The Mad Genius (1931)
John Barrymore as a ballet master who controls and dominates pupil Marian Marsh. This was clearly made as an attempt to replicate the success that Barrymore had playing more or less exactly the same type of role in the earlier Svengali
Freeway II: Confessions of a Trickbaby (1999)
Matthew Bright’s even better sequel to Freeway where he conducts an outrageous and quite brilliant modernisation of Hansel and Gretel now recast with two juvenile delinquents on the run
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
Hollow Man (2000)
Paul Verhoeven uses CGI effects to revamp the invisible man film with amazing results. On the other hand, Verhoeven’s penchant for sex and violence overkill quickly emerges with distasteful results
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.
Fangs of the Living Dead (1969)
The first film from Spanish director Amando de Ossorio, later known for the Blind Dead series. A Euro vampire film starring Anita Ekberg, this proves dreary on all counts
The Gate (1987)
Modest horror film of the 1980s where kids inadvertently open a demonic gateway. Like a juvenile version of Poltergeist, this comes with the bonus of some fairly good effects
The Magic Carpet (1985)
Amiable Danish-made Arabian Nights fantasy for children that has the benefit from being shot on location in Turkey
The Blob (1988)
The original 1958 The Blob gets a full makeover via some sensational state-of-the-art animatronics and makeup effects with impressive results. A much superior work to the original in all ways
Born of Fire (1986)
The world’s first Islamic horror film? A film filled with a constant profusion of weird imagery but otherwise baffllingly incomprehensible
Orca (1977)
After his crass remake of King Kong, Dino de Laurentiis went on to make this blatant copy of Jaws, which was widely ridiculed. Contrarily, i rather liked it – a Moby Dick by way of Jaws, it comes with some visually fantastic moments
Death Race 2000 (1975)
Satiric hit produced by Roger Corman, a spoof of Rollerball, with David Carradine as a driver in a futuristic road race where points are won by running down pedestrians. Also featuring a young unknown Sylvester Stallone
The Abyss (1989)
James Cameron had mixed success with this alien contact film. Much of the show is designed to highlight Cameron’s interest in diving and the effects on display are spectacular but the film peters out at a peculiarly abrupt non-ending
Mad Monster Party? (1967)
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
Black Moon Rising (1986)
Made from an old John Carpenter script, this is a reasonable action film starring Tommy Lee Jones as a professional thief who is tasked with stealing a hi-tech car
Fear (1990)
Fine copy of Eyes of Laura Mars from Rockne S. O’Bannon in which clairvoyant Ally Sheedy gains the ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer
The Deadly Mantis (1957)
Routine entry in the giant bug cycle of the 1950s, this essentially rehashes The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms with a revived prehistoric giant mantis on the attack
Terminal Island (1973)
Film from director Stephanie Rothman about a future where prisoners are exiled to an island whey they create their own ideal society
The Supernaturals (1986)
The first film on the theme of zombies from the American Civil War. Not too badly made and with an unusual cast line-up including Nichelle Nichols as a drill sergeant
Prospero’s Books (1991)
Peter Greenaway gets loose on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, indulging his obsessions with lists and multimedia visuals while the costume department goes completely over-the-top
Critters 2 (1988)
Critters was an entertaining ripoff of Gremlins. This sequel alas draws that appeal thin by being placed in the directorial ham fists of the perpetually awful Mick Garris
Damien’s Seed (1996)
This makes an interesting attempt to rewrite the basics of The Omen as an erotic film. The usual occult happenings but with an emphasis on bodies coupling
Knight Moves (1992)
Christopher Lambert and Diane Lane star in a thriller about a serial killer who treats his victims like a chess game and has turned an entire isolated island into a chessboard
The Invisible Man (1933)
Universal’s adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel that becomes a droll masterpiece in the hands of James Whale and with effects that still hold up today. Followed by a series of sequels
Predator (1987)
This takes the previous year’s big hit of Aliens and fuses it with The Most Dangerous Game, swapping that story’s bored aristocratic hunter for an alien hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger and a team of soldiers in the jungles of South America
Late for Dinner (1991)
A thoughtful and well-written Cryogenic Sleepers Awake film that charts the culture shock experienced by two men frozen in the 1960s and thawed out in the present day
StageFright – Aquarius (1987)
A Giallo thriller about a series of murders that take place during the rehearsal for a play. Michele Soavi directs a series of vivid suspense set-pieces
Brenda Starr (1989)
Disastrous Brooke Shields starring film adaptation of the famous comic-strip about a girl reporter. Nobody involved is taking the show seriously and everything is blown into camp farce.
An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991)
Amblin make a sequel to An American Tail minus the involvement of Don Bluth this time. The story now becomes an amiable animated parody of a Western
The Fourth Man (1983)
One of the early films from Paul Verhoeven, an amusingly blasphemous tale that draws more than a little from Don’t Look Now with gay writer Jeroen Krabbe becoming wound into the dealings of femme fatale Renee Soutendijk
Welcome to Blood City (1977)
Clearly influenced by the original Westworld, this is an interesting film about people waking up inside a computer-simulated Western town. Without realising it, this was the very first film to depict Virtual Reality
On the Beach (2000)
TV mini-series remake of the 1959 nuclear war film. With no longer the need to make messages as in the original, the story has been expanded out with a lush romantic sweep
Darkside Blues (1994)
Anime where a mysterious other-dimensional stranger aids future rebels. This has a wonderfully ornate Gothic feel but an entirely confusing plot
Beyond Bedlam (1994)
Tatty British film that feels like an attempt to crossbreed A Nightmare on Em Street with The Silence of the Lambs. Star Elizabeth Hurley sued to prevent the film’s release.
The Bare Wench Project (1999)
Following the success of The Blair Witch Project, this was an excruciatingly lame softcore parody with a group of girls tramping in the woods finding almost any excuse to undress and conduct sex-related takes on Blair Witch
Apollo 13 (1995)
Probably the best among Ron Howard’s mostly undistinguished films, a dramatisation of the real-life Apollo 13 space mission disaster. Once the film gets the capsule up into orbit, the drama is gripping
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
The fourth of Universal’s Frankenstein films where Lon Chaney Jr inherits the role of the monster and makes it into a stumbling brute that lacks the pathos of Boris Karloff. The plot recycles what has now become the cliches of the series
Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves! (1997)
The second sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Things are feeling uninspired by this point and this just repeats the first film except makes it the adults who are miniaturised
The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps (2000)
Sequel to the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor. That film’s tour-de-force was a scene with Murphy playing all the members of his family. Here the family have been brought to the fore. Murphy’s performance and the effects are expectedly great but the plot is all over the place
Beanstalk (1994)
A low-budget children’s film produced by Charles Band, this modernises the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. A sense of humour often proves the film’s saving grace among the tattiness.
Angel of the Night (1998)
Not very well made Danish vampire film that almost redeems itself by trying to conduct everything as a John Woo-styled action film
Club Vampire (1997)
Set around a secret society of vampires, this is a strong contender for the worst vampire film ever made. It suffers badly from a directorial approach that is unsure if it is taking things seriously
The In Crowd (2000)
This is sold with the appealing idea of someone slaughtering their way through a bitchy teen clique. However, the film on show is far tamer than anything that it is promises to be
What Lies Beneath (2000)
Robert Zemeckis takes on the ghost story with uncommon effectiveness. While this is average on a story level, Zemeckis’s directorial approach pushes it to the unnervingly spooky, with the last fifteen minutes being one of the most suspense-filled sequences in recent memory
The Sender (1997)
Action film with Michael Madsen and a mystery alien woman fighting a government coverup of UFOs to retrieve his abducted daughter
The Whole Wide World (1996)
Biopic of Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonja and others. Contains some fine acting from Vincent D/Onofrio and Renee Zellwegeras the teacher he becomes involved with
El Topo (1970)
Cult film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surrealistic Western that comes with an incoherent mishmash of symbolism, Zen mysticism and 1960s raised consciousness
Wishmaster (1997)
Rather enjoyable effort about an evil djinn that grants cursed wishes. Directed by makeup effects artist Robert Kurtzman, this has been designed to highlight various effects. Three sequels followed.
The Awakening (1980)
Adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars about the spirit of an Ancient Egyptian queen possessing a modern day woman. Lavishly produced with a series of novelty deaths modeled on The Omen. Also the first mummy film to actually shoot in Egypt
The Banker (1989)
Psycho film in which an investment banker relieves the pressures of the corporate world by going out hunting people with a crossbow. A film rich in ideas is given a disappointing B movie treatment
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series
Single White Female (1992)
Part of the late 1980s/early 90s spate of post-Fatal Attraction psycho-thrillers featuring deranged women stalkers. A creepy Jennifer Jason Leigh moves into Bridget Fonda’s apartment and then turns obsessive
The Time Travelers (1964)
Modest B-budget SF film with scientists opening a time portal and becoming caught up in a future war between humanity and mutants
Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity (1987)
Easily dismissed because of its deliberately cheesy title, this is a modestly enjoyable relocating of The Most Dangerous Game on another planet
Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D. (1990)
One of the more amusing and better made Troma films – their take on the superhero fad of the early 90s featuring a Japanese-themed superhero
The Red Violin (1998)
A reasonable arthouse hit, this tells the story of a cursed violin through five different periods of history
The Jungle Book (1994)
The first of the Disney live-action remakes of their animated films. Stephen Sommers abandons the talking animals and gives us a film that it more Tarzan than Rudyard Kipling set in a lush fantasy version of India
Billy’s Holiday (1995)
Head-scratching Australian oddity in which a middle-aged man becomes possessed and suddenly able to sing with the voice of Billie Holliday
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.
Horrors of the Black Museum (1959)
A highly entertaining Herman Cohen production where Michael Gough plays a mad crime writer who employs a series of cruel sensationalistic deaths for his victims
Embrace the Darkness (1998)
A surprisingly good work of vampire erotica made with some sensuality and apparent care by those involved, along with some quite imaginative touches of fantastique
Dracula – Prince of Darkness (1966)
The third of Hammer’s Dracula films. Christopher Lee returns to the role but is given no dialogue. Nevertheless, Terence Fisher delivers some vivid directorial set-pieces that make this one of the better sequels in the series
Dreamscape (1984)
The original version of Inception almost, featuring psychics entering into people’s dreams and then attempts to dream assassinate the US President. Despite much promise, the idea is prosaic in its handling
The Damned (1963)
A very atypical Hammer film. US director Joseph Losey makes a stark and effective contemporary set film about the discovery of children that have been left radioactively mutated by an experiment
The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
The tenth of the James Bond films, the third for Roger Moore. This determines to be spectacular in terms of international locales, effects and sets. It was also the point where the Moore Bond films started to become giant cartoon spectacles of the absurd
Hold That Ghost (1941)
The fourth of Abbott and Costello’s films, a knockoff of the then recent hit of the Bob Hope remake of The Cat and the Canary involving much comedic running around a supposedly haunted mansion
A View to a Kill (1985)
The final outing as James Bond for a visibly aging Roger Moore, the fourteenth Bond film all told. One of the more anonymous among the giant unserious cartoon shows the Moore Bond films became
Octopussy (1983)
The thirteenth James Bond film. the fifth for Roger Moore. While the preceding entry had tried to trim back the cartoonish excesses of the Moore era, it is back to business as usual here. The film frequently feels divorced from the remotest shred of realism
Black Sabbath (1963)
The great Mario Bava directs a horror anthology of three tales, delivering each with considerable spooky atmosphere. The standout among these is The Wurdulak with Boris Karloff as a vampire preying on his family.
X-Men (2000)
Bryan Singer’s dynamic and exciting adaptation of the Marvel Comic title fairly much kicked off the massive fad for Marvel superheroes in the 00s/10s. This was also the film that mad Hugh Jackman into an international superstar.
The Unknown (1927)
Classic, wonderfully twisted Tod Browning film with Lon Chaney as an armless circus performer who lusts for Joan Crawford
Shadow Hours (2000)
Film where recovering addict Balthazar Getty is dragged into an underworld of vice by mysterious stranger Peter Weller
The City Under the Sea (1965)
The title of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem is appropriated in an effort to appeal to the 1960s fad for Poe film adaptations, otherwise this is an unrelated work about a lost underwater city ruled by Vincent Price.
Blacula (1972)
A hit among the Blaxploitation fad of the 1970s, this has the novelty of casting a vampire film with African-American actor William Marshall. A whole series of Blaxploitation takes on horror themes followed.
Marooned (1969)
Released three months after the Moon Landing, this was a big-budget film depicting a space mission disaster that leaves three astronauts marooned in orbit
The Kid (2000)
Likeable and appealing Disney film in which Bruce Willis is an asshole executive who suddenly finds a kid in his apartment who turns out to be his nerdier boyhood self
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Second Sight (1989)
An attempt to copy Ghostbusters concerning a psychic detective agency that degenerates into painfully bad slapstick
Medicine Man (1992)
John McTiernan was one of the great action directors of the 1980s but this drama with Sean Connery as a scientist in the Amazonian rainforest and his bickering relationship with Lorraine Bracco failed to come off
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
The start of the 90s renaissance of Disney animation, a beautifully made adaptation of the fairytale that hearkens back to the Disney Golden Age. The only animated film nominated for an Academy Award Best Picture
Waxworks (1924)
A classic of the silent German Expressionist era, telling three tales throughout history – about the Caliph of Baghdad, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper – all set around the locale of a wax museum
Thumbelina (1994)
Animated film from Don Bluth, an insipid adaptation of the fairytale that eventually bogs down as a comic picaresque (*)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (1993)
The third of the original live-action Turtles films is a lazily conceived affair that transplants the Turtles back in time to feudal Japan in a plot that rips off The Seven Samurai
Creepshow (1982)
Stephen King and George Romero collaborate on a horror anthology made as homage to the EC Comics, telling five tales that replicate the blacker-than-black sense of humour (and even the visual look) of the comic-book with hilarious results
Rough Magic (1995)
Venture into Magical Realism with Bridget Fonda as a magician’s assistant who undergoes a Mexican ceremony to emerge with real magical powers. Featuring a young Russell Crowe.
The Return of Swamp Thing (1989)
Wes Craven’s adaptation of DC’s Swamp Thing was not a very good film. This sequel has been handed over to prolific B-budget hack Jim Wynorski who shows he is unable to take any of it seriously
The Mysterious Doctor (1943)
Film made during World War II about the locals of small English town dealing with a haunted mine and uncovering a Nazi infiltration plot
Supergirl (1984)
The Christopher Reeve Superman films started superbly but became wrecked by the producers’ insistence on the insertion of comedy element. Here they turn their attentions to Superman’s cousin Kara whose screen debut is derailed by a horrendously overacting Faye Dunaway
Help! (1965)
After the success of The Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, The Fab Four were quickly packaged in this follow-up. The free-wheeling amiability of that film has become a surreal plotless absurdity where nothing seems too silly
Short Circuit (1986)
Cute robot film that essentially plays out as E.T. with diodes. It gets some laughs and has a some virtuoso effects but as SF this is a film that can only be enjoyed as mindless entertainment
Cape Fear (1991)
Martin Scorsese remakes the classic thriller with Robert De Niro playing the ex-con seeking revenge against his lawyer. Scorsese makes the morality more ambiguous and bring out tensions within the family
Faust (1926)
F.W. Murnau’s version of the classic tale of an aging scholar selling his soul to the Devil for youth and love is one of the most fabulous pieces of pure cinema to come out of the German Expressionist era
Danger: Diabolik (1967)
Mario Bava directs a sublimely stylish and tongue-in-cheek adaptation of an Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief who delights in outwitting and taunting the bumbling authorities
The Batman Superman Movie: World’s Finest (1998)
Film crossover between the 1990s Batman and Superman animated tv series from Bruce Timm. The script does an interesting job in playing the characters, their secret identities and principal villains off against each other
Murders in the Zoo (1933)
Highly entertaining film with Lionel Atwill as a wonderfully mad zookeeper who uses his animals to kill people
Malediction (1990)
A Bert I. Gordon film with Robert Forster as a P.I. hired to search for a missing girl before finding she was mixed up with a modelling agency and the occult
Beetlejuice (1988)
This was where the world took notice of Tim Burton in his second film. This throws the standard ghost story on its head with the dead trying to exorcise the living. The show is dominated by Burton’s wild set-pieces and Michael Keaton’s OTT title performance
The Lost World (1925)
Based on an Arthur Conan Doyle novel and featuring stop-motion animated dinosaurs from King Kong creator Willis O’Brien, this was the quintessential lost world film
The Blob (1958)
Film about a monstrous blob that devours everything in its path. This has become a 1950s B movie classic more through its chessiness value, not to mention theme of teenage rebellion, than necessarily being a great film
Automatic (1995)
Olivier Gruner plays an android who goes rogue after accidentally killing his boss. A dull action film with no greater ambition than to be an SF version of Die Hard