Blood on Melies’ Moon (2016)
Luigi Cozzi’s return to screens after 26 years, a head-scratchingly bizarre effort overloaded with ideas about parallel worlds, cosmic journeys and homage to the early cinema of Georges Melies and others
Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971)
English horror film influenced by both the witch persecution themes of The Witchfinder General and the early 70s witchcraft film. Well made but that doesn’t quite disguise an unstructured screenplay
Blood Orgy of the She-Devils (1972)
One of the films from director Ted V. Mikels made not long afterRosemary’s Baby and mostly seems an opportunity for Mikels to lecture about historical witchcraft. Certainly, one of the great exploitation titles of all time
Blood Quantum (2019)
This had me sold from its premise of American Indians vs zombies. Made by Canadian First Nations people, this features an Indian reservation as the last refuge against the zombie apocalypse
Blood Red Sky (2021)
Train to Busan had zombies unleashed on a train, this German film is the same but with vampires loose on a plane. This comes with entertainingly full-tilt ferocity
Blood Relatives (2022)
An appealingly eccentric indie comedy directed by and starring Noah Segan as a vampire who suddenly discovers he has fathered a kid
Blood River (2009)
An interesting little film from Adam Mason that starts out seeming a variant on The Hitcher with Andrew Howard as a drifter taunting a couple on a desert highway before morphing into something very strange
Blood Run (1994)
This blatantly copies the plot of Basic Instinct with detective David Bradley being seduced by bisexual blonde Anna Thomson who is also the suspect in a murder investigation
Blood Sucking Freaks (1976)
Film that gained a notoriety for its scenes of a stage magician torturing and mutilating people. This seems fueled by a nasty misogyny involving the degradation and killing of women.
Blood Vessel (2019)
Australian film set during World War II as a group of shipwreck survivors board a deserted Nazi ship only to then discover that it is inhabited by vampires
Blood Work (2002)
This could be essentially be called Dirty Harry’s retirement. Clint Eastwood directs/stars as an aging detective brought back into the game to track down a serial killer from his past.
Blood: The Last Vampire (2000)
Stunning Mamoru Oshii-prodcued anime short about a vampire girl who operates as an American agent eliminating vampires in post-War Japan
Blood: The Last Vampire (2009)
Live-action English-language remake of the anime short about a demon-hunting vampire girl. The original is reduced to no more than a series of slick by-the-numbers action poses
Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984)
Parody of the horror genre designed to highlight British comedian Kenny Everett. Some quite funny spoofs, some that aren’t. Vincent Price appears as the leader of a coven.
Bloodbath in the House of Knives (2010)
Low-budget film that conjures a weird psychotronic atmosphere and features some out-there killings even if it fails to fully sustain it
Bloodeaters (1980)
A little-known zombie film in which marijuana crop-dusted with an untested pesticide turns hippies into zombies. Listed as a Video Nasty in the UK
Bloodlust Zombies (2011)
Yet another zombie film. This one headlines porn star Alexis Texas in a regular acting role. Low-budget and tame on the gore front but with some often wryly amusing characterisations
Bloodmoon (1990)
Belated Australian entry in the slasher genre about killings at a Catholic girls’ school, this is shabby on all counts
BloodRayne (2005)
Another Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptation, this feels slung together from vampire film and sword and sorcery cliches. Among the badly mismatched casting, the most eyebrow raising is Ben Kingsley as the vampire villain
Bloodrayne: Deliverance (2007)
The second in Uwe Boll’s trilogy adapted from the videogame, this plays out as a mix of Western and vampire hunter film and is marginally better than Boll’s usual standards
Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (2011)
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
Bloodrunners (2017)
The idea of a vampire set in the Prohibition era among the speakeasies and bootlegging rackets sounds intriguing. This is weakened by a low-budget and the simple fact that the vampire has become de-fanged post-Twilight
Bloodshot (2020)
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
Bloodstone: Subspecies II (1993)
The second in a series of low-budget vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Nothing much to write home about.
Bloodsucking Bastards (2015)
Comedy that resembles something of tv’s The Office where Fran Kranz discovers that management is turning his co-workers into vampires as an efficiency measure
Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh (1991)
One of the great deliberately ridiculous horror comedy titles of all time. The film itself telescopes down to an ordinary police procedural with no pharaohs, just an Egyptian serial killer
Bloodthirsty (2020)
Promising film about an ingénue singer under the control of a Svengali-esque record producer who is struggling against giving in to her true werewolf nature
Bloody Birthday (1981)
The evil child film has a long history. This is essentially a slasher movie variation where instead of a hockey-masked killer we have a trio of malevolent children devising a series of entertaining dispatches for grown-ups
Bloody Chainsaw Girl (2016)
Another of the gonzo Japanese splatter films about a schoolgirl who tries to go about her schoolday while fighting off mutant cyborgs with the chainsaw she carries
Bloody Hell (2020)
Oddball Australian Backwoods Brutality film with a man imprisoned by a strange family in Finland who intend to feed him to their hulking son
Bloody Knuckles (2014)
Canadian horror comedy that feels like a warmed-over rehash of Oliver Stone’s The Hand. A film made in wilful bad taste that feels like it came along twenty years too late for the mid-80s heyday of Troma
Bloody Moon (1981)
Jess Franco is a cult director, having mostly specialised in exploitation and horror. Here he turns his hand to the early 80s slasher film. The result was listed as a Video Nasty in the UK
Bloody Murder (1999)
A modern slasher film that slavishly rehashes Friday the 13th. Routine on most counts, excepting perhaps the oddity of it being made by a director/producer of Christian films
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.
Blow Out (1981)
One of Brian De Palma’s most stylish psycho-thrillers, featuring John Travolta as a sound engineer who becomes targeted after he accidentally records evidence of a political assassination
Blubberella (2011)
Uwe Boll sets out to offend everybody in a film founded on making constant insults about its’ plus-size heroine’s weight and bad jokes about the Holocaust, including the Boll playing a comic Hitler
Blue Beetle (2023)
The DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle, one of the Teen Titans, is given his own film. One of the more quickly forgettable entries among DC Comics’ attempts to compete with the MCU
Blue Flame (1993)
Low-budget but not uninteresting film that throws in a mind-bending mix of aliens, dream and alternate realities
Blue Holocaust (1979)
Italian horror cinema of the 1970s/80s had some of the most extreme material put on screen. Here Joe D’Amato directs a film about a young man with a necrophile obsession and pushes the material to extremes that take you back
Blue Remains (2000)
Epic and beautifully animated anime set largely underwater about the struggle to save a dying Earth from an evil super-computer that wants eradicate humanity
Blue Remembered Hills (1979)
I have said it before and will say it again – Dennis Potter was the greatest writer to ever work in television. This is his classic work depicting childhood where all the roles of the children are played by adults
Blue Steel (1990)
The second film from Kathryn Bigelow in which Jamie Lee Curtis is a rookie cop who is stalked by a creepily psychopathic Ron Silver. A beautifully stylish rendering of an increasingly improbable plot
Blue Sunshine (1977)
A film that has gained a cult reputation about a group of people who start suffering flashbacks from a bad batch of LSD taken in the 1960s that now causes them to become crazed killers
Blue Thunder (1983)
Dan O’Bannon scripted film about a hi-tech helicopter, this crackles with great writing and some immensely exciting aerial action scenes from director John Badham
Blue Velvet (1986)
One of the key David Lynch films in which cleancut college kid Kyle MacLachlan finds a severed human ear and is drawn into a dark underworld of S&M lorded over by a maniacally deranged Dennis Hopper
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
Bluebeard (2009)
Catherine Breillat, a director known for her full-on explorations of sexuality, takes on an adaptation of the French fairytale about a multiple wife murderer
Blues Brothers 2000 (1998)
John Landis and Dan Aykroyd minus the late John Belushi revisit their cult classic but the reunion exercise smacks of poor judgement and emerges as a haphazard arrangement made only to exploit the appeal of the original
Boa vs Python (2004)
A giant CGI snake film that promptly heads into bad movie stakes through a combination of ridiculous dialogue and absurd posturing of its cast
Boarding House (1982)
An incredibly bad film, the first ever shot on videotape concerning a man who lets nubile girls move into his home only for them to come under psychic attack
Bodies (2023)
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022)
Scathingly funny film where a party held by a group of self-absorbed twentysomethings turns deadly as it appears there is a killer in their midst
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
Body Count (1986)
The director of the notorious Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato, takes on making a slasher film. This seems full of possibilities but the results treads familiar ground
Body Double (1984)
Brian De Palma psycho-thriller that blatantly copies Hitchcock’s Vertigo and a few dashes of Rear Window. But De Palma’s stylish moves collapse under the weight of an absurdly contrived plot
Body Melt (1993)
Australian splatter film where a series of drug tests causes people to start melting down. A largely plotless film arranged around a series of gooey meltdown effects
Body Parts (1991)
Screenwriter Eric Red directs a film where Jeff Fahey receives an arm transplant only to find it gaining a life of its own as he is hunted by a the donor, a killer wanting to recollect his body parts
Body Puzzle (1992)
A giallo from Lamberto Bava, whose father Mario formulated the essentials of the genre. Joanna Pacula finds a killer leaving body parts in her home, along with notes signed by her dead husband
Body Snatchers (1993)
Abel Ferrara’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an overlooked film that settles in with an undeniable creepiness that is just as effective as the earlier versions. The metaphor for the pod people is more diffuse in this one but that does not mitigate the film’s effect
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues … (1983)
Charles B. Pierce, a director who gained a cult with his films for 1970s drive-in audiences, makes a sequel to his earlier pseudo-documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek about the hunt for a Bigfoot creature
Bogus (1996)
Sweetly likeable Norman Jewison film in which Whoopi Goldberg receives guardianship of young Haley Joel Osment only to find he has an invisible companion in Gerard Depardieu
Bokeh (2017)
A rehash of the The Quiet Earth with two American tourists waking up to find themselves in a deserted Iceland. There seem few more prettily photographed places for the End of the World to take place
Bolt (2008)
A low expectation Disney animated film that proves an entirely charming winner centred around a dog tv star who believes it is a superhero. In essence, this is a talking animals variant on the Don Quixote story
Bolt Neck (1999)
The amusing idea of the Frankenstein story relocated to a modern high school – and with no less than later-to-be superstar Ryan Reynolds as the monster
Bon Voyage (2006)
British tv mini-series reminiscent of And Soon the Darkness about an English couple who have their children abducted by sinister strangers while holidaying in France. From the director of Ginger Snaps
Bone Daddy (1998)
One of the serial killer thrillers made following The Silence of the Lambs. Rutger Hauer is a medical examiner who publishes a book about an unsolved serial killer case only to bring the killer out of retirement
Bone Face (2025)
Quite a good whodunit that takes place in the aftermath of a standard slasher set-up where police pursue the killer to an all-night diner and realise that one of a group of people there is the killer
Bone Lake (2024)
A psycho-sexual thriller that is being heralded as a throwback to the 1990s erotic thriller a la Basic Instinct but suffers from an utter tameness that would have been ridiculed in the 1990s heyday
Bone Tomahawk (2015)
This is like a Western version of The Hills Have Eyes. Exceptionally written – slow, sombre and character-driven, containing one of Kurt Russell’s best performances, before emerging into a brutal horror survival story
Bones (2001)
Blaxploitation homage designed as a vehicle for Snoop Dogg. Essentially a version of A Nightmare on Elm Street with Snoop as a pimp come back to haunt those who killed him
Bones and All (2022)
Suspiria director Luca Guadagnino sinks his teeth into making a film about cannibalism. Forget the Young Adult label the film was sold with, this is quite an impressive work
Bong of the Dead (2011)
A film about a marijuana crop that is grown using zombie brains as fertiliser. This starts with a promising gonzo zombie film tone but never quite sustains its approach
Bonnie & Clyde Vs. Dracula (2008)
This comes with the interestingly original idea of having the real-life outlaws Bonnie and Clyde come up against Count Dracula. The main thing against the film is a low budget
Boo! 2 A Madea Halloween (2017)
Tyler Perry is an accomplished impressionist but his two Halloween comedies appropriate elements of the horror film while having no interest in the genre. Here all the horror elements only serve to deliver a lecture on child rearing
Boo! A Madea Halloween (2016)
I don’t dislike the Tyler Perry film – the performances are skillfully accomplished. Here however Perry attempts to make a Halloween comedy while displaying almost zero interest in any of the genre elements
Boogeyman (2005)
A film that has been construed almost entirely as a series of spooky jumps and hyped suspense scenes with nothing in the way of rhyme, reason or connecting rationale. Produced by Sam Raimi
Book of Blood (2009)
A Clive Barker adaptation taken from the name of his story collection. While not uninteresting, it emerges as a haunted house story that eschews genre cliches for an everyday approach and never quite delivers its punches
Book of Days (2003)
Christian film in which insurance agent Wil Wheaton receives the title book containing the dates on which people are going to die and uses it to make his quotas
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
Books of Blood (2020)
A new Clive Barker film is always something to be excited about – Barker has been absent too long as a creative force. This is an anthology based around Barker’s celebrated story collection
Borderland (2007)
A blatant copy of Hostel wherein a trio of students cross the Mexican border and fall prey to a Santeria cult. Despite its derivativeness in the plot department, this emerges as a brutal and fairly well made film
Borderlands (2024)
Eli Roth adapts the popular videogame and corrals a surprisingly high-profile cast in a knockabout planetary adventure. Alas, that met a very mixed reception and was widely regarded as a bad movie
Borealis (2013)
A pilot for a tv series that never went ahead set in a future where Global Warming has turned the Arctic into a thawed-out tundra where various countries seek to claim the new territory
Borgman (2013)
A cryptically surreal Dutch film that comes with hilariously black deadpan effect as we watch a homeless man inveigle his way into a household and take over before starting to eliminate people.
Born of Fire (1986)
The world’s first Islamic horror film? A film filled with a constant profusion of weird imagery but otherwise baffllingly incomprehensible
Boss Level (2020)
You don’t think the mix of cartoonishly over-the-top action and a Groundhog Day timeloop scenario would work but this proves your assumptions wrong in highly entertaining ways
Boston Strangler (2023)
Produced by Ridley Scott, a new true crime work about the Boston Strangler killings that is told through the eyes of Keira Knightley as the journalist who broke the case
Bottom of the World (2017)
Indie film that channels a Lost Highway vibe as Douglas Smith searches for missing girlfriend Jena Malone and then wakes up in a different life where he cannot be certain which life is real and which is dream
Bound to Vengeance (2015)
From the generic title, this seems no more than another film about a girl seeking revenge for years of captivity a la I Spit on Your Grave. On the other hand, things are quickly turned on their head in unexpected ways
Bounty Killer (2013)
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
Bowery at Midnight (1942)
Low-budget film with Bela Lugosi as a respectable psychology professor who disguises himself as someone running a soup kitchen from which he runs a criminal operation and keeps zombies
Box: Metaphor (2023)
Australian film about a future where people are imprisoned inside shipping containers, this suggests it is going to be something like another Cube
Boxing Helena (1993)
David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer directs a film about a surgeon who abducts a woman and amputates her limbs to make her love him. A critical bomb, it is a not uninteresting work about woman’s desire handled with more taste than you would think
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
Boy Kills World (2023)
A film where you are struggling to find any easy labelling. What it is is an hilariously ultra-violent and over-the-top parody of an action movie that will have your sides splitting
Boy Wonder (2010)
Not to be confused with Robin of Batman fame, this is an indie film about a teenage vigilante. Not always the most accessible film but eventually works in a quietly effective way
Boys from County Hell (2020)
Spiritedly entertaining vampire film, this transplants the basics of the genre to rural Northern Ireland with wry and highly amusing results
Brahms: The Boy II (2020)
Sequel to The Boy in which a nanny was hired to tend a sinister doll. Now in what is clearly an attempt to imitate the Annabelle franchise, the doll gains life
Brain Damage (1987)
The best film from the great and underrated Frank Henenlotter about the relationship between a man and a parasite in his brain that feeds him drugs to make him go and kill
Brain Dead (1990)
One of the better 80s attempts to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street from an old Charles Beaumont script in which Bill Pullman is a neurologist who becomes involved in an increasingly wilder series of reality bendings