up of Rosemary’s Baby but with a spin where a couple move into the perfect apartment only to find their neighbours are health obsessed seniors with a sinister agenda
The Gnome-Mobile (1967)
One of the less remembered Disney live-action films starring the children from Mary Poppins who join their grandfather in a road journey caper to help a gnome
The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (2014)
A documentary about Cannon Films and legendary producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. This one was authorised by Golan and Globus and makes interesting comparison to Electric Boogaloo
The Golden Child (1986)
One of Hollywood’s misguided attempts to appropriate the Wu Xia film. This is turned into an Eddie Murphy comedy vehicle where neither his live wire presence nor the fantasy elements gel together
The Golden Compass (2007)
The attempt to create another Lord of the Rings went astray with this adaptation of Philip Pulllman’s fantasy series, which cut many of the core elements of the books so as not to offend religious conservatives
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)
The second of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, an Arabian Nights adventure. Made as a vehicle for Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects, which are stunning. Everything about the film is classic
The Golem (1920)
Classic silent film from the German Expressionist period in which a rabbi brings to life a creature made of clay (played by Paul Wegener), which then proceeds to go amok
The Golem (2018)
From the Paz Brothers who previously made Jeruzalem, a new take on the legend of the golem that offers an interpretation of the idea very different to any previous film version
The Good Dinosaur (2015)
Pixar have never been the same since they slipped into the easy familiarity of sequelitis. This is essentially a boy and his dog story but played out with a dinosaur and a caveboy, but also an alternate history tale
The Good Nurse (2022)
Sober realistic True Crime film based on the story of Charlie Cullen, a nurse in New Jersey that killed some 400 patients, injecting them with lethal doses of drugs
The Good Son (1993)
A variant on the evil child psycho-thriller, this seems set up specifically to allow Macaulay Culkin, the obnoxious cute kid from Home Alone, to trash his wholesome image
The Gore Gore Girls (1972)
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a killer who is targeting strippers. Lewis’s splatter outrageously over-the-top set-pieces are the only reason to watch
The Gorge (2025)
Scott Derrickson film with a captivatingly original premise – a sniper is assigned to a guardhouse overlooking a gorge filled with mysterious monsters and ends up in a forbidden relationship with his counterpart across the divide
The Gorgon (1964)
One of few attempts to create an original movie monster by Hammer Films, which they take from the Medusa of Greek myth. The result is an exquisitely and beautifully made film
The Gorilla (1939)
The Old Dark House film hit a peak in the late 1930s. This was a comedy variant featuring the entirely forgotten comedy act The Ritz Brothers stumbling around an old mansion
The Gorilla of Soho (1968)
One of the bizarrely colourful German krimi thrillers of the 1960s based on the works of Edgar Wallace involving a series of killings conducted by someone dressed in a gorilla suit
The Gospel According to Philip K. Dick (2000)
Low-budget but fascinating documentary about cult SF writer Philip K. Dick in particular focusing around the bizarre series of hallucinations he had during the 1970s
The Gracefield Incident (2017)
We have had a few UFO Found Footage films, most of which are rehashes on The Blair Witch Project with aliens instead of backwoods hauntings. This is one entry that produces a series of eerie jumps
The Grandmother (2021)
Paco Plaza, best known for the [Rec] movies, returns with an unsettlingly effective film about a girl forced to tend her grandmother only to find increasingly sinister things going on
The Gravedancers (2006)
Mike Mendez has gained a reasonable name as a genre director since the early 2000s. This is one of his earlier works, a venture into the ghost story where three friends are haunted after drunkenly dancing on a grave
The Greasy Strangler (2016)
The most likely response to this is going to be “WHAT THE $%@^* AM I WATCHING?” – a film so far removed from the average experience, so located in its own unique, utterly eccentric universe it has instant cult classic written all over it
The Great Alligator (1979)
A belated Italian-made attempt to jump aboard the bandwagon and copy Jaws with a giant alligator hunting people on an island
The Great American Snuff Film (2003)
A really good, unrecognised early Found Footage film, supposedly a series of videotapes that chronicle the activities of a serial killer. A film that takes us inside an incredibly disturbed headspace
The Great Martian War: 1913-1917 (2013)
A very clever mockumentary retelling of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds that ingeniously blends existing WWI war footage with CGI to show soldiers fighting off invading Martian tripods
The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
One of the most delightful films produced during the 1960s-80s lean years of Disney animation. This was not a success but delivers a film of winning charms about a mouse equivalent of Sherlock Holmes
The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
The second of the Muppet films made when Jim Henson was alive and one of the best, this bubbles with a double level of sly grown-up humour that many of the later post Henson entries miss
The Great Wall (2016)
Matt Damon helps defend the Great Wall of China against invading monsters. Directed by Zhang Yimou, this should be seen for its breathtaking visuals – vast battle scenes, lavish costumes – but you wish there had been more than that
The Great Yokai War (2005)
Takashi Miike jumps aboard the mid-00s fad for secondary world fantasy films, creating a realm of spirits where he and his makeup and creature effects team go absolutely wild
The Green Hornet (1940)
The first screen appearance of the masked superhero The Green Hornet in a thirteen-chapter serial that was adapted from a popular radio series. Later remade as a tv series and feature film.
The Green Hornet (1974)
The Green Hornet was a tv series based on the radio and serial masked hero. Following Bruce Lee’s ascent to superstardom, three episodes of the series were re-edited as a feature film
The Green Hornet (2011)
The long-planned big screen adaptation of the popular radio and tv masked hero becomes a disaster by placing the script in the hands of a badly miscast star Seth Rogen who plays everything for comedy
The Green Inferno (2013)
Eli Roth pays homage to the Italian cannibal films of the 70/80s, the most extreme genre ever put on film. While not uninteresting, rendered on a studio budget and passed uncut by the MPAA, this never touches the raw savagery of the originals
The Green Knight (2021)
David Lowery has emerged as a director to watch in the last few years. Here he conducts a beautifully sparse and more ambiguous take on the legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Green Man (1990)
Adapted from a Kingsley Amis novel, this BBC mini-series is a ghost story for arts audiences. Albert Finney is great as a philandering hotelier who must deal with the appearances of an 18th Century sorcerer
The Green Mile (1999)
Frank Darabont had a hit with the Stephen King adaptation The Shawshank Redemption. Here he makes another King adaptation about a Death Row inmate with healing powers
The Green Slime (1968)
Cheesily entertaining film about a crew aboard a space station fighting off an alien monster. Cited as one of the films that influenced Alien. With a screenplay co-written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger
The Greenaway Alphabet (2017)
A documentary about arthouse director and regular genre contributor Peter Greenaway. This takes an alphabetical look through Greenaway’s themes and offers some peculiar insights into him as a person
The Grinch (2018)
After Ron Howard’s over-produced version of the Dr Seuss story, one looked to Illumination Entertainment, the animation company behind the Despicable Me films, to do the story right
The Groundstar Conspiracy (1972)
Originally a tv movie but released to theatres. Michael Sarrazin is man who survives an explosion at a laboratory with amnesia only to be accused of being a spy and end in a labyrinth of brainwashing and identity confusion
The Grudge (2004)
The English-language remake of Ju-on: The Grudge, this has the good sense to retain the original’s director Takashi Shimizu. The script makes more sense and Shimizu replicates the same eerie scares
The Grudge (2020)
The fourteenth Ju-on/The Grudge film, a reboot of the 2004 English language version from Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures. This was dumped by its distributor and received some terrible reviews
The Grudge 2 (2006)
Follow-up to The Grudge, the English-language remake of the Japanese horror film. Although original Japanese director Takashi Shimizu is present, this is one of the weaker Ju-on/Grudge films
The Grudge 3 (2009)
The Ju-on/The Grudge series has spawned thirteen films to date. This was the second sequel to the English-language remake but by this point everything disappears into formulaic scares
The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol (2011)
Aramis Sartorio (aka porn actor Tommy Pistol) directs/stars in this anthology, a trio of Hollywood horror tales where everything is aimed at the farcical bad taste level of a Troma film
The Gruesome Twosome (1967)
One of the splatter films from the cult figure of Herschell Gordon Lewis, who made some terrible films whose only watchability was extreme gore. This concerns a wigmaker who scalps them victims and sells their hair as wigs.
The Guardian (1990)
William Friedkin film with Jenny Seagrove as a sinister nanny who is really a baby-snatching druidic tree spirit. Friedkin and all concerned play a B movie idea in remarkably straight face
The Guest (2014)
Adam Wingard thriller about a sinister stranger who inveigles his way into a household. This does well playing off the handsomely polished charms of Dan Stevens, less well when it turns into an a left field action film
The Guyver (1991)
US-made live-action adaptation of a popular manga/anime about a power-suit superhero. Directed by two makeup effects artists mostly as a vehicle for their creature creations