Brain Dead (2007)
Not to be confused with the Peter Jackson Braindead, although the similarity of titles only emphasizes how weak and unfunny this 1980s splatter homage comedy is in comparison
Brain Freeze (2021)
A Quebecois (French Canadian) zombie film about the residents of an island being turned into zombies by a fertiliser used on the golf course
Brain of Blood (1971)
An unofficial copycat of the Filipino-made Blood Island from exploitation director Al Adamson, a trashy mix involving a dictator’s transplanted brain, Frankenstein monsters and a perverted dwarf
Braindead (1992)
One of Peter Jackson’s early films, which is maybe the funniest zombie comedy ever made. This becomes a work of unparalleled genius in the glorious gore-drenched excesses it reaches for
Brainjacked (2009)
A low-budget film wherein a teenager falls under the influence of a mad scientist who drills open heads to implant mind control chips. This makes a beeline for gory splatter effects
Brainscan (1994)
One of the many virtual reality films that came out after The Lawnmower Man with Edward Furlong dealing with a figure from a horror videogame who turns his life upside down, urging him to become a killer
Brainstorm (1983)
Highly ambitious film for its day, this concerns a memory-recording device that manages to accidentally record the experience of someone dying. Well worth seeing today, including being one of the first films to depict the internet
BrainWaves (1982)
Ulli Lommel film in which Suzanne Love undergoes experimental brain surgery only to start receiving memories from the donor, a woman who was murdered
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)
Francis Ford Coppola remakes and reinvents Dracula, transforming the text of Bram Stoker’s book into a sensual, visually ravishing film with lush production values that make you gasp in excitement
Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s Guest (2008)
Possibly the worst Dracula film ever made. Dracula is cast as what looks like a beefy bouncer for a Goth nightclub. Bram Stoker is written as the central character seemingly without anyone having read a single detail about his biography
Bram Stoker’s Legend of the Mummy (1997)
Low-budget and cheap looking adaptation of a lesser-known Bram Stoker novel The Jewel of the Seven Stars. This was clearly made to capitalise on Stoker’s name following the success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Bram Stoker’s Shadowbuilder (1997)
One of several films that came out after the success of Bram Stoker’s Dracula claiming Stoker’s above their title despite slim or no connection. That said, this is a modestly effective film about a demon that exists in the shadows
Bram Stoker’s Van Helsing (2021)
An adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that comes with the oddity of featuring no Dracula. This is quite faithful to the book and the period setting looks not to bad on a low budget
Brand Upon the Brain! (2006)
Another of Guy Maddin’s silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers
Branded (2012)
An ambitious film in its depiction of a near-future Russia and satire on the media. The latter half has the hero undergo a mystical experience and discover that advertising brands are living entities that feed on human need
Brave (2012)
A real head-scratcher from Pixar that seems to have been pitched as a cross between Braveheart and Disney’s Brother Bear. The usual Pixar humour and polish makes for a mostly amiable film but never lifts the show out of a lame duck premise
Brave New World (1998)
TV movie adaptation that conducts a hatchet job on Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel where his vision of a conditioned class structure is turned into an allegory about a media-saturated world
Brave New World (2020)
TV mini-series adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel. Developed by Grant Morrison, this freely adapts the novel but does a strong and intelligent job of reimagining it in contemporary terms
Brazil (1985)
Terry Gilliam’s satire on Nineteen Eighty-Four is a darkly brilliant work – it is a madly out of control film but is filled moments of wild imagination and black-than-black humour than make it an unnerving ride
Breach (2020)
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis, before his retirement. Here Bruce is on form and gives a decent performance. The film is an Alien copy with the crew of a space mission under attack by a parasitic lifeform
Breakfast of Champions (1999)
Disappointing adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut novel from Adam Rudolph that substitutes Vonnegut’s satire for clumsy, ham-fisted farce that never gives us any clear idea what it is satirising
Breaking Dawn Part 1 (2011)
The point where the Twilight series collapses under its pretensions and draws every detail of its wedding out for an excruciating hour. A series that has been all about preaching chastity then segues into Right to Life advocacy
Breaking Dawn Part Two (2012)
Perhaps the best thing about this is that the Twilight saga is finally ended. This provides a moderately spectacular showdown but also wraps its plotlines up with absurd deus ex machina wimp outs and an infuriating twist ending
Breaking the Waves (1996)
Stunning, emotionally raw work from Lars von Trier with Emily Watson as a wife in a small religious community who is driven to extremes of masochistic self-sacrifice in the belief she is saving her husband’s life
Breaking Wind (2012)
A parody of the Twilight series, which feeds the films through the vulgar and sophomoric gags of the Scary Movie type film parody
Breathe (2024)
Film set in a harsh future as people struggle to survive in a world where oxygen supplies have been reduced to near zero. An okay film that suffers from an implausible premise
Breeders (1986)
All over New York City, virgins are being molested by aliens that lurk in the subway tunnels and seek them for breeding purposes. One of the worst genre films of the 1980s
Brenda Starr (1989)
Disastrous Brooke Shields starring film adaptation of the famous comic-strip about a girl reporter. Nobody involved is taking the show seriously and everything is blown into camp farce.
Brewster McCloud (1971)
One of the most eccentric and strangest films in the oeuvre of Robert Altman in which Bud Cort set out to build a set of wings to fly, amid aid from angels and lots of bird symbolism
Brian and Charles (2022)
At contrast to all the serious films being made about A.I, and androids, this is a wonderfully charming and really quite eccentric comedy where a man builds a robot out of junk
Brick Mansions (2014)
The English-language remake of the Luc Besson-produced Banlieue 13. The electrifying parkour scenes of the original now seem routine and the film’s social set-up so thinly sketched as to be negligible as science-fiction
Bride of Chucky (1998)
Fourth of the Child’s Play films where the importation of Hong Kong director Ronnie Yu doesn’t do much to enliven proceedings, although this does embellish the black humour element considerably
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
The first sequel to the 1931 Boris Karloff Frankenstein, which many prefer to the original. Director James Whale comes into his element and provides a whole other level of droll humour that the first film did not have
Bride of Re-Animator (1990)
Sequel to the cult splatter hit of Re-Animator, directed by the original’s producer Brian Yuzna. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale are back. This has some amazing effects work but lacks the first film’s outrageous black humour
Bride of the Monster (1955)
Edward D. Wood Jr film with Bela Lugosi creating a race of atomic supermen in the swamps. One of Wood’s more competent films that is an enjoyable variant on mad scientist film that Lugosi spent the 1940s making
Brides of Blood (1968)
The first of the Blood Island films, a classic of Filipino exploitation cinema. Although not as polished as later efforts, this serves up all the requisite cheesy monsters, mad scientists and gratuitous toplessness you expect
Bridge Across Time (1985)
Film made just before the centenary of the Jack the Ripper killings that imagines the Ripper being resurrected at the site where London Bridge has been relocated in Arizona
Bridge of Dragons (1999)
A Dolph Lundgren starring action film about a coup in a kingdom that exists as an oddly atemporal mix of clashing historical periods
Bridge of the Doomed (2022)
This is in essence a zombie film version of the classic historical film Zulu with a small group of soldiers tasked with protecting a bridge against a zombie horde
Bridge to Nowhere (1986)
New Zealand-made variation on the Backwoods Brutality film with a group of trampers being hunted through the bush by a psychopathic farmer
Bridge to Terabithia (2007)
Made by Walden Media following the success of their The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, a well-made adaptation of a Christian children’s book even if it sits uncertainly between gentle realism and the push to make it a fantasy film
Brigadoon (1954)
The film adaptation of a hit musical from Alan Jay Lerner and Fredreick Loewe in which Gene Kelly discovers love in a village that exists outside of time in the Scottish highlands
Bright (2017)
Set in an alternate version of the present where fantasy creatures – orcs, elves, fairies – live alongside humans, this comes with a cleverness, while being played as a buddy cop drama that anchors it with a realism
Brightburn (2019)
The rather interesting idea of Superman retold as a horror movie featuring a character that is Superman in all but name who goes over to the dark side instead of becoming a paragon of truth, justice and the American way
Brightwood (2022)
Remarkable little film where a couple go for a jog only to find they are trapped on the same stretch of trail in the woods by the lake where time starts looping around on itself in strange and increasingly sinister ways
Bring Her Back (2025)
Australia’s Philippou Brothers made the word of mouth hit Talk to Me and return here with this equally creepy film with Sally Hawkins as a sinister foster mother
Bringing Out the Dead (1999)
Martin Scorsese returns to the vision of urban hell he gave us in Taxi Driver with Nicolas Cage as an ambulance driver haunted by the dead he tends. Powerful, blackly funny, if not quite another Taxi Driver
Britannia Hospital (1982)
The third in a trilogy of satirical films from director Lindsay Anderson and star Malcolm McDowell, this takes a biting crosscut of British society as a hospital prepares for a royal visit
Broken (2006)
Highly effective British venture into the Torture Porn fad made not long after the successes of Saw and Hostel. A brutal and harrowing tale about women kept prisoner in the woods that travels to some grim and gore-drenched extremes
Broken Arrow (1995)
John Woo’s second Hollywood film, an action film about nuclear hijacking. Woo’s unique stylistics promptly get buried under the machinery of big-budget action filmmaking
Broken Vows (2016)
Jaimie Alexander has an affair with barman Wes Bentley whereafter he stalks her and throws her wedding plans awry. Wes Bentley plays with a darkly magnetic intensity but the film slides into the tamely PG-rated Fatal Attraction cliches
Bronx Warriors II (1983)
Enzo G. Castellari’s sequel to his Escape from New York ripoff 1990: The Bronx Warriors and a most more polished and entertaining B action movie
Brooklyn 45 (2023)
A film of electrifying tensions set just after World War II where a group of friends gather in an apartment and hold a séance that in turn brings out what they did during the War
Brother Bear (2003)
One of the flop Disney animated films of the 2000s, set among the Inuit with the head-scratching premise of a warrior who is transformed into a bear
Brotherhood of Blood (2007)
Vampire hunter film made by two Uwe Boll associates that plays out like a low-budget version of Blade II – it is passably well put together but the scope of action appears constricted to a single warehouse
Brotherhood of Satan (1971)
An entry among the 1970s occult cycle post-Rosemary’s Baby where a family stray into a sinister small town where a coven of Satanists are abducting children for sinister purpose
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
From regular genre director Christophe Gans, this is a head-scratching mix of French historical drama, monster movie and imported Wu Xia action moves
Bruce Almighty (2003)
Comedy in which God appears to Jim Carrey and grants him His powers for one week. Expectedly the film is of zero theological depth and all about Carrey going completely over-the-top
Bruiser (2000)
Uneven George Romero film from his less satisfying latter period in which Jason Flemyng wakes up with a blank white mask on his face and finds it allows him to unleash vengeance against those who wronged him
Brutal (2007)
Tedious psycho film that only seems to feature a series of nasty dispatches. Features maybe one of the most ridiculous pieces of serial killer motivation ever devised
Brute 1976 (2025)
A homage to 1970s Backwoods Brutality films like The Texas Chain Saw Masscare and in particular The Hills Have Eyes, albeit filtered through the retro lens of a modern take like X
Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
This sounds more like a tabloid headline “Elvis and JFK vs a mummy in a retirement home” than it does a film. It is however a work of considerable ingenuity from Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli
Bubble (2022)
Anime in which Tokyo is covered by a mysterious energy bubble of alien origin and of a group of defiant youths who live on in its midst until the appearance of a mystery girl
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979)
In the aftermath of Star Wars, the comic-book/serial hero was revived in this heavily Star Wars influenced remake that was released theatrically and then served as the pilot of a tv series
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)
An unfunny comedy about a cheerleader vampire slayer. This should have been quickly forgotten but instead it surprisingly became the basis for a much superior hit tv series several years later
Bug (2006)
One of the last films from William Friedkin, an astonishingly deranged descent into paranoia and madness, featuring an alarming performance from a young, unknown Michael Shannon
Bug! (1975)
William Castle production about the discovery of a species of insects that can start fires. Easily dismissable as a schlock film but it has an intelligence and eerie insect photography that make it more than that
Bugmaster (2006)
Akira director/creator Katsuhiro Otomo returns with this live-action manga adaptation about a wandering exorcist. Very different to any of Otomo’s anime, this is much quieter and rooted in Japanese folklore but has some undeniably way out scenes
Bugonia (2025)
Yorgos Lanthimos has become a director of acclaim in recent years. Here he remakes the Korean film Save the Green Planet where crazy conspiracy theorist Jesse Plemons abducts CEO Emma Stone insisting she is an alien
Bugsy Malone (1976)
The first film from the great Alan Parker, a 1920s gangster film but where the entire show is played out with kids, which include a young Jodie Foster. Regarded as a classic by many, this is a one-gimmick film dependent on kids (not) being able to play a complex range of adult emotions
Bulk (2025)
Ben Wheatley has gained a cult following in recent years with films like Kill List and High Rise. Here he sets out to make a deliberately low-tech multiverse film that becomes a real head-scratcher
Bullet Ballet (1998)
Shinya Tsukamoto of Tetsuo: The Iron Man fame turns his fascination with repressions to the story of a salaryman (played by himself) who deals with his girlfriend’s death by obsessively trying to obtain a gun
Bullet Head (2017)
A film with a great set-up where three criminals on the run (which include Adrien Brody and John Malkovich) take refuge in a warehouse only to find they are trapped with a maddened killer dog
Bulletproof Monk (2003)
Painfully derivative US-made attempt to jump aboard the popularity of Wu Xia following The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There are talented people involved who should have known better
Bullets, Fangs and Dinner at 8 (2015)
A low-budget independent film about a group of vampire hunters trying to bring down the master vampire – the local Catholic priest
Bullshot (1983)
A parody of British boys adventure stories like Biggles and Bulldog Drummond. This is made with a manic silliness that eventually becomes rather entertaining.
BumbleBee (2018)
Spinoff from the Transformers films. As though all it took was a change of director, this is a small sweet film that has more in common with E.T. as opposed to Michael Bay’s mass destruction spectaculars
Bundy: An American Icon (2009)
A low-budget film based on the life of serial killer Ted Bundy starring Corin Nemec. This stays to the facts of the case more than some of director Michael Feifer’s other True Crime films
Bunker (2022)
Film that draws on the basics of The Keep and takes place in a haunted bunker in the British-German trenches of the First World War as soldiers face something that preys on their fears
Bunker of the Dead (2015)
A revival of the Nazi zombie fad, which essentially becomes a First Person Shooter film as someone wearing a GoPro camera runs through a bunker dispatching zombies
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
Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
Psycho-thriller from Otto Preminger about the disappearance of a young girl. As much for the twists and turns of the story, Preminger enjoys the portrayal of the darkly laced characters on the periphery
Bunny the Killer Thing (2015)
Outrageous Finnish splatter comedy about a giant rampaging bunny creature. A film that in its better moments captures something of the sensibilities of early Peter Jackson films
Burial Ground (1981)
An entry from Italian exploitation cinema’s early 1980s fad for zombie films, this has been put together with no other intent than providing a progression of extremely gory set-pieces
Buried (2010)
A thriller with Ryan Reynolds buried in a coffin where the camera remains inside with him for the entire running time. This must be commended for its rigour in generating suspense while never cheating on its idea
Buried Alive (1990)
The directorial debut from Frank Darabont who went on to make The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist. A wife and her lover plot to kill husband off by poisoning him only for him to survive and plot an elaborate revenge scheme
Burke & Hare (1972)
One of several film versions of the story of the 19th Century grave robbers Burke and Hare, made at the height of the Anglo-horror cycle. While reasonably accurate to the facts, the story is sidetracked by softcore happenings at a brothel
Burke & Hare (2010)
Lavishly produced, reasonably historically authentic retelling of the story of the grave robbers from John Landis, which also becomes a wasted opportunity that turns the story into a comedy where the title characters are just two likeable schmucks
Burndown (1989)
Obscure and little seen thriller where a Florida sheriff deals with a series of radioactive murder victims where all clues seem to lead to an abandoned nuclear power plant
Burning Bright (2010)
Film about a girl and her autistic brother trapped inside a house with a tiger, this proves an unexpectedly really good. It avoids the cliches of the Animals Amok genre and derives superb hair-raising tension from the set-up
Burnt Offerings (1976)
A theatrical film directed by 1970s genre tv producer Dan Curtis. This has the intriguing idea of a house that acts as a psychic vampire. In all other respects, this plays out as a standard haunted house story
Burying the Ex (2014)
Joe Dante makes a zombie comedy. Dante is in his element and the film overspills with classic horror references but Dante feels like he is playing slow catch up with what the zombie genre has become
Bus (1987)
Obscure Japanese film set in a computer-controlled dystopia where a simple bus driver makes a defiant stand against against conformity
Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker (1981)
Psycho film that features Susan Tyrrell giving a totally demented performance and a plot that involves some fascinatingly twisted sexuality
Butt Boy (2019)
Every so often a film stops you dead in your tracks with its WTF premise. This is one such – a film about a man who develops a fetish for sticking objects up his ass and causes household objects, pets and children to disappear up there
Butterfly & Sword (1993)
One of the most amazing of the Wu Xia (flying swordsman) films from Hong Kong in the 1990s, this explodes with out of this world fantastical action scenes
Butterfly Kiss (1995)
An early Michael Winterbottom film. Far superior to the over-praised Heavenly Creatures, this has Saskia Reeves being drawn in by a crazed Amanda Plummer who gives the performance of a lifetime
Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins (2000)
Video-released spinoff of the Toy Story films featuring Buzz Lightyear in an adventure. Although released under the Pixar name, the animation is all cheaply produced by a Chinese studio
By Dawn’s Early Light (1990)
The last gasp of the Cold War nuclear film. A tv movie that features Martin Landau is the US President who tries to stop an accidental Russian nuclear release escalating into full-out war
Byte (2024)
This takes the award for bizarre concepts – a phone app that turns users into werewolves