Prince of Darkness (1987)
One of the less successful, nevertheless underrated John Carpenter films where he pays tribute to Nigel Kneale in a conceptually mind-boggling mix of deviltry and quantum physics
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Adaptation of the popular videogame that ventures into Arabian Nights adventure, this was a box-office flop. It swashbuckles entertainingly but Jake Gyllenhaal feels badly miscast as a buffed adventure hero
Prince of Space (1959)
Japanese film about a superhero defending Earth against alien invaders that travels into incredibly bad movie stakes with its painfully cheap effects and frequent dialogue howlers
Prince Valiant (1997)
The classic Prince Valiant comic-strip receives a disastrous film adaption where director Anthony Hickox decides to play everything for campy silliness
Princes and Princesses (1999)
From Kirikou director Michel Ocelot, an anthology of animated fairytales that prove quite delightful
Princess (2006)
Animated film from Denmark about a man who goes on an ultra-violent crusade against the porn industry over the loss of innocence of his young niece
Princess Mononoke (1997)
Stunning work of fantasy from Hayao Miyazaki. Made on an epic-sized story canvas and with a breathtaking beauty, this is one of the few original screen works to capture something of the nature and scale of written epic fantasy
Princess of Mars (2009)
The Asylum conduct their own version of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars adventures three years before the Disney film and, despite one of their impoverished budgets, do an almost halfway reasonable version
Princess of the Sun (2007)
Very nicely made French animated film based around the daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaton
Prison (1987)
An early film from Renny Harlin made for Charles Band concerning a haunted prison. Features an unknown Viggo Mortensen in one of his earliest roles
Prisoners (2013)
Dark and gripping thriller from Denis Villeneuve about child abductions and a distraught parent who decides to torture a suspect to find their whereabouts.; Superbly well written thriller that raises some big contemporary issues about the legitimacy of torture. Both Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal give utterly convincing performances
Prisoners of the Ghostland (2021)
Nicolas Cage’s career choices in recent years have taken him into serious psychotronic headspace. Shion Sono is a director whose film’s inhabit demented territory. It seemed inevitable that the two should meet up on screen
Prisoners of the Sun (2013)
The director of Battlefield Earth teams up with Uwe Boll to deliver a sub-Indiana Jones adventure about venturing into an Egyptian pyramid in search of Ancient Astronauts. The tomb raider cliches are so tired and creaky that the film fails to generate any excitement
Privilege (1967)
Peter Watkins is the most underrated director of the 1960s – his films are fiercely anti-establishment attacks that come with an extraordinary incendiary charge. This mockumentary depiction of a near future where the government uses a rock star to manipulate the public rings even more true today
Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies (2014)
The zombie film of the 2010s has become marked by a search for the most bizarre and incongruous title/conceptual mash-ups. True to its promise, the film pits several WWE wrestlers up against zombies, alas the creativity begins and ends with the mild amusement of the title concept
Prodigy (2017)
An excellent film about a psychologist sent in to assess a child who reveals phenomenal intelligence and psychic powers
Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)
Biopic about William Moulton Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman This covers the key aspects of Marston’s life and how it influenced the comic-book and delves into the highly unconventional lifestyle he led in a polyamorous relationship and exploring BDSM
Progeny (1998)
Horror director Brian Yuzna jumps aboard the alien abduction and impregnation theme that was popular at the time thanks to tv’s The X Files. All of Yuzna’s films have a fascination with sexual perversity so here the emphasis is placed on the impregnation
Project Almanac (2015)
A zero expectation film that turns out to be surprisingly good. Falling somewhere between Primer and Chronicle, this does a reasonable job of showing its time travel device in action and the unintended consequences
Project Gemini (2022)
A Russian SF film about an expedition through a wormhole that then gets lost, this bites off an ambitious conceptual reach only for it to fall apart in a shaggy dog ending
Project Hail Mary (2026)
A popular hit based on a book by Andy Weir, who wrote The Martian, where Ryan Gosling is a scientist who undergoes a space expedition and makes alien contact in an effort to save the Earth
Project Moon Base (1953)
Low-budget film set aboard a space station clearly springboarding from the success of Destination Moon and featuring a Robert Heinlein script
Project Power (2020)
Suffering superhero fatigue from screens overwhelmed with Marvel and DC adaptations? This is one of the most original superhero treatments in some time, concerning a drug that give the user superpowers for five minutes only
Project Shadowchaser II (1994)
Sequel to the ridiculous Project Shadowchaser, which has another android terrorist this time take over a nuclear power plant
Project Shadowchaser III (1995)
Third in the series about android terrorists, this is now about an amok android on a spaceship
Project Wolf Hunting (2022)
The most violent, brutal, blood-drenched films one has seen in recent memory, a South Korean entry about a monster loose aboard a prison ship
Project X (1968)
Gimmick master William Castle makes an SF films about scientists engaged in simulations and mental probing to obtain secrets from a man’s mind
Project X (1987)
Animal rights activism film with Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt as Air Force employees shocked at the tests being performed on chimpanzees
Project: ALF (1996)
A tv movie revival of the hit 1980s tv sitcom ALF. Looking back it’s hard to wonder what ever seemed funny about the show at the time
Project: Metalbeast (1994)
Typical 1990s video-released effort that stands out by dint of a far-out idea – a cyborg werewolf – even if in the end the film does nothing with it and everything only boils down to a standard monster movie that takes everything from the Alien playbook
Project: Shadowchaser (1992)
Completely ridiculous mix of The Terminator and Die Hard where, for no clear reason, an android terrorist decides to take hostages in an office building and the FBI’s only hope is a cryogenically unfrozen football player
Prom Night (1980)
Entry amid the 1980s slasher fad featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. A fairly dreary effort that comes with much disco dancing footage
Prom Night (2008)
Another among the fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. Any connection to the original Jamie Lee Curtis disco slasher is thrown out in favour of a generic modern slasher
Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990)
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Prometheus (2012)
Ridley Scott’s promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
Prometheus Trap (2012)
Low-budget film that was clearly trying to ride on the coattails of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus. This tells an almost interesting story about a timeloop and gets full marks for winding in the Greek myth of Prometheus
Prophecy (1979)
The once celebrated John Frankenheimer flopped with this monster movie about a mutant bear with laughable effects and inflated pretensions to message making
Prophet (1999)
Fred Olen Ray and Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson combine forces on a low-budget action film about psychic powers. The action scenes are competent but the film lacking in the script department
Prospect (2018)
I can’t say the premise of this – a gold prospecting story located in space – did much for me. Contrary to expectation, this is a surprisingly good planetary adventure that does a fine job creating an alien world with minimalist effect and telling a strong character-driven story
Prospero’s Books (1991)
Peter Greenaway gets loose on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, indulging his obsessions with lists and multimedia visuals while the costume department goes completely over-the-top
Proteus (1995)
Shabby copy of Alien with shipwreck survivors facing a genetically engineered monster on an oil rig
Prototype X29A (1992)
This is a standard 90s direct-to-video SF/action film about warring cyborgs in a burned-out future. This has borrowed most of its moves from other films. Not a lot happens
Providence (1977)
Alain Resnais meta-fiction with John Gielgud as an aging writer sits in bed writing a story that is based on the people around him
Proxima (2007)
Strong and intelligent Spanish film that readily homages Philip K. Dick in its mind-expanding story of a science-fiction fan being contacting aliens
Proximity (2020)
Cheaply made and frequently unintentionally hilarious variant on UFO conspiracies that wheels out all the usual cliches – alien implants, the Men in Black, recovered memories etc
Psych 9 (2010)
Thriller with a heroine working in an abandoned hospital amid sinister happenings that draws substantially on the fine Danish film Nightwatch. Does an okay if familiar job making us constantly doubt everything that happens before arriving at an ending that only confuses
Psyched By the 4D Witch (A Tale of Demonology) (1972)
Fascinatingly bizarre psychotronic film about an innocent drawn into the secrets of sexual witchcraft. Bad filmmaking on almost every level
Psychic Experiment (2010)
A film overstuffed with mad ideas and genre cameos about psychic experiments that have unleashed a series of other-dimensional entities
Psycho (1960)
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
Psycho (1998)
Over Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, there hangs the single question of “Why?” The result seems a futile conceit, one only designed to infuriate those who regard the original in such high esteem
Psycho Beach Party (2000)
Based on an off-Broadway play, this is a drag parody of the beach party movie. It does dig into the squeaky clean image of the genre but never seems a particularly funny parody
Psycho Girls (1986)
The debut of Canadian director Gerard Ciccoritti who should have become more well known, this goes for broke and becomes splendidly deranged
Psycho II (1983)
Psycho did not need a sequel but this does a scrupulous and exacting job, bringing back Anthony Perkins and paying a great deal of homage in many small details. The script comes with a considerable cleverness
Psycho III (1986)
Well worthwhile Psycho sequel directed by Anthony Perkins himself who makes an assured, even at times dazzling debut. The film has a playfulness and outrageousness that quite takes you aback
Psycho Shark (2009)
aka Jaws in Japan. A Japanese entry in the Gonzo Killer Shark Film fad
Psycho-Pass (2015)
Film spinoff of an anime series about a future police force that uses a system to monitor the brains of the populace for the potential to commit crime. Reminiscent of Minority Report, this is not uninteresting, although falls short of being another Appleseed or Ghost in the Shell
PsychoCop (1989)
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a slasher film with the requisite group of partying teens being stalked by a psychopathic, devil-worshipping police officer
Psychokinesis (2018)
From the director of Train to Busan, this starts out as a psychic powers film before becoming a South Korean superhero film. Made with a nicely grounded realism that makes refreshing contrast to the bombast of the MCU et al.
Psychomania (1963)
Interestingly torrid 1960s psycho-thriller featuring a number of then unknown faces
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
Psychonauts, The Forgotten Children (2015)
Strange, surrealist animation from Spain – the characters are the small, cute talking animals you might encounter in a standard piece of cutsie moppet animation but it exists in a disturbing world that is anything but where characters are plagued by drug addictions, mental illness and police brutality
Psychopaths (2017)
From the increasingly rising genre name of Mickey Keating. This feels less like a film than a series of short films edited together (expertly so), all on the theme of people gleefully engaged in murder
Psychos (2017)
Three abduction survivors seek out the house where they were imprisoned years before. A cheaply made revenge film is turned on its head in an improbable M. Night Shyamalan-esque conceptual reversal
Pterodactyl (2005)
Reasonable low-budget revived dinosaur film with not bad CGI effects and an often witty, genre savvy script
Puffball (2007)
Nicolas Roeg returns to screens after a long absence in what would be his last film, a Fay Weldon adaptation about pagan rites, pregnancy and witchcraft that manages to sound far wilder in synopsis than how Roeg directs it all on screen
Pufnstuf (1970)
Mind-spinning film spinoff of the tv series H.R. Pufnstuf, this plays out like The Wizard of Oz on hallucinogens
Pulse (1988)
Modest and underrated film where the electrics all around start conspiring against people with murderous intent
Pulse (2001)
From Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a ghost story that creates an incredibly haunted atmosphere. As with most of Kurosawa’s work, dazzling ideas sit alongside a murky and impenetrable plot where you are baffled trying to make sense of what is happening
Pulse (2006)
As part of the mid-00s fad for English-language remakes of Japanese horror films, Kiyoshi Kuroawa’s unfathomable but undeniably creepy internet horror is reworked as a standard teen film
Pulse 2 (2008)
This was the first of two sequels to the Wes Craven scripted Pulse, the English language version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intensely spooky film about ghosts from the internet
Pumpkinhead (1988)
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994)
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
Punisher: War Zone (2008)
The Punisher (2004) with Thomas Jane was a dud among the 2000s Marvel Comics adaptations. Here the role is recast with Ray Stevenson and director Lexi Alexander gets the dark, violent tone of the comic-book right
Punishment Park (1971)
From Peter Watkins, a remarkably stark and brutal film set in a near-future USA where political prisoners are allowed to run for freedom through the desert while hunted by law enforcement officials
Puppet Master 4 (1993)
The fourth in Charles Band’s most popular series about a group of malevolent dolls. This turns the dolls into good guys and adds an Ancient Egyptian deity who despatches a Terminator robot against them
Puppet Master II (1990)
The first of the long-running series of sequels to Full Moon’s Puppetmaster, this is essentially a rerun of the first film
Puppetmaster (1989)
The first in a series of killer doll films from Charles Band, which has generated some ten sequels. The original has an undeniable atmosphere
Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991)
The third of Full Moon’s Puppet Master films, this is a prequel that explores Andre Toulon’s origins in Nazi Germany
Purple People Eater (1988)
An inanely awful film based on the Sheb Wooley song. This is a really lame copy of E.T. in which a young Neil Patrick Harris forms a band with the title alien
Push (2009)
A positively ingenious film about psychic powers that comes with an enormous conceptual joy in seeing the ways the various powers can be combined
Puss in Boots (1987)
Another of the cheaply made fairytale adaptations from Cannon Films with the bizarre casting of Christopher Walken as Puss in Boots
Puss in Boots (1999)
An obscure animated version of the classic fairytale that comes with excruciating puns, much slapstick and has clearly been animated on a low budget
Puss in Boots (2011)
Spinoff of the popular Antonio Banderas voiced character from the Shrek sequels, this is lightweight and amiable but can be quickly forgotten
Pussy Cake (2021)
An Argentinean film where the four members of a girl rock band are forced to deal with a zombie outbreak
Pussy Kills (2017)
Another woman seeks vengeance film, sort of a female version of The Crow where the heroine wears PVC catsuit, fishnets and cat ears. A film made with a cod-grindhouse aesthetic hoping to get by on a certain trash movie sensibility
Puzzle (2014)
This starts as a standard Japanese high school drama but takes a turn for the twisted where it doesn’t exactly venture into Saw territory but certainly somewhere that has taken inspiration from it. Alas, everything gets lost in a second half that is burdened by an excessively complicated and non-linear plot
Puzzlehead (2005)
Interesting and well-made low-budget film about a scientist who builds an android duplicate of himself that starts to gain its own independence
Pyewacket (2017)
Chillingly effective film where a teenage girl casts a spell to kill her mother, only to become terrified and try to turn back what she has unleashed
Pyewacket (2017)
Chillingly effective film where a teenage girl casts a spell to kill her mother, only to become terrified and try to turn back what she has unleashed
Pyrates (1991)
Comedy where real-life husband and wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick play a couple who are so passionate they start fires whenever they have sex
Python (2000)
One of the more likeable among the 2000s fad for low-budget CGI monster movies, this is aided considerably by a sense of humour and a line-up of oddball characters
The Pacifier (2005)
Vin Diesel seemed to fairly much kill his career off with this excruciating comedy in which he deflates his tough guy persona by playing off a bunch of kids
The Pack (1977)
A solid and effective entry in the 1970s Animals Attack genre with a group on an island on a fishing holiday who come under attack by feral killer dogs
The Pack (2015)
Rather effective Australian killer dog film. The film streamlines anything extraneous in the plot and gets down to the business at hand of a family living in the Outback being terrorised by a pack of wild dogs, at which you have to admit it generates a reasonable hand of tension
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
The Pact II (2014)
The Pact was a modest and rather effective ghost story about a serial killer hiding inside the walls of a house. This seems to be straining to find some way to justify any relevance a sequel – for one, where do you go with the premise? Another killer hiding inside a different family home?
The Pagemaster (1994)
Amiable if lightweight film where a live-action Macaulay Culkin gets animated and has a series of adventures in a Land of Fiction where he must pass through various classic stories
The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Superlatively moody and well written film that winds a young Edgar Allan Poe into an occult murder mystery
The Pale Door (2020)
Weird Western where a group of outlaws on the run end up in a town of witches
The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999)
Biopic about controversial philosopher/SF writer Ayn Rand or at least one that focuses on the extra-marital affair she had throughout her life. Given that the film is based on a book by other man’s wife, it does come with the odd axe to grind