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 (or more so it followers) 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 usual In the strong, intelligent script, Tom Cruise is an officer on a police force that predicts crime before it happens
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
One of Woody Allen’s most warmly funny films of the 90s, featuring a side-splitting and Academy Award-winning performance from Mira Sorvino. 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
The Exterminating Angel (1962)
An acclaimed surrealistic film from Luis Buñuel in which a group of people attend an upper-class dinner party but then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room
The Hunt for Red October (1990)
The first and best Tom Clancy adaptation about a hi-tech Soviet submarine whose captain goes rogue. Director John McTiernan conducts the undersea maneuverings with gripping tension
Excalibur (1981)
The definitive film version of the Arthurian legends. John Boorman gives us a magnificent and soaring work of beautiful impassioned imagery that delves deep into the rich mythology of the cycle
East of Piccadilly (1940)
An obscure British thriller about murders in an apartment building of eccentric tenants. This turns into something really quite strange
The Electronic Monster (1960)
The first dreamscape film, before other films took up the theme, most notably Inception. By contrast this is a dull affair that lets most of the possibilities slip through its hands.
Dracula (1931)
The classic adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel that made Bela Lugosi into a horror icon and created the image of the vampire in dinner-suit and with East European accent. For all its stature, it is a dull and talky film and Lugosi is overwrought
Duel (1971)
The first film from Steven Spielberg, a tv movie that was released to theatres. Spielberg demonstrates style to spare in the gripping tale of a lone man on the road who finds himself stalked and followed by a murderous truck
Faust (1994)
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer offers up his wonderfully bizarre part-live-action, part-Claymation interpretation of the classic story of Faust and his pact with The Devil
The Eye Creatures (1965)
Larry Buchanan must count as one of the all-time bad movie directors and in this ultra-cheap alien invader film, in itself a remake of Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), he is true to form
Island of Terror (1966)
Director Terence Fisher made his name at Hammer Films but in the 1960s broke away to make a trilogy of SF films. This features the novelty of a giant virus creature but Fisher fails to generate much suspense
Kiss of the Vampire (1962)
One of the more overlooked of the Hammer vampire films. This doesn’t feature Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing but does some reasonable things in its own right
Resident Evil (2002)
Based on the survival horror videogame, this was the first in a surprisingly popular series of films. It also presaged a major return of the zombie film during the 2000s/10s, even if this only treads where George Romero went better before
The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars (1997)
Third of the Brave Little Toaster films, this takes the talking appliances to Mars and comes with an appealingly zany sense of humour
The Brave Little Toaster to the Rescue (1997)
The first of two Brave Little Toaster sequels, this plays more along the lines of a regular animated film formula but has its charms
The Boston Strangler (1968)
A high-profile studio film based on the real-life Boston Strangler murders. This is liberal with the facts but Tony Curtis giving one of his best performances as Albert DeSalvo
The Seduction (1982)
Ultra-trashy thriller with Morgan Fairchild as a tv newsreader stalked by next-door neighbour Andrew Stevens where she engages in the title seduction to eliminate him. A really bad film
The Watcher in the Woods (1980)
Problem ridden Disney ghost story with a science-fiction rationalisation that never quite comes together on screen
Village of the Damned (1995)
Director John Carpenter did amazing things with his remake of The Thing but was not able to replicate such with his remake of Village of the Damned, which misses the taut atmosphere of the 1960 film
Ewoks and the Marauders of Endor (1986)
Follow-up to The Ewok Adventure, a tv movie released to theatres internationally. This is a better film than its predecessor that even captures something of the Star Wars spirit on occasions
Forbidden Planet (1956)
A classic of 1950s SF that creates one of the most well remembered screen robots. An uncredited adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there are few other films that devote so much attention to creating a sense of wonder
Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (2002)
The second of George Lucas’s Stars Wars prequels is no particular improvement. The romance is stiff and awkward, badly written while the effects sequences seem to be running out of new things to do and so just up the scale of what has happened before with so much going on it reaches a point of visual overload
Crime Zone (1989)
A low-budget SF-action film produced by Roger Corman with David Carradine as a police chief in a dystopian future who becomes wound up in the lives of two young lovers on the run
Escape to Witch Mountain (1975)
Disney live-action film with two psi-powered kids on the run. A popular hit that seems to have been mostly construed around a series of novelty effects set-pieces
Tarzan’s Hidden Jungle (1955)
The first of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films although it does little to vary from the well-established formula of the previous eighteen entries
Virtuosity (1995)
Director Brett Leonard started the fascination with Virtual Reality off with The Lawnmower Man but shot himself in the foot with this absurd braindead follow-up in which Denzel Washington pursues a madly OTT Russell Crowe as an android serial killer
Drop Dead Fred (1991)
Sort of Harvey remade by way of Beetlejuice wherein Phoebe Cates’s childhood imaginary companion returns to wreak havoc. A film that makes a beeline for mud-pie throwing and general anarchy
Embrace the Darkness II (2001)
Embrace the Darkness was a surprisingly good work of vampire erotica. This, the first of two sequels, seems more interested in being a horror film than erotica
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
Gwendoline (1984)
From the director of Emmanuelle, this is an adaptation of an adult comic-book that replays the lost city adventure with the addition of a mind-boggling softcore fetishism
Postmortem (1998)
Albert Pyun jumps aboard the post The Silence of the Lambs serial killer thriller fad with a routine that has Charlie Sheen as a writer in Glasgow being taunted by the killer he wrote a book about
The Breed (2001)
A vampire film with an original premise, a buddy cop film where a vampire and human partner are paired together in a world where vampires are revealing their presence to humans for the first time
The Last Starfighter (1984)
One of the sillier films made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is recycling third hand cliches and reduces these to simplistic fantasies of military heroism for the videogame generation
Solaris (1972)
Called the Russian 2001. Andrei Tarkovsky makes one of the great SF films, a haunting ghost story set on a space station as an alien planet below drives the crew mad with recreated doppelgangers of their loved ones
To Die For (1989)
One of the first of the modern wave of darkly romantic vampire films that became the in-thing in the 1990s. This is occasionally effective but was eclipsed by later entries
Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)
This was the second of Jim Varney’s Ernest P. Worrel comedies. It sees Santa Claus looking for a replacement and Ernest coming to the aid amid a series of comic shenanigans
Electric Dreams (1984)
Lightweight, rather silly effort where Lenny Von Dohlen’s home computer becomes sentient and the two compete for the love of neighbour Virginia Madsen
The Horn Blows at Midnight (1942)
A screwball comedy with Jack Benny as a trumpeter send down from Heaven to Earth to blow the Last Trumpet who ends up getting distracted by a series of comic mishaps
Francis (1950)
This was the first in a series of excruciating comedies that pairs hapless Donald O’Connor with Francis, a talking mule. Six sequels followed
Taxi Driver (1976)
Possibly the best film made by Martin Scorsese. A disturbing vision of urban psychosis set in a morally festering New York City where the psycho, Robert De Niro’s title character who spills over with pent-up violence, actually becomes the hero of the show
Erik the Viking (1989)
Terry Jones of Monty Python fame makes a comedy with Tim Robbins as a non-violent Viking on a quest to bring about Ragnarok. A film that seems to think it is funnier than it ends up being
Dragonfly (2002)
Kevin Costner believes his late wife is trying to communicate with him. Comedy director Tom Shadyac makes his first serious film but it is so respectable and with all the horror element bled out of it as to be dull
Jungle Woman (1944)
The second of Universal’s trilogy that began with Captive Wild Woman, starring the exotic Acquanetta as a woman who transforms into an ape. Mostly routine
Krull (1983)
A big-budget fantasy film made too much in the shadow of Star Wars by people with little understanding of the genre. The fantasy elements feel leaden and fail to take any imaginative flight
Photographing Fairies (1997)
One of two films that came out in 1997 about the Cottingley Fairies Hoax. In comparison to the other, FairyTale: A true Story, this expands the premise out into a remarkable study of altered perception
Arcade (1994)
A quickie effort made by Albert Pyun for Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions to exploit the Virtual Reality themes popularised by The Lawnmower Man, concerning a malevolent VR videogame
2001: A Space Travesty (2000)
Supposedly an Airplane-styled movie parody that takes on 2001: A Space Odyssey (although this soon gets forgotten), this is one of the most painfully unfunny films ever made
18 Again (1988)
One of the spate of 1980s bodyswap comedies a la Big, Vice Versa and Like Father, Like Son in which octogenarian George Burns swaps bodies with his teenage grandson Charlie Schlatter
Melies Cinemagician (2011)
Melies Cinemagician was a special screening of a selection of films from Georges Melies presented by Vancouver’s Vancity Theater to celebrate the 150th anniversary of his birth
Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)
Wackily funny SF musical with Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey as aliens who land in the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Julien Temple with a giddily effervescent silliness
Gamera, The Guardian of the Universe (1995)
Here Shusuke Kaneko revived the Gamera series of the 1960s/70s with a series of stunning effects. The result promptly set a new standard for the Japanese monster movie
Silver Bullet (1985)
Overlooked but not entirely unworthwhile Stephen King adaptation about the hunt for a werewolf preying on a small town
Wrong is Right (1982)
A sprawling international political thriller/satire about stolen nuclear weapons starring Sean Connery as a journalist