Coma (1978)
Flush from the success of The Andromeda Strain and Westworld, Michael Crichton directed this medical conspiracy thriller, which returns to the fear of science themes that runs throughout his work
Combat Shock (1986)
Film about a Vietnam Veteran snapping and going over the edge that gained acclaim when it came out. More a work of grim social realism than horror, it is frequently amateurish but contains an undeniably bleak charge
Come Play (2020)
This is a surprisingly good film that generates quite a degree of spooky eeriness concerning a child on the autism spectrum and the sinister entity inside his tablet that just wants to be his friend
The Comeback (1978)
One of the films from Pete Walker, a greatly underrated director working in the British horror film in 1970s, in which pop star Jack Jones retreats to a country house only to be stalked by a psycho
The Comedy of Terrors (1963)
Droll black comedy with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone as morticians who decide to drum up business by murdering people. This assembles much of the team behind the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe films
Comforting Skin (2011)
Canadian film about a girl’s strange obsessive relationship with her talking tattoo. The idea has been done before but the film and fine performances give it life
Committed (1991)
A variant on Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether with Jennifer O’Neill as a woman wrongly committed to an asylum before discovering it has been taken over by the inmates
Communion (1976)
A psycho-thriller that has gained a modest cult reputation. This comes seeped in Catholic guilt and director Alfred Sole delivers twists and turns with a fine hand. Featuring a young Brooke Shields in her film debut.
Computer Chess (2013)
Quirky film shot as though a mockumentary from the 1970s about a conference where programmers compete against computer chess programs that starts to get into some puzzlingly weird SF territory
Coneheads (1993)
Film spinoff of a Dan Aykroyd skit on Saturday Night Live about a family of aliens ho attempting to maintain ordinary suburban life on Earth The film has a really wacky sense of humour, which is probably why it was a box-office flop
Congo (1995)
Following the success of Jurassic Park, a host of other Michael Crichton books were filmed, including this not entirely successful but not uninteresting work where Crichton attempts to modernise the lost world adventure
The Congress (2013)
Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman adapts a work by Stanislaw Lem into a conceptually challenging part-animated film concerning a virtual actress and a future where the populace lives inside a drug-induced mass hallucination
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972)
The fourth of the original Planet of the Apes films, this cuts back on the humour and makes a stark parable for the Civil Rights movement with the apes rebelling against humanity in a revolution
Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
Cult Czech stop-motion animator, Jan Svankmajer makes an eccentrically surreal live-action film that focuses on a variety of different people who have strange fetishes
Constantine: City of Demons (2018)
The Dc Comics character John Constantine was made into an animated web series that was compiled as this film. One is quite taken aback at how much more edgy and adult this is than most of DC’s animated offerings
Contracted (2013)
Modestly effective effort about a woman who contracts an infection that causes her to physically decay. The horror comes in watching the heroine’s progressive physical decomposition.
The Convent (1995)
Enigmatic Manoel de Oliveira film that may be about wife Catherine Deneuve making a pact with The Devil to dispose of the woman husband John Malkovich is attracted to. Or maybe not
The Convent (2000)
Early Mike Mendez film that quickly abandons being a standard venture into a haunted convent and launches into an entertainingly over-the-top splatter show filled with zombified nuns
The Cooler (2003)
Drama with standout performances. William H. Macy is a loser with perpetual bad luck who is employed by Las Vegas casinos to cool tables that have a winning streak – only for his luck to change when he meets a woman
Cop (1988)
A James Ellroy-adapted crime thriller with James Woods giving a very disturbed performance as an unhinged detective on the trail of a serial killer
Corridors of Blood (1958)
Early Anglo-horror film that seems to be trying to push a story about a 19th century doctor (Boris Karloff)’s discovery of anaesthetic gas out of shape and make it into a horror story.
Cosmic Voyage (1936)
An early Soviet-made film that does an extraordinary job in depicting the launch of a rocket to The Moon. Fascinating to see in terms of its incredible ambition and the things it gets right
Count Yorga, Vampire (1970)
One of the better efforts among a spate of attempts to modernise the vampire that came out the 1970s. Robert Quarry gives a witty, urbane performance in the title role. A sequel followed.
The Countess (2009)
Actress Julie Delpy directs/stars in an adaptation of the Countess Bathory story. In trying to pitch itself as a work of historical feminism and having sympathy for Bathory, this downplays the considerable horror element of the story
Coyotes (2025)
Colin Minihan has been a director on the rise in recent years. Here he makes an amusing film about Justin Long under siege in his home by killer coyotes that manages a deft blend of fine tension and humour
Crabs! (2021)
An amusingly tongue-in-cheek horror comedy that is a throwback to the1950s featuring an attack by giant crabs. With some surprisingly good crab effects too.
The Crazy Ray (1925)
An experimental silent film from the great Rene Clair that depicts a group of people who remain unaffected as all of Paris around them has been frozen in time by a ray experiment
Creation of the Gods I: Kingdom of Storms (2023)
Billed as the Chinese Lord of the Rings, this is an historically-based fantasy film that tries to out-Hollywood Hollywood in terms of effects, design and costuming and looks stunningly epic in scale
A Creature Was Stirring (2023)
An interestingly strange and undeniably different film where two teens break into a house at Christmas time to find a mother who keeps her daughter confined lest the creature inside her get free
Creep (2014)
An improvisational project shot between actor Mark Duplass and friend Patrick Brice, a two person handheld-shot film where videographer Brice is hired by an over-friendly Duplass who becomes increasingly disturbed
The Creeping Flesh (1973)
An interesting never-quite-ran from the heyday of Anglo-horror cycle with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Victorian anthropologists dealing with a prehistoric skeleton that is an embodiment of evil
The Crimes of the Black Cat (1972)
From the heyday of the giallo film, an extravagantly colourful psycho-thriller involving the killing of models by a killer with a black cat. This works all the tropes of the genre with considerable style
Criminally Insane (1975)
From the Films That Could Never Get Made Today file – an exploitation classic about an obese woman who goes on a killing spree. This comes with a level of derangement that leaves you puzzled why this has never become a cult classic
The Crimson Pirate (1952)
Burt Lancaster-starring pirate swashbuckler that announces it is not taking itself seriously and goes entertainingly over-the-top, eventually adding a series of wildly anachronistic inventions
The Crimson Rivers (2000)
A strong well-made French thriller that comes with the influence of Se7en involving murders on a mountainside glacier and a secretive boarding school with ties back to the Nazi era
The Croods (2013)
What gives the expectation of being a formulaic animated film about a prehistoric cave family instead comes with a fresh and naturalistic sense of humour that proves oddly appealing
The Croods: A New Age (2020)
The sequel to DreamWorks’ animated prehistoric film. For a very low expectation effort – the modern animated sequel – this emerges as far more colourful and entertaining than one expects
Crossworlds (1996)
Modest and clever venture on the alternate worlds theme where an average student is dragged into a war for the multiverse after meeting a strange woman at a party
Cruel Summer (2016)
Making claim to being based on a true story, this recounts the brutal beating and killing of a handicapped boy by three youths. More social horror than genre horror, this culminates in a horrible and not easy to watch scene
Crumbs (2015)
Forget Mad Max et al, this Ethiopian film is a fascinatingly different take on the post-holocaust film – set after the collapse of civilisation where the junk culture of today has developed a mythology of its own
Cry Wolf (2005)
Smart and intelligent slasher film in which a campus game among students turns deadly as it appears that a killer whose identity they made up may be eliminating their numbers for real
Cryptozoo (2021)
Adult animated film set in a zoo for cryptozoological animals, this has a great premise and eye-poppingly psychedelic visuals
Cube2: Hypercube (2002)
The first sequel to Vincenzo Natali’s fine conceptual puzzlebox film. This expands out on the idea, having a cube that bends through time and space, and has a certain fascination if not as much as the original did
Cult of the Cobra (1955)
A copy of Cat People in which a group of G.I.s violate a Malaysian temple and are subsequently haunted by a mysterious snake woman. This achieves some modest atmosphere
Curdled (1996)
A Quentin Tarantino produced black comedy about a forensic cleaner that is charmed by a serial killer who has returned to the crime scene. An indie film that not many people saw at the time.
Cure (1997)
The film that brought Japanese director Kiyoshi Kurosawa to attention. Set around a series of hypnotism murders, this is, as with Kurosawa’s films, cryptic and frequently inexplicable but has an undeniable uncanniness
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
David Fincher makes a surprisingly positive and upbeat Academy Awards crowd-aimed film in which Brad Pitt is a man who ages in reverse, born as an old man and progressively getting younger as he goes through life
The Curse of Downers Grove (2015)
Harsh and brutal work written by Bret Easton Ellis of American Psycho fame wherein a group of jocks harass and tear apart the life of Bella Heathcote after she accidentally blinds the leader’s eye in the process of rejecting his advances
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Hammer Films offer their take on the werewolf film starring a young, unknown Oliver Reed. Director Terence Fisher creates a lush film rich in symbolism, made with the full weight of Hammer’s production values
The Cursed (2021)
The greatly underrated Sean Ellis returns with a beautifully understated film about the hunt for a possible werewolf creature loose in rural 19th Century France. Everything happens in a state of careful ambiguity
Curtains (1983)
Slasher film that is more like an Agatha Christie whodunnit, this comes with an appealing level of meta-fictionality. Mostly, it is an actor’s film and has been set-up to allow its name cast to do amazing things
Cut Off (2018)
Gripping German forensic psychology thriller that starts with one of the most memorable hooks in recent years where a pathologist autopsies a body only to find his daughter’s name and cellphone number embedded in its head
Cybertech P.D. (1995)
At face value, this seems to be no more than a Lorenzo Lamas action film for video release, but it surprises one and becomes a quite reasonable Cyberpunk film that conducts a smart airing of the tropes
Cyborg2: Glass Shadow (1993)
Sequel that abandons that mindless chop suey of Albert Pyun’s Cyborg and reconstructs it into a halfway reasonable Cyberpunk film. A then unknown Angelina Jolie plays the cyborg
Cyborg3 (1994)
The second of Michael Schroeder’s sequels to Albert Pyun’s Cyborg both of which are better than the original. This does interesting things with the hokey idea of a pregnant android.
Daddy’s Deadly Darling (1973)
An enjoyably twisted psycho film that heads into a fairly disturbed headspace concerning a waitress who has a habit of killing people and her former circus performer boss who feeds the bodies to his pigs
Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting (1969)
Psycho-thriller about a woman who has an abortion and then years later is married and pregnant when she is stalked by her ex-boyfriend demanding that the child is his. From an early Larry Cohen script
Dahmer (2002)
A film based on true-life serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer that does a reasonable job in depicting the Dahmer story. This stars a young unknown Jeremy Renner in the title role
Dangerous Animals (2025)
At variance to the assorted other films about survival in shark-infested waters, this features Jai Courtney in a completely crazed performance as a serial killer who feeds his victims to sharks
Daniel Isn’t Real (2019)
A horror film that delves into pleasingly dark places as a man finds that his life is being taken over by his childhood imaginary companion that he realises wants to possess his body
Dante’s Inferno (2007)
Modernised version of the classic journey though Hell conducted with cardboard puppets – a uniquely appealing experiment peppered with a number of biting contemporary jibes
Dario Argento Panico (2023)
A documentary that interviews Dario Argento, now in his early eighties, along with his family and those around him, where he discusses his life, films and career
Dark and Stormy Night (2009)
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
The Dark and the Wicked (2020)
Bryan Bertino has become a Must Watch director ever since The Strangers. Here he makes an uncanny slow burn film about a family gathered to tend a dying father as something evil waits to claim his soul
Dark Angel (1990)
Rather enjoyable action film that conducts an amusing spin on Lethal Weapon buddy cop formula with Dolph Lundgren taking on an intergalactic drug dealer
Dark Angel: The Ascent (1994)
One of the better films to emerge from Full Moon, the story of a female demon who escapes to Earth and becomes a vigilante defender of the innocent. Rather well done with Angela Featherstone being particularly otherworldly
Dark Asylum (2001)
Modestly effective psycho film with Paulina Porizkova pursued through a deserted asylum by escaped serial killer Larry Drake
Dark Encounter (2019)
A modestly effective film about UFOs and alien abductions. This follows familiar paths to other films but is conducted with a quite reasonable degree of atmospheric
The Dark Half (1993)
George Romero’s adaptation of a Stephen King novel with writer Timothy Hutton haunted by an evil alter ego. Underrated and quite possibly the King adaptation that is the most faithful to its source material
Dark Harvest (2023)
David Slade seemed a promising directorial name several years ago with works like the charged Hard Candy, before making Twilight films and being lost in tv. Here he returns with a film set around a small town’s deadly Halloween rituals
Dark House (2014)
The underrated Victor Salva, director of Jeepers Creepers, takes on the deviltry and occult film where with his ability to conjure eerie jumps and outlandish images produces something original and out of this world
Dark Intruder (1965)
Pilot for an unsold tv series that was later released theatrically produced by Alfred Hitchcock’s company. Leslie Nielsen plays an occult detective and the film proves surprisingly well-shot and atmospheric
The Dark Red (2018)
Film where a woman in an asylum insists that her baby has been stolen from her womb and that she has psychic powers. Or equally possibly she is delusional. This sits on an ambiguous fence with some subtlety
Dark Spell (2021)
Work of Russian horror that heads into pleasingly dark places as a woman enacts a love spell to bring her boyfriend back to her where you just know that something horrible is going to happen
Dark Touch (2013)
In her first English-language debut, French director/writer/actress Marina de Van delivers a variant on Carrie, albeit rewritten as a tale about child abuse. Oblique, quiet but undeniably effective when de Van pulls her punches
Darkman III: Die Darkman Die (1996)
This was the second and better of the two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This adds a much more interestingly complex plot to the mix
Darkness (1993)
A no-budget vampire film from ingenue Kansas-based filmmakers. What the film suffers in the amateurism of its cast and lack of plot, it makes up for with its enthusiastically over-the-top gore effects and bucketloads of gore
Darling (2015)
One of the films from the most promising Mickey Keating. Darling owes a great deal of debt to Roman Polanski’s Repulsion but Keating very effectively drags us into a disturbed mental space
Dashcam (2021)
Director Rob Savage made a splash with the Zoom horror film Host. His second film here is an insanely crazed horror film that is shot from the point-of-view of a dashcam
Dave Made a Maze (2017)
A man builds a cardboard maze in his living room only for he and others to become lost in it. This has a wonderfully inventive scrappy handmade eccentricity. Imagine Cube remade as one of Michel Gondry’s sweded films
David Lynch: The Art Life (2016)
David Lynch is the king of weird cinema from works like Eraserhead to Twin Peaks. In this documentary, a 70-year-old Lynch sits in his art studio and in a very laidback manner reflects on his process and tells us his life story
Dawn of the Dragonslayer (2011)
From the people who made the Mythica films, this is a modest and well made fantasy film about a young farmboy thrust into the role of dragonslayer that does good things on a limited budget
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
In another of his big budget disaster spectacles, Roland Emmerich embraces environmental concerns about Global Warming. Here he (unscientifically) imagines the abrupt onset of a new Ice Age worldwide
The Day Mars Invaded Earth (1962)
This was one of the last gasps of the 1950s alien body snatchers genre. Conducted on a low budget, this nevertheless comes with some modest effect as a scientist and his family face mysterious doppelgangers
Day Shift (2022)
An enjoyably entertaining film featuring Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco as vampire hunters. This plays out as a comic buddy film mixed with a series of wildly charged action scenes
The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)
An interesting if uneven remake of the 1950s SF classic from Scott Derrickson that smartly updates the story from the Atomic Age to a post-9/11 era where it now delivers a modern environmental warning
Day Watch (2006)
Timur Bekmambetov’s sequel to Night Watch comes with a much better budget and the same wild visuals, although is slightly the lesser film
Daybreakers (2009)
Australia’s The Spierig Brothers create a strong and original scenario for a vampire film set in a future where vampires have killed almost all the humans and the blood supply is now running out.
The Dead 2: India (2014)
The Dead was one of the better modern zombie films, depicting the African continent as it succumbed to the zombie apocalypse. This offers nearly the same story but moves the locale to India
Dead Creatures (2001)
The second of British director Andrew Parkinson’s remarkable kitchen sink zombie films about people trying to deal with ordinary life while transforming
Dead Dicks (2019)
An off-the-wall film with a unique premise about an apartment where every time somebody is killed another copy of them emerges out of a hole in the wall
The Dead Don’t Die (1975)
Largely forgotten tv movie from a Robert Bloch script. Curtis Harrington creates a fascinatingly creepy atmosphere that blends film noir with mysterious happenings involving voodoo and the resurrected dead
Dead End (2003)
This starts out seeming like a Backroads Brutality film with an innocent family being attacked after taking a side road detour, only to end in increasingly stranger supernatural territory
Dead-End Drive-In (1986)
A remarkable little film from Australian director Brian Trenchard-Smith set in a satiric future where teens find they are trapped in a drive-theatre used as a prison for troubled youth
Dead Eyes of London (1961)
One of the German krimi films of the 1960s, regular police procedurals piled with so many weird elements they become works of the bizarre. Adapted from an Edgar Wallace novel about murders managed from an institute for the blind
Dead of Night (1974)
A very unique and unsettling variant on the zombie film wherein a soldier killed in combat in Vietnam is brought back from the dead by the pleading of his parents but returns not quite the same as before
Dead Season (2003)
Oddball psycho-thriller from low-budget director Ron Ford about a series of killings and games of suspicion occurring in and around an off-season bed and breakfast
Dead Silence (2007)
In his immediate follow-up to Saw, James Wan turns to the old possessed ventriloquist’s dummy theme. The result is not quite another Saw but Wan does deliver a number of very creepy moments
Dead Space: Downfall (2008)
Animated spinoff of the videogame. Your first impression is that animation is not suited for a gore-drenched film. One’s misgivings are silenced by the wildly phantasmagoric range of creatures the film throws at you
The Dead Zone (1983)
David Cronenberg adapts a Stephen King novel with Christopher Walken waking from a coma with clairvoyant abilities. An okay film if one that lacks the personal intensity and rich themes of Cronenberg’s original works