Contagion (1987)
Not a pandemic film despite the title, an obscure oddity from the great era of Ozploitation where a man undergoes a series of strange experiences as he is drawn to a mystery house in the backwoods
Contaminated Man (2000)
Thriller with Peter Weller as an aging man who is infected with a bio-agent that causes anyone he comes in contact with to bodily melt down within a matter of seconds
Convergence (2015)
This has an interesting set-up concerning mysterious happenings in a hospital where it is gradually revealed the characters exist in a limbo caught between Heaven and Hell even if it never does the idea justice
Corbin Nash (2018)
Film about a tough guy detective settling into the destined role of a monster hunter. With lots of dark streetwise urgency and Corey Feldman proving unexpectedly entertaining in drag as the lead vampire
Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel (2011)
Documentary about legendary B-budget director/producer Roger Corman, although this is more of an awe-struck tribute that disappointingly fails to venture into any of the stories of notorious cheapness and cost-cutting practices attributed to Corman
Corruption (1968)
Peter Cushing plays a surgeon who devises an advanced technique to restore his wife’s burn-disfigured face – only to find he must kill to maintain it. An Anglo-horror effort that borrows the basics of Eyes Without a Face/Les Yeux Sans Visage
The Cosmic Man (1959)
A low-budget 1950s SF film with John Carradine as a mysterious, shadowy alien visitor. This borrows a good many of its ideas from The Day the Earth Stood Still
Cosmoball (2020)
A Russian SF film about humans who have been selected to participate in an intergalactic sports tournament. This feels that it has been construed as an anti-Alita: Battle Angel and has some stunning design work
The Cottage (2008)
Andy Serkis and Reece Shearsmith are inept kidnappers in this black caper/horror comedy – imagine something like A Life Less Ordinary peopled with characters from a Guy Ritchie crime drama
Count Dracula (1970)
Christopher Lee was inveigled to play the title role in what was advertised as an adaptation of the book as Bram Stoker wrote it. While this was somewhat true, such ambitions befell the cheapness of exploitation director Jess Franco
Count Dracula’s Great Love (1972)
A copy of the Hammer Dracula films starring Spanish horror legend Paul Naschy. Naschy makes an okay but mundane Dracula, while the film never seems much more than lots of running around an abandoned asylum and softcore tumblings
Countdown (2019)
This feels like the Final Destination franchise updated for the mobile user generation concerning a sinister app that predicts how long the user has to live
Counter Clockwise (2016)
The time paradox film has always been one of the most ingenious and conceptually challenging SF films in recent years with the likes of Timecrimes and Predestination. This is a B-budgeted variant
Countess Dracula (1971)
Not another of Hammer’s Dracula films despite the title. This still builds on the brand name but is instead their loose adaptation of the story of the infamous blood-bathing Elizabeth Bathory.
Countess Dracula’s Orgy of Blood (2004)
Donald F. Glut is famous as a genre historian and novelist. Here he directs an erotic vampire film. Despite the title, Count Dracula doesn’t feature much but we get Paul Naschy in one of his few English language films
The Country Bears (2002)
Another film spun off from a Disneyland attraction, this hardly inspiring effort features a Country and Western band made up of talking bears and follows them as they set out on a reunion tour.
Cowboy Bebop: The Movie (2001)
The feature film spinoff of a cult anime tv series
Cowboys & Aliens (2011)
High-concept Jon Favreau directed film that has a winning title concept, overflows with star power and is made on a big budget. But the script feels like it had no idea what to do after setting up its title conceptual mash-up
Cowboys vs Vampires (2010)
A horror movie set around a modern day Western recreation town that was quickly retitled on the tail of Cowboys vs Aliens. It’s debatable though whether it does actually feature any vampires
Crackcoon (2024)
This is another of the low-budget films that take their inspiration from Cocaine Bear with a drug-addicted raccoon amok. This sits right between bad movie stakes and passable amusement
The Craft (1996)
A smart and well cast film about a quartet of modern teen high school girls who form a coven of witches. This starts well but loses it in an overblown second act
The Craft: Legacy (2020)
Blumhouse revival of/sequel to The Craft, the film about a quartet of teenage witches. This updates the original to the modern era in ways the original never did
Crash and Burn (1990)
Charles Band film that gives the impression it is a Transformers-type film. While a Transformer does appear in a few scenes, this settles down to be more of a killer android whodunit.
Crawl (2019)
Alexandre Aja makes a based on true life film where Kaya Scodeario becomes trapped in the crawlspace under a house with alligators as floodwaters rise all around
Crawlspace (2012)
Australian effort that seems to follow the path of Aliens/Resident Evil with soldiers venturing into a laboratory of amok monsters before a Philip K. Dick-ian twist on what we think is happening
The Crazies (2010)
George Romero’s underrated classic gets a makeover amid the 00/10s fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. Alas, Romero’s modest classic about a madness-inducing biospill has a big-budget thrown to emerge as just another zombie film
Creature (2011)
An enthusiastic B movie that takes its ridiculous premise of a group of friends encountering an alligator man lurking in the backwoods Louisiana swamps far too seriously for its own good
Creature from Black Lake (1976)
A 1970s Bigfoot/Sasquatch film made for drive-in audiences about students searching for the creature in rural backwater Louisiana
Creature with the Atom Brain (1955)
Atomic became the explain-all buzzword for almost every monster movie of the 1950s.This is the novelty of the one and only atomic zombie film, although at heart is no more than a 1940s mad scientist film
The Creep Behind the Camera (2014)
In the same vein as Ed Wood, a biopic of Art Nelson, director of the bad movie classic The Creeping Terror. Where Wood was an inept innocent, Nelson was a conman and pathological liar, which makes his story wilder
Creep Van (2012)
Imagine a slasher movie version of Duel – a film about an unseen driver and a van outfitted with a series of novelty killing attachments. A film driven by its gore set-pieces that tends to drag when it comes to the comedy relief
Crime Zone (1989)
A low-budget SF-action film produced by Roger Corman with David Carradine as a police chief in a dystopian future who becomes wound up in the lives of two young lovers on the run
Criminal (2016)
Everything indicates this should have been a hit – an impressive star line-up, big polished action sequences – only it tanked. Much has been assembled in the service of a hackneyed idea where the memories of an FBI agent are implanted into criminal Kevin Costner
Crimson (2020)
A film based around real-life YouTube influencer Brian ‘Faze Rug’ Awadis as he buys a new mansion only to move in and find his neighbours are an alley of sinister clowns
Crimson Rivers II: Angels of the Apocalypse (2003)
Luc Besson scripted sequel to the serial killer thriller The Crimson Rivers. However, in director Olivier Dahan’s hands, this emerges as a empty-headed series of shock images and random action scenes
Critters Attack! (2019)
For reasons known only to those involved, Critters, the quintessential 1980s VHS series about malicious creatures, has been revived for another sequel but with unmemorable results
Crocodile (2000)
Tobe Hooper delivers an entry amid the early-00s vogue for B-budget CGI monster movies, drawing clear inspiration from Lake Placid. Hooper had not made a good film since the 1980s and this does little to reverse the path of mediocrity
Croczilla (2012)
The late 2000s brought a spate of giant crocodile amok films that included some really good efforts like Rogue and Black Water. This is a belated entry from China, featuring some surprisingly good CGI effects
Cross (2011)
A copy of The Expendables (albeit with the addition of fantasy elements) that brings together a line-up of B-action movie actors as a team. While some of the actors shine, the feel is of a cheaper effort earnestly trying to copy its betters
The Crow: City of Angels (1996)
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
The Crow: Salvation (2000)
The third of the Crow films has a more substantial story than the second but is killed by a director who has no feel for the atmosphere created by the other films
Crowhaven Farm (1970)
TV movie that was an early effort from celebrated producer Aaron Spelling, concerning an occult conspiracy surrounding a couple who inherit a farmhouse
The Crucifixion (2017)
Xavier Gens film from the screenwriters of The Conjuring films based on a supposedly true-life exorcism. One was hoping that Gens would do amazing things with the exorcism genre but he only rehashes the same cliches
Cruising (1980)
Controversial William Friedkin film in which Al Pacino plays a straight cop who must go undercover in New York’s gay leather and S&M community to hunt a serial killer. This holds back little in its portrayal of the scene.
The Crush (1993)
A copy of Fatal Attraction where Cary Elwes rents a room from a family only to find himself dealing with a psychopathic underage Alicia Silverstone determined to seduce/wreak vengeance
Cube (2021)
Japanese remake of the Vincenzo Natali film where a group of people wake up in mysterious labyrinth of identical cubed rooms filled with death traps
A Cure for Wellness (2016)
From Gore Verbinski, director of The Ring and the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films, a film about a sinister health sanatorium. A beautiful looking film but it is a long time before we ever find out what is going on
Curious George (2006)
An animated film based on a popular series of children’s books about a mischievous monkey. Amiable but a film mostly intended for the pre-school set
Curse II: The Bite (1988)
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
Curse of Humpty Dumpty (2021)
The intriguing idea of a horror movie take on the famous nursery rhyme. An earlier work from Scott Jeffrey/Scott Chambers behind the Winnie-the-Pooh horror films
Curse of Mesopotamia (2015)
This sold itself as the first Iraqi horror film, which it isn’t quite (more accurately a film made by an expatriate), although it is rooted in the mythology of the region
The Curse of Sleeping Beauty (2016)
This offers the promising idea of Sleeping Beauty reworked as a horror film (and set in the modern day). Never as interesting as it sounds in synopsis, this becomes more a Sleeping Beauty-themed haunted house ride
Curse of the Blind Dead (2020)
A revival of the popular 1970s Blind Dead series about Knights Templar zombies. In this era of zombie films homages and remakes, it is a surprise nobody has thought to do so before
The Curse of the Clown Motel (2023)
This was the second film set around the real-life Clown Motel in Nevada. Despite which this is not another killer clown films and is focused around the awakening of vengeful Native American spirits
Curse of the Fly (1965)
The second sequel to the original The Fly, which does feature more teleporter accidents and mutations but for some reason no fly hybrids this time
Curse of the Forty Niner (2002)
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
The Curse of the Living Corpse (1964)
A low-budget copy of the Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films with a patriarch seemingly returned from the dead and eliminating his relatives with a series of sensationalistic deaths
The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb (1964)
The second mummy film from Hammer Films, this is a rather dull variant on the genre. Their usual flair and production values emerge here under a director who makes this turn out plodding
Curse of the Nun (2019)
A low-budget mockbuster that joins the horde of ghost nun films that were made following the success of The Nun. From the director of Clowntergeist.
Curve (2015)
Another variant on the containment thriller a la Buried, this has Julianne Hough trapped at the bottom of a cliff in an overturned SUV while being taunted by a serial killer
Cyber Tracker (1994)
Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson stars as a law enforcement officer pursued by killer androids in a blatant made-for-video action movie copy of the basics of The Terminator and RoboCop
Cyborg 2087 (1966)
The film that inspired The Terminator! Michael Rennie plays a cyborg who travels back in time to prevent a machine-dominated future coming about, while being hunted by two killer androids sent back to stop him
Cyborg Cop (1993)
A low-budget action copy of RoboCop starring David Bradley as a DEA agent up against drug lord John Rhys-Davies who has transformed his brother into a cyborg
Cyborg Cop II (1994)
From the height of the 90s RoboCop copycat video release, a sequel that this time pits DEA agent David Bradley up against an army of rogue cyborgs
Cyborg She (2007)
A Japanese romantic comedy about a lonely nerd who falls in love with a cyborg girl that has time travelled back from the future
Cyborg X (2016)
From Arrowstorm Entertainment, a low-budget company that make highly professional films. Here they have even roped Danny Trejo into playing a role in a passable attempt to replicate a 1990s Albert Pyun post-holocaust cyborg film
Cyclone (1987)
B-budget hackmeister Fred Olen Ray makes a hi-tech vehicle fantasies that reads as a cheap attempt to do Blue Thunder with a motorcycle instead of a helicopter. Cheap action but what an amazing cast line-up
The Cyclops (1957)
This has the clever idea of updating the Cyclops from The Odyssey to the era of the atomic monster movie. Director Bert I. Gordon is otherwise back at his usual tricks of serving up optically enlarged insects and animals
The Da Vinci Code (2006)
Ron Howard directed film version of Dan Brown’s best-selling book. This is historical nonsense woven into a fancifully absurd conspiracy theory where Howard does no more than offer an illustrated version of the book
Daddy’s Girl (1996)
A formulaic evil child psycho-thriller where young Gabrielle Boni kills to protect her perfect adopted family. At least young Boni conjures an effective nastiness on screen
Damien: Omen II (1978)
The first of the sequels to The Omen, this follows Damien through his teenage years as he comes into his powers. Mostly though, the film seems to exist to stage more bizarre novelty death scenes
Damien’s Seed (1996)
This makes an interesting attempt to rewrite the basics of The Omen as an erotic film. The usual occult happenings but with an emphasis on bodies coupling
Danger Beneath the Sea (2001)
A video-released submarine drama that is a blatant copy of Crimson Tide with a crew unsure whether to launch a nuclear strike. This is competently made if every move feels spelled out in advance
Dangerous Game (1987)
Australian film in which a psychopathic cop pursues a group of teens who break into a department store after hours. A debut film for Stephen Hopkins who went on to a successful career as a Hollywood director.
Dante 01 (2008)
Finally, the answer to what happened to Marc Caro after parting ways with Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Caro directs what would appear to be a darkly lit and confusing variation on The Green Mile set on a space station
Dante’s Inferno (1935)
Dante Aligheri’s famous poem is dragged down to a tatty morality play with Spencer Tracy as a carnival barker running an Inferno exhibit. The film is worth watching for its stunning hallucinatory vision of Hell
Daredevil (2003)
One of the early efforts among the surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on the big screen in the early 2000s. A disappointing adaptation that feels more like a series of posed comic-book panels than it ever does a movie
The Dark Backward (1991)
A really strange comedy with Judd Nelson as a socially inept man who tries to make it as a stand-up comedy act after growing a third arm out of his back. Audiences scratched their heads and the film bombed
Dark Cloud (2022)
SF film about a woman suffering amnesia who is sent to an automated house to recuperate only to be made prisoner by the sinister A.I. that runs the house
The Dark Eyes of London (1939)
Adaptation of an Edgar Wallace novel in which Bela Lugosi leads a blind institute whose donors are being murdered. More a crime thriller that has been twisted into being a horror film to fit Lugosi’s presence
Dark Kingdom (2018)
This is a British-made fantasy film in the vein of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones but conducted on a B-budget where it does seem to be making an effort
Dark Metropolis (2010)
a low-budget SF film set in an underground world ruled by a caste of genetically engineered people concerning who now face rebellion from among the lower classes
Dark Nature (2022)
A horror film made by Canada’s indigenous Metis people that concerns a group of women on a therapeutic wilderness trek are stalked and attacked by a monster
Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)
Frank De Felitta was mostly known for writing the novel that became Audrey Rose. He directs this tv movie where intellectually handicapped Larry Drake is killed by a lynch mob only to return from the dead as a scarecrow
Dark Places (1973)
A forgotten item from the Anglo-horror cycle in which brother and sister Christopher Lee and Joan Collins conspire to fake a series of hauntings in order to obtain an inheritance hidden in a mansion
Dark Planet (1996)
A routine SF film about an space expedition through a wormhole to investigate a habitable planet where the mission is endangered by warring factions among the crew
Dark Remains (2005)
A low-budget independent film that is making a clear effort to spook an audience. On the other side, it is also mining the ghost story, a genre that feels like it has run out of anything original in its tired and formulaic plot possibilities
Dark Shadows (2012)
Tim Burton’s slide into mediocrity continues with this comedic update of the cult Gothic soap opera tv series, which is now played at a level of cartoonish unseriousness that resembles the Addams Family
Dark Space (2013)
A low budget indie film about a spaceship crashlanded on an alien planet that is no more than a glorified fan film that features a level of effects that are extremely well accomplished
The Dark Stranger (2015)
This comes with an original idea where a troubled girl starts drawing a graphic novel that mirrors her own life only for the characters to emerge into the real world. Less horror than a dark allegorical fantasy
Dark Summer (2015)
Director Paul Solet made an incredibly creepy debut film Grace. His follow-up has Keir Gilchrist imprisoned on home detention with an ankle bracelet only to find the house is haunted
Dark Water (2005)
The English-language remake of Hideo Nakata’s ghost story made by Walter Salles. This version is surprisingly faithful to the original but entirely miscues Nakata’s jolt ending
Darkening Sky (2010)
Low-budget UFO/alien abduction film that mostly this just retreads familiar material, although it does evince a certain interesting state of rubber reality about what is happening
Darker Than Night (1975)
A Mexican entry in the haunted house genre, featuring a group of girls who inherit a place haunted by an aunt and her black cat. Strikingly rich in terms of set design
Darkest Day (2015)
An ambitious low-budget variant on 28 Days Later featuring some excellent effects, where a man wakes up with amnesia to find zombies have overrun society
The Darkest Hour (2011)
An alien invasion film set in Moscow. This is nothing more than a special effects vehicle about how the culturally self-absorbed twentysomething computer geeks and party girls save the world
The Darkest Minds (2018)
Adapted from a series of Young Adult books concerning a group of children with psychic powers on the run in a dystopian future, this failed to find the audience it sought
Darkman II: The Return of Durant (1995)
The first of two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman now starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This also brings back Larry Drake as the villain Durant
Darkness (2002)
From Jaume Balaguero, a film that assembles a decent cast and broods with suggestions of a haunted house and occult conspiracies but never does much to let it pay off
Darkness Falls (2003)
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street