The Blue Man (1985)
Canadian-made horror from the heyday of the VHS era about psychic vampires terrorising people via astral projection in order to steal their bodies
The Body (2001)
Thriller in which Antonio Banderas is a Catholic priest dispatched to Jerusalem to deal with the apparent archaeological discovery of Jesus Christ’s body
The Body Snatcher (1945)
One of the classic films of producer Val Lewton, a loose adaptation the historical story of the 19th Century body snatchers Burke and Hare. Robert Wise is on fine form as director and Boris Karloff gives one of his best performances.
The Bogus Witch Project (2000)
An anthology made up of six short film spoofs of The Blair Witch Project with a wraparound featuring the excrutiatingly unfunny Pauly Shore
The Bone Collector (1999)
Serial killer thriller with Denzel Washington as Jeffrey Deaver’s quadriplegic profiler Lincoln Rhyme and Anjelina Jolie as a rookie cop who becomes his aide
The Boneyard (1991)
Part of the 80s/90s fad for makeup effects driven popcorn horror – in this case, actually directed by an effects artist. The film moves slow as molasses but the giant zombie poodle and zombie Phyllis Diller do compensate
The Boogens (1981)
One of the original troglodyte films about creatures lurking underground that was the template for films like The Descent. Well-made as 1980s horror films go but it takes forever before the main action kicks in
The Boogey Man (1980)
Probably the most well-known film from hackmeister Ulli Lommel. An odd mix of Halloween ripoff and an occult film but nothing that stands out beyond a couple of weird novelty deaths
The Boogeyman (2023)
British director Rob Savage made a great splash in the early 2020s with Host and Dashcam. Here he turns his attentions to the adaptation of a Stephen King short story
The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942)
Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre make an unexpectedly great comic pairing in this mad scientist screwball comedy that comes with an exhaustingly madcap pace
The Book of Eli (2010)
Denzel Washington as an enigmatic Man With No Name wandering the post-holocaust apocalyptic landscape. This follows the cliches of the genre before it bizarrely morphs into a Biblical allegory partway through
The Book of Life (1998)
A darkly funny Hal Hartley film set on the eve of The Millennium as Jesus Christ wanders about Manhattan having doubts whether to unleash the Biblical Apocalypse
The Book of Life (2014)
An animated film produced by Guillermo Del Toro that draws on his Mexican heritage and Day of the Dead mythology. An amazingly colourful and happy film with one of the most unique design schemes ever
The Book Thief (2013)
Narrated by Death, this story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany comes with the self-importance of awards consideration bait. One of the great crimes of modern history (The Holocaust) is reduced to picture postcard sentiments
The Borderlands (2013)
The Found Footage horror film quickly became worn out. However, this effort about the investigation into a haunted church in the English countryside manages to generate some quite reasonable atmosphere
The Borrower (1991)
The film that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer director John McNaughton chose to make next – about an an alien criminal sentenced to Earth who is forced to ‘borrow’ people’s heads to replace its own
The Borrowers (1997)
Amiable adaptation of Mary Norton’s books about a family of miniature people that live in hiding in a human house. Aimed for big scale effects and slapstick set-pieces but sufficiently engaging nevertheless
The Borrowers [Season 1] (1992)
Absolutely delightful and charming BBC series about a family of miniature people who live in secrecy inside the walls of human houses. The best of several versions of the popular books
The Boss Baby (2017)
This has one of the most original nemeses created for an animated film – a baby in business suit and briefcase and with the demeanour of a ruthless corporate CEO – only for the film to then go and soften the character
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 Bothersome Man (2006)
A very black Norwegian comedy in which a man who committed suicide wakes up in an afterlife very much like this world but where everyone suffers from a maddening blandness
The Bourne Legacy (2012)
A reboot of the Jason Bourne series with Jeremy Renner replacing Matt Damon. The exhiliratingly kinetic action scenes are watered down, while the plot lacks the same focus. The first of the series to enter genre territory however
The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters (1954)
The Bowery Boys were a poor man’s Abbott and Costello; here in one of their most entertaining outings they try to compete with Abbott and Costello’s monster bashes
The Box (2009)
Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly adapts a Richard Matheson story about a couple who are offered a terrible choice by a stranger but delivers a bafflingly incomprehensible film
The BoxTrolls (2014)
From Laika, a stop-motion animated work about misunderstood creatures who wear boxes as shells and are perceived as monsters by polite society. An enormous degree of creativity has gone into this
The Boy (2015)
Not to be confused with the more profile film of the same name around the same time, this is a standout work about a psychopathic child. A real slow burn film that comes so understated that it can leave you gasping
The Boy (2016)
There is a certain appeal to the premise – nanny is expected to tend a doll that everyone pretends is real only to discover it might be alive. Director William Brent Bell but he redeems himself in terms of creepy atmosphere only to blow it with a lame twist ending
The Boy and the Beast (2015)
If Hayao Miyazaki ever follows through on his threat to retire, the one most likely inheritor would be Mamoru Hosoda. This is a perfectly enjoyably film that is sort of The Karate Kid by way of Disney’s The Jungle Book
The Boy and the Heron (2023)
The twelfth film from Hayao Miyzaki at age 82, a quasi-autobiographical if a slightly less classic work. A renaissance of many Miyazaki themes as a boy follows a heron though into a strange fantasy otherworld
The Boy and the World (2013)
Brazilian animated film that comes with a lovely simplicity – all jagged washes of colour, characters as simple lines, endless patterns and a minimalist plot – out of which it manages to weave an incredibly pretty eye candy
The Boy Next Door (2015)
A cougar version of Fatal Attraction with Jennifer Lopez stalked by a teenage boy. On every level this invites ridicule, from J-Lo sleepwalking through her performance to a director who has never made a good film to a script detached from human psychology
The Boy Who Could Fly (1986)
A beautifully sweet and tender film where teenager Lucy Deakins moves to a new home and befriends Jay Underwood, the autistic boy next door who dreams of being able to fly
The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (1973)
This comes with a cutely amusing title – about a boy who witnesses his father becoming a werewolf but nobody will believe him – but only emerges as a cheap and shabby B movie
The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (2010)
Entirely unrelated to the forgettable 1973 film, this is a children’s film for the Nickelodeon Channel. Merely adequate but no more. Brooke Shields seems to be having the time of her life vamping it up with Bela Lugosi accent
The Boy Who Turned Yellow (1972)
Michael Powell was one of the greatest and most underrated post-War British directors. This was his last film, a bizarre children’s film about a boy being turned yellow and visited by an alien
The Boy With Green Hair (1948)
A very young Dean Stockwell stars in this strange anti-war fable about a boy who wakes up to find his hair has turned green
The Boys From Brazil (1978)
Big-budget thrillers with Nazi villains were popular in the 70s. This pits acting legends Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck on opposite sides in a conceptually ingenious plot about the attempts to clone Hitler
The Boys Next Door (1985)
This caused quite a shock when it came out, a Penelope Spheeris film with Charlie Sheen and Maxwell Caulfield as two teenagers who feel they have no future and go on a killing spree in Los Angeles
The Brain (1988)
Mad psychologist creates a giant brain about the size of a small car that controls minds and is hungry to devour people. A deliriously entertaining film that seems to embody the essence of the cheesy makeup effects driven 1980s horror film
The Brain Eaters (1958)
A B budget variant on the 1950s an alien body snatchers film uncreditedly based on Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters. Other films in this niche created great paranoid atmosphere but here the results only look cheap and tatty
The Brain from Planet Arous (1957)
B movie in which John Agar is possessed by a glowing alien brain, this unfortunately fails to live up to either its lurid vigour or its bad movie reputation
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)
Classic Z budget film about a severed head in a laboratory that has plenty to place it in the bad movie category but is made with such a perverse panache that it is hard to dislike
The Brainiac (1962)
Bizarre Mexican film about a resurrected warlock who transforms into a bat creature to take retribution against the descendants of those who burned him at the stake
The Brand New Testament (2015)
A wickedly irreverent and even occasionally blasphemous comedy in which God is a scruffy, bad-tempered man living in Brussels who spends all his time devising ways to make humans miserable
The Brass Teapot (2012)
Comedy with a head-scratching premise where a couple discover a teapot that produces money whenever they hurt themselves. Such a loopy premise could work as a black comedy but this plays itself as a frothy light fantasy
The Brave Little Toaster (1987)
This is a charming and delightful animated film about a group of talking household appliances appliances that set out on a quest to find their young master. Little seen at the time but two sequels followed.
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 Brave One (2007)
Neil Jordan teams up with action producer Joel Silver to make a vigilante film where Jodie Foster starts toting a gun against thugs on the streets after the murder of her fiancé
The Breach (2022)
Rodrigo Gudiño, editor of Rue Morgue magazine, directs a horror film with strong Lovecraftian overtones about a portal opened at a mysterious cabin in the woods
The Breakthrough (1994)
A film about the scientific efforts to explore the afterlife, this suffers from too many good ideas and not enough of the effects needed to convey its journey
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 Breed (2006)
Produced by Wes Craven and directed by his assistant director, this features a group of twentysomethings led by Michelle Rodriguez trapped on an island with a horde of killer dogs
The Bride (1985)
Lushly mounted remake of Bride of Frankenstein with Sting as Frankenstein and Jennifer Beals as the Bride. More costume drama than it ever is a horror story.
The Bride With White Hair (1993)
Classic Hong Kong Wu Xia film featuring much aerial swordplay and lushly dressing/lighting but also a work of wildly uneven tone
The Bride With White Hair 2 (1993)
Sequel to the earlier Wu Xia film, which brings back the leads in an enjoyable adventure that places much more emphasis on flying swordplay
The Bride! (2026)
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s reinterpretation of The Bride of Frankenstein is the first spectacularly bad film of the 2020s. Jessie Buckley gives an absurdly unrestrained performance and the film’s tone veers all over the place
The Brides in the Bath (2003)
British true crime tv drama based on the George Joseph Smith who in the early years of the 20th Century would marry women, get them to sign life insurance policies and then drown them in the bath
The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The second of Hammer’s Dracula films has to work around the absence of Christopher Lee. Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing is brought to the forefront and Terence Fisher provides some standout directorial sequences
The Brides of Fu Manchu (1966)
The second film with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. Not quite up with its predecessor The Face of Fu Manchu but still an exciting blend of pulp melodrama, super-science and Yellow Peril
The Brides Wore Blood (1972)
Obscure 1970s horror that generates a certain creepy effect with four girls gathered at a big old house for sinister purpose. before going sidewise during the second half amid a profusion of competing tropes
The Brood (1979)
One of David Cronenberg’s great early films. Fueled by a messy divorce Cronenberg was going through, it is set around a radical psychological institute that encourages people to manifest their repressed angers through their bodies
The Brother from Another Planet (1984)
John Sayles responded to E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial and its suburban middle-class fantasy with this wry comedy in which a mute Black alien visitor (Joe Morton) arrives in Manhattan
The Brothers Grimm (2005)
Probably the least satisfying of Terry Gilliam’s films that turns the real-life fairytale authors into scam ghost hunters in an adventure. Purportedly the subject of behind the scenes troubles, the film never quite comes to life on screen
The Brown Bunny (2003)
Vincent Gallo’s muchly ridiculed directorial effort is an unbelievably indulgent film consisting of long, tedium-inducing scenes where nothing happens. It does arrive at a a surprise left field ending that travels into genre territory
The Brøken (2008)
Variation on Invasion of the Body Snatchers with body-snatching doppelgangers emerging from mirrors. Directed with an impressive air of subtle, brooding disquiet, this manages to run up some reasonable twists on an oft-told tale
The Bulldog Breed (1960)
In the 1960s, a number of popular comics made films about the Space Race. This was a vehicle for Norman Wisdom, a minor British comic of the era, and has him enrolled in the Navy and launched into orbit
The Bumblebee Flies Anyway (1999)
This feels like a weepie Disease of the Week drama where Elijah Wood is an amnesiac placed in a hospital ward of terminal patients before the film arrives at an SF conceptual twist
The Bunker (2001)
This borrows a good deal of its essentials from The Keep in the tale of German soldiers during World War II being haunted as they take refuge in a bunker
The Bunker Game (2022)
Horror film in which a group of LARPers (live-action role-players) use a wartime bunker as a location and are trapped where the bunker appears to be haunted
The Burning (1981)
Shabbily made entry in the 1980s slasher genre. Noted in retrospect for several before they were famous names and being the first producing credit of Harvey Weinstein
The Butcher Boy (1997)
Neil Jordan makes a film about an abusive childhood that actually ends up asking us to cheer on the central character’s emergence as a murderer. Maybe the most cheerfully entertaining film ever made about child abuse.
The Butcher’s Wife (1991)
Amiable romantic comedy with Demi Moore as a clairvoyant who dispenses prophetic advice to everybody while caught in her own romantic entanglements
The Butcher, The Chef and the Swordsman (2010)
Pitched as another Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, this has multiple stories, a cluttered look and a bizarreness that comes out more like a Wu Xia version of Scott Pilgrim vs the World
The Butterfly Effect (2004)
This was dismissed at the time because of its star Ashton Kutcher but is a surprisingly good film in which Kutcher finds the ability to travel back in time and alter his past
The Butterfly Effect 2 (2006)
The Butterfly Effect was not a film set up for a sequel but we get one here anyway with a different person flipping back in time to change his rather dull and uninteresting life
The Bye Bye Man (2017)
Film based on an urban legend film about a boogeyman that kills everybody that speaks its name. Director Stacy Title creates one or two haunting and unusual scenes but in every other aspect this emerges as exceedingly generic