Children of the Corn (1984)
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
Children of the Corn: The Gathering (1996)
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
Child’s Play (2019)
The controversial remake of Child’s Play where Chucky is no longer possessed but become an artificially intelligent smart toy. This seems to misconstrues everything that the fanbase of the series celebrates by a mile
Chill Factor (1999)
An inane action film that sets out to copy Speed with Skeet Ulrich and a motormouth Cuba Gooding Jr forced to drive an ice cream truck filled with chemical weapons
A Chinese Ghost Story (2011)
A Chinese Ghost Story was one of the greatest Hong Kong fantasy films; this remake gets everything wrong. The aerial combat scenes are replaced by CGI, the characters rewritten and the Buddhist elements eliminated
Choose or Die (2022)
A British horror film in which people open an old 1980s videogame that is cursed and forces them to make horrible choices concerning the deaths of people around them
Chop (2011)
A man is abducted by a stranger who proceeds to remove his limbs in an effort to make him remember the terrible crime he committed. This suggests an incredibly grim film. Surprisingly enough, it is a comedy
Christmas on Mars (2008)
Has there ever been a good film combining the concepts of ‘Christmas’ and ‘Mars’? A film made by cult band The Flaming Lips about the first colonists on Mars as they celebrate Christmas
The Christmas That Almost Wasn’t (1966)
An incredibly dreary Christmas film directed by actor Rosanno Brazzi where the South Pole in bought by a miser (played by Brazzi) and Santa ends up being evicted
Circus Kane (2017)
Film from Fred Olen Ray’s son Christopher where a group of people have to survive the death traps in the house of a circus master. Christopher reveals himself as a Rob Zombie wannabe on an impoverished budget
Clash of the Titans (2010)
Heavily disappointing remake of the Ray Harryhausen film where the replacement of Harryhausen’s stop-motion animation with CGI fails to achieve any magic
Class of 1999 II: The Substitute (1994)
A sequel to the killer android school teacher film Class of 1999. The sequel was made on a far lesser budget and is wrecked by an absurd twist ending
Class of Nuke ‘Em High (1986)
One of the essential Troma films, this seems to have been conceived as Rock’n’Roll High School with Evil Dead-styled makeup effects and lots of moronic bad taste humour
The Clones of Bruce Lee (1980)
Bruce Lee popularised the kung fu genre but then died. Welcome to the Brucespolitation phenomenon where for several years we had Bruce lookalikes appearing in copycat works. Several Bruce imitators appear here as his clones
Clown (2019)
The Asylum’s mockbuster version of It: Chapter Two. From Eric Forsberg, one of the better directors to emerge from The Asylum, this involves a group of teens being pursued around a funhouse by a killer clown.
The Collection (2012)
Disappointing sequel to the Torture Porn film The Collector. The captivating premise of an ordinary house turned into a series of deadly traps is gone, while the sadistic, gore-drenched set-pieces are tame and unimaginative
Color of Night (1994)
A blatant copy of Basic instinct with psychologist Bruce Willis getting involved with Jane March as his patients start being murdered. Much bare flesh but the film is killed by ludicrous plot twists
Coma (2012)
TV mini-series remake of the Michael Crichton medical thriller that pointlessly changes and over-extrudes a tight and effective original, while director Mikael Salomon adds absurd red herrings and keys away major surprises well in advance
Comet (2014)
From Mr Robot creator Sam Esmail, this is supposedly set in a parallel universe but is merely a relationship drama that quickly disappears into a puff of its own cutely ironic, self-admiring dialogue
Comix: Beyond the Comic Book Pages (2016)
Documentary about the comic-book that ends up trying to address everything and being so hopelessly watered down it feels like an attempt to explain everything to someone who has never read a comic-book before
Conan the Barbarian (2011)
This revival of Conan the Barbarian is a dismal effort that gets little of what made the character work, while Jason Momoa gives little impression he is taking proceedings seriously
Conceiving Ada (1997)
Rather muddled film that seems to want to be a biopic of Ada Byron but ends up with her (as played by Tilda Swinton) recreated in cyberspace
Condorman (1981)
One of the flops from Disney’s live-action heyday with Michael Crawford as a comic-book artist who gets to bring his inventions to life after being thrust into a spy caper
The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025)
Another supposedly true story from the casebook of the psychic investigator frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren. James Wan’s first two entries were eerily haunting; by now, the constant profusion of effect becomes overkill that produces no results at all
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1949)
Adaptation of Mark Twain’s classic about a modern man thrown back to the time of King Arthur. This has been made as a vehicle for Bing Crosby and makes for fairly excruciating viewing today
Conspiracy Theory (1997)
This should have been a witty film – Mel Gibson as a conspiracy nut who discovers one of his theories is true and is hunted by government agents – but the result is a confused mess that turns into an overblown action vehicle
The Core (2003)
A CGI disaster film about a journey to the centre of the Earth to restart the magnetic core. This is a film construed as no more than a series of spectacular self-contained disaster set-pieces, often irrespective of any of them making sense
Corona Zombies (2020)
A Charles Band film that has the distinction of being the first film released during the Corona Virus Pandemic. You watch out of curiosity of how the usual logistics of filmmaking deal with quarantine and social distancing
Cosmic Sin (2021)
Another among the shoddy last films Bruce Willis-made before retirement, an SF film about a rogue military team that decide to declare war on aliens. This is laughable in terms of military tactics
The Crater Lake Monster (1977)
An attempt to make an American equivalent of a Loch Ness Monster film. This drowns amid a dreary cheapness. The passable stop-motion animation effects have been a frequent source of ridicule
Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961)
Roger Corman makes a film about sea monsters and mobsters. Things get very silly but not as funny as when he tried the took the same wacky approach in his cult classic The Little Shop of Horrors
Creepshow II (1987)
The sequel to the hit George Romero-Stephen King horror anthology. This misses the original’s black humour by a mile and instead becomes overblown and filled with shrill unlikable characters
Critical Mass (2000)
Low-budget Fred Olen Ray action film is another variant on Die Hard with security guard Treat Williams foiling a terrorist hijacking of a nuclear power plant. For some reason this also includes reuse of footage from Terminator 2
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
The Cross of the Devil (1975)
The little-seen final film from Hammer director John Gilling, an Anglo-horror styled work about resurrected Knights Templar
Cross: Rise of the Villains (2019)
Third of the Cross films, a more fantastical variant on The Expendables, bringing 90s action actors back out of mothballs to form a team as they face various super-villains in present-day L.A.
Cross Wars (2017)
Cross was a low-budget attempt to copy The Expendables, featuring a C-list team of action stars (plus some fantasy elements). This is a sequel you doubt many people were burning to see
Crosstalk (1982)
Australian thriller about an inventor who has created an A.I,, although the film only puts it at the purpose of a routine murder mystery plot
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016)
A massive letdown of the year. A sequel that brings back several of the original cast and gives it to Yuen Wo-Ping to direct but is merely slickly paced, uninspired action that substitutes CGI for the graceful wirework of the original
Cry of the Banshee (1970)
Dreary film in which Vincent Price is a magistrate who is haunted by a manifestation of The Devil for his witch persecutions. The publicity falsely tried to sell this as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
Crystal Skulls (2014)
Syfy Channel film that mashes the disaster movie together with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The result is peculiarly unsatisfying either as disaster movie or the tomb raiding adventure we expect
Cube Zero (2004)
This was the third of the Cube films but has nothing new to add to the mix except a focus on the technicians monitoring the operation and the addition of gore effects
The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (1980)
TV movie about the historical discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter that inflates the tabloid notion there was a curse and so distorts the historical record that it more properly enters the realm of fantasy
The Curse of King Tut’s Tomb (2006)
TV mini-series that turns the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb into an Indiana Jones adventure. But everything is played with a constant barrage of one-liners and action sequences so silly you can’t take any of the show seriously
The Curse of La Llorona (2019)
An extension of The Conjuring universe with a film based on the Mexican legend of the crying woman La Llorona. This killed by the director’s constant straining for effect
The Curse of the Aztec Mummy (1957)
The second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)
Dreary British occult film that wastes a great cast line-up, including Christopher Lee, Barbara Steele and an 82 year-old Boris Karloff in his last performance
The Curse of the Mayans (2017)
Film about an expedition through the jungles of the Yucatan to investigate a Mayan pyramid that is revealed to contain alien artefacts. This ventures well inside wacky fringe science theories
Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966)
Larry Buchanan was a director whose output rivalled Edward D. Wood Jr in quality. This film about an expedition into the bayous encountering a mad scientist creating human-crocodile hybrids registers fairly poorly on most counts
Cursed (2005)
Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson had the huge hit of Scream but failed to replicate that with this werewolf film, which was a behind the scenes nightmare that emerges as a mess on screen
Cut Shoot Kill (2017)
Low-budget horror film in which a novice actress signs on to star in a low-budget slasher film only to find the director appears to be killing off people for real
Cyberjack (1995)
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus
Cybertracker 2 (1995)
In this sequel to Cyber Tracker, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson is a police officer fighting a criminal mastermind who is attempting to replace world leaders with android duplicates
Cyborg (1989)
The first of Albert Pyun’s kickboxing killer cyborg films featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme who was largely unknown at the time. Pyun creates wall-to-wall action but there is almost nothing else to the film
The Cycle (2009)
Micheal Bafaro is a justifiably obscure director whose entire career has been built on recycling other horror films. This is his version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is passable until a Sixth Sense-styled twist ending
Dahmer vs Gacy (2011)
This gets full marks for an attention grabbing title – outside of that it has the cheap shabbiness of a Troma film, substituting a gonzo sarcasm and plentiful bad taste and gore for many of the filmmaking basics
Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966)
The second of the theatrically released Doctor Who films intended to highlight the popularity of The Daleks, this is an improvement in that it dispenses with the first film’s buffoonish comedy elements
Dark at Noon (1992)
Incomprehensible surrealism from director Raul Ruiz about a doctor sent to investigate a village where miracles occur with commonplace regularity
Dark Breed (1995)
An action movie inspired by tv’s The X Files involving space shuttle pilots returned to Earth possessed by aliens. The emphasis is more on action scenes than a coherent plot
Dark Floors (2008)
Film created by Finnish heavy metal performer Mr Lordi that takes place in a hospital that seems to exist in a haunted twilight zone
Dark Island (2010)
This feels like a mockbuster thrown together to exploit the popularity of the tv series Lost concerning an island haunted by a sinister cloud of smoke. The scenario quickly collapses into absurdity.
The Dark Side of the Moon (1990)
Conceptually ridiculous film where a spaceship crew in lunar orbit come across a space shuttle that disappeared through the Bermuda Triangle and contains a parasitic organism that is The Devil
The Dark Tower (2017)
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman gives us an utterly mangled version of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series that has little resemblance to the books, yet makes little sense if you haven’t read them
Dark Waters (1993)
A film about a woman’s journey to a convent of sinister secrets that is aswim in religious imagery, although the film itself eventually proves to be all imagery with no coherent plot
Darkgame (2024)
A film about a snuff site that broadcasts a torture gameshow live on the web. This is a thriller that feels as though made by people who know nothing about the internet or law enforcement procedure
Darkweb (2016)
This exploits the topical fascination with the darknet in a story ostensibly about making snuff videos for sale there. In actuality, this telescopes down to being no more a variant on The Most Dangerous Game
Darwin (2016)
This imagines a future where people have become so absorbed in online communication that they live in isolated cubicles. An interesting idea that the film does zero to make believable
Date Movie (2006)
The first film from Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, a parody of a various romance movies. The duo went on to make some of the excruciating and unfunny comedies of the next decade
Dawn of the Mummy (1981)
By its very title, this is a mummy film that is trying to exploit Dawn of the Dead. Once the mummies are revived this is to all intents and purposes another in the fad for extremely gory Italian zombie films
Day of the Animals (1977)
A cheap 1970s Nature’s Revenge film that blatantly borrows all the essentials of The Birds in the story of a group of trampers in the High Sierras coming under attack by wildlife due to an ozone hole.
Day of the Dead 2: Contagium (2005)
Made during the mid-2000s zombie revival, this is a cheap, badly made film that tries to cling to any kind of relevance to the George Romero name. If anything it is more like a sequel to Night of the Living Dead than to Day of the Dead
Day of the Dead (2008)
A remake of George Romero’s third and most underrated zombie film, This came out as part of the 2000s revival of the genre but majorly miscalculates the original and emerges as wrong in just about every way
Day of the Dead: Bloodline (2018)
One of a growing industry of zombie films that leech off the George Romero name. This remakes Romero’s Day of the Dead, which means it cherry picks key elements and rearranges them in a different way but lacks everything else that Romero offered
The Day the Earth Stopped (2008)
A mockbuster from The Asylum that was released three days before the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. While some of The Asylum’s mockbusters have their amusements, this is cheaply and indifferently made
Dead Heat (1988)
Made not along after the success of Lethal Weapon, this offers a wacky spin on the buddy cop formula having a cop paired with a zombie. The mildly amusing notion is killed by the excruciating comedy relief of Joe Piscopo
The Dead Pool (1988)
The fifth and last of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, the weakest of the series. Dirty Harry comes up against a betting pool on celebrity deaths and a killer who decides to help it along
The Deadly Bees (1967)
An Amicus film directed by Freddie Francis and with a script by Robert Bloch that proves the dictum that there is no such thing as a good killer bee movie
Deadly Dreams (1988)
A dully directed imitator of A Nightmare on Elm Street, although a series of highly contrived twists eventually reveal that there are no dream horrors after all
Deadly Friend (1986)
Wes Craven was hot as a result of A Nightmare on Elm Street but badly lucked out with this ridiculous film in which a teenager raises his girlfriend from the dead by planting a computer chip from a robot in her brain
Deadly Skies (2006)
Very low-budget film about an impending asteroid collision. Possibly the first LGBT disaster movie depending on which version you see
Deal of the Century (1983)
The great William Friedkin, the director of The Exorcist and other works, had a flop with this unfunny Chevy Chase and Sigourney Weaver comedy about arms dealing and the efforts to obtain a robot plane
Dear Dead Delilah (1972)
A work of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? inspired Grand Dame Guignol with Agnes Moorehead as a Southern matriarch whose relatives are eliminating one another in the hunt for the family fortune
The Death Cure (2018)
The Maze Runner was a solid Young Adult effort that built out an effective Conceptual Breakthrough story; this, the second of two sequels, feeld like a series of canned action scenes in search of a purpose
Death House (2017)
This comes with the winning idea of being conceived as a horror version of The Expendables bringing back an amazing line-up of horror actors from principally the 80s. Alas, the film itself as an incoherent mess
Death Race 2050 (2017)
Death Race 2000 was a hit for producer Roger Corman. It was remade minus the satire as a straight action film with Death Race; here Corman remakes the original (albeit very cheaply) and restores the satire
Death Tunnel (2005)
Horror film set in the haunted tunnels beneath an abandoned hospital that seems all horror posturing without the benefit of an actual plot
Death Wish (2018)
Eli Roth’s remake of the classic Charles Bronson vigilante film is an ugly affair. In an era where school shooting are a weekly scourge in the US, do we really need another fantasy about one man becoming empowered and sorting things out with a gun?
Death Wish II (1981)
The first of several sequels to the hit Charles Bronson vigilante film, the first under Cannon Films. While the first film had some interesting things to say, this mostly repeats the original while taking some turns to the nastily exploitative
Deep Red (1994)
A confused and incomprehensible film in which Michael Biehn is drawn in to the hunt for a girl whose blood contains an immortality virus
Deep Rising (1998)
Early Stephen Sommers film that feels like it has been mounted as Alien meets Titanic. Between the ridiculous one-dimensional writing and Sommers’ CGI overkill, this heads well into bad movie material
Def by Temptation (1990)
Part of an attempt to revive the Blaxploitation film, a gospel horror film of sorts in which a young African-American divinity student fights the demon Temptation
Defcon 2012 (2010)
Amateur low-budget production about mysterious happenings in the aftermath of an alien invasion. This has many ideas but none of them much coalesce into a plot
Delete (2013)
The return of the talented Steve Barron after a decade’s absence in a film that was shot in my own backyard (literally). Disappointingly, all we get is a work that unimaginatively rehashes cliches about amok A.I.s
Delirious (1991)
Comedy in which John Candy wakes up inside the world of the tv soap opera he writes. This feels like it misses most of the possibilities inherent in its idea
Dementia 13 (2017)
Dementia 13 was a routine psycho-thriller elevated by the hand of a young Francis Ford Coppola. This remake adds ghosts and a home invasion to the mundane original, but fails to come anywhere near Coppola’s style
The Demolitionist (1996)
Nicole Eggert stars in this cheap and rather laughable copy of RoboCop, where she is a police officer killed in the line of duty who is resurrected as an avenging cyborg vigilante
Demon Seed (1977)
Adaptation of an early Dean R. Koontz novel about an A.I who imprisons a woman in her own home with the intention of impregnating her. A variant on Rosemary’s Baby conducted far more tastefully than you might think
Demonic (2015)
James Wan has an exemplary track record in one’s opinion, you think this would extend to anything he produces. Here all we get are series of tired haunted house cliches before a twist ending that makes no real sense
Deus (2022)
This has distinct overtones of 2001: Space Odyssey and Event Horizon about an expedition to Mars to investigate a mysterious black sphere – only to find that it offers a gateway to Heaven
Devour (2005)
Routine horror film about students being drawn to an internet site that is controlled by The Devil and is then driving them to kill others and themselves