Longlegs (2024)
Osgood Perkins has been a director on the rise in recent years. This was his fourth film where he makes a serial killer thriller featuring a verrrry weird Nicolas Cage in the title role
The Lorax (2012)
Animated Dr. Seuss adaptation that emerges as occasionally cute but little that rises above formula. The original story holds a pro-environmentalist message that is laid on with a trowel in the film
Lord of Illusions (1995)
Clive Braker’s third and final outing as a director. Barker is trying to tell an occult detective story but fails to get any of the mood that film noir operates by
Lord of Misrule (2023)
William Brent Bell, director of The Devil Inside and The Boy, makes a Folk Horror film. This borrows much from The Wicker Man and only seems Folk Horror by cliche
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)
A spinoff prequel to the Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films that takes the option that several other film/videogame franchises have of Going Anime
The Lords of Salem (2012)
In this homage to the 1970s occult film, Rob Zombie tones back the posturing shock effect of his earlier films and creates atmosphere. Eventually though, Zombie creates a film that feels coiled to unleash something bad but falters
The Loreley’s Grasp (1973)
Spanish director Amando De Ossorio gained a cult for his Blind Dead films. Here he makes a film about The Lorelei, a woman who sits on the banks of The Rhine tempting men to their deaths
Lost City Raiders (2008)
A conceptually peculiar mix of Indiana Jones and Waterworld about tomb raiding adventures in a drowned future and the quest for Moses’s staff to turn back the rising waters
Lost Continent (1951)
Low-budget film with scientists in search of a downed rocket who encounter a prehistoric lost world of dinosaurs on an island plateau
The Lost Future (2010)
This feels like a remake of the Roger Corman post-holocaust cavemen cheapie Teenage Caveman. It cannot escape that at heart it is never more than a B movie about caveman fighting mutants
The Lost Missile (1958)
A film from the heyday of Cold War hysteria made not long after the launch of the first ICBM about a mysterious hypersonic missile of possibly alien origin that terrorises the US
The Lost Tribe (1983)
Enigmatic New Zealand-made film that takes place in an incredibly haunted landscape about the disappearance of an anthropologist searching for a lost tribe
Lost Woods (2012)
Bigfoot film made by two brothers using a non-professional cast and crew, which emerges better than you might expect and generates passable tension
Love (2011)
Melancholy film that does some ambitious things on a low-budget about a lone astronaut stranded aboard the International Space Station after contact with Earth goes dead
Love and Monsters (2020)
A nerdy guy sets out across a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with giant animals to be with the girl of his dreams. This sound promising in description but suffers an identity crisis on screen
Love Object (2003)
This could be Lars and the Real Girl the horror version where a sex doll comes to life (maybe?) and makes Desmond Harrington’s life a misery. A film that becomes quite twisted
Love Potion No 9 (1992)
A comedy based on the hit song starring a then unknown Sandra Bullock as a nerd scientist who synthesizes a Gypsy love potion that causes anyone she gives it to to fall in love with her
Low Life (2011)
Long-winded French film largely about criticising the country’s problematic immigration and asylum seeking system. This also has a B plot about a series of cursed documents
Lucid Dream (2017)
The South Korean version of Inception with a man using a device that allows him to enter his and others memories in search of overlooked clues to the abductor of his son
Luciferous (2015)
A ghost story that is directed by a married couple who shoot the film in their own apartment and also play a family as they start to be affected by a malign presence
Lucky Encounter (1992)
A frenetic Hong Kong slapstick comedy about hoodlums trying to obtain a stash of money from a house that is inhabited by a ghost boy
Lunacy (2005)
A film from Czech animator Jan Svankmajer film, loosely based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, about the surreal happenings at an asylum where the lunatics have taken over
Lunatics: A Love Story (1991)
A head scractchingly strange Sam Raimi produced film in which Raimi’s brother Ted plays a man suffering from hallucinations who tries to come to the aid of the girl of his dreams
Lurking Fear (1994)
Charles and Albert Band had a success with the H.P. Lovecraft adapted Re-Animator; their attempt to replicate that with another Lovecraft story is lacking Stuart Gordon’s splattery black humour
The Lurking Fear (2023)
Another low-budget H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, this abandons all but the bare bones of the story to create a work about abominable experiments lurking in the halls of an abandoned asylum
Luster (2010)
British director Adam Mason has been a rising name of note in recent years. Here he makes a Jekyll and Hyde story with Andrew Howard as a mild-mannered man at war with his own evil half
Luther the Geek (1989)
A film about a psychopathic circus geek who kills using a pair of steel dentures. One of the better critically received releases from Troma. Things get quite nasty.
M3gan (2022)
A horror film about an artificially intelligent children’s doll that resembles one of the Big Eyes paintings, which then proceeds to go full-on Terminator
Ma (2019)
Blumhouse production with Octavia Spencer as a stalkery mad woman who befriends a group of teens in an elaborate revenge plot. Quite what people though they were making is a scratch of the head
Macabre (1958)
The first of William Castle’s films set around outrageous promotional stunts – here he took an insurance policy out against audience members dying of fright. The film entirely belies its promise to scare an audience to death
Mad at the Moon (1992)
This is a film filled with enormous possibilities in its set-up – a Western where Mary Stuart Masterson plays a woman who gets married only to find that her husband is a werewolf
Mad Doctor of Blood Island (1969)
The original Filipino exploitation classic, this pumps the 1940s mad scientist film up with gore, toplessness and tropical locations. A reasonable hit but surprisingly dull and sedate despite
The Mad Ghoul (1943)
An entry from the great era of mad scientist films wherein George Zucco turns his assistant into a zombie so he can steal his fiancee. Despite a wonderfully mad performance from Zucco, the effort is prosaic and routine, while the zombie gets to do almost nothing throughout
The Mad Magician (1954)
Vincent Price had success as the mad waxworks curator in the 3D horror House of Wax. This cheap copycat casts Price as a mad stage magician and is also served up in 3D
The Mad Monster (1942)
A poverty row mad scientist film where a magnificently sinister George Zucco turns his gardener into a werewolf. A copycat that was made not long after Universal’s The Wolf Man
Madame Hyde (2017)
A gender-flipped version of the Jekyll and Hyde story with Isabelle Huppert is a teacher who is walked over in every aspect of her life before she is changed by a strange electrical discharge
The Maddening (1995)
Rather trashy thriller in which Mia Sara is imprisoned by backwoods couple Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson
Madhouse (1974)
An attempt to copy the Dr Phibes films with Vincent Price as a horror actor facing a series of killings on the set of his comeback film
Mads (2024)
A French horror film shot all in a single unbroken take as a deadly infection spreads all around town and we follow various people as they try to survive in the midst
The Magic Faraway Tree (2026)
Adaptation of a book by famous children’s writer Enid Blyton about a series of adventures in a magical tree. Blyton would be turning in her grave at some of the changes and modernisations
The Magic Flying Mouse
China. ????) Plot China during the Song Dynasty. The Emperor Kang is kidnapped by Jin bandits. The martial arts warrior Li Ma and two swordmaster sisters head to the Jin stronghold on Lying Mountain to rescue him. Captured, they learn of the Jin scheme to substitute a double for Kang. They try to make an […]
Magic in the Mirror: Fowl Play (1996)
Sequel to the delightfully madcap Magic in the Mirror set in a world of talking ducks
Magic in the Moonlight (2014)
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films about rationalist Colin Firth who is debunking medium Emma Stone but becomes convinced of her powers as romance sparkles
Magic in the Water (1995)
Likeable Canadian-made children’s film where Mark Harmon and kids come to rescue of a lake monster
The Magic Legs (1989)
A rare venture into kung fu cinema made in Mainland China
Maid-Droid (2008)
Really odd, even at times touching, Japanese film about a man’s thwarted attempts to have sex with his android maid
The Mailman (2004)
Appealingly sordid little film with Rob Arbogast as a psychopathic mailman who reads people’s mail and blackmails them with information
The Majorettes (1986)
An entry in the slasher film made by several alumni from the original Night of the Living Dead. Someone is killing the girls of the high school’s cheerleading squad
Maleficent (2014)
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch
Malibu Shark Attack (2009)
Every B killer shark movie of recent years has tried to become as absurd as possible in (a la Sharknado), but this is one that plays itself seriously and generates okay tension in places
Malicious (2018)
Another film with a sinister adjectives for titles we have had since Insidious. This concerns a pregnant woman finding that the fetus she is carrying has been replaced by an evil spirit.
The Man From Earth: Holocene (2017)
The Man from Earth built up a reasonable reputation with a simple concept – a 14,000 year old man tells his life story that comes with a killer of a twist. This sequel far less interestingly becomes a detective story about a group of students trying to find if their professor is the same character
Man in the Attic (1953)
The fourth film version of The Lodger with Jack Palance as a new tenant that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper This has neither the style or the melodrama that the previous versions did
The Man in the Shadows (2017)
At the time of reviewing Rodney Ascher’s sleep paralysis documentary The Nightmare, I commented it would make fascinating material for a horror film. This Canadian micro-budgeted feature is one of the first to try and is interesting, even if it never truly grapples with its ideas
Man of Steel (2013)
Zack Snyder’s reboot of Superman leaves you irritated in the first half of the film at its throwing chunks of comic-book canon out the window and the second half bored with the mass destruction orgy that drags on
Man-Thing (2005)
The bastard child among the spate of pre-MCU Marvel Comics adaptations during the mid-2000s, a film based on their swamp-dweller that throws out most of the comic-book
The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)
A pre-James Bond Roger Moore plays a mild-mannered businessman who finds his life overrun by a malevolent doppelganger
The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot (2018)
Full marks for one of the great deliberately ridiculous titles of all time. The film itself is an oddity that almost seems intended to confound your expectations of it
The Man Who Sued God (2001)
Australian comedy where Billy Connolly sues God for all the supposed Acts of Gods on insurance forms
The Man with the Iron Fists 2 (2015)
I had a liking for RZA’s Shaw Brothers homage The Man with the Iron Fists more than most other critics.This sequel has been handed over to a generic action direction, which certainly leaves it more slickly polished than the original but also quickly forgettable
The Mandela Effect (2019)
Dramatised film based on the popular conspiracy theory that people are living in an alternate timeline where their memories have been edited and that we are all living in a simulation a la The Matrix
Mandrake, The Magician (1939)
The first screen appearance of the famous newspaper comic-strip stage magician superhero in a serial adaptation that strips out all his illusion-casting abilities and reduces him to a mundane crimefighter
Mandy (2018)
Nicolas Cage goes all Death Wish and slaughters a cult that murdered his wife. A regular revenge film is transformed by director Panos Cosmatos into something bizarrely primal
Manhater (2005)
Low-budget film about a demon slaughtering a woman’s ex’s. Despite being made by industry professionals, this looks like an amateur-made film
The Manhattan Project (1986)
Teen thriller where Christopher Collett decides to build an atomic bomb for the school science prize
Mansion of the Doomed (1976)
This first film from B-budget producer Charles Band, a blatant copy of Eyes Without a Face with mad surgeon Richard Basehart abducting women and transplanting their eyeballs into his blind daughter
Mansquito (2005)
B-movie in which a chemical spill at a lab causes a mass murderer to turn into a giant mosquito hybrid. An efficient cobbling of cliches that comes out as a B budget variation n The Fly.
Mara (2018)
Olga Kurylenko deals with a demon that appears to those affected by sleep paralysis. Another sleep paralysis horror film that only tepidly dips into the subject
Un Mariage Sans Fin (2025)
Palm Springs was one of the funniest and most delightful variants on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme. This is a French language remake that relocates the story to the Moroccan desert
Marjorie Prime (2017)
From the always interesting Michael Almereyda, an adaptation of a Pulitzer-nominated play set in a future where people replace their departed loved ones with holograms
Mark of the Vampire (1935)
Dracula director Tod Browning reteams with Bela Lugosi in a remake of the silent London After Midnight. A vampire film that has much atmosphere but is ruined by a ridiculous ending
Marquis de Sade (1996)
A biopic of the Marquis de Sade that is not uninteresting but suffers from being produced by Roger Corman on one of his usual B-budgets
Mars (1996)
Action film with police officer Olivier Gruner investigating a murder on Mars. For a film that claims such a definitive title – that it is about the planet Mars – this lets all opportunities slip through its hands
The Martian Chronicles (1980)
Ray Bradbury’s book about the human colonisation of Mars is an SF classic for its wistful, nostalgic poetry. This tv mini-series adaptation is killed by a lumbering director who over-explains Bradbury’s imagery in the most literal ways
Martian Land (2015)
The Asylum’s response to the box-office success of The Martian. The script has only made minimal effort to research the science but this works somewhat better than their usual fare
Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Mary Poppins was one of the greatest of all Disney live-action films, made with nonsensical charm and has become a much loved favourite. As part of the ongoing firesale that involves resurrecting almost all of their properties, this is a sequel. Its an exacting replication/homage to the original but that is the problem – it is a recapturing rather than seems to create its own sparkle
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)
An adaptation of Frankenstein made as companion piece to Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Kenneth Branagh creates a lush production but the attempts to emulate Coppola’s sensuality go awry
The Mask (1994)
Comic-book adaptation featuring a ballistically OTT Jim Carrey who becomes a zany figure of chaos whenever he puts on a mask. The film has been designed to emulate cartoon physics but its lack of any grounding reality proves annoying
Massacre on Aisle 12 (2016)
This calls itself a horror comedy and is set in a hardware store on Christmas Eve as the staff fall to murderous squabbling after the discovery of a dead body and large sum of money
Masters of the Universe (1987)
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series. Given a Cannon Films budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff
Masters of the Universe (2026)
A reboot of Masters of the Universe, this fully embraces the mythology of the animated series and gives them great life. But is also a work that is constantly deflating any chance you are taking it seriously
Matador (1986)
Cheerfully outrageous early Pedro Almodovar black comedy where virginal Antonio Banderas confesses to a series of murders conducted by his death obsessed lawyer
Matchless (1967)
One of the numerous spy films of the 1960s, featuring Patrick O’Neal who goes into action with a magic invisibility ring
Matilda (1996)
Danny DeVito directs an adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel with Mara Wilson as a mentally gifted child. In DeVito’s hands, Roald Dahl’s black bite overbalances into broad farce
The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (1999)
There is an appealingly satiric concept here – a parody of a nature documentary looking at human mating rituals from an alien perspective where everything is constantly being misinterpreted in terms of an animal behaviour – but what emerges is mostly a one-gag film
Mausoleum (1983)
A B-budgeted hit from the video era concerning a possessed housewife. This is a film that has only ever been construed around the provision of cheap makeup effects at regular intervals, all of which hold an undeniable entertainment value in their cheesy ridiculousness
Max Payne (2008)
Based on the popular videogame, this is fairly much Death Wish by way of Jacob’s Ladder and proves an underwhelming delivery of its promise
MaXXXine (2024)
Ti West and Mia Goth round out their trilogy of films begun with X with a psycho film set in 1980s Hollywood
May the Devil Take You (2018)
Indonesia’s Timo Tjahjanto has emerged as a Must Watch director on the basis of his jaw-dropping brutal action films plus assorted ventures into horror. Here he pays homage to the 1980s horror films in particular to The Evil Dead
McDull – The Pork of Music (2012)
Fifth in a popular series of satiric Hong Kong animated films. Kicks in with an amusingly sarcastic bite that resembles a Beavis and Butt-Head in its story of a talking animal children’s choir but alas by about the halfway point takes itself seriously and starts to get mawkish and sentimental
Me and My Mates vs. the Zombie Apocalypse (2015)
An Australian zombie comedy. The basic premise sets a bunch of lads and their cheerfully Neanderthal, sexist, beer-drinking, sports loving ways up against the zombie apocalypse
Me Two (2008)
Lightweight French bodyswap comedy where aging rocker Alain Chabat and mousy bureaucrat Daniel Auteuil end up sharing the same body
Meatball Machine: Kodoku (2017)
A sequel to Meatball Machine, the film that started the gonzo Japanese splatter genre, filled with wild mutations, over-the-top splatter, a surreal sense of humour and an obsession with schoolgirls in panties
Medicine Man (1992)
John McTiernan was one of the great action directors of the 1980s but this drama with Sean Connery as a scientist in the Amazonian rainforest and his bickering relationship with Lorraine Bracco failed to come off
The Medusa Touch (1978)
Film in which hospital patient Richard Burton seems able to will terrible things to happen with psychic powers
Meet Joe Black (1998)
Ponderous big screen remake of Death Takes a Holiday where Death in the form of Brad Pitt comes to Earth, engages in a romance
Meet Mr Lucifer (1953)
One of the forgotten comedies from UK’s Ealing Studios, this rails against the evils of the then new medium of television where The Devil contrives to make people miserable by getting them to watch tv
Mega Shark vs Mecha Shark (2014)
Third in The Asylum’s series of Mega Shark films where they borrow the Godzilla series’ idea of Mecha-Godzilla and pit the Mega Shark against a robot copy of itself. Here the Mega Shark series is starting to approach the entertaining silliness of their Sharknado films but still flounder amid tatty effects
Megaboa (2021)
In the vein of their Mega Shark films and Mega Python vs Gatoroid, The Asylum make a monster movie about a giant-sized snake. Cheesy with a B movie competence.
Megalodon (2018)
The Asylum’s low-budget mockbuster copy of The Meg, which is an irony in that The Meg was really an Asylum killer shark film with an A-budget. Two sequels followed.