The Demolitionist (1996)
Nicole Eggert stars in this cheap and rather laughable copy of RoboCop, where she is a police officer killed in the line of duty who is resurrected as a cyborg
NEKRomantik (1987)
From German director Jörg Buttgereit, a shocking and full-on film about necrophilia that defies all taboos and holds little back. This has a raw, in our face shock value that hits direct to the gut
Bambi (1942)
One of the unquestionable classics from Disney’s Golden Age of animation between 1939 and 1942. This is an absolute delight for its unalloyed innocence and tragically affecting emotions
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
The original Battlestar Galactica tv series was an incredibly blatant copy built on the success of Star Wars. This is the pilot, which aired on tv in the US but was released theatrically to theatres in other countries
The Strongest Man in the World (1975)
The third of Disney Dexter Reilly films in which teen inventor Kurt Russell creates a super-strength cereal
Those Dear Departed (1987)
An excruciatingly unfunny Australian comedy about a man murdered by his wife returned as a ghost to bring her to justice
The Spider Labyrinth (1988)
Italian giallo with a professor in Budapest investigating a cult of spider worshippers
Switchback (1997)
Directorial debut from the Die Hard scriptwriter Jeb Stuart is a solid thriller but the film was a surprise flop despite bringing together an impressive cast
Sneakers (1992)
Standout thriller set around the world of computing, one of the earliest techno-thriller to adapt to the new internet age
Digital Man (1995)
Fairly average 90s SF/action video release about soldiers hunting an amok military android before realising the androids have also infiltrated their troupe
Apex (1994)
Passable B-budget 1990s direct-to-video sf/action film about robots and humans warring across time that develops out an interesting plot about a changed timeline
Ticks (1993)
Routine variant on the 1970s killer bug film, although the bugs here are gooey and cartoonish not meant to be taken seriously
Vampires (1998)
John Carpenter revitalises the vampire film with a sharp action edge as James Woods heads a team of vampire hunters. Woods gives a ferociously determined performance way above and beyond the call of duty
The Butcher Boy (1997)
Neil Jordan makes a film about an abusive childhood that actually ends up asking us to cheer on the central character’s emergence as a murderer. Maybe the most cheerfully entertaining film ever made about child abuse.
A Bug’s Life (1998)
The second film from Pixar. One of their slighter and usually overlooked works, this is nevertheless an enjoyably eccentric reworking of The Seven Samurai set amidst a circus troupe of talking insects
From a Whisper to a Scream (1987)
One of the more underrated horror anthologies featuring an aging Vincent Price as narrator. Four strong tales that venture into pleasingly dark and grisly places
The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival – North (1999)
A festival of H.P. Lovecraft short films held in Vancouver, which display a quality and faithfulness to the original texts that far outstrips the professional efforts being made elsewhere
Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957)
One of the spate of teen monster movies of the 1950s, this is a B movie that at least has the benefit of not taking itself too seriously and the creation of some memorable alien creatures
Arabian Adventure (1979)
This tries hard to be another The Thief of Bagdad but is never too much more than a run through the cliches of the Arabian Nights adventure rewritten for the post-Star Wars era
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Roland Emmerich produced Virtual Reality film that toys with some ideas that almost make it a great SF film before cliches and a bad twist ending take over
Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)
Third of Jim Varney’s Ernest films where he is mistaken for a wanted criminal who is his double – only to go to the electric chair and this to magnetise his body. At that point, the film becomes a parody of Shocker
Mimic (1997)
This was the second film from Guillermo Del Toro, a modest and quite good Alien copy with Mira Sorvino hunting evolved insects in the New York subway tunnels
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999)
The second of the Austin Powers films is less sharp in its parody of the James Bond film and more focused on a series of broad scatological gags. Mike Myers owns the show in a trio of entertainingly gregarious performances
The Bad Seed (1956)
The original evil child film featuring an unforgettable performance from Patty McCormack (who received an Academy Award nomination along with most of the cast). Dated somewhat today but still holds a real charge
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
Antz (1998)
The first animated film from DreamWorks, a rather charming effort that takes place in an ant nest with Woody Allen perfectly voice cast as a nebbish ant who decides to defy the crowd
Birds Do It (1966)
An excruciatingly unfunny slapstick comedy with Soupy Sales as the janitor at an space laboratory who is accidentally made weightless
Instinct (1999)
This makes all effort to sell itself as Anthony Hopkins in another Hannibal Lecter-like role. Rather than any Silence of the Lambs copy, this undergoes several bizarre dogleg turns to emerge more as The Shawshank Redemption by way of Gorillas in the Mist
The Little Mermaid (1989)
The beginning of the big Disney renaissance of the 1990s. An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale conducted with an enormous degree of energy, colour and good cheer
Blue Sunshine (1977)
A film that has gained a cult reputation about a group of people who start suffering flashbacks from a bad batch of LSD taken in the 1960s that now causes them to become crazed killers
Almost an Angel (1990)
Paul Hogan became a huge international star with the Crocodile Dundee films. He next went on to appear in this oddity star as an aging ex-con who believes he is an angel
Agency (1979)
Lee Majors starring thriller set around the 1970s fad over subliminal advertising. The film fails to generate much in the way of thrills.
The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978)
TV mini-series released as a theatrical film in some parts of the world that resurrects Captain Nemo in the present-day. It is Irwin Allen returning to his tv roots where Captain Nemo’s adventures become a blatant attempt to copy Star Wars
Angel Heart (1987)
Dazzling mash-up of 1940s film noir and the horror genre. One of the most beautifully filmed of all horror films, Alan Parker creates a bygone world with a visual sensuality that constantly edges over into the fantastic
Beware, My Lovely (1952)
Very obscure but undeniably interesting film in which boarding house owner Ida Lupino hires Robert Ryan as a handyman before finding he is mentally disturbed and he makes her a prisoner
The Preacher’s Wife (1996)
Remake of The Bishop’s Wife with Denzel Washington as an angel come to aid an overworked pastor but falling for his wife Whitney Houston
Dark City (1998)
From Alex Proyas and David S. Goyer, this has an astonishing conceptual audacity in its plot dealing with shifting realities and transplanted memories, making it arguably the finest science-fiction film of the 1990s
The Alien Factor (1978)
Film from low-budget director Donald M. Dohler about escaped alien zoo animals amok in rural Maryland. The film has the benefit of some good creature effects
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
George Lucas’s return to the Star Wars series after a sixteen year absence and a build-up rivaled only by the Second Coming. Instead most audiences went away disappointed. Lucas has used the interim to push the technology to its heights but the story and characters are lacking
Hercules Returns (1993)
Excrutiatingly unfunny Australian film that has taken an old Italian 1960s Italian Hercules film and redubbed it with a laugh track
Anna to the Infinite Power (1982)
A modest and quite well written children’s film about a gifted twelve year-old (Martha Byrne) who gradually discovers that she is a clone
Trekkies (1997)
Mind-boggling and frequently hilarious documentary the charts the eccentricities of Star Trek fandom
Alien3 (1992)
Third of the Alien films, a directorial debut for David Fincher. A better film than was perceived at the time, this explores new character depths, while Fincher imprints his own visual style on the film
Phantasm II (1988)
The first and best of Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm sequels, one that creates an eerie twilight zone ambience that sits between dream and reality
The Beastmaster (1982)
Don Coscarelli, director of the culty Phantasm, made this as part of the early 1980s sword and sorcery fad with Marc Singer as a muscular hero who has the ability to communicate with animals
Bad Blood (1982)
Film based on true-life New Zealand mass murderer Stanley Graham, a disenfranchised farmer who became a local hero after shooting several police and inspiring a massive manhunt
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989)
Terry Gilliam’s adaptation of the adventures of the world’s greatest liar was another problem ridden Gilliam production that emerges as an absurd, colourful spectacle filled with a dizzying greatness of imagination
Anguish (1987)
Strange Spanish-made film about a mother-dominated psycho, which is also a film being watched in a theatre by an audience that is being stalked by another psycho
The Angel Levine (1970)
An obscure oddity in which elderly Jewish man Zero Mostel finds Harry Belafonte in his home insisting that he is an angel sent to help
Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (1973)
An outrageous gore-drenched version of the Frankenstein story that frequently ventures into bad taste. Despite his name in the title, Andy Warhol had nothing to do with the film
The Asphyx (1972)
A very underrated and almost completely ignored film from the great Anglo-horror cycle in which Victorian scientists are on a quest to capture the spirit of death
The Big Bus (1976)
Intermittently amusing parody of the disaster movie set aboard an atomically-powered luxury bus where everything proceeds to go wrong. The better parody of the genre would have to wait for Airplane
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
The original Mighty Joe Young was a wonderfully underrated giant ape film. This is a remake conducted in the post-Jurassic Park era that adds CGI but holds none of the magic of the original
Six-String Samurai (1998)
Gonzo comedy set in alternate world where a samurai-sword wielding Buddy Holly wanders through a post-apocalyptic present
Aliens (1986)
James Cameron’s follow-up to Alien is one of the few sequels that matches its predecessor (surpasses it in the eyes of many). Adding a troupe of Marines, Cameron creates a powerhouse of a film that sustains itself with seat-edge tension throughout
Airwolf (1985)
The pilot for a tv series that was theatrically released outside of the US. A blatant copy of Blue Thunder, this concerns the hijacking and retrieval of a hi-tech helicopter
Angel (1984)
Trashy film about a regular high school student who leads a double life as a hooker on Hollywood Boulevard who becomes targeted by a serial killer. Several sequels followed.
Conquest of Space (1955)
George Pal’s successor to Destination Moon imagines one step further – an expedition to Mars. Where Destination Moon had a bold unfettered optimism, this is killed off by an ending that falls prey to typical 1950s fear and anxiety
Amazon Women on the Moon (1987)
An anthology of comedy skits from several different directors including Joe Dante and John Landis. The result is fairly scattershot with moments of occasional humour falling between laughs that do not come off
The Killer Condom (1996)
Beyond the willfully ridiculous title, this is a surprisingly entertaining and funny film that lampoons monster movies in general
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
The Addiction (1995)
Abel Ferrara takes on the vampire film and delivers a work loaded with weighty and nihilistic philosophical meditations that creates startling reinventions of vampire mythology
Temmink: The Ultimate Fight (1998)
Dutch film set in a future where Jack Wouterse is a prisoner who is offered a chance to fight to the death in televised gladitorial combat
Flesh Feast (1970)
It’s anybody’s guess what possessed Veronica Lake, a great screen beauty of the 1940s, to return to screens playing a Nazi mad scientist having created flesh-eating maggots. A true Z film if there ever was
Too Many Ways To Be No. 1 (1997)
Predating Sliding Doors, this hard-boiled Hong Kong gangster film from Wong Kar-wai did the whole alternate timelines theme first
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
The Giant Spider Invasion (1975)
From Bill Rebane, a film about a rampaging giant spider (having emerged from a black hole we are told). This has a bad movie reputation, although on most accounts it emerges as strictly average
The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999)
Misguided attempt to make a sequel to Carrie, this reduces that film’s cry of the downtrodden to petty teen bitcheries, while the psychic eruptions are absurd, the complete antithesis of anything Brian De Palma directed
Beauties of the Night (1952)
Delightful and completely charming Rene Clair comedy about a daydreamer. A much better version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty than either of the official film adaptations
Bad Taste (1988)
Peter Jackson first appeared with this no-budget splatter comedy. A miracle of DIY filmmaking, the film plays out like a live-action Roadunner cartoon where the creativity of Jackson’s home-made gore effects is positively ingenious
The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953)
A classic of the genre for a number of reason – it was the film that kicked off the 1950s fad for atomic monsters, featuring an archetypal story about a dinosaur brought back to life by atomic tests. It also featured among the very first screen credits for both Ray Bradbury and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen
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
eXistenZ (1999)
David Cronenberg tackles Virtual Reality themes in an interestingly mind-bending work, which ended up being overshadowed by The Matrix the same year
Themroc (1973)
Anarchic French film entirely without dialogue as a group of people in an apartment begin to revert to pre-civilised behaviour
Battletruck (1982)
A fairly blatant copy of Mad Max 2, although this is one of the better-made and budgeted. Crucially what is lacking is much in the way of the action that made Mad Max a hit
Spontaneous Combustion (1990)
The start of Tobe Hooper’s decline wherein he borrows the basics of Firestarter in a really bad film with a madly overacting Brad Dourif as a pyrokinetic
Sliver (1993)
Adaptation of an Ira Levin thriller is turned into a blatant copy of Basic Instinct featuring Sharon Stone in more steamy scenes
Whispers in the Dark (1992)
Smart and tightly wound psycho-thriller as psychotherapist Annabella Sciorra is wound into the murder of a patient
Saviour of the Soul 2 (1992)
Sequel to their earlier Wu Xia film, although having nothing in common with it. All the moves are pushed to a level of cartoonish absurdity that proves amazingly silly
Within the Rock (1996)
Low-budget Alien copy directed by makeup effects artist Gary J. Tunnicliffe with a plot that prefigures Armageddon as drillers uncover an alien nasty on an asteroid
Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace (1996)
The Lawnmower Man was far from a classic but this sequel has a computer-illiterate absurdity that pushes it into extremely bad movie stakes
The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
Throwback to 1950s films like The Quatermass Xperiment with Alex Rebar as an astronaut infected with a condition that causes his flesh to melt. A B movie boosted by great melting effects from Rick Baker
What Dreams May Come (1998)
Vincent Ward is one of the least recognised great directors in the world. Here he creates an extraordinary vision of the afterlife in which he employs CGI to create a world that resembles classic artworks brought to life
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999)
Amid Kenneth Branagh’s dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s whimsy about fairy enchantments. An okay adaptation but it is eclipsed by other superior versions of the story
She Starts the Fire (1992)
Madcap Hong Kong comedy variant on Firestarter where Chingmy Yau has a curse that she starts fires when aroused
The Wizard of Gore (1970)
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a stage magician who cuts up women on stage and real life. The film makes mind boggling plays between reality and illusion
The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)
Mad scientist Bruce Dern creates a two-headed transplant. Unlike The Thing with Two Heads from the same company, this lacks an appreciable sense of its own absurdity
The Mummy (1999)
Nominal remake of the Boris Karloff The Mummy, which has now been inflated into a big budget Indiana Jones adventure. Stephen Sommers lets the film overspill with CGI spectacle but the exercise is deflated by a jokey, unserious attitude
The Matrix (1999)
A film that was as groundbreaking when it came out as Star Wars was in its day. The Wachowskis create a defining work on Virtual Reality themes and do so with a sublime cool and a series of breathtaking action moves that blew everybody away
Children of the Night (1991)
One of a trio of films produced by Fangoria magazine, this concerns a town overrun by vampires but swings uncertainly between moments of effectiveness and a campy silliness
All That Jazz (1979)
Dance choreographer/director Bob Fosse makes an autobiographical film in which dance choreographer (played by Roy Scheider) reflects on his life to the Angel of Death
The Amazing Mr Blunden (1972)
This Victorian-set children’s film has not been widely seen and has gained a small cult reputation for many years its ambitious plot involving a ghost story and time travel
The Prince of Egypt (1998)
The second animated film from DreamWorks, an impressively produced retelling of The Book of Exodus and the story of Moses.
Urban Legend (1998)
Following the success of Scream, this was an attempt to make an upmarket slasher film based around the motif of urban legends in the same way that Scream used 1980s slasher films. It is a stretch to make urban legends fit in some cases but director Jamie Blanks delivers reasonable tension
Hero at Large (1980)
Comedy where John Ritter is an actor dressed in a superhero costume for a promotion who then starts to fight crimes for real. The first of several comedy films about superheroes who have no powers.
Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)
Airplane was a parody of the disaster movie that proved a hit. This was a sequel that expands the action aboard the space shuttle and contains many SF in-jokes but to generally lesser effect
Repossessed (1990)
This wants to conduct an Airplane styled parody of The Exorcist to which extent it conducts the coup of casting a grown-up Linda Blair
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 Nosferatu Diaries: Embrace of the Vampire (1995)
Vampire erotica that is largely premised around seeing Alyssa Milano take her clothes off and little else
Back to the Future (1985)
This was a huge hit at the time and has become one of the most indisputable pop culture artifacts of its era. The film takes a clever time travel plot and infuses it with an effortless energy to prove a considerable winner