Blade of the Immortal (2017)
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
Blood and Chocolate (2007)
An interesting attempt to do something different with the werewolf film set in the tribal world of werewolves where Agnes Bruckner decides to defy tradition to liaise with a human
Blood and Roses (1960)
Roger Vadim conducts a very sofctore adaptation the classic vampire story Carmilla but this seems pallid and bloodless in contrast to the Hammer Films of the same period, not to mention their later adaptations of the same story
Blood Feast (1963)
This has the notoriety of being the very first ever splatter film and served to turn director Herschell Gordon Lewis into a cult figure. Shoddy and unpolished, you have to admit it goes for broke
Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb (1971)
Hammer Films adapt Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars about a revived mummy queen. A troubled production that ended up being one of Hammer’s never-quite-rans
The Blood of a Poet (1930)
Early film from Jean Cocteau that consists of a progression of surreal situations. Dreamy and occasionally interesting
Blood River (2009)
An interesting little film from Adam Mason that starts out seeming a variant on The Hitcher with Andrew Howard as a drifter taunting a couple on a desert highway before morphing into something very strange
The Blood Rose (1970)
Influenced by the classic Eyes Without a Face, this is a work of French Gothic about an aristocrat trying to find the right woman to use her face for his disfigured wife
The Blood Spattered Bride (1972)
A Spanish-made adaptation of the classic lesbian vampire story Carmilla that modernises the story and inflates it with much eroticism and surrealistic imagery
Bloodrayne: The Third Reich (2011)
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
Blue Flame (1993)
Low-budget but not uninteresting film that throws in a mind-bending mix of aliens, dream and alternate realities
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
Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues … (1983)
Charles B. Pierce, a director who gained a cult with his films for 1970s drive-in audiences, makes a sequel to his earlier pseudo-documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek about the hunt for a Bigfoot creature
Bokeh (2017)
A rehash of the The Quiet Earth with two American tourists waking up to find themselves in a deserted Iceland. There seem few more prettily photographed places for the End of the World to take place
Bones (2001)
Blaxploitation homage designed as a vehicle for Snoop Dogg. Essentially a version of A Nightmare on Elm Street with Snoop as a pimp come back to haunt those who killed him
Book of Blood (2009)
A Clive Barker adaptation taken from the name of his story collection. While not uninteresting, it emerges as a haunted house story that eschews genre cliches for an everyday approach and never quite delivers its punches
Book of Days (2003)
Christian film in which insurance agent Wil Wheaton receives the title book containing the dates on which people are going to die and uses it to make his quotas
Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
Borderland (2007)
A blatant copy of Hostel wherein a trio of students cross the Mexican border and fall prey to a Santeria cult. Despite its derivativeness in the plot department, this emerges as a brutal and fairly well made film
Bounty Killer (2013)
A film about post-apocalyptic bounty hunters pursuing bankers, this was an Occupy Movement era film and hits a deliriously unserious comic-book tone
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
Brainscan (1994)
One of the many virtual reality films that came out after The Lawnmower Man with Edward Furlong dealing with a figure from a horror videogame who turns his life upside down, urging him to become a killer
BrainWaves (1982)
Ulli Lommel film in which Suzanne Love undergoes experimental brain surgery only to start receiving memories from the donor, a woman who was murdered
Brave (2012)
A real head-scratcher from Pixar that seems to have been pitched as a cross between Braveheart and Disney’s Brother Bear. The usual Pixar humour and polish makes for a mostly amiable film but never lifts the show out of a lame duck premise
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
Bride of Re-Animator (1990)
Sequel to the cult splatter hit of Re-Animator, directed by the original’s producer Brian Yuzna. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale are back. This has some amazing effects work but lacks the first film’s outrageous black humour
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
Brightburn (2019)
The rather interesting idea of Superman retold as a horror movie featuring a character that is Superman in all but name who goes over to the dark side instead of becoming a paragon of truth, justice and the American way
Bruiser (2000)
Uneven George Romero film from his less satisfying latter period in which Jason Flemyng wakes up with a blank white mask on his face and finds it allows him to unleash vengeance against those who wronged him
Bugonia (2025)
Yorgos Lanthimos has become a director of acclaim in recent years. Here he remakes the Korean film Save the Green Planet where crazy conspiracy theorist Jesse Plemons abducts CEO Emma Stone insisting she is an alien
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
Bunker (2022)
Film that draws on the basics of The Keep and takes place in a haunted bunker in the British-German trenches of the First World War as soldiers face something that preys on their fears
Bunny the Killer Thing (2015)
Outrageous Finnish splatter comedy about a giant rampaging bunny creature. A film that in its better moments captures something of the sensibilities of early Peter Jackson films
Bus (1987)
Obscure Japanese film set in a computer-controlled dystopia where a simple bus driver makes a defiant stand against against conformity
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
Cabin Boy (1994)
A conte cruel that delights in piling humiliations onto obnoxious rich kid Chris Elliott who is shanghaied aboard a ship. This comes in an absurdist vein not dissimilar to the works of producer Tim Burton
Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014)
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film
Canadian Bacon (1995)
The one and only fiction film made by documentary-maker Michael Moore of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame, a broad farce concerning an imaginary war declared on Canada by the USA for political purposes
The Canal (2014)
Ghost story that does an effective job of generating dread and eerieness while also existing in a place that leaves you unsure whether it is all not just occurring inside the lead character’s fraying sanity
The Canterville Ghost (1944)
Amiable comedy adapted from an Oscar Wllde story with Charles Laughton as a ghost condemned to walks the family castle for his cowardice. Contains much Wartime comedy about the clash between British and American cultures
Capsule (2016)
Buried in a space capsule. A one-man show that takes place entirely in an orbiting space capsule with the stranded British astronaut alternately seeking aid and about to be shot down by both the US and Soviets
Captain Nova (2021)
An appealing Danish-made film in which a pilot travels back in time from the future to save the world from environmental disaster but finds she is now stuck in her twelve year-old body
The Captains (2011)
Documentary where William Shatner interviews the actors who played the captains in the other incarnations of Star Trek. The entire show is hijacked by the Shatner ego as he constantly overrides his interview subjects
Captive Wild Woman (1943)
Not long after RKO had a hit with Cat People, Universal responded with this in which the exotically beautiful Acquanetta turns into a gorilla (actually vice versa). The Jungle Woman went on to appear in two sequels
The Carpenter (1988)
Odd effort that features Wings Hauser as a polite and charming ghostly handyman who romances the heroine while despatching the people around her. Not a great film but Hauser has never been better
Castle in the Air (1952)
British quota quickie that is a likeable light fantasy comedy about a haunted Scottish castle and comes peopled with a cast of eccentrics
Cat Girl (1957)
One of the better copies of Cat People, an Anglo-horror film with Barbara Shelley coming to believe that she is the inheritor of a family curse that causes her to turn into a big cat
A Cat in Paris (2011)
French film that was nominated for the 2011 Best Animated Film at the Oscars. Cute but over-rated, the film is all highly stylised hand-drawn caricature that looks great but never works very hard to engage in terms of its characters
Category 7: The End of the World (2005)
Sequel to the tv mini-series Category 6: Day of Destruction ups the scale of the super-storm but is also better constructed as a disaster movie
Cats (2019)
The film version of the smash Andrew Lloyd Webber musical phenomenon was widely ridiculed. Seen, it is a colourful and absorbing entity and by no means as bad as its rap gives it
Chandu the Magician (1932)
The film adaptation of a popular radio series about a Westerner who has trained in the Eastern mystic arts and uses his powers to create illusions in the fight against crime. One of the first screen superheroes.
Child 44 (2015)
This offers one of the most fascinating settings for a detective story – the Soviet Union at the height of Stalinist oppression – and borrows the story of true-life Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo
Children of Dune (2003)
Follow-up to the 2000 tv mini-series adaptation of Dune, this adapts Frank Herbert’s two books sequels, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. The production lacks the depth of its predecessor
Children of the Corn (2009)
This remake of the Stephen King short story (this time with a script from King himself) is a much better film than the earlier 1984 version or any of its numerous sequels
Child’s Play 2 (1990)
The first Child’s Play felt like an incredibly silly film. However, this first sequel takes the same elements and constructs them into a much tighter, better package
A Chinese Ghost Story III (1991)
The second sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story, a slighter effort too reliant on the plot beats of the original. Where it does work is in the enormous degree of slapstick energy with which proceedings are conducted
Christina’s House (1999)
Modest film with Allison Lange being stalked by one of the men in her life. A film that vies between false jumps and moments of reasonable atmosphere
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, & The Wardrobe (1988)
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (1989)
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Silver Chair (1990)
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (1989)
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
Chronopolis (1982)
More of an abstract art short than a film. Dialogueless, almost plotless, this concerns the lone human in a city inhabited by inscrutable beings that amuse themselves by rearranging matter
Circuitry Man (1990)
Qurkily appealing Cyberpunk film in which a female bodyguard and a male pleasure android must make a journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland
Clifford the Big Red Dog (2021)
The best-selling children’s book series come to the screen with a big red CGI dog, which proves more enjoyable than the low-expectation film you initially expect going in
Clonehunter (2009)
SF neo-noir that suffers from a painfully low budget (particularly when it comes to its CGI) but transcends this with a consistently intelligent story and a world created with a reasonable sense of verisimilitude
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 (2013)
The original film was a good deal of fun; this sequel feels like it is simply a repeat of the same but slightly different. Still there is a good deal of creativity to the visual puns and living food creatures
Cloverfield (2008)
A J.J. Abrams produced film that was made under an absolute pall of secrecy. Released, it turns out to only be a fairly ordinary monster movie that is shot Found Footage style
Clown (2014)
The first film from Jon Watts, director of the Tom Holland Spider-Man films, and produced by Eli Roth, about a clown costume that possesses the wearer. You have to admire the film for the ballsiness with which it was made
Cold Blood: The Last Hurrah (2007)
The fifth and final of the Cold Blood films, brings Matthew Kelly’s serial killer back but still lacks the gripping tension of the first two films
The Collector (1965)
Adaptation of a John Fowles novel where shy Terence Stamp makes Samantha Eggar a prisoner so she can love him. Made not long after Psycho, this tries similar but becomes more of an Odd Couple comedy
Color Me Blood Red (1965)
One of Herschell Gordon’s Lewis’s splatter films, this readily rips off the plot basics of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood as an artist starts to paint using human blood
Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope (2011)
Documentary-maker Morgan Spurlock of Super-Size Me fame visits the San Diego Comic-Con and follows several attendees but comes away finding surprisingly little to say about the nature of fandom
Communion (1989)
Film adaptation of writer Whitley Strieber’s true-life claims to have been abducted by aliens. I am not sure if the film convinces us of Strieber’s claims but what is interesting is the thoughtful way it examines the phenomenon
The Companion (1994)
Rather amusing variant on the killer android theme where Kathryn Harrold buys a love robot as companion and causes it to become unstable when she overrides its safety protocols
The Conjuring 2 (2016)
If you want a genuinely scary spook show that will make you jump out of your seat, you would not go wrong with this. On the other hand, the Conjuring films with their claims to true stories of peddle superstition and fabricate most of their so-called facts
The Conjuring (2013)
Supposedly based on a true story. A film that feels written entirely by cliches taken from every other haunting and exorcism film, but you cannot deny that director James Wan generates a more than fair degree of spooky atmosphere
Containment (2015)
A variant on the plague outbreak drama with a difference. It begins with a man waking to go about his workday only to find he has been glued into his apartment and the film logically expands out from there
Cool World (1992)
Animator Ralph Bakshi jumps aboard the Who Framed Roger Rabbit? bandwagon with a toon film in which a Jessica Rabbit-like cartoon character is dragged into the real world whereupon she is played by Kim Basinger
Coonskin (1975)
Ralph Bakshi’s satiric animated depiction of African-American life in 1970s conceived as a parody of Song of the South was greeted with such controversy that it nearly derailed his career
The Corpse Vanishes (1942)
One of a host of low-budget mad scientist films Bela Lugosi made during the 1940s, slightly better than most of the others. Here he uses orchids to place brides in death-like comas
Corrective Measures (2022)
Another of the last films made by Bruce Willis before his retirement. This one has a watchable central idea and is set around the idea of a prison for super-villains even if Bruce is not up to much
Countdown (1967)
An early Robert Altman film about the planning and launch of a Moon Landing starring then unknown James Caan and Robert Duvall. The most realistic depiction of a space launch up to that point.
Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs (2015)
Despite the disappointment that it is not a Western but set modern-day. This enlivens a formula plot quite well and provides dinosaur effects that range between the surprisingly good and the occasionally ropy
Crack in the World (1965)
An End of the World film in which an atomic bomb causes a crack in the Earth’s crust. From the era before the disaster movie, this has yet to discover the idea of creating pieces of self-contained spectacle but works in its own sprawling way
Crater (2023)
A surprisingly better than expected film from the Disney Channel, a Coming of Age story set on The Moon about a group of kids who break out to go on a jaunt across the lunar surface
Creatures the World Forgot (1971)
The fourth and final of Hammer Films’ cycle of prehistoric adventure films, this far less interestingly throws out stop-motion animated dinosaurs and opts for relative anthropological realism
Creep 2 (2017)
Creep was a wonderfully creepy film with Mark Duplass as someone who invites a videographer to make a film but proves over-friendly to the point of highly disturbed. This is a sequel where Duplass returns for more
Crescendo (1970)
One of Hammer Films’ psycho-thrillers. Unlike the others, this is in colour where it loses much of the edgy tension the others had from shooting in b/w. The plot is slow to kick in but does produce some worthwhile twists
Crimson Peak (2015)
Guillermo Del Toro takes on the Victorian ghost story. What we get is the most gorgeously designed and costumed haunted house film ever but where the excess scenography actually distracts from producing any boo moment
Critters (1986)
A surprisingly likeable Gremlins copycat concerning an invasion by a horde of malicious alien creatures. An enjoyable popcorn muncher that has produced four sequels.
Critters 3 (1991)
The third of the Critters films and in my minority opinion the best of the series generating some reasonable suspense. Featuring the film debut of a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio
Cruel & Unusual (2014)
Canadian-made film about an afterlife encounter group where people are condemned to continually relive the circumstances that led to them being there
Cult of Chucky (2017)
The seventh of the Child’s Play films with the killer doll Chucky. I never much cared for the original series but the modern films – those with Chucky’s name in the title – have become a lot wittier and playful, constantly making jokes back to the rest of the series
Curse of Chucky (2013)
Sixth entry in the Child’s Play series, made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. Contains lots of fanservice and some surprise cameos. This makes an effort to cut back the black humour and go back to being scary
Curse of the Undead (1959)
The world’s first vampire Western featuring a vampire gunslinger. Today it’d be called Cowboys vs Vampires but such casual genre cross-hatching didn’t exist back then and it astride two genres with not uninteresting results
Cyber Zone (1995)
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a cyberpunk action film where the cut-price nature of the exercise is elevated by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour
Dagon (2001)
Stuart Gordon returns to adapt H.P. Lovecraft for a third time. As before, Gordon allows Lovecraft’s unspeakable terrors to be eclipsed by creature effects but the results are nothing too memorable
The Dam (2025)
This offers the novelty of being the world’s first Ukrainian zombie film. Being made in the midst the Russian invasion, this lays into Soviet Russia and its failings with a scathing regard
Dam Sharks! (2016)
Another gonzo killer shark film, this concerns sharks who have invaded a river and built a dam to trap human prey. Everything comes with an amusingly sarcastic sense of humour
Dampyr (2022)
A comic-book adaptation about vampire wars in a modern East European war zone. A slick Underworld-styled vampire action film that has some interesting ideas going on inside it