The Glass Slipper (1955)
A live-action version of Cinderella starring Leslie Caron. This is a rather staid version with ballet sequences where the magic and romance never much ignites
Mortal Kombat (1995)
This film adaptation of the videogame is a lot of fun. The plot is a rehash of Enter the Dragon but the film offers up wall-to-wall action and exotic creatures. A directorial debut for Paul W.S. Anderson
The Landlady (1997)
Witty psycho-thriller with Talia Shire giving the performance of a lifetime as a psychopathic landlady who becomes fixated on a handsome border
Campfire Tales (1996)
A solid revival of the horror anthology, this tells three stories that all work well. The film also features several before-they-were-known faces
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
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
The Crazy Ray (1925)
An experimental silent film from the great Rene Clair that depicts a group of people who remain unaffected as all of Paris around them has been frozen in time by a ray experiment
City of the Dead (1959)
An effort from the early days of the Anglo-horror cycle about a town ruled by a reincarnated witch. This comes drenched in a good deal of heavy black-and-white atmosphere
When a Stranger Calls (1979)
The original babysitter stalker film based on a short film that was then expanded out to feature-length following the success of Halloween
Flight of the Navigator (1986)
Smart and intelligent Disney film where Joey Cramer play a kid who goes missing and reappears some years later unaged, only to realise he has been abducted by aliens and can control a spaceship
Signs (2002)
M. Night Shyamalan delves into the crop circle phenomenon and makes an alien invasion film. At this point his films were predicated on big conceptual surprises and this comes out as a damp squib when we find out what is going on
Endangered Species (1982)
A modest thriller with sheriff Robert Urich investigating cattle mutilations in small town Buffalo and finding possible UFOs and a government conspiracy to be behind these
The First Power (1990)
This was made not long after Wes Craven’s Shocker. Here detective Lou Diamond Phillips faces a serial killer who comes back from the dead after going to the gas chamber and can hop between bodies
The Ghoul (1975)
Latter day Anglo-horror film from Freddie Francis that assembles many Hammer regulars in a story where Peter Cushing keeps a cannibalistic son on his country estate
In the Mouth of Madness (1995)
In one of his last really good films, John Carpenter pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft in this horror film that becomes an amazing blurring of the line between reality and fiction
Finian’s Rainbow (1968)
One of Francis Ford Coppola’s earliest films as director, a musical where Fred Astaire procures a pot of gold and makes a deal with a leprechaun
Stay Tuned (1992)
Unfunny comedy in which husband and wife John Ritter and Pam Dawber are trapped in Hell, which consists of various parodies of popular tv shows
Star Hunter (1995)
An incredibly cheap ripoff of Predator (and even more so that film’s real source The Most Dangerous Game) relocated to an urban area. Incredibly tatty and dull on all counts
The Hand (1981)
In his second film as director, Oliver Stone ventures into the disembodied hand theme. An amazingly OTT Michael Caine plays a cartoonist who believes the hand he lost in an accident is exacting vengeance against his enemies
Flatliners (1990)
A film about med students stopping their hearts so as to explore the afterlife. This aims for big ideas but befalls director Joel Schumacher who delivers pretty visuals but finds nothing any more profound than a figurative group hug
The 5000 Fingers of Dr T (1953)
Live-action film from a Dr Seuss script about children imprisoned by a mad piano teacher. As to be expected from Seuss, this is gloriously madcap with extravagantly surreal set designs and nonsense choreogrphy
Legend of the Werewolf (1974)
A Freddie Francis directed werewolf film from the latter days entry in the Anglo-horror cycle set in 1900s France. This owes much to Hammer’s earlier Curse of the Werewolf
Phantasm (1979)
Cult film from Don Coscarelli that takes place in a funereal twilight world and is filled with images of wild surrealism. Not a lot makes sense but the film is meant to operate on the logic of a dream. Several sequels followed.
Cyber Zone (1995)
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a cyberpunk action film where the cut-price nature of the exercise is elevated by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour
Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)
A head scractchingly strange Sam Raimi produced film in which Raimi’s brother Ted plays a man suffering from hallucinations who tries to come to the aid of the girl of his dreams
Desecration (1999)
This is a surreal and plotless Catholic horror film from Dante Tomaselli that seems full of fairground horror house jumps and overloaded with tortured Catholic imagery but makes no real sense
Dating the Enemy (1996)
An Australian variant on the bodyswap comedy in which couple Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan end up in each other’s bodies resulting in some likeable if predictable comic mishaps
Captain America (1990)
Cheap and fairly terrible adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero from low-budget director Albert Pyun. The superheroics look impoverished and Matt Salinger makes a dopey-looking Steve Rogers
Meet the Feebles (1990)
Peter Jackson‘s second film, what might be called The Muppet Show by way of John Waters, an inspired work of puppet depravity that makes a beeline for bad taste
Oliver & Company (1988)
One of the more forgettable Disney animated film of the 1970s/80s lull, this draws heavily on Lady and the Tramp for a talking animals retelling of Oliver Twist
The 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
Adaptation of the Jonathan Swift classic about adventures in the lands of big and small people with stop-motion creature effects by Ray Harryhausen
Killer Tomatoes Strike Back! (1991)
This was the third of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes films. This hits an appealingly silly and wilfully ridiculous note that makes it the best of the sequels.
Homicidal (1961)
William Castle gained fame for his horror films made with a series of promotional gimmicks. With the success of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Castle made a blatant copy here, the first of his psycho-thrillers
Ghost in the Shell (1995)
Classic anime from Mamoru Oshii, a Cyberpunk work with a heroine who is a cyborg special forces officer, a work that delves deeply into the philosophical questions of what is human and what is machine
The Final Countdown (1980)
A big-budget film that has one of the great SF premises – what if a modern aircraft carrier were transported back in time to the eve of Pearl Harbor – only to end up blowing it.
Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)
An early Brian De Palma film, a wonderfully nonsensical work in an absurdist vein where Tom Smothers drops out of the corporate world to become a tap dancing magician under the tutelage of Orson Welles
Persecution (1974)
A British psycho-thriller in the Baby Jane mold with Lana Turner as a deranged mother determined to wreck son Ralph Bates’s marriage
Fear in the Night (1972)
One of the better psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films where a deft script is aided by good performances including Peter Cushing and a wonderfully bitchy Joan Collins
Firestarter (1984)
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
Subspecies (1991)
The first in a series of vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Several sequels followed.
Time Bandits (1981)
Highly enjoyable Terry Gilliam film about a young boy who joins a group of dwarves on a series of adventures though time
Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
The fifth of Hammer’s Dracula films and by general consensus the last worthwhile entry. New director Peter Sasdy brings something fresh and this has an interesting plot that digs beneath Victorian hypocrisy
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Ingmar Bergman’s final film, a beautifully shot and richly textured family saga that was loosely autobiographical in nature on Bergman’s part. Contains considerable fantasy content.
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
A Roald Dahl children’s film that has become a cult classic, set in a deliriously nonsensical world with Gene Wilder give a sinisterly threatening performance in the title role
A Nightmare on Elm Street III: The Dream Warriors (1987)
The point where Robert Englund’s Freddy went from a boogeyman into the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote, popping up like a malevolent jack-in-a-box to quip a one-liner and dispatch victims
Phantom Town (1999)
A quirkily enjoyable horror Western about children searching for their parents and ending up in a town that exists in an afterlife netherworld populated by an assortment of weird creatures
Men in Black II (2002)
Sequel that turns a witty original into overblown slapstick that never consists of anything more than absurd gags with aliens and technology popping up from behind everyday objects
Killer Me (2001)
Ambitious ingenue film about a loner who may or may not be a serial killer. Directed with some subtle ambiguity and featuring good performances from the two leads
Blade II (2002)
Blade was a solid vampire/action film but the sequel is a quantum leap over that, a visually kinetic and immensely exciting comic-book of a movie thanks to the employment of Guillermo Del Toro in the director’s chair
Reptilicus (1961)
Incredibly shabbily made Danish copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms about a dinosaur revived in Copenhagen
And Then There Were None (1974)
Made in the aftermath of the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express, a star-studded Agatha Christie adaptation about a guests at a remote hotel being bumped off by someone among their number
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
Adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel about an unaging libertine starring Hurd Hatfield. This is regarded as a classic but reads as fairly melodramatic and tame today
It Came from Outer Space (1953)
The very first alien body snatchers film. With Jack Arnold’s eerily haunted landscapes and a memorably literate Ray Bradbury script, this is one of the classic SF films of the 1950s era
Wavelength (1983)
Modestly made alien contact film that came out not long after Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Tale of a Vampire (1992)
Part of the 1990s fad for dark romantic vampire films with vampire Julian Sands lurking around a library and fixating on Suzanna Hamilton
Starflight One (1983)
Made-for-tv disaster movie released to theatres about the attempts to rescue a plane that becomes trapped in orbit
The Horror of It All (1964)
For all that Hammer’s Terence Fisher was raised to the status of cult director, there are efforts such as this unfunny Old Dark House comedy that reveal that he was not always on form
Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
The fifth of Hammer’s Frankenstein films and the absolute pinnacle of the series. Terence Fisher is on the peak of his form and turns in a series of directorial set pieces that are quite masterful
The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV (1986)
Fourth of the original Star Trek films jumps on board the popularity of time travel themes following Back to the Future to have the regulars time travel back to the present for a series of amiable, easy comic encounters
Fantasia (1940)
The best animated film Disney ever made, created as a work of art with animation set to classical music. The segments vary between abstraction, comic eccentricity and evocations of nightmare. The results are magical.
Turkey Shoot (1983)
Ridiculous, splatter-heavy Australian-made film about a prison camp where prisoners are offered their freedom in a run while pursued by armed hunters
The Fan (1981)
A film made not long after the John Lennon shooting with Lauren Bacall as a Hollywood star stalked by fan Michael Biehn who snaps and turns psycho after a perceived rejection
Scooby-Doo (2002)
The live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
The first attempt to film the works of cult Cyberpunk author William Gibson met with very mixed success, nevertheless is a modest effort that does mainline the essence of Gibson’s world
The Hunger (1983)
The debut film from Tony Scott was a commercial flop but is a sumptuous, elegant, beautifully filmed work that is often a case of style over substance. It is nevertheless a challenging attempt to create a modern day vampire film
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)
The third of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, this came out the same year as Star Wars and Harryhauden’s stop-motion animated creatures look much more flat in comparison
Little Shop of Horrors (1986)
Roger Corman’s no-budget comedy about a killer plant is remade as a multi-million dollar musical with top-drawer effects. Missing is the original’s black comedy but this has many appealingly eccentric delights of its own
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002)
Beautifully animated DreamWorks film that tells the life of a horse on the Western frontier. For once, anthropological realism is maintained and the animals do not talk
The Fantasist (1986)
Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, makes an Irish-set thriller in which a country girl moved to the city is stalked by a serial killer who sends his victims poetry
Powder (1995)
Film from the controversial Victor Salva with Sean Patrick Flanery as an alienated teenager who demonstrates remarkable powers
Possessed By the Night (1994)
B-budget dircetor Fred Olen Ray has taken the plot of Gremlins and thrown it together with one of his sofctore erotic films in which a mind-controlling goblin creature forces people to have sex
Monty Python’s The Life of Brian (1979)
The Monty Python team’s finest hour, a wickedly irreverent spoof on Christianity that contains some of their most side-splitting gags
Minority Report (2002)
Steven Spielberg takes on Philip K. Dick in a much grittier film than he usually makes. In the strong and intelligent script, Tom Cruise is an officer on a police force that predicts crime before it happens only to then be hunted by his own side
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
One of Woody Allen’s most warmly funny films of the 90s with a side-splitting and award-winning performance from Mira Sorvino. Throughout, Allen gently spoofs Greek tragedy.
Cyborg3 (1994)
The second of Michael Schroeder’s sequels to Albert Pyun’s Cyborg both of which are better than the original. This does interesting things with the hokey idea of a pregnant android.
A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge (1985)
The first and worst of the A Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. The dream logic becomes incoherent, while the film is twisted out of shape to become a bizarre gay Coming Out parable
Hercules Unchained (1959)
Sequel to the Steve Reeves-starring Hercules where Hercules is wooed by an evil queen after drinking the Waters of Forgetfulness. Spectacular but stolid
The Shape of Things to Come (1979)
Shoddy low-budget Canadian-made attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, this promotes itself as a bogus sequel to the H.G. Wells classic
Edward Scissorhands (1990)
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp in one of their best collaborations. Burton creates this sweet oddball fable that is a take on Frankenstein where the monster becomes an alienated youth with scissors for hands
Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer who gains a psychic link into the mind of a killer. From a John Carpenter script but the thriller plotting is never up to the chic suggestiveness the film is given
The Extraordinary Adventures of the Mouse and His Child (1977)
Based on a popular children’s book, this is a simplistic animated film for very young children about a toy mouse that goes on a quest to find freedom
The Face of Fu Manchu (1965)
The first and best of the series of films featuring Christopher Lee at his ice cold best as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. This was made at the height of the Anglo-horror cycle and employs the production values to superlative regard.
I, Monster (1971)
The title and names are changed, otherwise this is an extremely faithful adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Christopher Lee. Not very successful at the time, this interestingly opens the story out with Freudian psychology
The Art of Dying (1991)
Actor Wings Hauser directs and stars in a film in which he plays a detective pursuing a killer who is luring teenage runaways into making snuff films
Escape from New York (1981)
One of the key films from John Carpenter with Kurt Russell giving his best ever performance, a slick exciting action film that imagines a future Manhattan Island having been transformed into a lawless prison
Night of the Eagle (1961)
Excellent film about an academic who discovers his wife is a witch. A film that delves into a psychological place between rationalism and belief with stark effect
The Bees (1978)
This was made as a quickie cash-in on Irwin Allen’s big-budgeted bomb The Swarm. Cheap effects and ridiculous plotting cause it to topple well over into bad movie stakes
The Omega Code (1999)
The Omen and imitators had been exploiting Biblical End Times prophecies for years but this is one that approaches it from a Christian perspective. The film also started a wave of serious faith-based films that employed name actors in order to carry them to crossover audiences
The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter (1990)
Sequel to The Neverending Story made with a better budget. This delivers some amazing sets and creature designs but is killed with a script that discards the metaphors and complex level of meta-fiction of the original
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
The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu (1980)
Peter Sellers’ last film and usually lambasted by his fans. Spoofing the great villain, Sellers indulges his penchant for playing multiple roles and the result is some likeable silliness
The Keep (1983)
Adaptation from a best-selling horror novel about Nazis battling an ancient evil. Michael Mann lavishes amazing visuals on the film but almost entirely sidelines the horror element
Single Santa Seeks Mrs. Claus (2004)
Mawkishly sentimental Christmas tv movie with Steve Guttenberg as Santa’s son who needs to find a wife before he can take over the role. So cliched and written to expectation that it lacks any conflict
The New Adventures of Tarzan (1935)
A serial Tarzan adventure that stood outside the regular Johnny Weissmuller films. A producer formed a business partnership with Edgar Rice Burroughs and went to Guatemala to shoot
Death Warmed Up (1984)
The first horror film from New Zealand, a gore drenched effort about a mad scientist creating zombies. Directed by much energy even if it suffers a complete lack of plot
Charlotte’s Web (1973)
A classic animated film. A delightful film about a young pig that seeks to change his fate and gets aid from a spider that can spell. A theatrical outing for Hanna-Barbera, creator of tv’s The Flintstones et al
Torture Garden (1967)
Following the success of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, this was the second of Amicus’s trademark horror anthologies with Burgess Meredith as a carnival barker showing people their fates
Destination Inner Space (1966)
A B movie that essentially locates The Thing from Another World underwater with an alien monster invading a sub-oceanic research laboratory. Not dissimilar to a host of B movie copying Alien in the 80s/90s
The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
Ninth and weakest of the James Bond films. Ian Fleming created a great nemesis in the assassin Scaramanga and the film casts it with Christopher Lee – only to fail to write the role interesting enough for Lee to fill
Streets (1990)
Gritty urban drama with Christina Applegate as a teenage runaway on the mean streets of L.A. harassed by a psycho cop