Avenging Force (1986)
Action film from Cannon Films with Michael Dudikoff forced to undergo a Most Dangerous Game scenario and be hunted through the bayous by white supremacists
Battle Royale II: Requiem (2003)
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
National Lampoon’s Class Reunion (1982)
Following the highly successful Animal House, this was the second of the films made using the name of the satirical magazine National Lampoon and is a feeble parody of the slasher film
Nightmare (1956)
An eerie work of film noir adapted from Cornell Woolrich in which Kevin McCarthy has a nightmare of killing a man and then wakes up and finds that details of his dream are starting to come true
Steamboy (2004)
Sixteen years after making Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo returns to direct a full-length anime, making a Steampunk work that is dazzling in its epic quality and vistas of mass destruction
Incident at Loch Ness (2004)
A witty parody of the Found Footage form where the attempts by Werner Herzog to make a documentary about the Loch Ness monster are constantly upset by the director’s insistence on sensation and faked monster appearances
Three … Extremes (2004)
Standout horror anthology designed to highlight episodes from three Asian directors – Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook and Japan’s Takashi Miike – all of whom are on top form
High Tension (2003)
The film that made the world take notice of Alexandre Aja. Aja serves up a brutal and gore-drenched variant on the Backwoods Brutality film, although things fall apart in an absurd twist ending
The Machinist (2004)
Fascinating film about reality blurrings. Haunted by Christian Bale’s intensely physical performance for which he lost a third of his body weight to become an anorexic shell of a person
Land of the Dead (2005)
George Romero’s return to the zombie genre after twenty years, after others starting remaking and homaging his films. Romero still makes potent social metaphors but the gory extremes of his earlier films seem tamed down
Birth (2004)
Beautifully made and exquisitely directed film with Nicole Kidman as a widow who meets a ten-year-old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of her late husband
Beauty (2004)
A quite enjoyable attempt to modernise the story of Beauty and the Beast with Martin Clunes as a disfigured reclusive aristocrat and Sienna Guillory as a plumber who connects with him
The Ax (2005)
Costa-Gavras, a director known for highly political films, makes a dark comedy about an unemployed man who sets out to eliminate his rival job applicants
Dumplings (2004)
Excellent horror from Fruit Chan about a middle-aged actress seeking a backstreet age rejuvenation treatment. Great performances and directed with a queasy discomfort
The Island (2005)
What should have been a modest conceptual SF story about people coming to discover the true nature of the world they live in is killed by being turned into an loud and over-inflated Michael Bay action vehicle
Godzilla: Final Wars (2004)
The 28th Godzilla film, made for the series fiftieth anniversary and bringing every monster ever created by Toho together for a massive battle. The results are immensely satisfying
Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
Mamoru Oshii’s follow-up to Ghost in the Shell where he makes a work that pushes both an artistic envelope at the same time as taking his philosophical fascination with the Cyberpunk world to a stunning level
House of Wax (2005)
Despite borrowing the title, this has the no connection to the 1953 film with Vincent Price as a mad waxworks curator and is a modern slasher film. Nevertheless, director Jaume Collet-Serra does come up with some very inventive dispatches
The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse (2005)
Film spinoff from the popular British comedy series sees the familiar characters entering the real world to meet their creators and deal with the cancellation of the show
Kung Fu Hustle (2004)
Stephen Chow excels himself in this comic take on the martial arts film. Sensational over-the-top fight sequences sit alongside Chow’s frequently sidesplitting comic hand.
The Ordeal (2004)
A Belgian-made venture into Backwoods Brutality territory that keeps heading into stranger and more disturbing places until it almost seems to be taking place on another planet altogether
Fantastic Four (2005)
One of the big hits among the spate of Marvel Comics adaptations in the 2000s. This has a very mixed reputation but brings the comic-book team to life in a reasonable effort
The Haunted House of Horror (1969)
The haunted part of the title is misleading but this is an attempt to update the Old Dark House thriller of the 1930s and 40s to the midst of Swinging 60s London and featuring a youth cast
Dune (2000)
This TV mini-series remake of the Frank Herbert novel is much more faithful to the essence and complexity of the book, even if it lacks the visual resplendence of the film versions
Maxie (1985)
Light fantasy comedy where Glenn Close plays a housewife who is possessed by the ghost of Maxie, a Hollywood starlet who is determined to revive her career
The Relic (1997)
This is a copy of Alien with a monster hunting people through darkened corridors and is generic in all regards, although you have to admit that Stan Winston creates an original monster and the film generates reasonable suspense
Octane (2003)
Thriller where Madeleine Stowe’s daughter is abducted by a blood drinking cult while on a road trip
Pinocchio (1940)
One of the great Disney animated classics from the still unsurpassed era between 1937-42. The studio were at the peak of their game artistically and the film embodies a near-perfect sense of childlike innocence
Creature from Black Lake (1976)
A 1970s Bigfoot/Sasquatch film made for drive-in audiences about students searching for the creature in rural backwater Louisiana
Percy (1971)
Popular entry among the early 1970s spate of British sex comedies featuring Hywell Bennett as the recipient of the world’s first penis transplant. Mostly this serves as an excuse to string a series of sexual encounters together.
Bartok the Magnificent (1999)
Animator Don Bluth conducts a spinoff from his previous film Anastasia, focusing on the adventures of the talking bat sidekick
War of the Worlds (2005)
Steven Spielberg remakes the classic H.G. Wells alien invasion story, liberally rewriting it for the post-9/11 world. Not Spielberg’s best film but a more than solid work on most grounds
Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005)
This was a revival of Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug films. Here it becomes a vehicle for Lindsay Lohan who is cast as a racing driver but is missing all the cute charms the original films had
Disturbing Behavior (1998)
A smart and modestly enjoyable film that plays like a high school version of The Stepford Wives where troubled students are being brainwashed and turned into preppy high-achievers
The Tenant (1976)
One of Roman Polanski’s least recognised films in which he both directs and plays the lead as a mousy man driven to a state of paranoia and the point he loses his identity by the neighbours in a Parisian apartment building
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair (1990)
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
Reaper (1998)
Chris Sarandon is a writer who becomes embroiled in solving a series of murder that mimic his own books. An okay set-up that rarely moves beyond the unfolding of cliches
Darkness Falls (2003)
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street
Bad Guy (2001)
Kim Ki-Duk film about the strangely tender relationship that grows between a mute thug and a woman he forces into prostitution
Arabian Nights (2000)
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of the classic tales has been granted a decent budget that allows the stories to emerge with lavish spectacle and the fantasy to fly with exceptional regard
Day of Wrath (1943)
Excellent film from Carl Dreyer, the director of Vampyr director set during the time of witch persecutions about a woman who believes she has the powers of a witch. Everything is told with a beautifully subtle ambiguity
2046 (2004)
An exquisitely dreamy Wong Kar Wai film as a man remembers his liaisons with various women. Only peripherally a science-fiction film concerning a story the protagonist is writing.
Gandahar (1988)
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
The Thing from Another World (1951)
The very first alien invader film of the 1950s. Maybe or maybe not directed by Howard Hawks, this has a dramatic urgency and tight tension that makes it stand head and shoulders above most of the films that came after
Starship Troopers 2: Hero of the Federation (2003)
A passable video-released sequel to Starship Troopers the heads more in the direction of a body snatchers film. Directed by stop-motion animator Phil Tippett
First Spaceship on Venus (1959)
A Soviet space exploration film from East Germany concerning an expedition to Venus. This was the first film to depict an international space mission but proves stolid dramatically
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1989)
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
Oh God Book II (1980)
Sequel to Oh, God, this brings back George Burns as God but pairs him with a cute kid
Madagascar (2005)
Enjoyably silly DreamWorks animated film concerning a group of talking zoo animals that are released into the wilds of Africa for the first time. This spawned a series of sequels
D.E.B.S. (2004)
An extremely witty parody of Charlie’s Angels (that also tapps the whole Austin Powers spy spoof fad). This amusingly rewrites the tv show in terms of lesbian attraction
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
Hammer Films adapt Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars about a revived mummy queen. A troubled production that ended up being one of Hammer’s never-quite-rans
Total Recall (1990)
Adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story is killed by being turned into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle and by director Paul Verhoeven’s burying the reality bending subtleties of the story under bludgeoning ultra-violence
Batman Begins (2005)
After Joel Schumacher killed off the cinematic Batman franchise, Christopher Nolan successfully revives it, bringing back the dark, psychologically brooding superhero and telling a Batman origin story
Jungle Moon Men (1955)
Former Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller plays himself in a routine studio backlot jungle adventure that uncreditedly steals the plot from H. Rider Haggard’s She
Doppelganger (1993)
Horror film in which Drew Barrymore is haunted by a doppelganger. Before allowing the film to collapse into incomprehensibility, director Avi Nesher creates some fascinatingly weird images
Guard from the Underground (1992)
An early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out as a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts as a hulking security guard eliminating people
Toolbox Murders (2003)
After a decade-long slump, Tobe Hooper started to show he still had what it took with this remake of the 1980 slasher film
Face/Off (1997)
A John Woo directed action film with the improbable premise where FBI agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage end up surgically swapping faces and then taking over the other’s identity
Someone is Watching (1999)
Okay psycho-thriller where Stefanie Powers is stalked in her new apartment while her son develops a mysterious imaginary companion
The Thief of Baghdad (1961)
Dull remake of the classic Arabian Nights film that casts Steve Reeves and tries to make it into a Hercules peplum adventure
Raat (1992)
One of the rare Bollywood ventures into horror, a blatant copy of The Exorcist. You have to praise the film for trying out every effect in the book in an effort to get a jump but the result ends up being so overwrought it produces almost no effect at all
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (1989)
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
Laserblast (1978)
One of the first films to come out exploiting the success of Star Wars – a badly made teen underdog fantasy in which bullied Kim Milford takes revenge after finding an alien raygun
Mortuary Academy (1988)
Intended as a horror riff on the phenomenally popular Police Academy series, this sets a series of gags in as bad a taste as possible around the locale of a mortuary
Anatomie (2000)
Extremely satisfying German medical thriller about a secret society that conducts illicit experiments. The film comes with a torturous suspense and goes way out on a limb in the gore department
The Amityville Horror (2005)
Remake of the 1979 film that still persists with the claim that the Amityville hoax was true. This now embellishes the rather dull original with the baggage of trick effects of the modern horror film
Dracula’s Daughter (1936)
The first of the sequels to Universal’s Dracula this time without Bela Lugosi. A much better film in every way. creating a fine sense of atmosphere. Arguably the first lesbian vampire film.
Split Second (1992)
A mishmash of Alien copy and supernatural serial killer film set in a drowned future London with a script that makes no real sense. The film’s buddy cop relationship starring Rutger Hauer does have its amusements.
The Perfect Wife (2001)
Psycho-thriller with Shannon Sturges as a woman who marries Perry King with the intent of destroying his life
The Little Prince (1974)
Director Stanley Donen conducts a star-studded musical adaptation of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s children story about an innocent alien prince come to Earth but with ponderous results
Firestarter Rekindled (2002)
TV mini-series sequel to Stephen King’s Firestarter that now sees Charlie McGee in her twenties played by Marguerite Moreau. The story feels under-plotted and over-padded
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
Siesta (1987)
This directorial debut for Mary Lambert is a stylish but empty-headed erotic mystery that eventually settles for a fantastical twist ending
White Noise (2005)
Ghost story about so-called Electronic Voice Phenomenon with Michael Keaton as a widower being contacted from beyond by his late wife. A film that achieves some quite reasonable spooky effect
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005)
The last of George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy and the last opportunity for him to get it right, which he generally does. The effects are expert but are not allowed to dominate as much as they did previously and the focus has come back onto the story and Anakin’s transformation into Darth Vader
Motel Hell (1980)
A studio-backed attempt to enter the Backwoods Brutality genre ends up as an uncertain black comedy that fails to push the envelope anywhere near what its models do
The Caller (1987)
Unexpectedly good film with Madolyn Smith as a woman living alone in a cabin in the woods and Malcolm McDowell as a caller where the two engage in a series of cat and mouse games where nothing is what it seems
Shrunken Heads (1994)
Another film from Charles Band’s Full Moon Production centred around dolls – in this case, three murdered youths who are resurrected as flying shrunken heads. A film that never quite lives up to the outlandishness of its premise
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe (1988)
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
Targets (1968)
Early film from a young Peter Bogdanovich loosely based on sniper Charles Whitman. Bogdanovich creates something chilling in his depiction of a cleancut kid who goes on a sniping spree for no clear reason
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
The big-budget film version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide phenomenon is a disaster that fumbles Douglas Adams’s humour and blows everything up with big-budget effects and a pitch to US audiences
First Light (1992)
Dreary action film with Michael Paré as a soldier with the army’s psychic warfare unit who is sent on a mission to rescue a girl from the hands of terrorists
The Lift (1983)
A Dutch film about a killer elevator that gained some attention when it came out. This generates some reasonable suspense but it also has a plot that drags considerably
The Rosary Murders (1987)
Extremely good thriller from an Elmore Leonard script with Donald Sutherland as a Catholic priest who tries to stop a serial killer without violating the sanctity of the confessional
Pieces (1983)
A venture into the slasher film from hack Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon that features utterly surreal bad dialogue and copious amounts of blood
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
My Life as a Fairytale: Hans Christian Andersen (2001)
A Hallmark TV mini-series that purports to tell a biography of fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen only to freely rearrange or outrighly invent aspects of Andersen’s life
Kate’s Addiction (1999)
A psycho-thriller in the vein of Fatal Attraction with Kari Wuhrer stalking best friend Farrah Forke insisting they are meant to be together as a lesbian couple
Dark Water (2002)
Hideo Nakata made the highly influential Ringu but his other films have been uneven. This ghost story is one of his few follow-ups that comes near recapturing the same uncanny mood
Dark Water (2005)
The English-language remake of Hideo Nakata’s ghost story made by Walter Salles. This version is surprisingly faithful to the original but entirely miscues Nakata’s jolt ending
Barbie Fairytopia (2004)
The previous Barbie animated films had adapted various fairytales but this casts her as a fairy in a magical kingdom – simplistic, but one of the most colourfully animated of Mainframe’s Barbie films
Alone with a Stranger (2000)
Excellent psycho-thriller in which family man William R. Moses has his life taken over by an evil twin. Filled with a series of gripping unexpected twists and tensions
The Return of Dracula (1958)
One of the first contemporary Dracula films. Compared to Christopher Lee’s first appearance as Dracula the same year, this is dull, plodding and without atmosphere where Dracula looks like no more than a door-to-door salesman
Deranged (1974)
One of the better among several films based on the activities of the true-life body snatcher and necrophile Ed Gein. Roberts Blossom gives an amazingly creepy performance
Wired (1989)
Flop and muchly hated biopic of John Belushi that turns his life into a bad farce. Included here for the presence of an angel that guides Belushi through his life
Robots (2005)
Enjoyably likeable animated film from Blue Sky Studios set in a world inhabited by robots. Lots of visual invention and madcap slapstick
Pom Poko (1994)
Delightful and charming Studio Ghibli film about shape-changing raccoons that blend with humanity when their forest is threatened
Darkness (2002)
From Jaume Balaguero, a film that assembles a decent cast and broods with suggestions of a haunted house and occult conspiracies but never does much to let it pay off
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
Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Mini-series that reconstructs the old Battlestar Galactica into smart and intelligent SF with strong characters, a gritty realism and sensational effects. A tv series followed and became one of the best SF shows of the 2000s