Frankenstein Legacy (2024)
One of the spate of Frankenstein films to emerge in the 2023-4 period, this conducts an ambitious period-set follow-up to the original Mary Shelley story on a low budget
Frankenstein Meets the Spacemonster (1965)
A film with a bad movie reputation where a NASA android returns to Earth damaged and goes amok where it tackles alien invaders come to Earth to abduct women
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
The first film in which Universal teamed-up their in-house monsters, leading to several other monster bashes throughout the decade. For all that, this fails to make any interesting use of the title set-up
The Frankenstein Theory (2013)
A Found Footage Frankenstein film. There is little of Frankenstein and his monster here and this feels more like a Found Footage Quest for Bigfoot film in all but name
Frankenstein’s Bloody Terror (1968)
Not a Frankenstein film but a werewolf film. Spanish actor Paul Naschy debuts his signature role of the wolfman Waldemar Daninsky. Naschy would return to the role nine times, as well as play most of the classic horror characters
Frankenstein’s Castle of Freaks (1974)
A trashy European exploitation version of the Frankenstein story that involves Frankenstein reviving a cavemen, a perverted dwarf and plentiful nude bodies
Frankenweenie (2012)
Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated expansion of his 1982 short film has a winning concept – a parody of the Universal Frankenstein films with a teenage boy resurrecting his dog
Frankie Freako (2024)
Makeup effects artist Steven Kostanski has become a fine director in recent years. Here he makes a Gremlins-styled film about a 1-900 number that unleashes a mischievous goblin
Frat House Massacre (2008)
Supposedly a slasher film that purports to tell the truth about university fraternity rites, the delves into depicting hazing rituals with gory relish
Freaky (2020)
A slasher film with a novelty (gimmicky?) premise where the Final Girl and the hulking killer of the show end up swapping bodies. Essentially a conceptual mash-between a slasher film and Freaky Friday
Fred Claus (2007)
A Christmas film with Vince Vaughn as Santa’s younger brother, a petty street hustler. A promising sarcastic tone falls into easy predictable routines and characters arcs
Freddy vs. Jason (2003)
The long promised crossover between the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, this seems caught in a juggling act that fails to satisfy the requirements of either franchise
Free Birds (2013)
Animated film designed for the US Thanksgiving holiday. With a completely insane plot involving turkeys travelling back in time to stop turkeys being served at the first Thanksgiving
Freeway (1988)
Thriller where widow Darlanne Fluegel and radio talkback host Richard Belzer team up to hunt a serial killer shooting people on the L.A. freeways
Freeway Killer (2010)
A low-budget entry in the 2000s fad for true-life serial killer films. This is based on William Bonin who around the L.A. freeways in a van and abducted and killed young men
The Freeway Maniac (1989)
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a cheap psycho film in which maniac James Courtney (later Michael Myers in the Halloween reboot) pursues a young actress around the desert
Fresh Meat (2012)
New Zealand comedy in which a teenage daughter discovers that her father Temuera Morrison is a modern-day Maori cannibal cultist. Everything is given a very broad playing
Friday the 13th (1980)
A copy of John Carpenter’s Halloween that proved a big success and spawned a long-running series of sequels. Both films created the slasher film, which came to overrun horror in the 1980s, although this is a cruder film than Halloween
Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
The second of the Friday the 13th films. This was the point where the formula of the series slipped into place and Jason emerges to become an invincible killing machine
Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)
The eighth of the Friday the 13th films that offers the novelty of taking a revived Jason to New York City. Actually, one of the better entries in the series, which plays his encounters with New York locals for some amusement
Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984)
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
Fried Barry (2020)
A South African variant on a film like Starman where a man is inhabited by an alien and stumbles through a series of encounters on the seedier side of life
Fright Flick (2011)
A slasher movie that takes place on the set of a slasher movie. Director Israel Luna has an idea that you feel could have been far cleverer than the way it ends up being presented on screen
Fright Night (2011)
Another 1980s horror remake that resurrects and changes the original to little purpose. This fails to understand that what was original in 1985 lacks much when placed alongside contemporary vampire films
The Frighteners (1996)
Before The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson flopped badly with this ghost comedy. Jackson allows his obsession with the effects technology to take over at the expense of much else and provides little that is funny
Frogs (1972)
Classic film from the 1970s Nature’s Revenge fad with a group gathered for a party on an island finding that flora and fauna all around has become malevolent and turned against humanity
From Beyond (1986)
After the cult success of Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs and most of the principals returned with a further H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. More outrageously over-the-top splatter effects but this is somewhat the lesser
From Hell (2001)
Disappointing attempt, based on a Alan Moore graphic novel, to depict the Jack the Ripper killings. The film feels over-produced and slides off the cliff by throwing its weight behind one of the more ludicrous and implausible Ripper theories
From Hell to the Wild West (2017)
Western based around the idea of Jack the Ripper having relocated out West whereupon he becomes a standard slasher-styled maniac. Featuring Charles Bronson ringer Robert Kovacs as the hero
From the Dark (2014)
A horror film stripped to the basics – just two characters at siege in a farmhouse from creatures that lurk in the dark – not even any explanation of what the creatures are
From the Earth to the Moon (1958)
One of a series of Jules Verne adaptations that were popular in the 1950s about a Victorian-era Lunar rocket launch, this starts with great promise but loses impetus once it gets into orbit
Frontier(s) (2007)
Xavier Gens delivers a French copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is largely by the numbers excepting for a gore level raised to what must be a maximum for the genre
Frostbite (2006)
Swedish film about vampires at a smalltown hospital and vampire pills thought to be party drugs that spread around the town. This is made with an uneven sense of black humour
Frozen (2013)
Disney animated film that supposedly adapts Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, although Andersen wouldn’t recognise it. This often feels like a ramshackle assemblage of formula elements rather than the classic it was hailed as
Frozen With Fear (2001)
A psycho-thriller featuring Bo Derek as an agoraphobic wife dealing with the shock of seeing her husband murdered only to then find that his body has disappeared
Full Circle (1977)
A Peter Straub adapted ghost story that sits in an ambiguous state about whether Mia Farrow is seeing her dead daughter or going mad. This comes influenced by Don’t Look Now
Fullmetal Alchemist (2017)
Live-action adaptation of the popular manga and anime series. Despite having a reasonable budget thrown at it and treating the source material with fathfulness, this looks awkward on the screen
Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos (2011)
Film spinoff from the popular anime tv series that seems caught between a film and a tv episode. While the film reaches for epic scale, the usual run of power blasts, there is nothing that we haven’t seen before
Fun & Fancy Free (1947)
One of the Disney animated portmanteaus of the 1940s featuring stories about a circus bear and a retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk starring Donald, Mickey and Goofy
Funeral Home (1980)
Forgotten Canadian film about a series of murders around a former funeral home that has been converted into a guest house. Released at the height of the slasher cycle but this comes more in the vein of Psycho
The Fury (1978)
Brian De Palma returns to psychic powers themes in this successor to Carrie, but this is a much more sprawling and often incoherent narrative with only occasional moments of De Palma’s directorial flourish
Future Force (1989)
1990s VHS SF/action with David Carradine as a future cyborg bounty hunter on the run with a wrongly convicted girl while hunted by his own side
Future World (2018)
James Franco co-directed effort about an android on a quest across a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Franco draws on cliches established by the Mad Max films and only makes an Albert Pyun film with pretensions
G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013)
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage. This is less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film
G.I. Joe: The Rise of the Cobra (2009)
Stephen Sommers make a film based on the popular action toy line. Barring one exhilarating sequence in the middle, this consists of lots of sound and CGI fury amounting to very little at all
G-Loc (2020)
SF film with Stephen Moyer as a spaceship survivor who boards a ship with the crew mysteriously dead and becomes caught up in interplanetary politicking
Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
Truly amazing William Randolph Hearst financed film about a weak US President who is influenced by angels and ruthlessly cracks down on law and order
Galaxy Turnpike (2015)
Japanese comedy with various humans and aliens interacting around an interstellar burger restaurant on the road from Earth, although none of it seems that funny
The Gallows (2015)
Though this received a reasonably high-profile release from Blumhouse, it transpires as no more than a Found Footage film about the haunting of a high-school play
The Gallows Act II (2019)
The Gallows was a Found Footage film about a haunted high school play. Blumhouse have yet to have a success to which they are not willing to spin out a sequel
The Game (1997)
David Fincher film in which Michael Douglas is wound into a conspiracy that makes him doubt everything around him. Fincher creates paranoia but the story eventually becomes an improbably contrived house of cards
Game of Death (2017)
Gore-drenched French-Canadian film where teens play a board game that forces them to kill a select number of people lest their heads explode
Game Over (2019)
A reality bending Bollywood film in which a wheelchair-ridden woman videogame designer is haunted by mysterious events, although quite what is all about is a very good question
Gamer (2009)
Film somewhere between Counterstrike and The Running Man where convicts are controlled as avatars inside a live-action videogame. A difficult to believe premise that is pumped up with hyper-adrenalised action visuals
Gamera 2: Assault of Legion (1996)
Shusuke Kaneko did extraordinary things in revitalising the Japanese monster movie in the 1990s with his trilogy of Gamera films. This was the second of them, usually seen as the weakest of the trilogy
Gamera vs Barugon (1966)
The 1960s Gamera films were always a copy of the Godzilla films, aimed at a more juvenile level and with crappier effects. This was the second of them, somewhat better produced than the others and taking proceedings seriously
The Gamma People (1956)
One of the early films from Anglo-horror director John Gilling, this takes place in a fictional Soviet republic and features experiments to create a race of super-children
Gandahar (1988)
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure set on a world where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
Gangsters, Guns and Zombies (2012)
This has the amusing idea of mashing the zombie film up with the Guy Ritchie gangster film, although never quite hits the comic-bookishly over-the-top posturing of Ritchie’s films
Garfield (2004)
Big screen version of the massively popular Garfield comic-strips in live-action with a CGI talking Garfield. Here Garfield has been tacked onto a plot that feels assembled from every other talking animals film
Garfield Gets Real (2007)
Animated film spun off from the Garfield comic-strips in which Garfield emerges out into the real world. A cute premise that the film fails to develop
The Gathering (2003)
Made not long after The Da Vinci Code was huge, a similar archaeological mystery centred around an amnesiac Christina Ricci and a sinister buried church dating back to The Crucifixion
Gawain and the Green Knight (1973)
The first film version of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the tales associated with the Arthurian legends. An obscure, little seen version starring singer Murray Head as Gawain
The Gendarme and the Extra-Terrestrials (1979)
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
Genesis (2018)
Apparently the first in a projected trilogy. The ambitiousness of this aside, the film only trades in unoriginal cliches of post-apocalyptic survival and android self-awareness
Genesis II (1973)
An unsold Gene Roddenberry tv pilot that is a fascinating almost-ran. Roddenberry rehashes Star Trek by way of Buck Rogers in a post-holocaust setting. This could have made for a worthwhile series
Gentlemen Broncos (2009)
Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess visits the same territory with this comedy in which teenager Michael Angarano has his manuscript stolen by SF writer Jemaine Clement
Gentlemen Explorers (2013)
This advertises itself as the first live-action Steampunk film. What we get is like a Victorian version of The Librarians with two adventurers hunting mythical artifacts while armed with steam weapons
Genuine (1920)
One of the lesser films made by the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene. Wiene employs the same stark angular sets and exaggerated shadows in the tale of a predatory femme fatale
Geo-Disaster (2017)
A disaster movie mockbuster from The Asylum that was intended to exploit the (non)-success of Geostorm. Directed by the writer of the Sharknado films
George A. Romero’s Resident Evil (2025)
George A. Romero was hired to make the first Resident Evil film but was abruptly fired and we ended up with films we did. This is a documentary that sets out to find what happened
George’s Intervention (2009)
A zombie comedy that comes with a mildly amusing premise – where people stage an intervention to stop their friend eating people. This feels a single gag drawn-out as a full length film
German Angst (2015)
Amid the 2010s spate of multi-director horror anthologies a la The ABCs of Death, V/H/S etc, this is a trio of tales from all German directors, the most well known of which is Jörg Buttgereit of Nekromantik infamy
The Gestapo’s Last Orgy (1977)
One of the notorious 1970s Nazisploitation films, this Italian-made entry is one work that crosses way over taboo lines and makes for extreme watching
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)
Don Knotts was a popular comic of the era who specialised in a craven fearfulness. Here he plays in a haunted house comedy. Beyond Knotts’ comedic antics, the film never seems very interested in the haunted house aspect
The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960)
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s. While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects
The Ghost Galleon (1974)
The third of the Blind Dead films about the zombies of blind Knights Templar. This is set aboard a ghost ship at sea and is said to have later influenced John Carpenter’s The Fog
Ghost in the Shell (2015)
Another anime film in the Ghost in the Shell franchise. This was the fifth episode of the Ghost in the Shell: Arise reboot series that received a theatrical release
Ghost Lantern (1993)
From Andrew Lau, director of Infernal Affairs, a weepy Hong Kong comedy about a man caught up in a romantic quandary from his previous reincarnation
The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
The fourth of Universal’s Frankenstein films where Lon Chaney Jr inherits the role of the monster and makes it into a stumbling brute that lacks the pathos of Boris Karloff. The plot recycles what has now become the cliches of the series
Ghost Ship (2002)
This was a big-budget revival of the ghost ship theme by Dark Castle Entertainment about a salvage crew encountering a ghost vessel. Visual effects tend to trump spooky atmosphere
The Ghost Snatchers (1986)
Hong Kong supernatural film about a new tower block that is haunted because its feng shui is out. This goes well beyond the initial fantasy it starts out as being into moments of out-and-out dementia
Ghost Story (1981)
Big-budget studio adaptation of Peter Straub’s novel about four aging men who tell ghost stories to exorcise their past. This strips many of the book’s storylines and never seems to make any of its attempts to scare pay off
Ghost Town (2008)
Director/screenwriter David Koepp proves that comedy is not his forte in this light fantasy in which Ricky Gervais emerges from anaesthesia to find that he can now see ghosts
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024)
Follow-up to Ghostbusters: Afterlife, reuniting that film’s mix of new and classic cast. However, this becomes a plotting juggle that is often straining to find somewhere to include everyone
Ghostbusters II (1989)
A weak follow-up to the hit original that essentially killed off any further Ghostbusters sequels. Most of the the cast are back but the plot and proceedings feel like a walk-through for all involved.
Ghosthouse (1988)
From the notorious 1980s heyday of Italian horror, this reads as The Amityville Horror remade as a Lucio Fulci film with the addition of a series of gore-drenched dispatches
Ghosts – Italian Style (1967)
A lightweight Italian comedy of errors where Sophia Loren and husband move into a mansion being offered cheaply only to find it is haunted by the ghosts of the previous owners
Ghosts of Mars (2001)
John Carpenter returns to cinema screens amid the 2000-1 spate of Mars movies. Despite promise, this ends up being not much more than his early film Assault on Precinct 13 relocated on Mars
Ghostwatcher (2002)
A B-budget horror film about an agoraphobic woman who is unable to go over of her apartment who then finds that it is haunted by a ghost
The Ghoul (1975)
Latter day Anglo-horror film from Freddie Francis that assembles many Hammer regulars in a story where Peter Cushing keeps a cannibalistic son on his country estate
Giallo (2009)
Dario Argento makes a disappointing return to the giallo thriller where he made his name. With Argento’s characteristic murder set-pieces having been toned down, the results are nothing special
The Giant (2016)
For the most part, this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
The Giant Behemoth (1958)
The director of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms essentially rehashes the same film here with another atomically revived dinosaur this time attacking London instead of New York
Giant from the Unknown (1958)
1950s B movie that jumps aboard the fad for big/small people films created by The Incredible Shrinking Man. Only you end up feeling that the film’s 6’6″ resurrected Conquistador is a letdown on the title promise
The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
From Bill Rebane, a film about a rampaging giant spider (having emerged from a black hole we are told). This has a bad movie reputation, although on most accounts it emerges as strictly average
The Gift (2000)
An uncommon misstep from Sam Raimi. Despite the fact he has a sterling cast onboard and a script from Billy Bob Thornton, the medium thriller plot rehashes comes out fairly bland
The Gift (2015)
Blumhouse thriller about an old school friend who inserts himself into the lives of a successful couple and proceeds to stalk them. This produces several effective twists but ultimately feels too mannered
The Gingerdead Man (2005)
One of the most ridiculous title creature to ever inspire a horror franchise – a possessed gingerbread man. From low-budget producer Charles Band, this rips off the Chucky series but with baked goods instead of a doll
Gintama (2017)
The live-action adaptation of a popular anime and manga, this takes place in an alternate history version of Japan where samurai fight following an alien invasion