Darkside Blues (1994)
Anime where a mysterious other-dimensional stranger aids future rebels. This has a wonderfully ornate Gothic feel but an entirely confusing plot
Darlin’ (2019)
The Woman was one of the least likely films to ever warrant a sequel. But this is what we get here and directed/written by no less than Pollyanna McIntosh who played The Woman in the original
D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)
Barret Oliver plays an android boy on the run from his creators who shelters with a human family. This promptly employs all the cliches of the post-E.T. film
Daughter of Dr. Jekyll (1957)
From cult director Edgar G. Ulmer, a film ostensibly pitched as a sequel to the Jekyll and Hyde story focused on his daughter where it is revealed that Dr Jekyll was actually a werewolf!
The Daughter of Dracula (1972)
Prolific exploitation director Jess Franco makes an entry in the early 1970s fad for lesbian vampire films. This has more softcore erotic content than other entries, although the Dracula part of the title is a misnomer
The Dawn (2019)
A passable variant on the usual haunting and possession cliches overloaded with Catholic imagery before becoming a surprise unofficial prequel to a classic horror series
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Zack Snyder debuts with a remake of the cult George Romero film. While this has a bigger budget, it is missing is the satire and gore-drenched effects that made the original memorable. This inspired the mid-2000s zombie film revival
The Dawnseeker (2018)
A low-budget film about a group of soldiers crashed on another planet where they find themselves hunted by an alien. This channels the basics of Predator
The Day (2011)
A post-holocaust film that takes its tone from the bleak survivalism of The Road. Much focus on the grim harshness of trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world but there nothing particularly original in the film’s treatment
The Day After (1983)
From Nicholas Meyer, a TV movie (released theatrically in some countries) that was considered controversial in its day for its no-holds-barred depiction of a nuclear attack on the US
The Day of the Beast (1995)
The second film from Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia, a comedy poking fun at Biblical End Times prophecies. Quite a promising idea that eventually dissolves into a caper comedy
The Day of the Dolphin (1973)
George C. Scott is a marine biologist who has taught dolphins to speak but faces the military want to take his research. A serious work that all hinges on whether one is willing to accept the idea of dolphins talking in squawky voices
The Day of the Triffids (2009)
Disappointing tv mini-series remake of the John Wyndham novel about England overrun by killer plants. This abandons most of the book’s sociological portrait for cliche melodramatics
The Day Time Ended (1980)
A B-budgeted film made not long after Close Encounters of the Third Kind about a family on a ranch encountering mysterious alien phenomena. An early Charles Band produced film
DC League of Super Pets (2022)
Superheroes have overrun screens. It is starting to seem a little too much when we now get an animated film about animal superheroes who form their own Justice League
De Sade (1969)
A Marquis de Sade biopic that was problem ridden behind the scenes. The result is an incoherent mess on screen that feels as though it is being handled by several different directors, each with a different idea about what is happening
Dead Air (1994)
Psycho-thriller with Gregory Hines as a radio talkback host dealing with a psychopathic caller who plays a series of taunting games with him
Dead Air (2009)
Madness/zombie outbreak film set in a radio station as a talkback host watches the catastrophe unfurl outside. This only cheaply goes where the far superior Pontypool did first
Dead & Buried (1981)
After writing the huge hit of Alien, Dan O’Bannon next went onto this strange zombie film in which the people of a small town fail to stay dead
Dead Ball (2011)
The Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film is a genre filled with gore, madcap combat moves, bizarre bio-mechanoid transformations. This concerns itself with a game of baseball that has become a blood-drenched combat sport
Dead Dudes in the House (1989)
Known under various titles including Dead Dudes in the House and The House on Tombstone Hill, a film about a group of young people who go to renovate a house but find themselves trapped inside being killed
Dead Fire (1996)
Action film set aboard a space station that houses cryogenically frozen survivors of a devastated Earth as C. Thomas Howell tries to stop a mad Matt Frewer
Dead Friend (2004)
South Korean ghost story that has borrowed most of its moves from the J-horror cycle – Ring, The Grudge et al. A relatively anodyne treatment is enlivened by a twist ending that draws heavily on The Sixth Sense
Dead Hooker in a Trunk (2010)
The debut film from the Soska Sisters – a demented road movie – is scrappy, all over the place and highly uneven but shows the two are definitely going places
Dead Meat (2004)
An enthusiastic Irish-made copy of the George Romero zombie film that vies between the amateurish and occasional moments of interest
The Dead Next Door (1989)
Sam Raimi gave some money to independent filmmaker J.R. Bookwalter to see what he would do. The result is a modest and gory if amateurish copy of George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead
Dead of the Nite (2013)
Another variant on the set-up of the team of ghostsbusters investigating a haunted locale with videocameras that has been done to death in recent years
Dead Or Alive 2 – Birds (2000)
Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive was a Yakuza film with a gonzo ending. In this sequel, Miike brings back the same two actors and makes it ALL gonzo
Dead or Alive: Final (2002)
The third of Takashi Miike’s Dead or Alive trilogy. While the previous entries are Yakuza films, this is an action film about androids set in Blade Runner-homaging Cyberpunk future
The Dead Pit (1989)
A typical 80s film with a mad doctor resurrecting the dead in the abandoned wing of an asylum amid gory makeup effects. The first film from Brett Leonard who next went on to make The Lawnmower Man
Dead Rising: Watchtower (2015)
Dead Rising was another zombie survival horror videogame from the creators of Resident Evil. Although nowhere near the popularity of the Milla Jovovich films, this was the first of two films based on the game
The Dead Room (2015)
New Zealand-made film about a trio of parapsychologists investigating a reputedly haunted farmhouse. This treads very familiar ground and ultimately suffers from a sedate approach
Dead Season (2012)
One among the vast horde of zombie films that has deluged the genre since the mid-00s. An average entry in the field, competently made and with a plot that could have served as an entire season of The Walking Dead
Dead Sexy (2001)
An erotic thriller where detective Shannon Tweed must go undercover as a call girl to find a killer eliminating girls at the agency. A blatant copy of Basic Instinct
Dead Snow (2009)
A revival of the Nazi zombie film that comes from Norway! A hugely gore-drenched effort from Tommy Wirkola that soon plants tongue very much in cheek.
Dead Zone (2022)
Not to be confused with the Stephen King novel/film. A zombie film with a military focus that appropriates the basics of Escape from New York as a tactical unit is sent into an infestation zone to retrieve an antidote
Deadly Eyes (1982)
James Herbert was a writer of extraordinary ferocity and gore-drenched extremes. This is an adaptation of his first book The Rats where all the ferocity has been watered down to a standard Animals Amok film
The Deadly Mantis (1957)
Routine entry in the giant bug cycle of the 1950s, this essentially rehashes The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms with a revived prehistoric giant mantis on the attack
Deadly Prey (1987)
Another variant on The Most Dangerous Game with an unarmed man on the run against armed hunter(s). This was made just after Rambo came out so it becomes one lone man fighting an entire army with his bare hands.
Deadtime Stories (1986)
Horror anthology with the novelty where all of the stories are horror versions of fairytales. Particularly amusing is the second episode, a modernised version of Little Red Riding Hood
Death and Cremation (2010)
Low-budget film about a killer and his teenage apprentice. The film benefits from a well-seasoned Brad Dourif and Jeremy Sumpter, the grown-up Peter Pan, who gives a fine brooding performance
Death Dimension (1978)
One of the film from legendary bad movie maker Al Adamson. While it has some SF elements, this is mostly an action film where Adamson has set out to mine the burgeoning Blaxploitation and kung fu genres of the day
Death Kiss (2018)
A mockbuster copy of Death Wish that gains its novelty from the casting of Robert Kovacs, an actor who could be a dead ringer for the late Charles Bronson, who is naturally cast as a lone man with a gun cleaning up the streets of scumbags
Death Note (2017)
The English-language remake of the popular Japanese franchise from Adam Wingard. This essentially remakes the first film and is adequate in its own right but no patch on either of the original Japanese films
Death of Me (2020)
Darren Lynn Bousman is a director that leaves me wondering why he keeps attracting money to make films. Here he makes a work about a couple caught up in sinister rituals while tourists in Thailand
Death Race 2 (2010)
The first of three sequels (actually a prequel) to Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race, this gives the origins of Frankenstein and the Death Race. This rehashes much of the first film as generic direct-to-dvd fodder
Death Race (2008)
Paul W.S. Anderson’s remake of Death Race 2000 strips the satire from the original and turns it into a modern action movie – a to-the-death car chase film set in a near-future prison
Death Race: Beyond Anarchy (2018)
The third sequel to Death Race and the most interesting of the series. This sets up an Escape from New York scenario and has fun with bad-ass posturing in depicting the interior of the prison as a open air biker bar
Death Rider in the House of Vampires (2021)
Punk/metal rocker Glenn Danzig directs his own film, a vampire Western. This comes filled an amazing line-up of genre cameos, while Danzig casts himself as a bad-ass vampire outlaw
Death Ring (1993)
Another action movie variant on The Most Dangerous Game with Chuck Norris’s son Mike facing hunters on a remote island. Featuring a cast made up of the relatives of more famous actors
Death Ship (1980)
Film about a ghost ship haunted by Nazi atrocities. This gives the impression it was made to highlight a series of novelty deaths styled after the then-recent hit of The Omen
Death Spa (1988)
A 1980s VHS released horror about a series of novelty killings at a health spa. This contains some entertainingly bizarre death and a surprise number of later to be famous faces
Death Streamer (2024)
A film from low-budget producer/director Charles Band about a trio of horror podcasters who come across a vampire that livestreams its kills on the internet, only for their attention to bring it after them
Death Valley (1982)
Essentially a slasher movie version of Witness where a family driving through Death Valley are pursued by a killer after the young son sees his face
Death Warmed Up (1984)
The first horror film from New Zealand, a gore drenched effort about a mad scientist creating zombies. Directed by much energy even if it suffers a complete lack of plot
The Deaths of Ian Stone (2007)
Extremely confusing film in which Mike Vogel keeps waking up in different lives where he is pursued by creatures. Sort of like Dark City reconceived as a horror film.
Debug (2014)
Actor David Hewlett directs a B-budget film where a team of convicted hackers are sent to clean out the computers on a spaceship only to come up against a malevolent A.I.
Deceiver (1997)
A police interrogation film that becomes a psycho-thriller as suspect Tim Roth turns the interrogation back on the detectives. Despite a strong cast, the film eventually strains plausibility
The Deceivers (1988)
Little seen Merchant Ivory film directed by Nicholas Meyer set during the British Raj in India with Pierce Brosnan as a British officer who goes undercover to investigate the Thuggee cults
Deep Blue Sea (1999)
A killer shark film by way of Jurassic Park. The perpetually terrible Renny Harlin creates something almost watchable that vies between moments of tension and the entertainingly absurd
The Deep Dark (2023)
From the director of the standout Meander, a dark and claustrophobic film set in the 1950s about miners disturbing a Lovecraftian entity buried in the depths of a mineshaft
Deep Impact (1998)
Big serious attempt at creating an asteroid collides with Earth film, this came out the same year as Armageddon. Despite arraying much acting talent and effects artistry, this disappears into a melodramatic blandness
Deepstar Six (1989)
Entertainingly cheesy monster underwater film from Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. One of several such Aliens located underwater films that came out the same year that James Cameron made The Abyss
Deja Vu (2006)
Tony Scott directed time travel film with Denzel Washington viewing and then entering into events of the past in an effort to stop a terrorist bombing. Action driven as you might expect with Jerry Bruckheimer as producer
Delgo (2008)
This attempted to do something different to the usual formula US kiddie animation film and creates its own fantasy world. Unfortunately, while the ambition is admirable, the film flopped badly
Delirium (1987)
The great Mario Bava was the man who essentially created the giallo film. Here his son Lamberto makes an entry, which rehashes much of Mario’s seminal Blood and Black Lace, albeit more crudely
Delirium (2018)
Blumhouse film that stars Topher Grace as an asylum detainee who is released to home detention and may or may not be hallucinating seeing figures inside the house
Delivery (2013)
This was the first Found Footage film to deal with the Satanic pregnancy theme, prefiguring the more high-profile Devil’s Due. This draws on the plotting conventions and cliches laid down by Rosemary’s Baby in every way
Deluge (1933)
The world’s first disaster movie concerning a worldwide flood. This has some extremely impressive effects for the era showing New York being drowned. Less interesting are the dramatics in the ruins
The Demolisher (2015)
This starts as a Death Wish-styled vigilante film of interesting ambiguities, before abruptly turning into a psycho film. The latter half generates some undeniable tension but the film feels it needed more than that
The Demonologist (2019)
Film where New Orleans detective Brian Krause investigates a series of ritual killings before finding he is dealing with devil worshippers and that he is a destined John Constatine-like figure
The Demons (1972)
Jess Franco rips off Ken Russell’s The Devils, although surely only Franco could take a story about nuns being tortured and witches burned at the stake and turn it into a work of softcore erotica
Demons (2017)
Miles Doleac is better known as an actor but also has a number of credits as a director. Here he both directs and stars as a former priest haunted by an exorcism gone wrong
The Den (2013)
Unfriended gained attention as a horror film that took place across social media where the computer screen became the video screen. It was done first in The Den about a snuff internet site that stalks people who innocently log in
Depraved (2019)
Larry Fessenden has become a horror director who has made some fine work that remain under the commercial radar. This is his modernised take on the Frankenstein story
The Descent: Part 2 (2009)
Neil Marshall’s The Descent was a ferociously effective horror film that proved a sleeper success. This is an unnecessary sequel that only offers up a limited variation on the same jumps
Desecration (1999)
This is a surreal and plotless Catholic horror film from Dante Tomaselli that seems full of fairground horror house jumps and overloaded with tortured Catholic imagery but makes no real sense
Desert of Blood (2008)
Vampire film that takes place South of the Border. This is low-budget and has with the potential of doing something original in its hands but that never quite arrives
Despicable Me 2 (2013)
Despicable Me was a charming lightning in the bottle hit. Here Illumination Entertainment merely recyclethe familiar and already the cute sweetness and gags of the original are starting to feel like processed formula
Despicable Me 3 (2017)
Despicable Me was a delightful debut for Illumination Entertainment but has come close to making the studio a one-hit wonder they have milked that one hit for all they can
Despicable Me 4 (2024)
More from the world’s cuddliest super-villain and those manic ritalin-deprived kids that are the Minions. Is there are life and creativity left in a franchise that has been milked for six films now?
Destination Inner Space (1966)
A B movie that essentially locates The Thing from Another World underwater with an alien monster invading a sub-oceanic research laboratory. Not dissimilar to a host of B movie copying Alien in the 80s/90s
Destination Moonbase-Alpha (1979)
A two-part episode of the Gerry Anderson tv series Space: 1999 that was repackaged as a feature film to take advantage of the late 1970s post-Star Wars SF boom
Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995)
Would be quirky, surrealistic indie film with lovers on the run in Las Vegas. Quentin Tarantino appears as the spirit of chance from an interdimensional swimming pool
Destroy All Monsters (1968)
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
The Destructors (1968)
An entry amid the 1960s spy fad that suffers a pedestrian dullness. A stocky Richard Egan seems miscast as a playboy spy up against a bikini designer villain who seeks a powerful laser weapon
Detention of the Dead (2012)
Another entry in the zombie comedy field. This has essentially been conceived as a retread of The Breakfast Club but with the addition of zombies
Deterrence (1999)
A thriller with Kevin Pollak as the US President caught at a diner by a blizzard where he is faced with the hard choice of whether or not to launch a nuclear attack on Iraq
The Devil Bat (1940)
Typical Bela Lugosi fare of the 1940s involving one of the most lunatic mad scientist schemes of the era in which he kills his enemies with an experimental aftershave that his bats have been trained to hone in on and attack
The Devil Complex (2016)
Found Footage horror that unimaginatively rehashes The Blair Witch Project with a trio of people equipped with videocameras wandering around a supposedly haunted forest in Romania
The Devil Conspiracy (2022)
This has an insane plot about Satanists stealing the Shroud of Turin to clone a body to incarnate The Devil and a priest possessed by the archangel Michael wading into action with a glowing sword
Devil Girl from Mars (1954)
British entry in the 1950s alien invader genre with a female invader come to Earth to select male breeding specimens. The invader looks like a dominatrix from outer space who comes accompanied by a ridiculous robot
Devil in the Flesh 2 (2000)
Inferior sequel to the modest Devil in the Flesh which had Rose McGowan as a psychopathic schoolgirl. Recast with Jodi Lyn O’Keefe, this is now a routine slasher effort
The Devil Inside (2012)
Another Found Footage variant on an exorcism film. This was a big box-office hit but only ends up repeating the tired cliches of the exorcism and possession genre
The Devil’s Candy (2015)
From Australian director Sean Byrne who made the splendidly twisted The Loved Ones, this starts out a heavy metal horror film that broods with occult imagery and a sense of bad things about to explode
The Devil’s Carnival (2012)
Darren Lynn Bousman, the director best known for the Saw sequels, makes a musical about a circus set in Hell through which three damned souls pass, enacting updated versions of various of Aesop’s Fables
The Devil’s Doorway (2018)
Irish made Found Footage film where the investigation into a seeming miracle at a Catholic orphanage uncovers a case of possession and assorted deviltry taking place
Devil’s Due (2014)
A Found Footage film that seeks to overhaul the Satanic impregnation film a la Rosemary’s Baby. Both the Found Footage and the Satanic impregnation genres feel well-mined by now and this fails to offer anything new
Devil’s Gate (2017)
This comes with a great initial set-up as it becomes apparent that law enforcement investigating a missing woman are dealing with alien abductions
Devils of Darkness (1965)
British-made vampire film that very much trying to copy the style of Hammer Films. This has colour and moments of undeniable style that stand out but lacks it in other crucial areas.