Killer Bees (1974)
TV movie that does nothing to dispel the dictum that there has never been any such thing as a good killer bee film. As always, the effects let the show down and the rest of the piece is slow going and talky
Killer Crocodile (1989)
An Italian exploitation ripoff of Jaws with a group of environmentalists in South America dealing with a killer crocodile that has been made giant size by radioactive waste
Killer Crocodile 2 (1990)
A sequel to Killer Crocodile, which was a dreary Italian-made Jaws ripoff. Here another radioactive waste mutated crocodile stalks people. Indifferently made.
The Killer Eye (1998)
A David DeCoteau film about a giant alien eyeball that causes people to become erotically aroused. The chessiness of the premise is hijacked by DeCoteau’s typical homo-erotic predilections
Killer Motel (2012)
An obscure Japanese film with quite a WTF element about a backwoods motel where things get very strange – the hosts slaughtering the guests, a zombie wandering around
Killer Tongue (1996)
A giddy madcap, frequently over-the-top and entirely ridiculous Spanish film in which Melinda Clarke’s tongue is possessed by an alien whereupon the tongue starts killing people
Killers from Space (1953)
A cheesily bad alien invader film from the 1950s that seems to be trying to throw every element in SF of the era into the mix from mind controlling aliens to atomic monsters
The King and I (1999)
Don Bluth conducts animated remake of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical memorably incarnated with Yul Brynner. Now the story comes with the addition of fantasy elements
King Kong (1976)
The infamous miscalculated Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong where the stop-motion is replaced by Rick Baker in an ape suit, while the fairytale romance is replaced by Jessica Lange as a flower child who cracks jokes
Konga (1961)
Herman Cohen production with Michael Gough as a mad scientist who creates a giant ape. Aside from Gough’s entertainingly mad performance, this is killed by incredibly tatty effects
Krampus: The Christmas Devil (2013)
Krampus, Santa’s evil brother, was an obscure piece of Germanic folklore until repurposed for the Christmas horror film in the mid-2010s and. This, while not very good, was the first of these
Kraven the Hunter (2024)
Another of Sony’s films spun off from Spider-Man supporting characters. In the comics, Kraven is a Spider-Man super-villain with a big game hunter motif but here is turned into a superhero
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
Kung Fu Zombie (1981)
One of the weird mash-ups of horror and martial arts popular in Hong Kong during the late 70s/80s. Despite a great title, this suffers from an emphasis on frenetic slapstick and caricatures
Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp’s Adventure (2001)
Disappointing video-released sequel to the classic Disney animated film where the engaging characters of the original have become settled down parents
Lady Beware (1987)
A tawdry erotic thriller where designer Diane Lane creates a series of sexually provocative window dressings only for her to then become targeted by a psycho stalker
Lady Krampus (2018)
This is a misleadingly titled film that features no Krampus and is actually a low-budget Christmas slasher that has been renamed by the distributor. Poorly made on all accounts.
Lake Fear 2: The Swamp (2018)
Slasher film in which a group of unlikeable teens on Springbreak are slaughtered by backwoods hicks in the Everglades. Sold as a sequel to Lake Fear despite neither film being connected in any way
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003)
The first Tomb Raider film was empty-headed but a hit but the series was then killed off by this sequel. Angelina Jolie’s performance is detached from human emotion and the action sequences ludicrous
The Last Dragonslayer (2016)
An adaptation of Jasper Fforde, one of the cleverest of modern humorous fantasy writers. Alas, the finished result is one that understands nothing about the book and is one of the worst ever screen adaptations
The Last Exorcism Part II (2013)
Sequel to the sleeper 2010 Found Footage hit. Alas, this is a sequel that understands almost nothing about what made the first film so original and is just a possession film that comes utterly by the numbers
Last Journey of Paul W.R. (2020)
French film about Earth endangered by an oncoming moon and how only one man can save the world. This seemed it might be something culty – before the mind-bogglingly bizarre science becomes apparent
Last Lives (1997)
B-budget action film in which C. Thomas Howell is caught up in a chase when an escaped criminal from an alternate timeline abducts his wife.
The Last Resort (2009)
This was made following the success of Hostel, a low-budget film concerning a group of girls abandoned at a deserted Mexican resort town that may be haunted
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
Latency (2023)
A film about an agoraphobic videogamer confined to their apartment who is given a Virtual Reality headset to test that soon starts to warp their sense of reality
The Lazarus Effect (2015)
The experiment to bring someone back from the dead has been trod many times before and this Blumhouse production only rehashes it in tired and unimaginative ways
Lazer Team 2 (2017)
Lazer Team was an easy predictable comedy about four screw-ups that accidentally obtain parts of an alien power suit. This sequel is all the same gags on rinse and repeat.
Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990)
The third of the Texas Chainsaw films where the rights have now been inherited by New Line Cinema and the brutality of the original promptly watered down to MPAA standards
Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist (2023)
A revival of the Kirk Cameron starring Biblical End of the World films and a sequel to the Nicolas Cage starring reboot. Directed by and starring your favourite internet troll Kevin Sorbo
Left Behind – Vanished: Next Generation (2016)
There have been the various adaptations of the Left Behind books about the Biblical Rapture; this is an attempt to spin the same off for Young Adult audiences and is not very good
The Legend of Hercules (2014)
Renny Harlin, the director of a great many empty-headed action films, takes on the Greek myth and delivers a Hercules film that feels like it has been directed after too many watchings of 300
The Legend of Six Fingers (2013)
Sam Qualiana is a director who has made some incredibly bad films elsewhere. Here he takes on making a Found Footage film about the hunt for a Bigfoot-like creature
The Legend of the Flying Swordsman (2000)
A forgettable entry in Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cycle that suffers from an overly confusing plot and crucially much in the way of flying swordplay
Legion (2010)
An absurd film where angels conduct a war on Earth, which comes amid much in the way of gunfire and creature effects. Directed by a former visual effects supervisor.
Leprechaun 2 (1994)
The second in the Leprechaun series with Warwick Davis delivering a series of extremely silly novelty deaths accompanied by excruciating one-liners
Leprechaun 3 (1995)
Third in the series takes Warwick Davis’s Leprechaun to Las Vegas for a series of novelty deaths that have silliness that frequently defies belief
Life Like (2019)
There have been some extremely good films about androids and A.I. in the last few years. This one about an android manservant is so ridiculous it should have been played as a comedy
Life on the Edge (1989)
A film where makeup effects artist Tom Burman takes the director’s in this head-scratchingly strange film about a family set in a bizarre future world
Life or Something Like It (2002)
Bland romantic comedy with a miscast Angelina Jolie as a tv newswoman who receives a prophecy of her death and begins to reconsider her life
Ligeia (2009)
Modernised adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story. Poe might be turning in his grave with visits to fetish clubs added to the mix but mostly the film befalls a low-budget and tepid delivery
Limit Up (1989)
A VHS era light fantasy Nancy Allen plays a futures trader in Chicago who is offered the chance for business success if she will trade her soul
The Lion King (2019)
Jon Favreau had success recreating The Jungle Book in live-action with CGI animals and does the same with The Lion King – only to produce an exacting, lifeless replication missing the charms of the original
A Little Bit of Soul (1997)
Australian black comedy about research into longevity and Satanism. The film has a great cast but hits a shrilly hysteric pitch without ever being funny
Little Mermaid (2016)
A modernisation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale cast as a hipster romance where the mermaid becomes a stripper, all shot with the gauzy soft focus of a feminine hygiene products commercial
Little Nicky (2000)
The Adam Sandler comedy and its pitch to the most vulgar common denominator is an acquired taste. This not very funny effort casts Sandler as The Devil’s Son
The Lockdown Hauntings (2021)
A film shot during the Covid lockdown, following a police detective who conducts an investigation into deaths caused by supernatural entities unleashed amid the isolation
Logan’s Run (1976)
Dystopian SF mounted on a big budget by people that don’t have a clue what they are doing. This creates one of prettiest depictions of the future of any film of this era but it is only a surface deep depiction
Longing For Eternity (1988)
A dull Quebec-made about the discovery of how a pharmaceutical company is conducting illicit experiments to create an artificial womb to breed embryos
Lord of the Flies (1990)
Remake of William Golding’s classic work about boys stranded on a desert island descending into barbarism where the book is disastrously Americanised in a clodding adaptation that misses the original’s rich swim of symbolism
Lost and Beautiful (2015)
A film that started as a documentary about a man engaged in the restoration of an Italian villa before its subject died and it morphed into a peculiar fantasy film
The Lost Boys (1987)
Popular 80s vampire film that suffers the curse of Joel Schumacher. A promising opening dissolves into posturing cool, flashy visuals with zero substance underneath
Lost Boys: The Tribe (2008)
After 21 years, this was the first of two sequel to The Lost Boys, featuring return performances from Corey Feldman and Corey Haim and, yes, surfer vampires
Lost Horizon (1973)
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas. The film dies an ungainly death with a cast awkward in ill-fitting costumery
Lost in the Pacific (2016)
A Chinese-made attempt to make a disaster movie with a crosscut of characters aboard a luxury airliner. What causes the film to plummet down into the ridiculous is the addition of a horde of mutant cats
The Lovely Bones (2009)
A film about a dead girl trying to stop her paedophile murderer from the afterlife. A grim story becomes a visual effects vehicle wrecked by Peter Jackson’s overblown amateur hour symbolism
Lovesick (1983)
A comedy in which Sigmund Freud’s ghost pops up to offer advice to psychologist Dudley Moore after he falls in love with patient Elizabeth McGovern
Luck (2022)
Disgraced former Pixar head John Lasseter makes a returns to animation for Skydance in an incredibly lightweight effort about adventures in the land of luck
LunarCop (1995)
Low-budget Mad Max copycat with Michael Paré as an officer from the lunar colony who comes down to Earth to take on the marauders of the post-apocalyptic wasteland
The Lurker (2019)
Scout Taylor-Compton stars in a slasher about a killer stalking the cast of a high school play. She plays with a professionalism but the rest feels like an amateur production
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
The second of Hammer’s Karenstein films based on the lesbian vampire story Carmilla. This is killed by its laughable unsubtlety and an air of adolescent masturbatory fantasy
Lust for Dracula (2004)
Very strange softcore vampire film that conducts an all-girl retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. One or two okay erotic scenes but this befalls a quick shooting schedule
Madame Web (2024)
Another of the films spun off from Sony’s hold on the Spider-Man copyright, this has been called the worst Marvel Comics superhero film ever. This also bears next-to-no resemblance to its comic-book counterpart
Maid to Order (1987)
1980s light fantasy comedy where spoilt rich girl Ally Sheedy wakes up in a world where nobody recognises her and is forced to take a job as the maid
Making Contact (1986)
Roland Emmerich’s second film, a confused oddity that seems to be trying to model itself as a Spielberg film about a kid who gains psychic powers and whose toys come to life
Mama (2013)
A Guillermo Del Toro produced ghost story that fails to go anywhere. The promise of the film’s trailer falls apart in the hands of a novice director who blows all of his scares
The Man in the White Van (2023)
A fake True Crime film. This is loosely to the point of almost non-existently based on a serial killer who stalked victims in a van in 1970s Florida. This is blown up into a Duel wannabe with the van prowling everywhere
The Man Who Invented Christmas (2017)
Among the fad for biopics about writers and the origins of famous stories, this, about Charles Dickens and the creation of A Christmas Carol, is the most lunatic – and that’s not counting the blatant lie of the title
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
The Man Without a Body (1957)
This came out two weeks before Hammer Films had their first success with The Curse of Frankenstein. Where Hammer discovered the future of British horror, this is no more than a dreary quota quickie that has possibly the most lunatic scheme of any British horror film involving the revival of Nostradamus’s severed head
Mannequin on the Move (1991)
A sequel to the Mannequin, the inane comedy about a romance with a storefront dummy come to life. Here Kristy Swanson plays a princess who is turned into a statue before being awoken in the present
Mantis in Lace (1968)
A 1960s LSD film where a stripper kills men while under the influence. Mostly this is just a series of nudie scenes that go on and on without any plot
Marabunta (1998)
A routine made-for-tv movie where a small Alaskan town comes under attack as it is overrun by a legion of marabunta ants
Margaux (2022)
Group of young people get away to a smarthome for the weekend, which then tries to kill them. The most ridiculous amongst a mini-spate of films about smarthome A.I.’s
Markham (2020)
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
Mars et Avril (2012)
An impressively designed Quebecois sf film where it is it is sad to see so much artistry lavished on something completely nonsensical and utterly woolly-headed in terms of its ideas
Mars Needs Women (1966)
Larry Buchanan was a low-budget director whose cheapness easily equaled Edward D. Wood, Jr. This alien invasion effort features Tommy Kirk come to Earth to procure women for repopulation purposes
The Mask (1961)
Film that has a minor cult reputation for its cheaply trippy 3D hallucination scenes. Outside of that, The Mask (not to be confused with the Jim Carrey film) is a dull variant on the Dr Jekyll story in which a ritual mask causes the wearer’s dark side to emerge
Masque of Red Death (1989)
Dull and dreary version of the Edgar Allan Poe story especially when placed in contrast to producer Roger Corman’s definitive 1964 version
The Masque of the Red Death (1989)
Disappointingly, not an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story but more of a Poe-themed slasher film about a masked killer dressed as the Red Death
The Master of Disguise (2002)
Hardly anyone remembers Dana Carvey, Mike Myers’ co-star in Wayne’s World. This was Carvey’s attempt to copy the Austin Powers films and is regarded as a bad movie
Max Steel (2016)
An ill-conceived attempt to compete amid the high stakes box-office superheroics enjoyed by Marvel and belatedly DC, this had one of the most disastrous box-office showings of 2016 … Based on a popular line of action toys, this gets nothing right – it’s hard to tell it is meant to be a superhero film for half the show
Maximum Ride (2016)
In between the hugely successful Young Adult adaptations of the 00s/10s there has been another trail of YA adaptations that never made it beyond one film. Adapted from a YA series by crime writer James Patterson about a group of kids with wings, this is an exceedingly lacklustre production
The Medallion (2003)
Flop Jackie Chan film that tries to recapture some of his Hong Kong heyday with Jackie in a quest for a boy and medallion with magical powers
Meet the Santas (2005)
Sequel to Single Santa Seeks Mrs Claus where here Santa’s son (Steve Guttenberg) ties the knot – amazingly traditional and conservative in its sentiments and with everything so predictable that there is no real drama
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus (2009)
The Asylum’s first venture into the gonzo shark movie that would spin off a series of sequels and culminate in the Sharknado phenomenon. Despite one of the great attention grabbing titles of all time, this is an unmemorable affair
Men in Black II (2002)
Sequel that turns a witty original into overblown slapstick that never consists of anything more than absurd gags with aliens and technology popping up from behind everyday objects
Men in Black: International (2019)
The original Men in Black was a witty parody of alien coverup conspiracies; the sequels became slapstick films about pop-up aliens and gadgets hidden behind everyday things. This offers little that is new
Merry Little Batman (2023)
A real head-scratching oddity, a Batman animated Christmas film
Metamorphosis (1990)
An Italian exploitation film intended to take advantage of the 80s makeup effects revolution of the day as a scientist injects himself with an untested serum and transforms into a monster
The Meteor Man (1993)
Robert Townsend directs and stars as the screen’s first Black superhero in this comedy take on the superhero film
Midnight Ride (1990)
Cheaply made Cannon Film that plays out like an action version of The Hitcher featuring a completely over-the-top Mark Hamill as the psycho
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
The original Mighty Joe Young was a wonderfully underrated giant ape film. This is a remake conducted in the post-Jurassic Park era that adds CGI but holds none of the magic of the original
The Mighty Peking Man (1977)
Cheap and ridiculous attempt to cash-in on the 1976 remake of King Kong made by Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers. A classic bad movie on most counts
The Millennium Bug (2011)
The Y2K Problem was a now largely forgotten social apocalypse that never happened so why someone is making a film about it now is a scratch of the head. This is a Backwoods Brutality film that abruptly jumps tracks to become a monster movie
Mindhunters (2004)
Serial killer thriller from the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin. A variant on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, it promptly collapses into ludicrous plotting and an even more ridiculous string of deaths
Miracle on 34th Street (1994)
A John Hughes written remake of the classic Christmas film where a man (Richard Attenborough) claiming to be Santa ends up tried in court.
Mission Galactica: The Cylon Attack (1979)
Episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica tv series that were recut and screened theatrically for international audiences
Mission Stardust (1967)
Film adapted from the popular German-language Perry Rhodan space operas that is cheap and quickly heads into bad movie stakes
Mongolian Death Worm (2010)
Another low-budget monster movie for the Syfy Channel. Between Sean Patrick Flanery’s unconvincing adventurer hero and the filmmaker’s failure to even vaguely approximate what Mongolia or its locals look like, this quickly slides down into a tatty, indifferently made copy of Tremors