You know when some letters look like they have a lot of films starting with them, but you think nothing of it? Well, that was me with the letter T. Welcome to Part One of Seven (yes, you read that right). This letter is a treasure trove of horror; some you will know, and some you won’t. As usual, this is in alphabetical order, so your favourite will most likely appear in another part! Shall we?

Tag (2015)

Mitsuko is going through the standard schoolgirl life when suddenly her world is ripped in two. She must try to work out what is happening as she keeps encountering alternative realities that always end in violence.

What makes Tag so good is that, when you look deep into the fact that director Sion Sono had already released two other films in 2015, and after Tag, he released another two. Just, what? Anyway, the film Tag wastes not a second of its 85-minute runtime. It hits the ground running and just keeps going until the credits roll. We are in a film about women, showcasing their strength and beauty, sadly, though it’s through the perspective of the male gaze. That isn’t bad, as Sion uses that to the film and the character’s advantage, making Mitsuko an absolute badass. The simplest way to describe it is that Tag is the film Zack Snyder pretends Sucker Punch is.

Tag also has an opening that is probably up there with Scream in terms of how much it gets you. You sense the film is going to be a light-hearted piece, but then it all goes off in a brutally fantastic fashion, and if you were wearing a seatbelt on your sofa or chair, you would belt yourself in. It’s bizarre, absurd, but importantly, it’s bloody engrossing, and that’s all you want in something as mad and wonderful as a horror film. As with all Sion films, this is more than worth your time.

The Tag-Along (2015)

Chih-wei has disappeared, gone without a trace, just like his grandmother. His girlfriend Yi-chun realises that these incidents relate to a little girl in a red dress, who appeared not long before Chih-Wei’s grandmother went missing.

Based on an urban legend in Taiwan, this ghost story has a lot going for it, and instead of being cliché heavy, it takes the slightly more original route. Urban legend films have always interested me as there is something unique to them that you wouldn’t necessarily see in a normal ghost story. A film where a ghost follows you because of the immense guilt and regret you have residing within you is a great concept and one no practising Catholic would survive.

What we get here is a highly effective and intriguing film. While the cast can’t fully outperform the concept, it is still a good watch.

The Tag-Along 2 (2017)

Pregnant Ya-ting mysteriously disappears; her mother, Shu-fen, desperately tries to find out where she has gone and endeavours to learn more about this mysterious little girl who was with her daughter just before she vanished.

You can’t keep a good ghost who feeds off guilt down it seems. Sequels that try to give us more meaning to what is going on is always a risky move, and worse still, rarely succeeds in before better. Somehow, The Tag-along 2 is on par with the original film and, if anything, isn’t far off surpassing it. Does it have an anti-abortion slide to it? Sadly, yes. Also, like the first, it should have tried to stay as practical as possible because yikes.

Make this a double bill with the first The Tag-Along, and you will have a suspensefully good time. Just make sure to stay as guilt-free as possible. That or run for the hills whenever you see a girl in a red dress.

The Taint (2011)

Water is poisoning the minds of men to make them more misogynistic to women (as if they could be much worse at the minute). These lunatics want to crack skulls and be as sadistic assholes. It comes down to two people to fight off these erection-clad zombies (yep, that’s a sentence I thought I would write after doing an education degree). Can they quell the madness?

A Troma piece of madness (of course, it’s a Troma film) that teeters on being offensive but keeps falling off said fence and lands on a pile of penises just due to how daft it is. As over the top, as that synopsis sounds, this is a ridiculous film that takes from every type of exploitation film imaginable.

If exploding genitalia is your jam, then first off, what? Second, Why? Thirdly, then The Taint is the film for you. No one is safe in The Taint, not even the poor, poor squirrels.

Take Me Home (2016)

Tan has had an accident where that memory of his has gone and done a big old wander without telling him. As he tries to find his identity, he thinks he has found his home. Yet the more he learns, the more the secrets from his family begin to spill out.

Truly, there has never been a more confidently solid haunted house film about someone with memory loss than this. Legitimately, though, this Thai horror ticks all the right boxes and isn’t afraid to be bold with its story and take you down paths you never expected. A heartbreaker of a film, Take Me Home ensures you are creeped out thanks to the brilliant production design and carefully crafted feel. From beginning to end, there is an eeriness to the film that you couple with.

Take Me Home is very much an underrated flick that almost gets too caught up in the maze of its own narrative. Luckily, it stops enough not to trip itself up to mark itself as quite the original tale.

Tale of Tales (2015)

The Queen of Longtrellis wants a child and will make whatever bitter sacrifices to ensure it happens. King of Strongcliff has fallen for a woman due to her singing, unaware she isn’t all she appears to be in his imagination. All the while, the neighbouring King of the Highhills has become thoroughly obsessed with a flea as he tries to keep his daughter’s castle bound in this world. Basically, don’t be royalty in this world; it’s just too much of a hassle.

Our first of many anthologies on today’s list, Tale of Tales, is a collection of short films inspired by fairytales curated by Giambattista Basile, with a tidy bow of a finale. With more than 50 stories that director Matteo Garrone could have mined from, it is interesting that he went with the three royal ones, each with its own theme that modern audiences could immediately latch onto.

The Enchanted Doe takes from the desire to have a child, to raise something of your own. The Flayed Old Lady is surprisingly a take on trying to keep oneself as young as possible to stay loved and desired, with The Flea focussing on the changes in generations, with older, less modern generations wanting to keep to a form of tradition instead of allowing the younger to look for their own love. All of this is painted on the most beautiful of dark canvases by Carrone, who makes these stories into some glorious adult fairytales.

The main disappointment (if you can even call it that) is that we dip our toes into this aesthetically gorgeous fantasy realm only to never encounter it again. There needed to be so much more of this world; it’s a shame we never got it. Even getting more time in each story would have been great. I would not have been upset at each tale being considerably longer. But, alas, what we get is still gorgeous cinema.

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003)

Su-mi returns from home after spending time in a mental institution. Welcomed back by her younger sister and distant father, she is frosty to her young and frail stepmother, Eun-joo. This frosty relationship is only enhanced by the continued presence of nightmares and ghosts around the secluded house.

In my opinion, A Tale of Two Sisters is as close to perfection as a horror film can get. It is not only a compelling story from a dramatic viewpoint, but once the supernatural horror seeps into the film, it becomes unmissably bleak viewing. For a film with constant revelations, each hits more like a brick to the face than the last. Your heart truly drops as the truth slowly materialises for the family.

Writer/director Kim Jee-woon struck gold multiple times with his casting of the lead four. Each is nailing their respective roles in such a draining emotional manner. There is astounding nuance to each performance; no one overdoes it, especially our two teens. This is a film that will have you repeatedly watching to catch all the hints that Jee-woon spreads throughout. Lines have extra meaning once the entire puzzle has been revealed. It’s already been said, but this film is simply perfect.

Tales from the Crypt (1972)

Five strangers somehow get lost in an old catacomb and find themselves in the same crypt (this happens all the time on my nighttime walks). They meet the mysterious Crypt Keeper, who forces them to foresee how they will die.

Forget the puppet from the TV show and revel in the mastery of this 1972 anthology classic of the same name. Here, we have five stories that range from solid to great. What makes them work together is that they are all telling different enough fates that they never feel repetitive. The stories for each film were taken from the comics of the same name.

With a star-studded cast of UK actors, few anthologies have topped this one, even 52 years after its release. Watch out for Peter Cushings’s performance in one of these; it’s utterly heartbreaking. As with many of these types of films, they leave you wanting more, which is lucky as the “franchise” went on for a very long time.

Tales from the Hood (1995)

Three drug dealers decide to rock up to a funeral home for the absolutely giddy giggles and are confronted by the funeral director, who traps them in as he tells them four spooky tales with a focus on African Americans.

If you are unaware of Tales from the Hood, you would probably expect very little from it due to the title. Well, let me firmly put those doubts to bed, as we have a little gem of a horror anthology here that will surprise you with just how good it is. Its power is in how it is clear that while wanting to give you a bit of a scare, there is a message within each story that, sadly, almost 30 years later, still feels prevalent.

Unlike the other anthologies around, Rusty Cundieff has ensured his film is bold and loud, Clarence Williams III is having an absolute ball with his role and for the film to teeter that fine line while going a mile a minute with its stories is a testament to just how bloody brilliant this anthology is. It is legitimately one of the best horror films of the 90s that has sadly been forgotten.

Tales of Terror (1962)

Lenora returns to her father’s decrepit mansion with him, still bitter about her mother, Morella, dying during childbirth. Her spirit is even more bitter towards Lenora. Montresor Herringbone gets much more than he bargained for during a wine-tasting event and finds himself an unhappy third wheel in his marriage. Fed up, he decides to take vengeance on his wife, lover and her black cat. Ernest is dying and employs a hypnotist to alleviate his suffering, but what happens when the hypnotist keeps him alive long after his body has given up?

A film from Roger Corman starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone? Automatic, yes, for classic horror fans. Add in that the stories used are loose adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories. Then you are practically ticking all the invisible boxes. This one stands out, though, because there are no stories weaving to interconnect them. We are smack bang into each story, no messing about. You almost have to love that about Corman, he was never going to film anything extra when just moving from one film to another sufficed enough.

Each story has its own elegance that shows the capabilities of the cast and of Corman himself. What works well in these films, particularly the middle story, The Black Cat, is how humour has been added where it really shouldn’t be. Making it a dark, morose comedy at times allows for the bleakness of each story to ease, stopping the whole film from becoming an endurance test. Entertaining with a touch of dark campness, Vincent Price’s performance will, unsurprisingly, lead the plaudits.

Talk to Me (2022)

If you or your friends ever come in contact with something that can talk to spirits that are not alcoholic, then listen and stay well clear of them. Do not be like Mia and her impressionistic peer-pressuring friends when you touch that hand and let those spirits in, as those spirits are going to come in. It only spells pain and death for you and your friends.

A solid and fresh enough take on the Ouija board horror film subgenre, where shit only hits the fan when the sensible person leaves the room. Using probably a few too many old horror tropes to get by for its own good, Talk to Me still has a tonne of freshness to it, from how once possessed for too long, the spirits brutally try to control their human host to the ideas that are spread throughout. The good far outweighs the bad, and with the clear set-up for future films, it will be interesting to see if we do get a franchise out of Talk to Me.

Tammy and the T-Rex (1994)

Michael is that type of unlucky guy where you go to defend your girlfriend from her ex and end up getting so mauled by a lion that you are left in a coma that you will not wake from. So your poor little brain is taken by a scientist and placed into a robotic Tyrannosaurus Rex. It always happens to the good guys, am I right?

If that synopsis doesn’t sell you on the utter madness that is Tammy and the T-Rex, then well, I feel sorry for you because this was the best film of 1994 (tiny T-Rex, hands down). I won’t lie to you; this is a guilty pleasure film, but jeez, is it not full of laughs, death and stupidity? I mean, the only reason this film was made was because the animatronic T-Rex was getting returned to its owners. The director quickly made a film idea to use it before it went back. Glorious.

We have a film here that knows what it is and is just happy to have as much fun with itself as possible. Forgetting he is a dinosaur, Michael uses a payphone to talk to Tammy, forgetting he can’t talk like a human. How do you not love that and the terrific death scenes once Michael loses his dino temper? It’s just the right level of cheesy fun where you don’t mind the plot holes but are guaranteed a laugh, and that’s the main thing. If you want a campy dumb as a bag of rocks B-Movie, then friend Tammy and the T-Rex is for you.

Tarantula (1955)

In typical 1950s sci-fi horror tradition, scientists have been mucking around with animals a bit too much, playing with their sizes and whatnot, and seem to think keeping them in a tiny box will be fine. It is fine until a tarantula escapes and just doesn’t stop growing as it starts to wreak havoc on a small town in the Arizona desert.

Yeah, these are a dime a dozen, but what makes Tarantula stand out is that there seems to have been more of an effort to cast and write this film properly. Even the effects work to the film’s advantage, and 70 years from now, you’ve seen worse in modern films than what we see here.

One of Clint Eastwood’s early uncredited roles, Tarantula, does have that silliness you would expect from a film like this. For example, how does a jet miss a spider the size of multiple houses wandering through the desert? You can only imagine that, at the time, the effects were something else. One for those who love the 1950’s giant bug films.

To check out our previous letters have a click below! Come back for the letter U, tomorrow.

Horror films to watch: Letter A

Horror films to watch: Letter B

Horror films to watch: Letter B (Part 2)

Horror films to watch: Letter C

Horror films to watch: Letter D

Horror films to watch: Letter E

Horror films to watch: Letter F

Horror films to watch: Letter G

Horror films to watch: Letter H: Part 1

Horror films to watch: Letter H: Part 2

Horror films to watch: Letter H: Part 3

Horror films to watch: Letter I; Part 1

Horror films to watch: Letter I – Part 2

Horror films to watch; Letter J

Horror films to watch; Letter K

Horror films to watch: Letter L

Horror films to watch: Letter M

Horror films to watch: Letter M (Part 2)

Horror films to watch: Letter M (part 3)

Horror films to watch: Letter N

Horror films to watch: Letter N (Part 2)

Horror films to watch: Letter O

Horror films to watch: Letter P (Part 1)

Horror films to watch: Letter P (Part 2)

Horror films to watch: Letter Q

Horror films to watch: Letter R (Part 1)

Horror films to watch: Letter S (Part 1)

Horror films to watch: Letter T (Part 1)

Horror films to watch: Letter U

Horror films to watch: Letter V (Part 1)

Horror films to watch: Letter W (Part 1)

Horror films to watch: Letter X

Horror films to watch: Letter Y

Horror films to watch: Letter Z

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