Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
Faye Dunaway is a fashion photographer who gains a psychic link into the mind of a killer. From a John Carpenter script but the thriller plotting is never up to the chic suggestiveness the film is given
Face/Off (1997)
A John Woo directed action film with the improbable premise where FBI agent John Travolta and terrorist Nicolas Cage end up surgically swapping faces and then taking over the other’s identity
Faceless (1987)
Cult exploitation director Jesus Franco pays homage to the mad surgeon films of his heyday. Essentially one of Franco’s Dr Orloff films by way of the sadistic despatches of the giallo film
Fallen (2016)
Adaption of a Young Adult series of books – this is essentially Twilight but with angels instead of vampires. Another YA effort where we never saw successive chapters due to its box-office flop
Family Blood (2018)
A modern day vampire film that comes with the amusing idea of James Ransone as a vampire who lurks around AA meetings to find his prey
The Fan (1981)
A film made not long after the John Lennon shooting with Lauren Bacall as a Hollywood star stalked by fan Michael Biehn who snaps and turns psycho after a perceived rejection
Fando and Lis (1968)
The first film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, more like a student film that seems a rehearsal for the surrealistic and outrageous imagery of El Topo, although no less uniquely Jodorowsky-esque for all that
Fangs (2001)
This is a B-budget film about genetically engineered killer bats where the usual is boosted by a sense of humour and a line-up of eccentric characters
Fantasia 2000 (1999)
Disney’s sequel to Fantasia comes weighted with a sense of its own self-importance – the first theatrical release of the new millennium. However, it fails to produce much that has the stature of the original
The Fantasist (1986)
Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, makes an Irish-set thriller in which a country girl moved to the city is stalked by a serial killer who sends his victims poetry
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
The first Fantastic Beasts was a welcome opening up of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe and offered something fresh in the series. This is a more mixed bag where it feels like it is back to business as usual for Rowling
Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)
Third of the Fantastic Beasts films, this comes as a mix of ennui with the franchise and promise. It feels like about right now would be a good time to retire the series
A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012)
Featuring Simon Pegg as a paranoid writer seeing sinister happenings everywhere. This should have been a darkly funny comedy but the film winds everything up to a shrilly hysteric fever pitch
The Fantastic Four (1994)
The film version of the comic-book that was made by Roger Corman intended to never be released. This has a reputation as a bad movie and is extremely impoverished adaptation but is more authentic to the comic-book than other big-budget films
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This sequel substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
Fantasy Island (2020)
The big screen remake of the popular 70s/80s tv series about an island that makes guests fantasies come true. In the hands of Blumhouse, this has now been turned into a horror film
FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions (2004)
Spanish film set in a dystopian future where physical contact between the sexes is outlawed and rebels discover forbidden broadcasts. This becomes overrun by its pretensions
Fast Color (2018)
A superpowers rather than a superhero film with Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a woman with abilities on the run who is forced to seek refuge with her estranged family
Fatal Attraction (1987)
Classic and highly influential psycho-thriller with Glenn Close as a deranged woman who stalks married man Michael Douglas after he has a fling with her. The film’s stature has been overstated and beneath the surface it holds a very conservative outlook on gender politics
Fatherland (1994)
Disappointing film version of Robert Harris’s excellent novel depicting an alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. On screen, the book is watered down and given an upbeat happy ending
Father’s Day (2011)
Troma film that ventures back into their regular bad taste territory. This often feels like a film that never coheses into a particularly clear idea of what it is trying to do, possibly the result of six different directors
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)
In attempting to capture the surreal, paranoiac drug haze of Hunter S. Thompson’s counter-culture classic, Terry Gilliam’s adaptation becomes a rambling, self-indulgent mess of tripped-out visions that go on and on
Fear City (1984)
Abel Ferrara is known for bleak works of social realism. This features a killer targeting strippers but has a superficial blandness that feels like it is made by someone who has never visited a strip joint in their life
Fear Clinic (2015)
Film spun out from a web series. Robert Englund as a mad psychiatrist who creates a machine that helps people confront their phobias that somehow opens a doorway to creatures from another dimension
Fear No Evil (1981)
From Frank LaLogiaa, a director who has made too few films, a low-budget film with Stefan Arngrim as a teenage Antichrist. This is a film filled with as much promise as it does absurd effect
Fear Street 1994 (2021)
The first of the Fear Street films, somewhat more adult than the usual R.L. Stine adaptations. This can be considered the first Woke era slasher film
The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967)
Roman Polanski misfired with this vampire comedy intended as a spoof of Hammer Films. Beautifully produced but comedy is not Polanski’s forte and the film seems to consists of much slapstick running around
Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (2008)
Feast was an enjoyable monster movie that came with tongue planted in sarcastic cheek. This was the first of two sequels but by now the snappy sarcasm of the original is feeling thinly drawn
Feed the Gods (2014)
A film about a sinister small town with secrets and Bigfoot creatures lurking around in the background. Quite what is going on any more than that is unclear
Femalien (1996)
Work of softcore erotica about an alien woman who comes to Earth to catalogue human sexual experience. Consists of lots of tasteful glossily photographed tumblings with only the slimmest of plots connecting
Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
Animated film where fairies face the threat to their forest posed by a logging operation. Preachy message-making that is all but a recruitment film for Greenpeace and the Sierra Club
Fertile Ground (2011)
Adam Gierasch, known for his gore-drenched horror films like Autopsy and Night of the Demons, takes a change of direction into the haunted house genre
Field of Dogs (2014)
From Lech Majewski, the Polish director of The Mill and the Cross, comes this supposed modern version of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Alas, the film never amounts to anything more than a series of almost entirely plotless surrealist visions
The Fiend (1971)
British-made film with Tony Beckley as a sexually repressed psycho raised in a religious cult who goes out and kills women. The film seems more interested in the sexploitation elements than it does in the psycho elements
Fiend Without a Face (1958)
Classic SF film where Marshall Thompson faces an invasion of hopping brains – pure thought monsters that have been unleashed by an atomic scientist dabbling in telekinesis
Final (2001)
Indie SF film where Denis Leary wakes up as patient in a psychiatric institution while he insists he has been awoken from cryogenic suspension in a future where he is awaiting execution
The Final Countdown (1980)
A big-budget film that has one of the great SF premises – what if a modern aircraft carrier were transported back in time to the eve of Pearl Harbor – only to end up blowing it.
Final Cut (2022)
One Cut of the Dead was one of the freshest takes on the overworked zombie film in recent years. Here Academy Award-winning director Michel Hazanavicius conducts a French remake but misses the mark
Final Destination (2000)
This spins the old plot about a clairvoyant dream of an airline disaster out as a teen horror film based around a series of bizarre novelty deaths. This became the first in a franchise of popular horror films.
Final Destination 2 (2003)
The first of the sequels, this has a group receiving bizarre deaths after receiving a premonition that prevents a deadly pile-up on the highway. It reveals the problems of creating a sequel to a film that was never intended to be a series
Final Destination 3 (2006)
The original creative team behind the Final Destination series, James Wong and Glen Morgan, return for this sequel but only provide a routine series of bizarre novelty deaths following the premonition of a rollercoaster disaster
Final Mission (1994)
Top Gun meets Virtual Reality in a rather ridiculous plot about Air Force pilots being introduced to a new virtual targeting system that turns them into brainwashed killers
The Final Programme (1974)
Michael Moorcock’s psychedelic adventurer hero Jerry Cornelius gets a disappointing film adaptation here. There are imaginative sets but the plot plays out as a pedestrian spy thriller
The Final Storm (2010)
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
The Final Terror (1983)
From the heyday of the slasher film, this seems to be trying to conduct a slasher version of Deliverance. Largely forgotten today and unremarkable but for an amazing cast of before-they-were-famous faces
Finding Neverland (2004)
A biopic about J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan. The film received much acclaim at awards season but in reality is a simplistic work that rewrites J.M. Barrie’s biography in favour of a fictional story about what happened
Finian’s Rainbow (1968)
One of Francis Ford Coppola’s earliest films as director, a musical where Fred Astaire procures a pot of gold and makes a deal with a leprechaun
First Knight (1995)
A version of the Arthurian legends that has stripped out Merlin and all of the magic and mounted it as an historical romance. With Sean Connery as King Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot
First Man Into Space (1959)
British-made SF film that is undeniably influenced by The Quatermass Xperiment about a test pilot turned into a mutated monster after flying above the upper atmosphere
The First Men in the Moon (1964)
Adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel about a Victorian journey to the Moon and encounter with its denizens. The film comes with Ray Harryhausen effects but is considerably weakened by a buffoonish tone
The First Omen (2024)
Did the world ask for a prequel to the events of The Omen, explaining how Damien was born etc? It’s not an issue that has given me sleepless night, but it is a question the film sets out to answer anyway
The First Power (1990)
This was made not long after Wes Craven’s Shocker. Here detective Lou Diamond Phillips faces a serial killer who comes back from the dead after going to the gas chamber and can hop between bodies
First Spaceship on Venus (1959)
A Soviet space exploration film from East Germany concerning an expedition to Venus. This was the first film to depict an international space mission but proves stolid dramatically
Fist of the North Star (1995)
The live-action English-language adaptation of the Japanese manga/anime that comes off as a muddled post-holocaust action film that doesn’t know what it wants to be
The Fitzroy (2017)
Eccentric and unclassifiable British film that takes place in some kind of gonzo alternate reality aboard a submarine converted into a hotel. The nearest equivalent one can think of in comparison is Delicatessen
Five Children and It (2004)
Adaptation of a classic British children’s book made by Jim Henson Productions where children discover a sand fairy that grants wishes. The film is largely centered around creating slapstick chaos
Five Nights at Freddy’s (2023)
A Blumhouse film adaptation of the videogame that was a considerable hit at the box-office. Josh Hutcherson plays a security guard at a pizza parlour who faces killer animatronics come to life
The Flame Barrier (1958)
An odd mix of 1950s alien invasion film and low-budget jungle adventure as explorers in the wilds of Mexico encounter a glowing amorphous blob in the jungle
Flashburn (2017)
Reality bending film where an amnesiac Sean Patrick Flanery wakes up in a warehouse and learns he is a scientist who holds the antidote to a pandemic. But all is not it seems.
Flatliners (1990)
A film about med students stopping their hearts so as to explore the afterlife. This aims for big ideas but befalls director Joel Schumacher who delivers pretty visuals but finds nothing any more profound than a figurative group hug
The Flesh and Blood Show (1972)
One of the earlier films from British director Pete Walker, a whodunnit with a psycho stalking the cast of a theatrical rehearsal. Walker doesn’t stint on the flesh but proves tamer than usual when it comes to the blood
Flesh Gordon (1974)
This offers the amusing idea of a softcore parody of the old Flash Gordon serials. A surprisingly well-made film in terms of effects but the jokes often seems belaboured amid the witless mugging
Flesh Gordon Meets the Cosmic Cheerleaders (1991)
This sequel to Flesh Gordon, the R-rated parody of the Flash Gordon serials, feels like a joke that is belaboured in the retelling. The film does have a crass level of nonsensical absurdity that proves amusing
The Flight That Disappeared (1961)
Film in which a plane in whisked outside of space and time and the passengers are placed on trial from the children of the future for their part in designing nuclear weapons
Flight to Mars (1951)
1950s SF film about an expedition to Mars. This fails to find anything interesting to happen once there where the astronauts do no more than engage in romances with the Martian women
The Flintstones (1994)
The first in what later became a fad for replicating cartoon tv series as big-budget live-action films, this does an exacting live-action version of the Hanna-Barbera series
Flood (2007)
A British disaster tv mini-series that depicts London being overwhelmed by vast flooding and the struggle by civil authorities to cope
Flowers for Algernon (2000)
Matthew Modine stars in the remake of the classic story about an experiment that turns an intellectually handicapped man into a genius. Everything comes in the simplistic emotions of a tv movie
Flu Bird Horror (2008)
The Bird Flu Epidemic was a brief panic over an influenza outbreak that infected humans; this seems to little concern the film that blows it up into a horde of large mutant birds that attack humans
Flubber (1997)
Remake of Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor where the charms of the original are buried under an excess of twee – where the professor now gets a cute robot assistant and the flubber becomes sentient
The Fly II (1989)
Sequel to the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly directed by that film’s effects creator Chris Walas. This reduces Cronenberg’s obsessive bodily transformation film into just another monster on the loose tale
Flying Disc Man from Mars (1950)
Twelve-chapter serial that offers one of the first ever depictions of an alien invader on screen. The results are oddly mundane in comparison to the onslaught of great 1950s alien invasion films that came only a couple of years later
The Flying Saucer (1950)
The very first film ever made about UFOs. This is fascinating as a work about UFOs made before all the other claptrap about abductions, impregnations etc came in. The film itself is rather dull
The Flying Serpent (1946)
Mad scientist cheapie from poverty row studio PRC in which George Zucco has found an Aztec Quetzalcoatl bird and kills his enemies by placing one of its feathers on their person
Foe (2023)
From the pen of Iain Reid who wrote I’m Thinking of Ending Things, an SF film about a man recruited for a space mission and the training of his android replacement. Expectedly, what is going on is shifting and pulls expectation out from under us
The Follower (2016)
A blatant copy of Misery where Erika Christensen is a popular singer who is abducted and made a prisoner by deranged fan Bethany Lauren James who wants her to write more songs in the style she used to
Forbidden World (1982)
One of the numerous copies of Alien. This was produced by Roger Corman, which means more of an exploitation emphasis – the alien is three times the size, there is more of a T&A emphasis and the effects are cannibalised from his other films
The Forest (2016)
Film about Japan’s legendary Suicide Forest that comes rich in a sense of original mythology. All possibilities are wrung out by incredibly tepid direction that fails to deliver anything remotely scary
The Forever Purge (2021)
In this, the fifth film in The Purge series, the scenario becomes even more interestingly political, becoming a satiric take on MAGA America and the Capitol Riots
Forever Young (1992)
Popular film with Mel Gibson as a man who is cryogenically frozen in the 1940s and thawed out in the present. The romantic focus of the film is undone by some absurd plotting. An early script from J.J. Abrams
Forgotten Experiment (2023)
A Russian SF film where a plane is forced to put down on an island where people find themselves caught up in a series of time travel experiments and thrown between different eras
The Formula (1980)
Dull big-budget thriller about Nazi fuel formulas and Big Oil conspiracies. This seems intended as a copy of The Boys from Brazil centred around George C. Scott and Marlon Brando trying to out over-act one another
Fortress 2: Re-Entry (2000)
Sequel to the Christopher Lambert starring future prison film, this relocates the action to an orbiting space station. Less brainless than its predecessor if in the end no more than average
Fortunes (2005)
Frustratingly insipid indie slice-of-life film following three guys affected by a fortune-teller’s prophecy, this never surmounts the banalities of its characters’ lives
The Fountain (2006)
Darren Aronofsky’s version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A cryptic and baffling story that takes place in three different eras, all featuring the same actors. Aronofsky engages in much symbolic interplay but what is happening is a scratch of the head
Fountain of Youth (2025)
Guy Ritchie makes an adventure film that pays homage to Indiana Jones and a host of other works concerning the quest for the Fountain of Youth. A superficial film killed by its constantly distracting flip banter
Four Rooms (1995)
An anthology of blackly funny tales, including episodes directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, all centred around Tim Roth as a long-suffering hotel bellboy
Four Sided Triangle (1953)
An early effort from Hammer Films and director Terence Fisher. Rather than the florid Gothic that Hammer and Fisher would discover four years later, this is a film with one foot in the mad science genre of the 1940s about the invention of a matter duplication machine
The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1959)
Someone decided to make a horror film about the practice of shrinking heads conducted by some South American Indian tribes. Despite starting well, this is mostly dull and pedestrian
The Fourth Kind (2009)
This makes a fictitious claim to be a dramatisation of alien abductions that took place in Alaska. This creates something that is undeniably interesting before shooting itself in the foot by heading into Ancient Astronauts territory
Fractured (2013)
Film about an amnesiac man trying to piece his disturbing past together amid a series of surreal nightmares. This ends up not nearly as interesting as you feel it could have been
Fractured (2019)
Brad Anderson makes a paranoid nightmare as Sam Worthington takes his daughter to a hospital only for her to go missing and he to encounter a Kafka-esque bureaucracy that insists she doesn’t exist
Francis Goes to the Races (1951)
The second in a surprisingly popular series of comedies about Francis the talking mule, this involves Donald O’Connor and Francis in a series of hijinks set around horse racing track
Frankenfish (2004)
A fairly routine cable monster movie about people dealing with a series of attacks by genetically-engineered killer fish that are loose in the bayous
Frankenhooker (1990)
Frank Henenlotter of Basket Case fame modernises the Frankenstein film Here Frankenstein creates a body out of parts from Time Square hookers. Amusing but eventually a film where the humour is too broad
Frankenstein 1970 (1958)
Boris Karloff became an icon of horror after appearing as the monster in the 1931 Frankenstein. This was the only time he played Baron Frankenstein, appearing as his modern descendant using an atomic reactor to bring his creation to life
Frankenstein (2004)
TV mini-series that tries to conduct a rigorously faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s book and largely succeeds apart from some minor changes. On the other hand, none of the period setting or story much comes to life
Frankenstein: A Modern Myth (2012)
Supposedly a documentary about the Frankenstein story but no more than a glorified dvd extra to accompany the Danny Boyle stage production of Frankenstein. This covers the life of Mary Shelley but almost entirely sidesteps the Frankenstein cinematic legacy
Frankenstein Conquers the World (1966)
One of the strangest of Japanese monster movies in which the heart of the Frankenstein monster is caught in the Hiroshima atomic blast and grows into a giant boy
Frankenstein: Day of the Beast (2011)
What is there that a new version of Frankenstein can offer? This low-budget effort strips everything down to simply a monster movie about the creature pursuing Frankenstein on his wedding night