Armed Response (2017)
Behind the generic action movie title, this is an SF about a unit of soldiers led by Wesley Snipes venturing into an automated prison to investigate the death of personnel by an unknown force
Army of Darkness (1992)
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell make their third Evil Dead film. The series hit a peak with the delirious balance of horror and comedy in the second film but here the comedy over-balances and becomes too broad
Army of Frankensteins (2014)
This comes with an insane mash-ups of ideas – modern day Frankenstein monster is thrown back in time to the Civil War (in a process that also creates multiple copies) and ends up fighting on the Northern side
Arnold (1973)
Comedy-thriller in the Old Dark House tradition with greedy relatives being bumped off in the fight for the will. A film that begins with a corpse getting married can’t be all bad.
Arrest Bulldog Drummond (1938)
One of a series of Hollywood films based on popular British adventurer hero Bulldog Drummond. This throws Drummond into the midst of a plot to obtain a raygun
The Arrival (1991)
This is a weird little film about an alien vampire that is slowly rejuvenating. This has an interesting swim of strange ideas but in reality isn’t very good
Arthur & Merlin: Knights of Camelot (2020)
A B-budget venture into the Arthurian Legends that never much finds the rich myth of the cycle and emerges as just a routine fantasy adventure
Artificial Lies (1999)
Psycho-thriller in which Daphne Zuniga is a woman accused of the murder of her psychiatrist and may or may not have been faking her mental illness
As Above So Below (2014)
The Brothers Dowdle made the standout The Poughkeepsie Tapes but this is a sub-Da Vinci Code archaeological mystery that is little more than a Halloween haunted house attraction in the Paris catacombs
As Time Goes By (1988)
A very eccentric Australian film about a man wound into solving a temporal paradox by aliens who time travel in a greasy spoon diner
Ash (2025)
The rapper turned filmmaker Flying Lotus directs a copy of Alien with an amnesiac crewmember of a ship landed on a hostile planet where the crew are hunted by an alien nasty
Assassin’s Creed (2016)
Adaptation of the popular videogame that is lumbered with the game’s inherently uncinematic premise where people only sit around and watch what has already happened in the past
Assault Girls (2009)
Disappointing live-action film from anime director Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, construed as nothing beyond a live-action videogame with kick-ass girls engaged in serial combat encounters
Assault on Wall Street (2013)
Uwe Boll makes a big issue film about the subprime mortgage crisis. The film is packed by Boll with messages but comes down to being a variant on Death Wish with its blue-collar hero on a shooting rampage against bankers
The Assignment (2016)
From Walter Hill, one of the legendary action directors, comes what is either the most edgy or tasteless concepts for a revenge film – Michelle Rodriguez is a hitman who seeks revenge after having gender reassignment surgery forced on him
Assimilate (2019)
A body snatchers film, shot partially as Found Footage where teens shooting a video make the discovery that people in their town are being replaced
Asterix: The Secret of the Magic Potion (2018)
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
Asteroid (2021)
We have had numerous films about asteroids and meteors about to strike the Earth. This is played as a comedy where a man buys his dream home only to find it is ground zero for an oncoming comet strike
Astronaut (2019)
Space movies were big following successes like Gravity and The Martian. At complete contrast, this is a genteel laidback film with Richard Dreyfuss as a senior obsessed with boarding a spaceflight
The Astronaut (2025)
Kate Mara plays an astronaut returned from a space mission strangely changed. Before you can say The Quatermass Xperiment, ‘something’ mysteriously appears to be entering the house at night
Astronaut: The Last Push (2012)
Gravity presaged a big upsurge about scientifically realistic space films. Coming out only a few months before, this concerns a lone astronaut on a space mission to Europa that goes wrong
The Astronaut’s Wife (1999)
Charlize Theron becomes paranoid and suspects her space shuttle astronaut husband Johnny Depp of returning possessed by an alien. Essentially an SF version of Rosemary’s Baby
Asunder (1998)
A formulaic copy of Fatal Attraction. The difference here is that the sexes have been reversed and the key parts cast with African-American actors
Asylum (2008)
From the director of Snakes on a Plane, a film about a co-ed university dormitory that used to be an asylum where students find that former horrors still lurk
Asylum of Fear (2018)
A crew of reality tv paranormal investigators are hired to investigate a haunted abandoned asylum. This sort of film has been done numerous time before.
At the Earth’s Core (1976)
Second in the trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations starring Doug McClure. This opens with the fabulous invention of the drilling mole but the arrival at the earth’s core look cheap and tatty
Atlantic Rim: Resurrection (2018)
When Guillermo Del Toro made Pacific Rim, The Asylum switched US seaboards to make Atlantic Rim. With the release of the Pacific Rim sequel, The Asylum followed in kind
Atlantis, The Lost Continent (1961)
George Pal was one of the top genre producers of the 1950s. Here he aims to emulate the Cinemascope Biblical spectaculars of the day albeit with an SF spin but this ends up one of his lesser works
Atlas Shrugged (2011)
The first in a three part film adaptation of Ayn Rand’s novel that makes a heavy-handed and frequently tub-thumping argument for the virtues of selfishness and despisal of any rules of fairness
ATM (2012)
Thriller from the screenwriter of Buried that seeks to imitate that film’s containment drama in having three characters trapped inside an ATM booth by a killer outside
Atom Age Vampire (1960)
Despite the possibilities set up by the title, this features no vampires nor atomic monsters but is an Italian film influenced by Eyes Without a Face about a mad surgeon trying to restore a woman’s disfigured face
Attack Girls’ Swim Team vs. the Undead (2007)
You feel that a film about lesbian Japanese schoolgirls vs zombies should have been more interesting. The zombies barely mount to a dozen and the director seems more preoccupied by his softcore predilections
Attack of the 50 Foot Camgirl (2022)
B budget director Jim Wynorski makes another of his bimbo films, a parody of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman where a cam girl is turned giant size after eating GMO food
Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993)
The first time we have had a remake of a bad movie – in this case the 1958 film. The title role is cast with Darryl Hannah and the shabby effects gets a much more polished work over
Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995)
Fred Olen Ray offers up a bimbo movie take on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Where the original was an early feminist parable, Olen Ray offers up a giant woman whose only motivation is wanting a bigger set of breasts
Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959)
A typical 1950s B monster movie. The first half creates an entertainingly torrid drama in the bayous, although when they eventually turn up the giant leeches never get to do much
Attack of the Robots (1966)
The title is misleading as the film doesn’t feature any robots but a group of mind-controlled assassins. An entry in the mid-1960s spy film fad from cult exploitation director Jess Franco
Attack of the Southern Fried Zombies (2017)
Seemingly another ridiculously titled zombie movie but in actuality this is no more than a regular zombie film played straight that has been slapped with a gonzo title as a selling point
Attack on Titan (2022)
Not to be confused with the Japanese manga/anime of the same name, this is a space opera from The Asylum, which boasts some very good effects on a budget
Attack on Titan II: End of the World (2015)
Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later
Audrey Rose (1977)
Big serious film about reincarnation that places the arguments for into a courtroom setting. Director Robert Wise and a young Anthony Hopkins fail to do much with a talk-heavy script
The Aurora Encounter (1985)
A low-budget cute alien film made in the aftermath of post-E.T., this purports to be based on the true story of a UFO and alien visitor who landed in 19th Century Texas
Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002)
Third of the Austin Powers films and the point where the amusements of the other films topples over into a pandering indulgence to Mike Myers’ mugging, which is allowed to overtake the whole show
Automaton Transfusion (2006)
Despite a title that resembles more a 1990s killer cyborg film, this is actually a zombie film. Made soon into the mid-2000s zombie revival, this is driven more by fannish enthusiasm and copious gore than anything else
Autopsy (1975)
Italian thriller that attained some censorship controversy when it came out. Minsy Farmer is an assistant coroner haunted and obsessed by the corpses she tends
Autopsy (2008)
Horror film conceived around having creepy things happening around a hospital, less so in terms of any rationale. What the film does have in its favour is that it is exxxtremely gory
Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Marvel conclude the cliffhanger they left Avengers: Infinity War on and offer up a bigger-than-big line-up, overspilling with just about every MCU character to ever appear on screen up to that point
Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
Marvel’s third Avengers film, uniting almost every superhero under their roof, resulting in some thirty characters on screen and a plot that becomes a blur of changing locations and superheroic punch-ups
AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004)
Beginning as fan mill speculation, 20th Century Fox finally brought their Alien and Predator franchises together on the screen here. The result is an okay effort in the hands of Paul W.S. Anderson, even if it never has the grueling intensity of the early entries in either series
Awaiting (2015)
This is the British equivalent of a Backwoods Brutality film in which Tony Curran is a towtruck driver who traps and kills motorists to salvage their belongings
Awakening the Zodiac (2017)
This comes with a great hook – a couple buy up the contents of a defaulted storage locker only to find film reels taken by The Zodiac Killer, leading them on a pursuit of his identity
Axcellerator (2020)
Lightweight action in which a young carjacker gains possession of a teleportation device and is pursued by government agents
Azrael (2024)
A film that takes place with no dialogue set in a post-apocalyptic world where people have forsaken speech as Samara Weaving is pursued by a cult
B.T.K. (2008)
A film supposedly based on true-life serial killer Dennis Rader that completely fictionalises much of his story, while Rader is badly miscast with big, bulky Kane Hodder
Baba Yaga, Terror of the Dark Forest (2020)
A new Russian-made version of the Baba Yaga folktale where the old witch is rewritten as a seductive nanny stealing children and their parents’ memories of them
Babe: Pig in the City (1998)
For this sequel to the hit talking pig film, producer George Miller of Mad Max films fame steps into the director’s chair. However, the cuteness of the original promptly becomes buried under careening slapstick
Babes in Toyland (1961)
The Disney musical version of a story that takes place among the denizens of fairytale. Some visual nonsense but the film dies a slow lumbering death amid the sugary sentiment
A Babysitter’s Guide to Monster Hunting (2020)
Adapted from a Young Adult series of books, this is a bland and utterly superficial film about a secret society of monster-hunting babysitters
Back from Hell (2011)
A possession film that takes the Found Footage approach. This takes the traditional approach of Catholic priests intoning exorcism rituals etc and fails to do anything interesting
Back in Time (2015)
Fan-produced documentary about the making of the Back to the Future trilogy. The filmmakers get face time with almost everybody involved. Far less interesting are the scenes dealing with DeLorean restoration
The Bad Batch (2016)
Ana Lily Amirpour caught attention with A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. She makes her second film here, set in a desert prison of cannibals and scavengers, sort of Escape from New York by way of The Burning Man Festival
Bad Dreams (1988)
Story of the sole survivor of a cult mass suicide waking from a coma to be haunted by the cult leader begging her to join them. This becomes a derivative of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films before a contrived ending
Bad Johnson (2014)
Sometimes you shake your head and wonder how a film got greenlit. In this case, we have a comedy where Cam Gigandet’s penis gains a separate life of its own, resulting in a Jekyll/Hyde film of sorts
Bad Kids Go to Hell (2012)
This promises the amusing idea of a sarcastic 00s take on The Breakfast Club but emerges as no more than a glorified episode of Scooby-Doo, in a plot about punishing the children of privilege
Bad Kids of Crestview Academy (2017)
Sequel to the sarcastically amusing Bad Kids Go to Hell, which is set at the same school a few years later as someone starts eliminating people in detention
Bad Moon (1996)
Eric Red directed film with Michael Paré as a werewolf fighting a territorial dispute with his sister’s dog. Slight effort that suffers from crappy morphing werewolf transformation effects
Bad Ronald (1974)
From the Golden Age of TV Movies, a film where Scott Jacoby hides in the cubbyhole of the wall of his home after he accidentally kills someone and then develops a fixation on the family that move in
Bad Samaritan (2018)
Roland Emmerich’s former writer Dean Devlin makes a film where a burglar discovers that David Tennant is a serial killer holding a girl prisoner and sets out to rescue her. Tennant does an entertaining turn as a bad guy
The Bad Seed (2018)
The 1956 The Bad Seed is the original evil child film. All other psycho children films draw themselves from here. This is a remake directed by actor Rob Lowe who also plays the father. McKenna Grace gives a superbly chill performance as the child
Baffled! (1972)
A young and dashing Leonard Nimoy plays a clairvoyant racing driver in this unsold tv pilot. The disappointment is that his powers amount to no more than a detective deducing clues in a standard murder mystery
Bag of Bones (2011)
The perpetually terrible Mick Garris is allowed loose on another Stephen King book where he promptly reduces a subtle, ambiguous ghost story to a series of lunging pop-up scares without any concept of atmosphere or nuance
Baghead (2008)
The second film from The Duplass Brothers, Mark and Jay. Though labelled a slasher parody, it is more of an improvisational comedy that uses the set-up of a backwoods slasher film without much interest in horror
Baghead (2023)
Horror film about a mysterious creature in the cellar with a bag over its head that can bring a dead loved one back to life for two minutes, but where use of this comes with a price
Bagman (2024)
Colm McCarthy, who previously directed the standout The Girl With All the Gifts, returns with a film about a man being haunted by a boogeyman out of his childhood that snatches children in a bag
Bailey’s Mistake (2001)
Strange Disney tv movie in which widow Linda Hamilton moves to a small town where the people seem able to do magic
The Banana Splits (2019)
In the what the feck department, this is a gore-drenched horror remake of a Hanna-Barbera children’s show, one that now depicts the original anthropomorphic animals as murderous killer robots
Bangkok Haunted (2001)
Early effort from one of the Pang Brothers Oxide, who only directs one of the episodes in this trio of Thai ghost stories. The other director’s grasp of horror effect is often crude and amateurish
The Banishing (2020)
Christopher Smith seemed one of the most promising genre directors of the 2000s with films like Triangle and Black Death. Here he returns with a venture into the English ghost story
The Banker (1989)
Psycho film in which an investment banker relieves the pressures of the corporate world by going out hunting people with a crossbow. A film rich in ideas is given a disappointing B movie treatment
Barb Wire (1996)
Enjoyably silly comic-book adaptation with a pneumatically-inflated Pamela Anderson playing the titular bounty hunter in an anarchic future. You cannot complain that this is a film that delivers exactly what it promises
Barbarian Queen (1985)
One of a series of low-budget sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s. This predates both Red Sonja and Xena with its depiction of a fierce warrior woman. Produced by Roger Corman
Barbie (2023)
Less a film than a phenomenon, there is something ironic about a doll that is accused of promoting negative body standards ending up leading a women’s movement. Moria has just one or two issues with this.
Barbie as Rapunzel (2002)
The second of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as the title character in the popular Brothers Grimm fairytale, which has been considerably embellished. This suffers the glassy plasticity of the early Mainframe films
Barbie as The Island Princess (2007)
Another of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as a desert island castaway accompanied by a retinue of talking animals. Visually colourful but slight
Barbie as The Princess and the Pauper (2004)
Here the Barbie films turn to Mark Twain’s classic (non-fantasy) tale of rags and riches and spins it as a fairytale This has the same blank, plastic style of the early Barbie films and is otherwise bland
Barbie Fairytopia: Magic of the Rainbow (2007)
Sequel to the earlier Barbie animated film Barbie Fairytopia. Extremely colourful but essentially a fantasy version of a teenage girl high school drama that quickly slips into pre-packaged formula
Barbie in the 12 Dancing Princesses (2006)
Another animated Barbie film that leaves you quite certain that every problem in life can be solved with a positive upbeat ditty
Barbie in The Nutcracker (2001)
The first in a long series of animated films based on Mattel’s girl’s doll Barbie. This casts Barbie as a lead in an adaptation of The Nutcracker ballet
Barbie Mermaidia (2006)
Seventh of the animated Barbie films, spinoff of the earlier Barbie Fairytopia, all delivered in sugary upbeat sentiments amid pastel colour schemes that would look eye-poppingly psychedelic if one were high
The Barefoot Executive (1971)
Very slight Disney live-action comedy with Kurt Russell as a tv network mailboy with a chimpanzee that can predict which tv shows are going to be hits
Barnyard (2006)
An incredibly silly animated film set around the antics of talking barnyard animals. Directed by comedy writer Steve Oedekerk, this is almost entirely centred around gags involving animals doing parodies of human things
The Barrens (2012)
Saw series Darren Lynn Bousman downplays sadism in favour of a psychologically ambiguous film about a series of attacks possibly conducted by the Jersey Devil
Bartok the Magnificent (1999)
Animator Don Bluth conducts a spinoff from his previous film Anastasia, focusing on the adventures of the talking bat sidekick
Basic Instinct 2 (2006)
Sequel to Basic Instinct made fourteen years later. Sharon Stone vamps her way across the screen but the heated sexuality of the original has been watered down to a lukewarm whimper
Basket Case 3 (1991)
The third of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case films but by this point the perverse wit of the original has become replaced by a cartoonish absurdity
The Bat People (1974)
Rather ridiculous film where Stewart Moss is bitten by a bat and afterwards turning into a bat creature. Not a terribly interesting film – it takes three-quarters of the show for him to work out what the title tells us
The Bates Haunting (2012)
Despite the title, this is no relation to tv’s Bates Motel or the Psycho franchise but a slasher film set around a famous Pennsylvania Halloween haunted house attraction. The film otherwise displays a general but unremarkable competence
Batman (1966)
A film spinoff from the popular 1960s Batman tv show starring Adam West. At half-an-hour twice a week, the series was an enjoyable piece of surrealistic zaniness but its appeals seem stretched at feature-length
Batman and Robin (1949)
Not to be confused with the Joel Schumacher atrocity, this was the second Batman film ever made, a 15-chapter serial. This is mostly worth watching as a novelty in its laughable attempts to approximate the superheroics of the comic-book in comparison to modern counterparts
Batman: Soul of the Dragon (2021)
An oddity among the animated Batman films. This seems less another Batman film – Bruce Wayne gets more screen time than Batman, for instance – than it does a homage to the 1970s martial arts film