The Land Before Time V: The Mysterious Island (1997)
The fifth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, all having been made for very young children
The Land That Time Forgot (2009)
A low-budget modernised version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a group ending up on a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. Slightly better than usual for The Asylum
The Land Unknown (1957)
A 1950s B movie where a US Navy team discovers a prehistoric lost world in the Antarctic where dinosaurs from prehistory still roam. This unfortunately befalls shoddy effects
Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (2001)
The first film adaptation of the popular videogame is a film largely premised around the personality of Angelina Jolie. Outside of that, the film is a half-baked series of plot ends and action scenes taken from better films
Larva (2005)
Monster movie about larvae emerging from genetically engineered cattle feed and becoming giant bat-like creatures. When a film casts Rachel Hunter as a corporate lawyer, it is not exactly aiming for believability
The Las Vegas Serial Killer (1986)
Film from Ray Dennis Steckler, the cult director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies concerning a maniac on a killing spree in Las Vegas
The Last Boy (2019)
Low-budget film set following the collapse of society about a boy who goes on a quest for the place where wishes can be fulfilled
The Last Breath (2024)
A film about survival in shark-infested waters where a party diving on a wreck become trapped inside by sharks. Featuring the last performance of Julian Sands
The Last Chase (1981)
Dystopian action film that could have only been made during the late 70s Oil Crisis where Lee Majors defies a totalitarian system where vehicles are banned by setting out in his racing car
The Last Child (1971)
TV movie set in a dystopian future where law mandates that couples can only have one child, concerning a couple who go on the run after becoming pregnant a second time
The Last Days of American Crime (2020)
A heist film set in a near-future USA where a group of criminals are preparing a last big caper before the activation of a mind control device that will make crime impossible
The Last Dinosaur (1977)
A team of explorers find a humid world at the Arctic where dinosaurs and cavemen still roam. The men in rubber suit effects are adequate, although the film itself is on the slow side
The Last House on Cemetery Lane (2015)
A haunted house film from Andrew Jones, who makes an okay but very low key film – the spookiest it ever gets is a phantom record player. Things are lifted by a modest M. Shyamalan-esque twist
The Last House on Dead End Street (1977)
A work of exploitation notoriety about snuff movies. Seen in heavily cut and edited forms, the film holds an undeniably sordid and nasty charge but mostly comes across as amateurish
The Last House on the Left (2009)
A disappointing remake of the harrowing Wes Craven classic where the violence has been tamed down and the film is entirely missing the irony of the original’s savage ending
The Last Loner (2019)
A homage to Andrei Tarkovsky’s classic Stalker about people venturing into a mysterious alien zone. This is rather fascinatingly filmed inside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone
The Last Man(s) on Earth (2012)
Film spinoff from a YouTube channel that features two comedians giving absurdly over-the-top survivalist tips. What works as a series of short clips has difficulty extending the gags to a dramatic plot
The Last Mimzy (2007)
Adaptation of a classic SF short story about children’s toys from the future that give them expanded mental powers. Much of the story has been dropped in favour of banal New Age thinking
The Last Scout (2017)
British SF film about the last survivors of Earth on an expedition to find new planet to make home. This manages to do some reasonable things on a low budget
The Last Sentinel (2007)
Action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as a cyborg soldier fighting a one-man war against rogue police drones of the future. A fairly generic assemblage of cliches
The Last Seven (2010)
Seven people wake up in a deserted London with no memory of who they are only to find that something is stalking them. An intriguing hook let down by a tired and overused ending
The Last Shark (1981)
One of several Italian exploitation copycats of Jaws. This has the reputation as the film that was such a blatant ripoff that Universal sued to stop its release
The Last Sharknado: It’s About Time (2018)
The sixth of the Sharknado films, this has the usual crew fighting sharknados throughout history. With this comes the recognition there is nowhere more ridiculous and over-the-top for the series to go
The Last Train (1999)
A British tv mini-series where a group of people in a regular train carriage go into suspended animation and emerge fifty years later to find a devastated world
The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
One of a spate of recent films that adapt characters or sections from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this concerns the doomed ship voyage aboard which Dracula travels to England
Late Night Double Feature (2016)
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
Lathe of Heaven (2002)
This was the second film adaptation of conceptually ingenious Ursula Le Guin novel about a man whose dreams change reality around him whenever he wakes up
L’Atlantide (1992)
The sixth film version of a classic lost world story about explorers finding Atlantis and its immortal queen in the desert. This is a more mundane version that waters down the fantastic elements
The Laughing Policeman (1973)
A gritty US-made adaptation of a Swedish thriller with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern as detectives investigating a machine-gun murder spree aboard a bus
Lavender (2016)
From the director of The Last Exorcism Part II, a title that does nothing to suggest a horror film. All we get is a ghost story that does an M. Night Shyamalan shift into an improbably contrived fugue state drama
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Vigilante film where Gerard Butler exacts revenge against the justice system while imprisoned in a jail cell. The dispatches become entertainingly improbable to the point that Butler almost becomes a Batman villain in all but name
The Lawnmower Man (1992)
This has nothing to do with the Stephen King story about a Pan-worshipping lawnmowing service and is a film about Virtual Reality. Harnessing some top-drawer CGI effects of the day, this was influential on subsequent VR films
Lazareth (2024)
A film set in a post-pandemic future, this features Ashley Judd and daughters living in isolation on their own who are suddenly forced to welcome a stranger into their house
Lazer Team (2015)
A film from the comedy collective Rooster Teeth about four screw-ups who pick up power suit items from an alien spaceship only to find they are to defend Earth in a tournament
Lee Cronin’s The Mummy (2026)
Blumhouse conduct not a reboot but a new mummy film – that has no actual mummy in it and instead seems to have taken most of its moves from The Exorcist. And naturally the title leaves you asking “Lee who?”
The Leech Woman (1960)
Disappointingly not a work about human-animal hybrids but about a woman who obtains a rejuvenation serum but finds it requires devouring male pineal glands. This comes with much amusingly dated sexism
Left Behind (2000)
Adaptation of the best-selling Christian book series about the Biblical End of the World. There is a mini-industry of these films and, if one can stomach the preachiness, this is not entirely bad
Left Behind (2014)
Nicolas Cage stars in a new film based on the best-selling books about the Biblical end of the world. Despite a much bigger budget than the Kirk Cameron version, nothing terribly interesting happens
Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002)
The second of the Kirk Cameron Biblical End Times films. On one hand, these are quite competently made B movies; on the other the fundamentalist message is unpalatable
The Legacy (1978)
One of the last gasps of the Anglo-horror cycle, this sets assorted deviltry in an English mansion along with a series of novelty deaths that trying to compete with The Omen
The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
One of the numerous Bigfoot films of the 1970s. This takes a quasi-documentary approach that never makes for a particularly interesting film and where the Bigfoot of the show gets to do very little
The Legend of Jack and Jill (2021)
From the people who made Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a film where the nursery rhyme of Jack and Jill somehow morphs into a variant on The Hills Have Eyes
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1980)
A tv movie version of the classic ghost story by Washington Irving and the most faithful version of the story to date. With a young Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane
The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
The last of Hammer’s Dracula films made after Christopher Lee departed. A co-production with Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers that shows Hammer trying to jump aboard the 1970s kung fu fad
Legend of the Werewolf (1974)
A Freddie Francis directed werewolf film from the latter days entry in the Anglo-horror cycle set in 1900s France. This owes much to Hammer’s earlier Curse of the Werewolf
Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return (2014)
Animated sequel to The Wizard of Oz that proved a charmless flop that misses the magic of the original by a mile. The familiar characters are run over with a gratingly modern sense of humour
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Film adaptation of the popular children’s books expends much effort on the design and look and casts a wildly over-acting Jim Carrey as the villain. Beyond that, the show never much goes anywhere
Lensman (1984)
E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith’s Lensman books are space opera classics. Here they are given the anime treatment, which abandons much adherence to the source material and ends up more as a copy of Star Wars
Leonard Part 6 (1987)
Bill Cosby was massive on tv during the 1980s but when he tried to move to film it resulted in this bizarre flop of a gonzo spy comedy starring Cosby as a retired agent forced to return to the field
Leones (2012)
A group of youths walk through the woods lost then discover why they are there in a hackneyed genre twist ending you can see coming an hour before it does
Leprechaun (1993)
The first in the popular series of films starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun. Fairly cheesy and silly, mostly known today for featuring a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston
Leprechaun Returns (2018)
Leprechaun was a hit of the VHS era. This, the eighth of the films, was made to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary and contains many tributes to the original
Lesbian Vampire Killers (2009)
This seems to want to do for the lesbian vampire film what Shaun of the Dead did for the zombie film. Alas, the film makes its appeal fairly and squarely into the crude, sexism of British lad culture
Lethal Target (1999)
Conceptually odd mix of an erotic film and a standard copy of Alien. This come with the peculiarity of steamy encounters sitting alongside chestburster scenes
Level Five (1996)
Chris Marker, the director of La Jetee, returns to SF. Though this is set around a Virtual Reality game, it is in fact a documentary essay about the Battle of Okinawa
Level Up (2016)
Like a version of David Fincher’s The Game rewritten for the mobile user generation where a slacker is forced through a series of scenarios that mess with his sense of reality
The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines (2006)
The second of The Librarian tv movies featuring Noah Wyle as an Indiana Jones-modelled adventurer in search of mythical artifacts – here a map to King Solomon’s Mines
Licensed to Love and Kill (1979)
One in a series of British spy films made in imitation of the James Bond series. As evidenced by the alternate title The Man from S.E.X., this takes things further than the Bond films do
Life After Life (2016)
Chinese film in which a dead wife comes back to inhabit the body of her son to get her husband to move a tree before their village is redeveloped
Life Among the Cannibals (1996)
A black comedy that feels like a wannabe Coen Brothers film. Set among various Hollywood hangers-on, this starts with a surreal bizarreness that collapses into raucous farce
The Lift (1983)
A Dutch film about a killer elevator that gained some attention when it came out. This generates some reasonable suspense but it also has a plot that drags considerably
Light Blast (1985)
From the director of the original Inglorious Bastards, an action film with Erik Estrada as a cop pursuing a blackmailing scientist who has a powerful laser weapon
Lights Out (2016)
The James Wan produced (as opposed to directed) film is a dubious prospect. You cannot deny that this film about creatures in the dark does make an audience jump but I felt that I’d seen everything before
Lilo & Stitch (2025)
The Disney live-action remake machine continues with this version of the hit 2002 animated film about a cuddly malevolent alien creature. As with most of the Disney remake, the original looks flat in live-action
Limbo (2019)
Film set in a police interrogation room in the afterlife where two attorneys argue over whether a dead man should be saved or damned
The Limehouse Golem (2016)
This comes with a captivating tagline “Before The Ripper, fear had another name” and misleadingly suggests it is based on another true-life Victorian serial killer. This refuses to be the police procedural you expect
Limitless (2011)
Bradley Cooper in a film about a drug that provides about heightened intelligence. In truth this is a film how becoming a baked drug addict can give you the feeling you can change the world
The Limits of Control (2009)
Cryptic and baffling Jim Jarmusch film with Isaach De Bankole as a mysterious assassin who passes through a series of enigmatic and surreal conversations
The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe (1979)
Earlier less well known adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book made for tv. This is faithful to the book but is badly hampered by primitive animation and an exceedingly simplistic rendering of the story
Lisa (1989)
Gimmicky thriller about teen girls making prank phone calls who end up calling and then becoming the target of a serial killer
Lisa Frankenstein (2024)
A modernised comedy take on the Frankenstein film that comes with a script from Diablo Cody where Kathryn Newton turns a resurrected man into the ideal boyfriend
Little Bone Lodge (2023)
A thriller in which two brothers fleeing police take refuge at a farmhouse where it becomes increasingly apparent that there are secrets and sinister goings-on
Little Buddha (1993)
Bernardo Bertolucci directs a biopic of the Buddha, which is interspersed with a modern story where a Western boy learns that he is the reincarnation of a revered abbot
Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016)
This had me watched on the basis of the title alone. An Asylum production, this is less a twisted take on the fairytale than one that turns Little Red Riding Hood into a werewolf hunter
Little Evil (2017)
The director of Tucker and Dale vs Evil returns with a comedy that spoofs The Omen about an average guy trying to step-parent the Anti-Christ child
The Little Mermaid (2018)
Not the Disney film, but a live-action film only loosely based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. Not much more than a nicely made average film but one conducted with evident care
The Little Mermaid (2023)
Disney’s original The Little Mermaid was an enormously fresh film. This is the live-action remake that came out amid much controversy and is inevitably a lesser shadow of the original.
The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning (2008)
One among the series of cheap video-released sequels to their classic animated films made during the 1990s/2000s, this is a prequel that offers up a Little Mermaid origin story
Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989)
Anime film based on Winsor McCay’s celebrated comic strip about a boy’s adventures in dreams. Despite a script from Ray Bradbury, the film waters the comic-strip down to the formula of the modern children’s film
The Little Prince (1974)
Director Stanley Donen conducts a star-studded musical adaptation of Antoine De Saint-Exupéry’s children story about an innocent alien prince come to Earth but with ponderous results
The Little Vampire (2017)
Animated film based on the popular series of children’s stories about a kid who befriends a vampire boy. The same stories had previously appeared as a live-action fllm
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
The fourth of the Die Hard films and the only one that enters into genre territory with Bruce Willis now fighting a catastrophic hack attack that disables the entire US
Live Wire (1992)
Thriller with Pierce Brosnan as a bomb disposal expert who comes up against terrorists who have invented an explosive that can be drunken in a glass of water
Living Among Us (2018)
A modern-day vampire film set at a time when vampires have revealed themselves to the world. This is shot as Found Footage film as a tv crew go to interview a brood of vampires
Liza, The Fox-Fairy (2015)
A head-scratchingly odd effort – a woman who stayed inside all her life goes in search of love only for the jealous ghost of a 1950s pop singer to kill every man who looks at her
Lizzie Borden Took an Ax (2014)
Lizzie Borden is one of the more fascinating figures in True Crime. This is very accurate to the details of the case; alas it gets the most sensational aspect over soon in and bogs down in the minutiae of the trial
Lobster Man from Mars (1989)
This is intended as a deliberately bad parody of a 1950s SF film. It is a fairly silly effort that almost ends up being too well made for its own good to mimic the originals that weren’t even trying
The Locals (2003)
A New Zealand-made horror film in which two friends find themselves trapped in a small rural town where the dead keep returning to life
Loch Ness (1996)
Big-budget film with a CGI creature made not long after Jurassic Park with Ted Danson as a zoologist investigating the existence of the Loch Ness Monster film. This only resorts to simplistic cliches
The Loch Ness Horror (2023)
A low-budget Loch Ness Monster film, this does capably well for the most part but then bizarrely enough turns into an Alien-copy part way through
Locked (2025)
A thriller in which Bill Skarsgård is a petty thief who break into a SUV only to become trapped inside and psychologically tormented by the vehicle’s owner Anthony Hopkins
Locusts (2005)
A formula Syfy Channel film variant on the bugs gone amok film, starring Lucy Lawless as a government official who fights to stop a genetically-engineered swarm of locusts miles wide
The Lodger (2009)
Fourth version of the tale about a family who believe their boarder might be Jack the Ripper. This is updated to the present and abandons most of the story for a mind-bending pretzel of identity speculations
The Lodgers (2017)
A beautifully shot period set Irish ghost story that does a superb job in building atmosphere but is all fascinating mystery that ends without explaining a single thing
London After Midnight (1927)
A lost film from the great silent actor Lon Chaney [Sr] who would undergo great physical makeup transformations for his role. This also has the distinction of being the first Hollywood-made vampire film
London Fields (2018)
Based on an acclaimed book, once to be directed by David Cronenberg. This opened to bad reviews but is not uninteresting. A near future setting, precognitive dreams and Amber Heard as a sizzling femme fatale
Lonely Hearts (2006)
Film based on true-life killers Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez who preyed on victims through the lonely hearts column. Directed by the investigating detective’s grandson.
Long Distance (2024)
SF film with Anthony Ramos as survivor of a crashed ship who must make a journey across a hostile planet to find another survivor while low on oxygen
The Long Night (2022)
A Folk Horror film where Scout Taylor-Compton visits the South in search of the parents she never knew only for cultists in black robes and animal masks to surround the house
Long Weekend (2008)
Pointless remake of the cult Australian Nature’s Revenge film. This takes place amid some gorgeously shot natural scenery, is very faithful to the first film but seems to entirely miss the paranoid tone