Progeny (1998)
Horror director Brian Yuzna jumps aboard the alien abduction and impregnation theme that was popular at the time thanks to tv’s The X Files. All of Yuzna’s films have a fascination with sexual perversity so here the emphasis is placed on the impregnation
Project Gemini (2022)
A Russian SF film about an expedition through a wormhole that then gets lost, this bites off an ambitious conceptual reach only for it to fall apart in a shaggy dog ending
Project: Metalbeast (1994)
Typical 1990s video-released effort that stands out by dint of a far-out idea – a cyborg werewolf – even if in the end the film does nothing with it and everything only boils down to a standard monster movie that takes everything from the Alien playbook
Project Moon Base (1953)
Low-budget film set aboard a space station clearly springboarding from the success of Destination Moon and featuring a Robert Heinlein script
Project X (1968)
Gimmick master William Castle makes an SF films about scientists engaged in simulations and mental probing to obtain secrets from a man’s mind
Project X (1987)
Animal rights activism film with Matthew Broderick and Helen Hunt as Air Force employees shocked at the tests being performed on chimpanzees
Prom Night (2008)
Another among the fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. Any connection to the original Jamie Lee Curtis disco slasher is thrown out in favour of a generic modern slasher
Prom Night III: The Last Kiss (1990)
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Prometheus (2012)
Ridley Scott’s promised prequel to Alien. The first half creates epic mystery but the answers provided are not nearly as interesting as promised, while the latter half disappointingly settles for doing the Alien standard with decidedly lesser effect
Prometheus Trap (2012)
Low-budget film that was clearly trying to ride on the coattails of Ridley Scott’s Alien prequel Prometheus. This tells an almost interesting story about a timeloop and gets full marks for winding in the Greek myth of Prometheus
The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (2000)
The third of the Prophecy films with Christopher Walken as the angel Gabriel. This time the wry humour and interplay of ideas of the other films feels more thinly drawn
The Prophecy: Uprising (2005)
The fourth of The Prophecy films about war between angels, the first to be made without Christopher Walken with Sean Pertwee as a detective in Bucharest who is drawn in
Prospero’s Books (1991)
Peter Greenaway gets loose on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, indulging his obsessions with lists and multimedia visuals while the costume department goes completely over-the-top
Prototype X29A (1992)
This is a standard 90s direct-to-video SF/action film about warring cyborgs in a burned-out future. This has borrowed most of its moves from other films. Not a lot happens
The Prowler (1981)
An effort from the heyday of the 1980s slasher film. Made with slightly more directorial competence that most of its contemporaries, a level of gore that caused censorship issues in some countries, although this proves weak when offering script rationale for proceedings
Psych 9 (2010)
Thriller with a heroine working in an abandoned hospital amid sinister happenings that draws substantially on the fine Danish film Nightwatch. Does an okay if familiar job making us constantly doubt everything that happens before arriving at an ending that only confuses
The Psychic (1977)
A blatant copy of Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now from cult Italian director Lucio Fulci. Here Don’t Look Now reduced to no more than a dull clairvoyant murder mystery
Psycho (1998)
Over Gus Van Sant’s shot-for-shot remake of Psycho, there hangs the single question of “Why?” The result seems a futile conceit, one only designed to infuriate those who regard the original in such high esteem
Psycho Beach Party (2000)
Based on an off-Broadway play, this is a drag parody of the beach party movie. It does dig into the squeaky clean image of the genre but never seems a particularly funny parody
PsychoCop (1989)
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a slasher film with the requisite group of partying teens being stalked by a psychopathic, devil-worshipping police officer
Psychomania (1973)
Hard to find Anglo-horror effort that has been long considered an item of must-see fascination for its premise of an undead biker gang, including the central image of the gang leader erupting from the grave on his motorcycle. The film unfortunately has a prosaic dullness that belies such imaginative wildness
Psychopaths (2017)
From the increasingly rising genre name of Mickey Keating. This feels less like a film than a series of short films edited together (expertly so), all on the theme of people gleefully engaged in murder
Puffball (2007)
Nicolas Roeg returns to screens after a long absence in what would be his last film, a Fay Weldon adaptation about pagan rites, pregnancy and witchcraft that manages to sound far wilder in synopsis than how Roeg directs it all on screen
Pulse 2 (2008)
This was the first of two sequels to the Wes Craven scripted Pulse, the English language version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s intensely spooky film about ghosts from the internet
Pulse (2006)
As part of the mid-00s fad for English-language remakes of Japanese horror films, Kiyoshi Kuroawa’s unfathomable but undeniably creepy internet horror is reworked as a standard teen film
Pumpkinhead (1988)
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings (1994)
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
The Punisher (2004)
Amid the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations in the early 2000s, there came this version of The Punisher. Cast with Thomas Jane, the film is tepid and singularly lacking in the grim, dark avenging violence of the comic-book
Puppet Master 4 (1993)
The fourth in Charles Band’s most popular series about a group of malevolent dolls. This turns the dolls into good guys and adds an Ancient Egyptian deity who despatches a Terminator robot against them
Puppet Master II (1990)
The first of the long-running series of sequels to Full Moon’s Puppetmaster, this is essentially a rerun of the first film
Puppetmaster III: Toulon’s Revenge (1991)
The third of Full Moon’s Puppet Master films, this is a prequel that explores Andre Toulon’s origins in Nazi Germany
The Purge (2013)
Film based around the improbable concept of a future where on one night of each year all crime including murder becomes permissible. While this promises a rich vein of satire, the film only emerges as a variant on Straw Dogs
The Purge: Anarchy (2014)
Slightly more interesting than its predecessor in that it takes the action out from gated communities into the streets, otherwise this offers just the same as The Purge – much in the way of heavy artillery and a patina of contemporary politics that have all the depth of a protest placard
The Purge: Election Year (2016)
The Purge was a routine film that caught on with audiences but the premise lacks the legs to be a franchise – for one, it is based on a future scenario that has zero plausibility. This makes paper-thin stabs in terms of social issues but all interest evaporates when the guns start blazing
Puss in Boots (1999)
An obscure animated version of the classic fairytale that comes with excruciating puns, much slapstick and has clearly been animated on a low budget
Pussy Cake (2021)
An Argentinean film where the four members of a girl rock band are forced to deal with a zombie outbreak
Puzzle (2014)
This starts as a standard Japanese high school drama but takes a turn for the twisted where it doesn’t exactly venture into Saw territory but certainly somewhere that has taken inspiration from it. Alas, everything gets lost in a second half that is burdened by an excessively complicated and non-linear plot
Pyrates (1991)
Comedy where real-life husband and wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick play a couple who are so passionate they start fires whenever they have sex
The Pyx (1973)
Difficult to find 1970s Canadian-made occult film that doesn’t quite live up to expectation. Mostly it is a police procedural and the devil worship cult angle only emerges as a left field ending in the last ten minutes.; Not tight enough as a detective story to fully work
Quarantine 2: Terminal (2011)
A sequel to Quarantine, the English-language remake of [Rec]. Abandoning the Found Footage concept, and indeed much continuity, to the other films, this is nothing more than a standard zombie film set inside an airport terminal
Quest for Camelot (1998)
An Arthurian legends fantasy adventure made as part of the animation renaissance of the 1990s. Anything serious aspirations are wrecked by the insertion of inane popular culture in-jokes
Quicksilver Highway (1997)
The perpetually awful Mick Garris inflicts adaptations of Stephen King and Clive Barker stories on us in what looks like an unsold pilot for a horror anthology tv series
The Quiet Ones (2014)
Another offering from the revived Hammer Films. Like a few films of recent, this claims to be based on a true story – a parapsychological experiment conducted in the 1970s – but throws almost every detail out the window to substitute a well-worn bag of horror tricks
Ra. One (2011)
A Bollywood venture into science-fiction that does a reasonably impressive job of trying to mount CGI superheroics … on the other hand, the plot deals in simplistic black-and-whites and draws on models of SF two decades out of date
Raat (1992)
One of the rare Bollywood ventures into horror, a blatant copy of The Exorcist. You have to praise the film for trying out every effect in the book in an effort to get a jump but the result ends up being so overwrought it produces almost no effect at all
Race Through Time (2000)
TV movie in which aging William Devane travels back in time to try and prevent the death of his father
Race to Witch Mountain (2009)
Revival of the Disney Witch Mountain films of the 1970s. Now the films have been dragged into the post-X Files era and flashy effects added to negligible result
Race with the Devil (1975)
This has been conceived as a 1970s car chase film mashed up with the 1970s fad for Satanism and occult where two couples in an RV inadvertently witness a devil worship ceremony and are pursued
Radar Men from the Moon (1952)
The second of the Rocket Man serials in which Commando Cody faces invaders from the Moon. This comes with the creative impoverishment of serials where the alien invaders are no more than regular gangsters.
Radioflash (2019)
Film in which the entire US Western seaboard falls into social chaos after being hit an EMP burst focusing on one girl’s journey to safety across anarchic territory
Rage of the Yeti (2011)
Typical Syfy Channel monster movie directed by actor David Hewlett. Hewlett seems to be taking little of the film seriously, while the two lead characters are played as strung-out thrill-seeking skateboarders
Raising Cain (1992)
Brian De Palma made a return to his trademark psycho-thriller for the first time in several years but the benchmarks of the genre were now The Silence of the Lambs and Basic Instinct and De Palma’s wildly contorted plot and flourishes of style for their own sake seem dated
Rampage: The Hillside Strangler Murders (2006)
A True Crime film based on the Hillside Stranglers case, or at least the arrest of one of the killers. From a director who makes True Crime films but throws out the facts and makes up his own story about what happened
Random Acts of Violence (2019)
Actor Jay Baruchel directs a film in which a comic-book artist bases a graphic novel on a true-life serial killer only to find that the killer has returned and is imitating his work
Random Quest (2006)
BBC tv play adaptation of a short story by John Wyndham that also furnished the earlier film Quest for Love about a man finding himself in an alternate world. Despite this version being more faithful to Wyndham, the earlier film makes the central relationship work better
The Rape of the Vampire (1968)
Director Jean Rollin gained a cult following with his erotically fetishised, strikingly poetic vampire films, of which this was the first. Viewing the film today, one has more than a few problems with the title
Ratboy (1986)
Sondra Locke directs an odd little fable about a boy with rat-like features but the result never quite comes off
Ratchet & Clank (2016)
Animated film based on the popular computer game. On screen, this emerges as essentially an instantly forgettable variant on one of the Star Wars prequels retooled for the Under Tens with the emphasis all on frenetic slapstick and visual eye candy
Rattlesnake (2019)
From the promising Australian director Zak Hilditch. Carmen Ejogo’s daughter is bitten by a snake, a stranger heals her only for Carmen to then be told she has to kill somebody else in payment
Ravagers (1979)
A post-apocalyptic film that predates Mad Max 2, which set the benchmark for the genre a couple of years later. This is watchable but hat you notice in comparison is that this is lacking the action element.
The Raven (1915)
Silent movie based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Today we’d call it a biopic, although it readily departs into fantasy with Poe having drunken visions of the raven, ghosts and the afterlife
The Raven (2012)
This has the great idea of pitting Edgar Allan Poe against a serial killer imitating his stories but instead produces a desultory murder mystery that has done only the most cursory reading about Poe and is ill-informed about the historical period
Razor Blade Smile (1998)
Modern vampire movie that aims for a chic sophistication amid poses borrowed from MTV and other films
Re-Elected (2020)
Horror comedy about an attack by the zombies of resurrected former US Presidents
Ready or Not (2019)
This is The Most Dangerous Game in the setting of an Agatha Christie whodunnit. Samara Weaving marries into a family of privilege only to find her wedding night requires her to engage in a deadly game of Hide and Seek
Real (2013)
A Japanese-made variant on the dream incursion theme of Inception. Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa is noted for his bafflingly surrealistic horror films but in working in a genre like science-fiction that requires an implied explainability, he makes a far less interesting film
Realms (2017)
Two Americans fleeing an armed bank robbery with hostages take refuge at a house that they discover it is haunted. A vy the numbers effort before arriving at a confused twist ending.
Reaper (1998)
Chris Sarandon is a writer who becomes embroiled in solving a series of murder that mimic his own books. An okay set-up that rarely moves beyond the unfolding of cliches
Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver (2024)
Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon was intended as a two-part space opera saga. This first half emerged watchably and this is Part Two
Rebirth of Mothra (1996)
One of the worst among the usually worthwhile Japanese monster movie revivals of the 1990s. Much of the film is played down at an inanely silly children’s movie level, with there only being the requisite mass destruction effects to enliven the show
The Recall (2017)
A group of friends at a cabin in the woods are subject to alien abductions. Directed by a production illustrator on a number of high-profile films, this comes with some unique designs and effects
Recovery (2016)
A film that starts with the premise of teenage girls looking for a party and then going in search of a missing cellphone doesn’t do much to enthuse me. On the other hand, things pick up when the search leads them to a strange house
Red One (2024)
Essentially Christmas the Action Film featuring Dwayne Johnson as Santa’s bodyguard going into action accompanied by Chris Evans as a nerdy hacker when Santa is abducted
The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)
A giallo film where a family curse about the vengeance of a red queen starts being enacted with a mystery figure bumping off relatives following the reading of a will
Red Riding Hood (1987)
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations that Cannon Films made during the 1980s
Red Snow (2021)
This has the amusing idea of being a Martin for the Twilight era where a writer of vampire romances not at all modelled on Stephenie Meyer encounters a real vampire
Red Sonja (2025)
Following the disastrous Brigitte Nielsen film, a new version of Robert E. Howard’s Amazonian warrior woman has been promised since the late 2000s. It finally emerges here from the same people behind the revivals of Hellboy and the Jason Momoa starring Conan
The Red Violin (1998)
A reasonable arthouse hit, this tells the story of a cursed violin through five different periods of history
A Reflection of Fear (1971)
A psycho-thriller directed by renowned cinematographer William A. Fraker that is never more than a series of elliptical, soft-focus images
The Refrigerator (1991)
A film about a possessed refrigerator!
Reign in Darkness (2002)
Australian vampire action that feels like a single pose that has been inspired by too many watchings of The Matrix
Reign of Assassins (2010)
Chinese-made Wu Xia film – sort of a flying swordsman variant on A History of Violence. This comes on an impressive scale but also plays down the action element and leaves all the flying swordsman moves sitting on the fence as being possibly mundane
The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975)
High-profile film of its era that was mounted with an A-budget sheen. Beyond that, the film is made with the sedate predictability of a tv movie – it takes the hero half the film to work out what the title tells us
The Rejuvenator (1988)
This is essentially a 1940s mad scientist film having been given a workover with an arsenal of gory and gooey 1980s makeup effects. The plot concerns an aging movie star who obtains a rejuvenation serum
Relentless (1989)
A popular thriller in its day about a cop tracking a serial killer (played by Brat Packer Judd Nelson). This prefigures The Silence of the Lambs in some interesting ways. Several sequels followed
The Reluctant Astronaut (1967)
Most of the comics of the 1960s made a film dealing with the Space Race and here it is the turn of Don Knotts. Lots of bumbling slapstick ensues in this hardly inspiring entry
The Remains (2016)
The haunted house genre is one that has become thoroughly exhausted by overuse in recent years. This puts the elements together with a professional assemblage but is essentially no different to the 347 other haunted house films that this site has seen in the last twelve months
Rememory (2017)
Film about a device that can record and play back memory. This comes with a reasonable cast but the great disappointment is the idea is never used for anything more than a mundane murder mystery
Repli-Kate (2002)
Comedy released under the National Lampoon banner in which a nerdy student accidentally creates a clone of his object of desire. This feels like a mash-up between Weird Science and a frat rat comedy
Repo Men (2010)
SF film set in a future where agents are sent to repossess artificial organs when the owner’s fall behind on payments. Sort of Sicko by way of Logan’s Run but lacking the necessary sense of black humour to work
Resident Evil (2002)
Based on the survival horror videogame, this was the first in a surprisingly popular series of films. It also presaged a major return of the zombie film during the 2000s/10s, even if this only treads where George Romero went better before
Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)
The first of the Resident Evil sequels and a better film than its predecessor, getting in a series of spectacular, if at times ridiculously silly, action sequences
Resident Evil: Damnation (2012)
The second of the Resident Evil anime films. This is set before the release of the T-Virus and focuses on origin stories for some of the characters
Resident Evil: Degeneration (2008)
The first in a series of anime films that were produced by Capcom, the creators of the Resident Evil videogames, and intended to run parallel to the live-action films. I was never a big fan of the live-action films. The question is – does Resident Evil work better in the anime format?
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
Third of the Resident Evil films. This expands the scale of action to show the entire world destroyed by the virus but for all that and a decent budget, director Russell Mulcahy fails to push the elements to a suitable head of steam
Resident Evil: Retribution (2012)
Another unnecessary entry in a creativity-handicapped series, the continuing popularity of which is baffles. This shuffles through the familiar moves, brings back several familiar characters but only leaves me asking why I have invested some nine hours of time following this series
Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021)
A reboot of the Resident Evil film series under a new director with Johannes Roberts who abandons the previous action poses for a far darker and more visceral survival horror approach
The Resonator: Miskatonic U (2021)
Charles Band returns to H.P. Lovecraft and conducts a low-budget remake of From Beyond, which he had memorably overseen back in the 80s with Stuart Gordon
Rest in Peace (1982)
Forgotten 1980s horror where Meg Tilly accepts a dare to spend a night in a mausoleum as a powerful psychic returns to life
Restart the Earth (2021)
A Chinese attempt to make a Michael Bay mass destruction spectacular depicting an Earth that has been overrun by massive plant growth