The Mutations (1974)
Rather tedious throwback to the 1940s mad scientist film in which Donald Pleasence is turning people into plant mutations and pawning his mistakes off to the circus
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
Never Talk to Strangers (1995)
A tawdry erotic thriller copy of Basic Instinct where psychologist Rebecca De Mornay is drawn in to become involved with possible stalker Antonio Banderas
The New Adventures of Pinocchio (1999)
Sequel to the 1996 CGI The Adventures of Pinocchio, this is a shabby and drearily made piece of filler that unimaginatively shuffles around the basic elements of the first film without making an effort at all
Night Fright (1967)
An incredibly dreary film about an alien monster menacing a small town. The alien invasion cinema equivalent of watching paint dry. Unseen during its original release, it was then resurrected in the VHS era as an E.T. copy called E.T.n – The Extra-Terrestrial Nasty
Night in Paradise (1946)
Overblown production featuring Turhan Bey as the storyteller Aesop engaged in a romantic adventure
No Retreat, No Surrender (1986)
Martial arts film about a bullied teenager who gets aid from the ghost of Bruce Lee. A shabby effort lifted by the dynamic presence of a then unknown Jean-Claude Van Damme
Nosferatu vs Father Pipecock & Sister Funk (2014)
Tony Watt, who gets my nomination as the world’s worst filmmaker, does the laughtrack trick of taking a film – in this case, the original Nosferatu – and running his usual inane sound effects and excruciating bad acting over the top
The Number 23 (2007)
Demented Joel Schumacher film in which Jim Carrey sees occurrences of the number 23 everywhere and finds his life is being predicted by a book. Featuring one of the most absurd scripts ever written
October 32nd (1992)
Cheap and tatty variant on the Arthurian legends with people trying to prevent a reincarnated sorcerer obtaining Excalibur
Orgy of the Dead (1965)
Thought to be a long-lost Edward D. Wood, Jr film for many years. Although only written by Wood, this has all the bad acting and hilarious purple prose of a Wood film. The film consists of strippers doing routines in a graveyard
The Other Side of the Mirror (2016)
This sets out to offer a dark take on Alice in Wonderland but leaves you scratching you head. At most the Wonderland characters take a lot of drugs, along with a haphazard mix of scenes from the book cheaply shot
Ouija: Summoning (2015)
A bafflingly incoherent effort – quite what it is about I am at a loss to explain. The sole distinction it has that it was repackaged from its anonymous original title to market it on the tail of Blumhouse’s Ouija: Origin of Evil despite the fact an ouija board only briefly features at the start
Out of the Body (1989)
A cheapie from cult Ozploitation director Brian Trenchard-Smith about a man having clairvoyant visions of an astral killer
Paranormal Entity (2009)
The Asylum’s answer to Paranormal Activity Oren Peli made his film for $15,000, which is about as cheap as it is possible to make a film; this manages to look even cheaper – simply someone wandering around with a camcorder that is at best aimed in the general direction of things happening
Parasite (1982)
The second directorial outing of a young Charles Band, this is essentially an earthbound version of Alien. Not a very good film, the principal reasons to watch are some cheap effects and a young Demi Moore
Parasitic (2012)
Low-budget directorial effort from a makeup effects artist about a parasitic creature loose in a nightclub after hours
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
Pig Killer (2022)
A film based on true-life Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton who fed his victim’s bodies to his pigs
Piranha Sharks (2016)
Part of the gonzo shark film’s ongoing quest for the most ridiculous title mash-up, this involves a horde of genetically engineered shark-piranha hybrids loose in New York City
Platoon of the Dead (2009)
A painfully amateurish zombie films – the entire show has been shot in someone’s house. There are only two gore effects throughout and the titular platoon the soldiers is limited to only three in number
Possessed (2000)
Steven E. de Souza directs a film that supposedly tells the true story that inspired The Exorcist but in practice is just another excuse to trot out the possession and exorcism cliches
Power Rangers: The Movie (1995)
Film spinoff from the Mighty Morphin Powers Rangers tv series that became a fad in the 90s. All the same rubber monsters and shrieking over-the-top acting is preserved intact
Project Shadowchaser II (1994)
Sequel to the ridiculous Project Shadowchaser, which has another android terrorist this time take over a nuclear power plant
Psycho Shark (2009)
aka Jaws in Japan. A Japanese entry in the Gonzo Killer Shark Film fad
Psychos (2017)
Three abduction survivors seek out the house where they were imprisoned years before. A cheaply made revenge film is turned on its head in an improbable M. Night Shyamalan-esque conceptual reversal
The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)
Misguided attempt to make a sequel to Carrie, this reduces that film’s cry of the downtrodden to petty teen bitcheries, while the psychic eruptions are absurd, the complete antithesis of anything Brian De Palma directed
Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966)
Fascinatingly terrible effort from cult Z-movie maker Ray Dennis Steckler that appears to have been made as a parody of tv’s Batman but comes filled with a mind-boggling ineptitude and classic bad movie dialogue
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
Return of the Living Dead: Necropolis (2005)
Shabbily made hanger-on to the 00s zombie fad that would have gained zero attention without its pedigree name. This completely misses the black humour of the original
Rocktober Blood (1984)
The first in a cluster of mostly terrible 80s films that tried to incorporate horror and rock music, this concerns a rock star sent to the electric chair after a killing spree who now appears to return from the dead
Savage (1995)
Bizarrely incomprehensible film from Avi Nesher set in a Cyberpunk future in which Olivier Gruner is turned into a Neanderthal superhuman by aliens living in cyberspace
The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1985)
Cannon Films produced remake of The Seven Samurai as an Italian gladiator film starring Lou Ferrigno
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
Shark in Venice (2008)
This is where the Sharknado and the modern gonzo shark movie phenomenon began. A ridiculous and cheap film that forgets the necessary tongue-in-cheek attitude and comes out as cheap on all fronts
Sinbad and the War of the Furies (2016)
The Asylum attempt a modern-day Sinbad film – one where Sinbad uses a cellphone and sets sail to L.A. aboard a regular yacht. This is so cheap that it has even been stripped of all the exotic creatures
Sinister Squad (2016)
The Asylum made Avengers Grimm as a copycat of The Avengers films, featuring a team-up of fairytale heroines, and so for the release of Suicide Squad they made this sequel featuring a team-up of fairytale villains. Both films are utterly incomprehensible and require you to essentially ignore the originals
Slaughtered Vomit Dolls (2006)
A hardcore and irredeemably nasty film, this has the aesthetic of a snuff movie and features lots of scenes of victims tortured and vomiting
The Smurfs 2 (2013)
The first film was vaguely passable but this is an agonising piece of commercial product that has reduced everything to lazy slapstick sequences, cutsie laughs and smartass lines played for the single-digit age groups
Snuff (1976)
Arguably the world’s first Found Footage film, this gained a notoriety by conducting a scam that tried to sell it as a real snuff movie
Something Weird (1967)
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s film, this features a totally demented plot involving a man who develops psychic powers and his encounters with witches and LSD trips
Son of Dracula (1974)
Bizarre musical monster bash with singer Harry Nilsson as Dracula’s son and Ringo Starr as Merlin. A film that seems to have no real clue what it is doing beyond friends having a good time. Nilsson makes surely the screen’s least threatening Dracula, while this is the worst film from the usually great Freddie Francis
Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-o-Rama (1987)
A David DeCoteau film that comes with one of the great exploitation titles of all time but is otherwise a cheap Scream Queen vehicle about a demonically possessed bowling trophy
A Sound of Thunder (2005)
Adaptation of the classic Ray Bradbury time travel story is overblown as a ridiculous big-budget film filled with bad science where the original point of the story disappears in a script that makes no sense
Spacerage: Breakout on Prison Planet (1985)
SF action with Michael Paré convicted to a prison planet from which he attempts to organise the prisoners to make an escape. This is essentially a Western that takes place in SF terms
Spies Like Us (1985)
Unfunny John Landis film with Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd as two bumbling CIA agents. This aspires to being one of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films but only arrives at inane slapstick
Spy Hard (1996)
Styled in the same movie parody style vein as Airplane, this digs into the spy movie, although in actuality it is more of a scattershot spoof of films of then-recent vintage. Leslie Nielsen found regular employ in these types of film
Spymate (2006)
Perhaps the lamest spy movie idea EVER – a children’s film about a spy who goes into action accompanied by a chimpanzee
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
Strangest Dreams: Invasion of the Space Preachers (1990)
A film that has been sold on the basis of its deliberately ridiculous title concept – that of alien invaders attempting to take over the airwaves by posing as televangelists
Suicide Girls Must Die! (2010)
A horror film made by the alt modelling website Suicide Girls where several girls go away for a modelling shoot only for something to cause them to start disappearing
Super Mario Bros. (1993)
The first film to be adapted from a videogame and inauspiciously one of the worst. This is a film made on a decent budget that seems to have set out to be as stupid and brainless as possible
The Sword of the Barbarians (1982)
One of the various low-budget Italian sword and sorcery of the 1980s that borrows much from Conan the Barbarian
Tainted Love (1995)
Tawdry copy of Basic Instinct, an erotic thriller about a woman detective going undercover to investigate a series of murders that are linked to a health club
A Tale from the East (1990)
A wannabe entry aboard the HK supernatural fantasy fad of the late 80s/early 90s sparked by the likes of the Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story films … This, which involves a time travel plot, is crippled by a pandering to a slapstick inanity that makes it a painful watching experience
Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010)
Albert Pyun makes a long promised sequel to his first film The Sword and the Sorcerer but delivers an impoverished mess that is all over the place plotwise
Terror in the Midnight Sun (1959)
Possibly the dreariest alien invader film ever made. A US film shot in Sweden about an expedition to find a crashed meteorite. An alien monster that looks like a giant shaggy Yeti turns up in the last few minutes.
Theodore Rex (1995)
Disastrous flop that tries to do a Lethal Weapon buddy cop film by way of Jurassic Park and gives us a film about a cop with a dinosaur partner!
Thirteen Erotic Ghosts (2002)
Softcore version of Thir13en Ghosts with ghosts hunters wandering through a house and seeing various girls making out. The various encounters seem to lack even the basic conviction from those involved
Three Dangerous Ladies (1988?)
Very obscure horror anthology re-edited from episodes of a Canadian tv series featuring names like John Hurt, Charles Gray and Keir Dullea.
Three on a Meathook (1972)
A great example of the lurid sensationalism with which films of the so-called grindhouse era were sold, designed with a go-for-broke trashiness intended to get you in the door, something that is promptly let down by the shoddiness of the film itself
Tomcat: Dangerous Desires (1993)
Poorly made psycho-sexual thriller where Richard Grieco becomes a predator after getting an injection of feline DNA
Track of the Moon Beast (1976)
Cheap and unmemorable film that is essentially a werewolf film with an SF rationale in which an archaeologist transforms into a lizard creature under the moonlight after touching a moon rock. The most incredible thing is that this has a screenplay by Bill Finger, the unacknowledged co-creator of Batman
Tunnel Vision (1994)
A poorly made Australian copy of Basic Instinct where a detective and his partner are investigated a serial killer. All the heated sexuality comes out tamely
Up from the Depths (1979)
A Jaws copy made by regular Roger Corman scriptwriter Charles B. Griffith. Shot on the cheap in the Philippines and featuring a fish of unidentified species attacking a holiday resort, this is one of the most miserably cheap Jaws copies that came out during this era
Upworld (1991)
The most bizarre of the variants on the buddy cop film that came out after Lethal Weapon in which Anthony Michael Hall is partnered with a gnome. Directed by makeup effects man Stan Winston and an embarrassment to all involved
Urban Legends: Bloody Mary (2005)
The third of the Urban Legend films, unconnected to any of the previous two. This lamely tries to stretch the thin premise out to a story of high school supernatural vengeance
Urge (2016)
The use of a designer drug causes a small island to descend into mass insanity – this is essentially The Crazies repackaged as a slick empty-headed thriller for teen audiences. The various scenes of madness are frequently laughable and the film arrives at possibly the most ridiculous twist ending one has ever seen
The Vampire’s Night Orgy (1974)
Quite possibly the most boring 1970s Euro horror film ever made. Innocent travellers stray into a village of vampires but hardly anything happens in this soporific Spanish effort least of all the title orgy
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
Wishmaster 3: Beyond the Gates of Hell (2001)
The Wishmaster series was a franchise based around a series of novelty effects wherein a malevolent djinn turned wishes against the wisher. This third entry is the utter nadir of the series
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1984)
A painfully cheap entry in the 1980s fad for sword and sorcery films.
The Year Without a Santa Claus (2006)
Dull live-action tv remake of the Rankin-Bass stop-motion animated Christmas special
Zombie Holocaust (1980)
One of the most extreme films among the early 1980s fad for Italian zombie films, which it also manages to merge with the Italian cannibal film. Beyond the provision of gore effects, there is not much else to the film
Zombies Have Fallen: Vengeance Runs Deep (2017)
The title gives the impression this is intended as a zombie film take on the action film Olympus Has Fallen. The confusion you have in watching is that this is actually a film about a girl with psychic powers on the run. Brief zombie scenes turn up later in the show to justify the title but feel that they have strayed in from another film.
Zombies’ Lake (1981)
One of the original Nazi zombie films. From cult director Jean Rollin, known for his arty vampire erotica