The 10 Best B-Movies in Film History, Ranked
Jeremy has more than 2800 published articles on Collider to his name, and has been writing for the site since February 2022. He's an omnivore when it comes to his movie-watching diet, so will gladly watch and write about almost anything, from old Godzilla films to gangster flicks to samurai movies to classic musicals to the French New Wave to the MCU... well, maybe not the Disney+ shows.
His favorite directors include Martin Scorsese, Sergio Leone, Akira Kurosawa, Quentin Tarantino, Werner Herzog, John Woo, Bob Fosse, Fritz Lang, Guillermo del Toro, and Yoji Yamada. He's also very proud of the fact that he's seen every single Nicolas Cage movie released before 2022, even though doing so often felt like a tremendous waste of time. He's plagued by the question of whether or not The Room is genuinely terrible or some kind of accidental masterpiece, and has been for more than 12 years (and a similar number of viewings).
When he's not writing lists - and the occasional feature article - for Collider, he also likes to upload film reviews to his Letterboxd profile (username: Jeremy Urquhart) and Instagram account.
He has achieved his 2025 goal of reading all 13,467 novels written by Stephen King, and plans to spend the next year or two getting through the author's 82,756 short stories and 105,433 novellas.
Sign in to your Collider account
If you're after the technical definition of a B-movie, it’s technically something that isn't really made anymore, because B-movies in the traditional sense existed when double features were more common. Two movies would be screened, obviously, with the first being a bit more prestigious, and therefore an “A” movie, with a bigger budget and more by way of production values, and then the second film would often be of a lower quality, hence being a “B-movie.”
When double features stopped being common, the term stuck around anyway, and nowadays, something is a B-movie if it has the feel of an old B-movie, or if it feels like it’s generally cheaper and a little scrappier than a modest-to-big budget kind of movie. Some B-movies from throughout cinema history are amazing, though, with the ones below being particularly great, with comedies, horror movies, and over-the-top action flicks being inevitably well-represented here.
10 'Re-Animator' (1985)
The basic premise of Re-Animator might sound familiar, but it’s what the movie does with such a premise that makes it special. Also, some familiarity isn’t the worst thing in the world when your movie is based on a piece of writing by H.P. Lovecraft, since he was active as a writer ages ago, and his work has proven undeniably influential (though not as much in his lifetime).
As for the story here, for as much as there is a story, Re-Animator is about a medical student who experiments with re-animating dead bodies, and that leads to easy-to-predict chaos and carnage. Re-Animator does a great job at balancing grotesque body horror with dark comedy, and those two sides work in tandem to make something very entertaining overall, since you get both a good horror movie and a good comedy here for the price of one, so to speak.
9 'Demons' (1985)
When a movie’s called something as straightforward as just “Demons,” you do expect simplicity and a no-nonsense approach overall, and that’s definitely what you get here. Things mostly take place in a cinema, with people trapped inside and demons also being on the loose, as the title promises, and the whole movie’s a battle for survival where demonic possession also makes the human side dwindle throughout.
Demons clocks in at just under 90 minutes, and plays out in a way that ensures things never feel boring, with the setting going a long way toward making an otherwise very straightforward (and maybe slightly predictable) horror movie stand out. It’s fun to have a movie being about movies in one way or another, and then, for obvious reasons, if you can somehow see Demons inside an actual cinema, it’d probably be enhanced even more.
8 'Duel' (1971)
Before he became known for helming some truly impressive blockbusters, Steven Spielberg made something of a name for himself by directing Duel, which was a TV movie initially, and sort of a B-movie, owing to its small budget. It’s got a B-movie kind of premise, too, since Duel is just about a guy driving out in the desert, and he ends up in a psychological battle with a truck driver.
The truck chases his car, and then things escalate, eventually making the conflict physical and more life-or-death stakes-wise, rather than just a psychological back-and-forth. There is a slightly extended theatrical version of Duel, as well, with it being maybe, like, too good for TV? Not that it’s the only great TV movie out there or anything, but it is easily one of the best of all time, and established a still-very-young Spielberg (he was 24 when Duel first aired) as a serious up-and-comer at the time.
7 'The Boxer's Omen' (1983)
Genuinely one of the most effortlessly disgusting movies ever made, The Boxer’s Omen is a gross-out horror film and an extreme martial arts flick at the same time. If there’s a story here, it leaps off the deep end rather fast, but before it vanishes from view, you can sort of identify it as a story that concerns a man seeking vengeance after his brother is injured during a boxing match.
That quest for vengeance isn't unusual, if you're looking at martial arts movies, but the supernatural territory The Boxer’s Omen eventually lands in is very strange, and undeniably unique. You'll see things here you probably wish you could unsee, so it’s definitely not for everyone. But if you're after particularly extreme martial arts films and are open to seeing uncompromising horror alongside gory action, then The Boxer’s Omen will be for you.
6 'The Warriors' (1979)
There’s a less-than-amazing director’s cut of The Warriors that should probably be avoided, though the original version is pretty amazing, as far as cult classic B-movies go. It’s mostly a thriller film with some action, and it involves gangs (including the titular Warriors) gathering to try and resolve various disputes and conflicts that are being fought, but then the Warriors get blamed for killing the leader of another gang.
The movie then becomes about them having to escape with their lives, all the while being pursued by the members of all the other gangs. And they make some more enemies along the way, with everything building in intensity and scope as things go along. The Warriors does a lot with its simple premise and fairly modest budget, ultimately being a very easy movie to enjoy and find a certain charm in.
5 'Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance' (1972)
Like The Boxer’s Omen, Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance is about revenge, and it’s technically a martial arts movie as well, if you're willing to count samurai movies as belonging to the martial arts genre. It’s also the first in a series about an ex-Shogunate executioner (bringing along his son, a very young child) seeking revenge against those who wronged him, and might be best-known for being re-edited into Shogun Assassin.
Technically, Sword of Vengeance and the second movie in the series were used in the assembling of the English-language (thanks to a dub) Shogun Assassin, but you're better off sticking to the original movies. Also, the five main sequels in this 1970s series are also very much worth watching if you get something out of the bloody and oftentimes exciting Sword of Vengeance, with Lone Wolf and Cub being amazingly pulpy stuff overall.
4 'They Live' (1988)
Ahead of its time in so many ways, all the while still looking and feeling undeniably like a 1980s movie in some other regards, They Live is a blast however you want to classify or approach it. The premise here involves a man finding a pair of sunglasses that reveal a devastatingly widespread truth about the world, and who really controls it, so he tries to combat what he’s witnessed.
It was directed by John Carpenter, and when he was at his peak, he was doing some pretty great stuff on fairly low budgets (and then in the case of 1982’s The Thing, he demonstrated he could put a bit more money than usual to great use). They Live is also another movie that feels more spiritually in line with B-movies than a B-movie in the literal sense, but if it’s got that kind of feel and attitude, then that’s enough for it to earn a spot here.
3 'Dead Alive' (1992)
Easily one of the wildest horror comedy movies ever made, Braindead/Dead Alive (it has one of those two titles, depending on where you live) is a blast, and the best thing Peter Jackson directed before he did The Lord of the Rings, which is very far from B-movie territory, obviously. His earliest films are defined by their low budgets and generally extreme content, though, with Dead Alive really pushing things far in terms of violence.
It’s mindless, sure, but very well-made mindlessness, and the fact that much of it’s broadly comedic makes all the grotesque imagery a little easier to stomach.
The blood and gore is what Dead Alive is understandably best remembered for, but it’s got an infectious chaotic energy to it as well that makes it fun in other ways. It’s mindless, sure, but very well-made mindlessness, and the fact that much of it’s broadly comedic makes all the grotesque imagery a little easier to stomach (though by no means is it easy in the traditional sense to stomach).
2 'Army of Darkness' (1992)
All the Evil Dead movies directed by Sam Raimi (and starring Bruce Campbell) can be classified as B-movies, and maybe The Evil Dead (as in the first one) qualifies strongest as a B-movie, given it’s the most stripped back and inexpensive of the trilogy. It is an iconic film, of course, and more than worthy of an honorable mention here alongside Evil Dead II, which is also excellent, and important for the progression of the trilogy by having horror and comedy side-by-side.
With Army of Darkness, though, things get very wild, and the horror side of the series is thrown out almost entirely. Army of Darkness has that B-movie ethos, and a real lack of regard for coherence and anything that comes even close to feeling conventional. It’s all very silly and non-stop with its humor, and of the three main Evil Dead movies, it’s going here because it’s arguably the most entertaining.
1 'Dawn of the Dead' (1978)
Like with Evil Dead, there was originally a trilogy of Living Dead movies directed by George A. Romero, and they remain iconic within the horror genre, as well as collectively feeling legendary as far as B-movies go. So, honorable mentions are in order again, because Night of the Living Dead was groundbreaking, and Day of the Dead holds up more than four decades later as one of the grisliest and most downbeat zombie movies ever made.
But Dawn of the Dead, the middle film of the bunch, has the most to offer, and it’s also probably the simplest and most purely entertaining at the same time. There are four main characters here, and they take shelter in a shopping mall while trying to survive a zombie outbreak. That’s all, and that’s also all that’s needed. It’s a B-grade masterpiece, and the kind of thing you should watch even if you're not particularly/usually all that keen on the zombie sub-genre.
Dawn of the Dead
- Release Date
- September 2, 1978
- Runtime
- 127 minutes
- Director
- George A. Romero
- Writers
- George A. Romero, Dario Argento
-
David Emge
Stephen "Flyboy" Andrews
-
Ken Foree
Peter Washington
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.