A Valentine Carol (2007)
Lifetime Channel Valentine’s Day movie that rewrites A Christmas Carol to have Emma Caulfield visited by the ghosts of relationships past, present and future
A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)
The third film in the series of stoner comedies trips off into gonzo genre territory. A relentlessly and unashamedly vulgar film that also manages to be occasionally quite funny
A View to a Kill (1985)
The final outing as James Bond for a visibly aging Roger Moore, the fourteenth Bond film all told. One of the more anonymous among the giant unserious cartoon shows the Moore Bond films became
A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired. On the other hand, the film is written with a randomness that makes it impossible to understand anything that is happening
I Vampiri (1957)
The Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s was filled with works of amazing visual flair – this is where it started. Although this is more a 1940s mad scientist film, it comes with all the decaying old castles and beautifully moody b&w lighting
The Vagrant (1992)
Directorial outing from makeup effects artist Chris Walas who created the Gremlins and Cronenberg’s The Fly. This Bill Paxton as a Yuppie who buys a home and is driven paranoid as it keeps being invaded by a vagrant
The Valley of Gwangi (1969)
Ray Harryhausen film featuring cowboys roping dinosaurs. The plot rehashes King Kong but with a dinosaur instead of an ape however it is Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animation effects that make the film watchable
The Valley of the Rats (2016)
There is considerable conceptual ambition to this – a giallo homage, most of which takes place inside a limo. Charitably, you call it is a micro-budgeted collision between Cosmopolis and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, alas the film lets narrative fragment into incoherence in the latter half
The Vampire (1957)
One of the first films about a medically rationalised vampire concerning a doctor who discovers pills that turn him into a vampire monster
The Vampire Bat (1933)
Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray star in a film about a mad scientist conducting a series of vampire bat killings. A minor but watchable entry in the Golden Age of Horror.
The Vampire Happening (1971)
Freddie Francis was one of the finest stylists of the Anglo-horror cycle. Here he makes a comedy spoofing the vampire film that comes out feeling like Benny Hill routines running around a big castle
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
The first in Hammer’s trilogy of lesbian vampire films, an adaptation of the classic story Carmilla. Unfortunately in Hammer’’s hands, the story’s subtlety is killed by an emphasis on softcore titillation
The Vampire’s Night Orgy (1974)
Quite possibly the most boring 1970s Euro horror film ever made. Innocent travellers stray into a village of vampires but hardly anything happens in this soporific Spanish effort least of all the title orgy
The Vanishing (1988)
Grippingly good Dutch thriller about a husband who becomes obsessed following the disappearance of his wife, while at the tame time we also get a parallel plot about the comically jolly serial killer responsible
The Vanishing (1993)
Disastrous English-language remake of the brilliant Dutch thriller The Vanishing, which miscalculates everything including mangling the classic ending
The Vast of Night (2019)
Indie film about UFOs and alien abductions in a small 1950s town. This comes with undeniably eerie effect that heralds a strong new directorial voice. It also has a perfectly realised sense of retro period detail.
The Vatican Tapes (2015)
The exorcism film has made a big comeback in the 00s. From one of the co-directors of the Crank films, this only offers up the same mix of cliches as usual – indeed, often seems like a series of random jump scares without any rationale as to why they would be happening
The Vault (2017)
A film with a captivatingly original idea – bank robbers break into a bank vault, only to find they have stirred something supernatural imprisoned there. A film that builds a more than reasonable head of tension before losing it with a weak payoff
The Vault of Horror (1973)
The second of Amicus Films’ adaptations from EC Comics, a follow-up to their earlier Tales from the Crypt and one of their weaker horror anthologies with the episodes much more variable in overall quality
The Veil (2016)
This has a great premise – a camera crew revisiting the site of a cult mass suicide stir up the ghosts of the cult members – and a director who I always maintained had much untapped potential. Alas, the finished result seems to slip by his hands
The VelociPastor (2018)
Inspired by an autoccorrect error, this is deliberately ridiculous film about a priest who transforms into a dinosaur to fight evil, A film made with a full awareness of its own absurdities where the ineptitude of the shoestring effects adds to the charm.
The Velvet Vampire (1971)
From cult director Stephanie Rothman, a provocative and intriguing entry in the 1970s lesbian vampire film
The Vengeance of Fu Manchu (1967)
The third of the fifilms with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu and generally the point the series started to go downhill
The Video Dead (1987)
An entry from the classic 1980s era of the zombie film about zombies that emerge from a cursed tv set
The Vigil (2019)
Standout film set among the Orthodox Jewish community where a man sitting an all-night vigil with a corpse finds it possessed by a demonic force that starts toying with him
The Village (2004)
M. Night Shyamalan creates three-quarters of a tense and eerie film about a 19th Century village under siege from mysterious creatures only for it to fall apart when he produces a damp squib of a twist ending
The Vindicator (1986)
Canadian film about a man rebuilt inside a cyborg body. What started as a Frankenstein film is turned into a copy of The Terminator
The Vintner’s Luck (2009)
Whale Rider director Niki Caro makes an uneven film about a 19th Century peasant who is inspired to make wine by an angel
The Violent Kind (2010)
Strange but by no means uninteresting film that takes several weird doglegs going from biker parties to a possession film and then a home invasion by seemingly resurrected 1950s rockers
The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963)
A fine example of the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s that overruns the screen with brooding Gothic dungeons, visually stunning colour schemes, a mad nobleman and Christopher Lee as a sinister manservant
The Virgin Spring (1959)
One of the classic works from Ingmar Bergman, uncreditedly remade by Wes Craven as The Last House on the Left, with Max Von Sydow as a virtuous farmer who is driven to vengeance after three youths rape and kill his daughter
The Visit (2015)
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
The Visit: An Alien Encounter (2015)
Absolutely fascinating documentary that speculates what the likely reactions would be if aliens were to arrive on Earth where we get input from various scientists and UN spokespeople. The answers are compelling and completely different from anything that you usually get in SF cinema
The Visitation (2006)
The novelty of the first Christian horror film. As opposed to much of the message-heavy tripe that usually gets peddled in this niche market, this is actually well structured with a number of interesting ambiguities and engaging as a story for the better part
The Visitor (1979)
Head-scratchingly strange Italian film that seems made as a crosshatch of 1970s Devil Child films and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Makes no sense in terms of story but worth watching for the bizarreness of its imagery
The Visitor (2022)
Blumhouse production where Finn Jones moves to a small town and finds the portrait of the town’s founder is a ringer for him
The Visitors (1993)
Hilarious French comedy where a filthy Mediaeval knight and his servant are transported into the present-day
The Voices (2014)
On the scale of weird movies, this is about as out there as it gets – Ryan Reynolds has conversations with his cat and dog who urge him to cut people’s heads off, which continue to talk as he keeps them in his refrigerator. A mind-bogglingly warped film and quite brilliant in its dark funniness when you work out what is going on
The Void (2001)
Film where scientists creates an an atom-sized black hole that has the potential to destroy the Earth
The Void (2016)
In his follow-up to Manborg, Steven Kostanski abandons the affectionate homages to 1980s video-released genre films he has specialised in so far. A homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this should be seen for the utterly wild and outlandish makeup effects that Kostanski delivers
The Vourdalak (2023)
Adaptation of a classic Aleksei Tolstoy story set in Eastern Europe as a family awaits the return of the patriarch who has been turned into a vampire
The Voyage Home: Star Trek IV (1986)
Fourth of the original Star Trek films jumps on board the popularity of time travel themes following Back to the Future to have the regulars time travel back to the present for a series of amiable, easy comic encounters
The Vulture (1967)
Possibly the most conceptually demented film to come out of the 1960s-70s Anglo-horror cycle – one part The Fly, one part a witch’s retribution film about a man who transforms into a vulture creature after teleporting into his ancestor’s grave whereupon he is driven to enact a centuries old curse
V (1983)
Very popular mini-series during its day (that was followed by a tv series) concerning the alien invasion and occupation of Earth, this has an utter banality that fails on almost every level – as human drama, science and even basic plausibility
V for Vendetta (2006)
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel with a script from The Wachowskis. Moore’s repudiation aside, this is a fine and literate work that retells the story of an anarchist trickster and potently politicises it for the era of the George W. Bush.
V/H/S (2012)
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
V/H/S Viral (2014)
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
V/H/S/2 (2013)
Sequel to the modest success of V/H/S, an anthology of short Found Footage horror films featuring a different line-up of genre directors. The episodes are competent at best, none standout and mostly forgettable
V/H/S/85 (2023)
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
V/H/S/94 (2021)
The popular V/H/S series, an anthology of Found Footage horror tales, is revived for a fourth entry
V/H/S/99 (2022)
The fifth film of the Found Footage horror anthology series, including one episode that is among the best of the series so far
V/H/S/Beyond (2024)
Seventh of the V/H/S Found Footage horror anthologies, this is one of the best with a number of the episodes venturing into SF and others that feature some genuinely outlandish moments
V: The Final Battle (1984)
Follow-up to the popular V mini-series, this is an absurd melodrama that is made up of incredibly bad science-fiction writing and directed with zero plausibility
Vacancy (2007)
Reasonable film influenced by Hostel with Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale as a married couple who sign into a backroads motel used to shoot snuff movies
Vacancy 2: The First Cut (2009)
Passable sequel (or rather prequel) to the remote motel snuff movie thriller Vacancy. Even though a throwaway effort, it manages to build an okay head of steam
Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows (2007)
Val Lewton produced a body of works beginning with Cat People that are the finest horror films of the 1940s. This is a documentary that looks at Lewton’s life and films in detail, produced and narrated by no less than Martin Scorsese
Valentine (2001)
Following the revival of the slasher film with the success of Scream, this was a slick but forgettable studio copycat set around a Valentine’s Day motif
Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)
It was a box-office bomb but this is one of the most breathtaking and completely designed SF work to ever cross the screen. In terms of effects, sets and costuming, Luc Besson gives us a work that is an overwhelming treat for the eyes
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970)
Little-seen Czech film that sits on the blurred edge of a dream in its hazily surreal view of the world through the eyes of a young girl where the figures around her seem to become vampires that constantly loom with darkly allegorical sexual threat
Valhalla Rising (2009)
A Viking film from Nicolas Winding Refn. Rather than being made in the sense of any historical film this is almost a mystical arthouse work, a work haunted by the austerity of its primal landscape
Valiant (2005)
Amiable British animated film set amongst the Allied Resistance during World War II, all cast with talking carrier pigeons
Valley of the Dragons (1961)
Among the 1950s/60s spate of Jules Verne films, this was an adaptation of one of Vernr’s lesser-known works Hector Servadac/Off on a Comet. That said, all the but the notion of people swept up on a comet is thrown out and the rest played as a prehistoric lost world adventure
Vamp (1986)
Very 80s film that feels like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours rewritten with vampires set around vampire nightclub. The comedy is uneven but there is is a striking performance from Grace Jones as the vampire
Vamp U (2013)
The entirely unappealing notion of a vampire frat rat comedy, The film is agonisingly unfunny on almost every level, while Adam Johnson’s professor may count as possibly the wimpiest and most non-threatening vampire in the history of cinema
Vampira (1974)
Dismissed at the time as a copy of Young Frankenstein even though it had been made earlier, this is a not too funny vampire comedy with David Niven as Dracula
Vampire (1979)
A vampire movie from the creators of Hill Street Blues, the greatest tv cop show ever made??? The mind boggles as to the possibilities and wonder what amazing creative possibilities they could put on it – alas, the show only ends up staying with the tried and true
Vampire (2011)
Technically not a vampire film at all, rather about a kind and caring serial killer with a blood-drinking fetish who frequents suicide support boards looking for victims. A remarkable film, shot in a plain, unaffected manner and managing to discover an extraordinary intimacy between the characters
Vampire Academy (2014)
One has zero enthusiasm for this, which has been sold as Twilight meets Harry Potter. Defying expectation, it is written with a sarcastic amusement puncturing its own seriousness and has a great performance from its leading lady, if in the end it is too weighted down by story exposition needed to set up its sequels to ever open up dramatically
Vampire Boys (2011)
This is essentially intended as a gay version of Twilight and features a near-identical plot in which a vampire fixates on a youth and decides he is his true love.
Vampire Bride (1960)
Rather drab and cheap Japanese horror film about a disfigured actress who returns to life as a hairy vampire creature to exact vengeance. Not without its schlocky appeals, the hairy vampire bride looks more funny than threatening
Vampire Circus (1972)
Fascinating vampire film from the latter days of Hammer Films, this tries to do something different to the usual
Vampire Cleanup Department (2017)
Revival of the Hong Kong hopping vampire film phenomenon of the late 80s as personified by the Mr Vampire films. This lacks the slapstick silliness of the originals but settles in with a goofy nuttiness, getting some winning charms out of the romance between mortal and hopping vampire girl
Vampire Diary (2006)
Not to be confused with tv’s i>The Vampire Diaries, this is a British film that sets out to reconstruct the lesbian vampire film within the frame of modern LGBT relationships. It is also Found Footage, an early and rather amateurish variant, but not without some effect
Vampire Dog (2012)
This may quite possibly be the worst vampire film ever made – a children’s film about a boy and a cute vampire dog. Being a children’s film, the vampire dog is not allowed to drink blood so has to have a ravenous hunger for red jelly! The slapstick is excruciating and the film painful on every level
Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl (2009)
Completely insane Japanese film that wades in gore while playing everything up at a level of demented cartoonish absurdity. Possibly the most delirious movie-watching fun it is possible to have
Vampire Hookers (1978)
Filipino exploitation film that has a reputation as something more trashy than it is. In actuality, a dull and aimless effort that wanders around a single crypt set without much ever happening, while an aging John Carradine delivers a largely incoherent performance as the head vampire
Vampire Hunter D (1985)
Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires
Vampire Hunter D (2000)
Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, steps in to make a sequel(?)/reboot(?) to the cult 1985 anime with visually enthralling regard
Vampire Hunters (2002)
Tsui Hark scripted/produced Wu Xia effort that shuffles the familiar tropes about without seeming too enervated
Vampire in Brooklyn (1995)
An odd mismatch of talent where Wes Craven directs Eddie Murphy as a vampire who arrives in present-day New York. Craven and Murphy seem to drown either;s distinctive voices out
Vampire Vermont (2000)
Low-budget video release about a group of people holed up in a house preyed on by a vampire. Passable but never amounts to much
Vampire’s Kiss (1988)
Bizarre comedy where Nicolas Cage is a literary agent who believes he is a vampire. Cage gives the most absurdly over-the-top performance ever put on film
Vampirella (1996)
Disappointingly tatty rendering of the famous comic-book strip as a low-budget Roger Corman production. Vampirella is missing her distinctive costume and Talisa Soto comes nowhere near the comic-book character’s statuesque voluptuousness
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
Vampires and Other Stereotypes (1994)
Low-budget independently made film that manages to effectively use a singe warehouse location to suggest a gateway to Hell
Vampires Suck (2010)
The movie parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer witlessly run a series of crude, unfunny gags over films and celebrities of the previous twelve months vintage. Here they take on the Twilight series
Vampires vs. The Bronx (2020)
Essentially a US version of Attack the Block with vampires instead of aliens, this is a smart, fun effort that adapts the vampire film to local hood culture
Vampires: Los Muertos (2002)
Sequel to John Carpenter’s Vampires given over to his regular associate Tommy Lee Wallace, this looks tatty in trying to replicate the action sequences on a B-budget and with the script holes showing through
Vampires: The Turning (2005)
Supposedly a second sequel to John Carpenter’s Vampires but of little connection otherwise, this is a film of uneven effect about warring vampire clans in Thailand
Vampyr (1932)
Carl Dreyer’s cult film is not a vampire film as we know it but creates an incredibly haunted uncanny mood
Vampyros Lesbos (1970)
Another film in the cult of Jess Franco. Jumping aboard the early 1970s fad for lesbian vampire films, Franco offers up a sofctore take on the story of Dracula but cast with women.
Van Helsing (2004)
Stephen Sommers conducts a big-budget rehash of a 1940s Universal monster bash. A film so overloaded with CGI bombast and general overkill it becomes utterly absurd.
Vanilla Sky (2001)
The English-language remake of Open Your Eyes, starring Tom Cruise. The Spanish version is still the superior of the two but this stays surprisingly faithful to the original
Vanishing on 7th Street (2010)
Enigmatic film in the vein of The Quiet Earth where everybody vanishes except for a handful of survivors who have to now deal with creatures the lurk in the dark
Vanishing Waves (2012)
Acclaimed Lithuanian film involving a venture into a person’s dreamscape a la The Cell and Inception. Some nicely cool visuals, a strong character arc and some potentially edgy sexual content but the film still remains in the shadow of Inception without quite finding enough original ideas
Varan the Unbelievable (1958)
Japanese monster movie from the same team that created the original Godzilla. The English-language version has simply kept the effects scenes and cut everything else, replacing it with scenes of the US military ordering the Japanese about
Velvet Buzzsaw (2019)
This gets full marks for an eye-catching title, even if it is one that has next to no relevancy in the film. The film itself is set in the world of art dealership and concerns a series of cursed paintings that kill all who seek to acquire them
Vengeance (1962)
The third film version of Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain, this abandons much of the book. Not a terribly interesting effort, mostly noted as the directorial debut of Anglo-horror regular Freddie Francis
Venom (2018)
Anything with the Marvel Comics name on it is box-office gold. This spins a standalone film off from one of the main villains of the Spider-Man comic-book. This is watchable by several showstopping effects set-pieces.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
Next to Batman & Robin, this could be a strong contender for the worst big-budget superhero film ever made