Something in the Water (2024)
The survival in shark infested waters film has emerged as its own genre niche in the last few years. This is an all-girl variant with a bridal party stranded and trying to make it to shore
Something is Out There (1988)
Mini-series that was a popular hit in its day, which largely steals its premise of a human and alien cop hunting a body-hopping alien from The Hidden. What makes the show work past its rather ordinary story, is the two leads and their wittily sparring Lethal Weapon-type relationship
Something Weird (1967)
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s film, this features a totally demented plot involving a man who develops psychic powers and his encounters with witches and LSD trips
Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)
Adaptation of the Ray Bradbury novel about a sinister circus come to town and one of the films that get Bradbury right principally because Bradbury himself wrote the script
Sometimes They Come Back (1991)
Passable but slight tv movie adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a teacher facing undead pupils
Sometimes They Come Back … Again (1996)
Sequel to the Stephen King adapted film about hoodlums resurrected from the dead, this descends into an incredible silliness. Featuring a teenage Hillary Swank
Sometimes They Come Back … For More (1998)
The third film adapted from the Stephen King short story, which dispenses with connection to the other films and now concerns occult forces in an Arctic base
Somewhere in Time (1980)
Old-fashioned romantic weepie with Christopher Reeve hypnotising himself into travelling back in time to 1912 to woo actress Jane Seymour
Somnus (2016)
This low-budget British effort starts well as a film that deals with space travel realistically only to bog down in one of the most incomprehensible plots one has ever sat through
Son (2021)
This seems a variant on the plot about a cult pursuing a child for their purposes but expectations soon get twisted on their head in interesting ways
Son of Batman (2014)
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Movies, this devoted to the character of Batman’s son Damian. Solid action, a well moving plot that makes good use of its characters, adding to a decent entry even if it is not up among the best of these animated DC films
Son of Darkness: To Die For II (1991)
To Die For was a forgettable effort, most notably as one of the first films to feature the darkly romantic vampire. This sequel recasts the part with the impossibly handsome Michael Praed and is a far more successful assemblage of the elements
Son of Dracula (1943)
The third of Universal’s Dracula films in which Dracula travels to Louisiana in search of a wife. A flabby Lon Chaney Jr makes a poor replacement for Bela Lugosi, while the script seems improbably stitched together – despite the title, the film features Dracula, not his son
Son of Dracula (1974)
Bizarre musical monster bash with singer Harry Nilsson as Dracula’s son and Ringo Starr as Merlin. A film that seems to have no real clue what it is doing beyond friends having a good time. Nilsson makes surely the screen’s least threatening Dracula, while this is the worst film from the usually great Freddie Francis
Son of Flubber (1963)
Sequel to Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor that only unimaginatively shuffles around the same elements and lacks the inspired touch of the first film
Son of Frankenstein (1939)
The third of Universal’s Frankenstein films, the last to feature Boris Karloff as the monster and the last good entry before the sequels became formulaic. Shot with the clear influence of German Expressionism, this is filled with memorable characters and some great performances
Son of Godzilla (1968)
The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period
Son of the Mask (2005)
Sequel to the Jim Carrey starring The Mask with Jamie Kennedy taking over in a film that was regarded as one of the worst sequels of all time
Song of the Sea (2014)
An Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film – a unique and exquisitely drawn dive into Celtic mythology that comes with wit, humour and the emotional tenderness of a Hayao Miyazaki. This deserves to be seen far more widely than it ended up being
Song of the South (1946)
Disney film that is difficult to see these days due to its controversial treatments of race issues. Controversies aside, this is undeniably likeable, in particular in its telling a series of tall tales and finding a folk vernacular
Songbird (2020)
Film shot during the pandemic lockdown from Michael Bay’s production company set in a future where Covid has become even more virulent
Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
From Swedish director Roy Andersson, a series of plotless, surreal vignettes pitched with black humour
Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
After a disastrous fan reception of its initial trailer, the film of the videogame arrives on screen. The surprise is that for such a zero expectation film and one that defies the engagement of any of your braincells it is as much fun as it is.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022)
Sequel to the hit videogame adaptation, this offers up fairly much the same mix of elements as before – a cutely anthrompomorphic creature and Jim Carrey going to rafter-rattling excess
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)
Third of the Sonic the Hedgehog films and surprisingly far more entertaining than you expect from such a lightweight formulaic film
Sorceress (1995)
Jim Wynorski is a B-budget director whose films feature women with massively oversized breasts. Beyond epic-sized mammaries, this softcore tale about housewives engaged in witchcraft that makes no sense on a plot level
Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (1987)
A David DeCoteau film that comes with one of the great exploitation titles of all time but is otherwise a cheap Scream Queen vehicle about a demonically possessed bowling trophy
Sorority House Massacre (1986)
A Roger Corman produced slasher film, which spawned two sequels. The plot draws heavily on Halloween and comes with all the usual scenes of co-eds being stalked by a maniac escaped from an asylum
Sorority Row (2009)
Loose remake of the 1980s slasher film The House on Sorority Row, competently made but in the end this never sufficiently surmounts the routine
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
This directorial debut for rapper Boots Riley is a very funny satire on telemarketing that becomes increasingly more surreal as it goes on. Imagine something like Spike Lee around the point of Do the Right Thing mixed with the absurdist humour of Kurt Vonnegut
Soul (2013)
Taiwanese horror film about an elderly man who finds another soul is inhabiting his son’s body. A very different sort of possession story. While the horror element peters out in its third act, the film creates a very mysterious atmosphere and a series of tight thriller tensions and complications
Soul (2020)
Pixar film with a head-scratchingly odd plot but also one of the better efforts of the divided post-2010 period that goes a long way towards recapturing the things they did so well in their heyday
Soul Survivors (2001)
This is essentially The Sixth Sense rehashed as a teen horror film and conducted without any finesse – here you can see the twist ending coming miles in advance
Sound of Horror (1965)
There have been great films about unseen threats before (Cat People, The Haunting) but in this case the idea of an invisible monster is just the excuse for a cheap film to avoid any special effects. It has been a long time since I have seen a film so mind-numbingly boring and dull
Sound of My Voice (2011)
Fascinating film about a cult centred around a woman who claims to come from the future. Featuring an ethereal performance from a then unknown Brit Marling, the film remains ambiguous about her claims. Less a script than a series of often emotionally raw scenes that have been improvised between the actors
Source Code (2011)
The second film from Duncan Jones, this places Jake Gyllenhaal through a Groundhog Day scenario as he is forced to relive the same eight minutes in order to find who planted a bomb on a train
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
A theatrical release spun off from tv’s cult absurdist/scatological show. Not as sophisticated as later seasons of the tv series but with a raucously wacky bite that is frequently hilarious
Southbound (2015)
Another in the spate of multi-director anthologies that have become popular in recent years – The ABCs of Death, V/H/S et al. This is set around the common locale of a desert highway where all five tales hover in an eerie twilight zone where the everyday world has stepped over into the uncanny
Southern Comfort (1981)
A beautifully evocative Walter Hill film where National Guard soldiers on training manoeuvres are hunted through the Louisiana swamps after accidentally shooting at Cajun locals
Southland Tales (2006)
Richard Kelly of Donnie Darko fame makes a work set in a near-future L.A., a sprawling film bursting at the edges with too many characters and subplots but not uninteresting
Soylent Green (1973)
The film mangles and fails to understand the fine Harry Harrison novel it is based on but in its own right creates an effective and worthwhile portrait of a badly overpopulated 21st Century New York
Space Adventure Cobra (1982)
The great Osamu Dezai makes a colourful anime that jumps aboard the Stars Wars space opera fad
Space Battleship Yamato (2010)
A live-action remake of the 1970s anime series Space Cruiser Yamato made with stupendous effects, although now much of the plot has been rendered familiar by assorted Star Wars copies
Space Chimps (2008)
An animated film about NASA experimental chimpanzees. Not quite up there with Pixar but an amiable and unpretentious and amiable outing
Space Cop (2016)
Comedy about a cop from the future who joins the present-day force where he is partnered with a cop thawed out from the 1960s. This is a premise that should have been funny but emerges as something like Sledge Hammer cast with the characters from Dumb and Dumber
Space Cowboys (2000)
Clint Eastwood directs a film about a quartet of aging NASA astronauts reunited for one mission back into space after forty years.
Space Cruiser Yamato (1977)
Anime film spun off from a popular Japanese tv series. Despite crude animation, this has a colourful vigour and taps the same space opera vein as Star Wars, which came only three months earlier
Space Jam (1996)
Based on a Pepsi commercial, this brings NBA star Michael Jordan and a host of Looney Tunes characters together in a basketball game. A cute idea not very well developed.
Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)
For reasons not clear to me, Space Jam is considered a classic. Now we get a sequel that updates it to the present featuring a different NBA star LeBron James
Space Marines (1995)
Low-budget film that does quite a creditable job on the whole space marines theme
Space Milkshake (2012)
The title and the description of a space station crew dealing with a mutating runner duck gives the expectation of something wacky – what we get is more like a variant on Dark Star, a comedy set around the boredom of life on a space station and a 1970s era episode of Doctor Who
Space Mutiny (1988)
This is widely regarded as a classic bad movie. A South African-made space opera where the corner-cutting cheapness of the production proves frequently hilarious
Space Pirate Captain Harlock (2013)
The brooding space pirate Captain Harlock is one of the famous anti-heroes in manga and anime. Harlock gets a big screen revamp here from Shinji (Appleseed) Aramaki, one of the most amazing of modern anime directors, who delivers a series of epic space battles with a breathtaking beauty
Space Raiders (1983)
Low-budget producer Roger Corman jumped aboard the Star Wars sf bandwagon with Battle Beyond the Stars then took all the effects scenes and wrote another entire film around them with Space Raiders
Space Sharks (2024)
Another in the gonzo killer shark film fad viz Sharknado, a bottom of the barrel effort that concerns lab sharks returned from a space mission mutated
Space Station 76 (2014)
This has an irresistible premise – of doing for 1970s tv SF what GalaxyQuest did for Star Trek – parodying the sets, costumes and cliches. On the other hand, the superb conception fails to ever play out as comedy and the film centres around a series of singularly dull personal dramas
Space Sweepers (2021)
South Korean space opera about a crew of space junk collectors. If the Star Wars series wanted to find a director to create fresh and exhilarating effects scenes, they need look no further than here
Space Truckers (1996)
Stuart Gordon takes a lame concept – a trucker film set in space – and makes something far more enjoyable than one expected with most of the cast getting into the spirit of the exercise
Space Wars: Quest for the Deepstar (2022)
An enjoyable low-budget modern space opera that ably conjures the knockabout spirit of a host of low-budget 1980s Star Wars knockoffs
Space Zombie Bingo!!! (1993)
Part of the late 80s/early 90s fad for deliberately bad SF films, this has plentiful references to Plan 9 from Outer Space but little that is funny
Spaceballs (1987)
Mel Brooks parodies the Star Wars films. As with most Brooks films, the humour is broad and scattershot but occasionally amusing
Spacecamp (1986)
This comes with the unappealing concept of ‘Teenagers Trapped in Orbit in the Space Shuttle’ and vies between cliche and passable treatment
Spaced Invaders (1990)
Well produced but otherwise unfunny comedy about a group of bumbling Martian invaders who turn up on Halloween, following a rebroadcast of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio show
Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone (1983)
Planetary adventure in the Star Wars vein with a few shakes of the junkyard future look of Mad Max 2. This was made to exploit the short-lived early 80s 3D revival fad
Spaceman (2024)
Adam Sandler plays a lone astronaut who befriends an alien. This falls somewhere between E.T. and Interstellar
Spacemaster X-7 (1958)
Cheap 1950s SF film about alien spores brought back from Mars and the hunt for a housewife who inadvertently spreads them
Spacerage: Breakout on Prison Planet (1985)
SF action with Michael Paré convicted to a prison planet from which he attempts to organise the prisoners to make an escape. This is essentially a Western that takes place in SF terms
Spaghettiman (2016)
Possibly the most absurd notion to hit superhero cinema – a film in which the hero’s power is to fling spaghetti from his fingertips and hides his identity behind a paper bag. A low-budget, no-effects indie comedy with a deadpan sense of humour not likely to be everybody’s taste but I found downright hilarious
Spare Parts (1979)
A German thriller about a newlywed couple in the US where the husband is abducted and the wife’s attempts to find him take her into the midst of an illicit organ harvesting operation
Spare Parts (2020)
I was sold from the point of reading the premise where an all-girl punk band is abducted, surgically given weapons attachments and forced to fight in an arena
Sparks (2013)
Low-budget superhero that co-opts the cod-film noir look from Sin City. Alas the film has an excessively sprawling and complicated plot, while the film noir style looks like no more than cheap pastiche reduced to cliche poses by well-meaning amateurs
Spasms (1983)
A 1980s film that was sold around a single air bladder makeup effects scene where a man swells up and explodes from a snakebite. That and the entirely risible premise of Oliver Reed as a billionaire who has a psychic link with a giant snake
Spawn (1997)
A very disappointing film adaptation of Todd MacFarlane’s cult comic-book where all of the moody darkness emerges with one-dimensional effect as little more than The Punisher with horns
Spawn of the Slithis (1978)
Independently made 1970s monster movie. The film came along about ten months too early to be be part of the great spate of B movies that copied Alien and so draws on the earlier model of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Nothing exceptional
Speak No Evil (2022)
A darkly funny Danish film about a couple who accept an invite to visit another couple who seem to have no boundaries, before everything gets nasty
Speak No Evil (2024)
The Danish original was a darkly brilliant film about guests in a home of people who step over boundaries. This is the English-language remake from Blumhouse that lacks the same dark bite
Special (2006)
Before the likes of Defendor, Kick-Ass and Super, there was this, one of the best comedies about superheroes with no powers. The film loves screwing with its audience and comes with a series of mind-bending flips between drug hallucination and subjective view of the superpowers in action
Species (1995)
Slick and rather silly copy of Alien that conceptually cross-hatches it to emerge as essentially Basic Instinct with tentacles
Species II (1998)
Sequel to Species that this time offers up the male of the species. The film feels put together as an exercise in makeup effects but their physiological absurdity causes the film to topple into silliness
Species III (2004)
The third of the Species films, which follows Sil’s daughter. Some okay makeup effects but the plotting gets fairly silly
Species: The Awakening (2007)
Fourth entry in the Species series where at least the series seems to have gravitated to the arena of the trashily absurd B movie it belongs
Spectral (2016)
Highly original piece that works as a supernatural version of Black Hawk Down with a unit of soldiers cut off in rebel territory and surrounded by spirit beings. Grippingly effective both in terms of the tension and a script that treats the phenomenon with scrupulous rationalism
Spectre (1977)
Another unsold Gene Roddenberry tv pilot, this would have made for a potentially worthwhile series involving Robert Culp and Gig Young as occult investigators
Spectre (2015)
The fourth Daniel Craig James Bond film welcomely resurrects one of the great nemeses from the series past – only to fall flat on its face. This is a Bond film severely hampered by a director unattuned to the classical elements of the series and the need to cripple everything by giving Bond backstory and character development
Speed Racer (2008)
The Wachowskis live-action remake of the anime series is a sublimely madcap confection, a film that is alive with vibrant visuals and all the colours of the rainbow. A box-office flop but glorious, even groundbreaking visually
Spell (2020)
Bizarrely overwrought film in which a successful city lawyer is made prisoner by a backwoods voodoo priestess
Spellbinder (1988)
Modest 1980s video release that builds with some unnerving effect as Timothy Daly grants shelter to Kelly Preston only to earn the wrath of a pursuing Satanic cult
Spermula (1976)
Rather of an oddity – a French adult film about women from the future that in the aftermath of Star Wars was re-edited to become a film about alien women visitors come to kill off the human species via sex. Often directed with an artiness that proves far more than you expect
Sphere (1998)
Michael Crichton was hot property after the success of Jurassic Park but this was one flop. A by no means uninteresting film about a group of scientists in an underwater habitat making contact with an alien lifeform
Spice World (1997)
The Spice Girls conduct their own version of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, a largely plotless film with them clowning around. Including appearances from aliens.
Spider (2002)
David Cronenberg film that subjectively takes place in the mind of mentally ill Ralph Fiennes, a bewildering film with no easy handholds
Spider Baby or, the Maddest Story Ever Told (1968)
Obscure film that has developed a certain cult following concerning a murderous family. This plays out like a non-comedy version of the Addams Family and has an undeniable ghoulish atmosphere
Spider Forest (2004)
South Korean horror film that feels like The Sixth Sense crossed with the enigmatic games of Don’t Look Now. The film takes place in a cryptically baffling mandala of dreams, hallucinations and possible deathdream that eventually proves rather absorbing
Spider in the Attic (2021)
From incredibly prolific B-budget British producer/director Scott Jeffrey, a film about a radio broadcaster who ventures to the home of a scientist to find it overrun by genetically engineered spiders
Spider-Man (1977)
The first big screen incarnation of the Marvel Comics character, the theatrically released pilot for a dreary tv series starring Nicholas Hammond that stripped Spider-Man down to being no more than a superpowered detective in a tv cop show
Spider-Man (2002)
A huge hit and one of the key influences that created the box-office dominance of Marvel Comics in the 2000s/10s. A fine incarnation of the comic-book, Sam Raimi brings it to life with exhilarating web-slinging scenes but overdoes the winsome innocence of Peter Parker
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire get it just right in the second entry in their trilogy of Spider-Man films. The writing team deliver a fantastic Soul of the Superhero script while Raimi delivers some superheroic action sequences that are about as exciting as it is possible to get (*)
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
Last and by general opinion the least of the Sam Raimi-Tobey Maguire Spider-Man films. With three super-villains present, the plot feels as though it is bursting at the seams juggling the various origin stories and ongoing dramas, although Raimi still delivers some solid superheroic action scenes
Spider-Man Strikes Back (1979)
The 1970s Spider-Man tv series was a miserable failure at live-action superheroics, little more than a crime show with a costumed hero. This was the best of three theatrically released films edited from it with the plot of students building an atomic bomb has an undeniable real world credibility
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
The animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse proved an unexpected success. This sequel builds on that ups the artistic quality of the original to something quite extraordinary