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Peacock’s selection of horror and sci-fi movies is quite good, but its genre library also has tons of titles you’ve probably never heard of, including overlooked oddities—and several outright howlers. We’ve combed through Peacock’s sci-fi category to find 10 of the most WTF titles you can stream. Are these recommendations, or more of a “proceed at your own risk” situation? Let’s just say your results may vary.
Also known as Clash of the Empires and Age of the Hobbits, Lord of the Elves is just one of several mockbusters created by the Asylum—a studio specializing in schlocky copies of Hollywood hits—available on Peacock. The Asylum’s best known for its Sharknado series (a few of which are available on the streamer), as well as monster face-offs and disaster epics (ditto). This one in particular aroused the ire of a litigious Warner Bros, which didn’t take kindly to a film purporting to be about “hobbits” that wasn’t directed by Peter Jackson. Watch on Peacock.
Adorable actors Kate Micucci and Sean Astin make an intriguing rom-com pair, but this one manufactures conflict by magically turning her pets (a cat and a dog) into hunky human men who then become rival suitors. Is it cute... or is it just too weird if you think about it for more than a couple of seconds? Watch on Peacock.
If you seek a silly, grimy B-movie set in a 14th century riddled with plagues and demons... you’ve found it. Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman play knights who have a change of heart amid the brutality of the Crusades—but after returning home, find an unpleasant scene involving the Black Death and what sure appears to be a supernatural evil. Claire Foy plays the accused witch promised by the title, and the legendary Christopher Lee has a very late-career cameo. Watch on Peacock.
From a trio of directors that includes Charles Band (of Empire Pictures and Full Moon Productions fame, the outfits behind Ghoulies, Puppet Master, and zillions more), Prehysteria! follows a family that accidentally becomes the guardians of newly hatched baby dinosaurs. Naturally, bad guys try to steal the little critters, who are named after music stars both legendary and... less-so (Elvis, Paula, Jagger, Hammer, and Madonna). The special effects are galaxies away from that other 1993 movie about dinosaurs, which Prehysteria!—which spawned a pair of sequels—may or may not have been trying to cash in on. Watch on Peacock.
Peacock doesn’t have the 1992 original, adapted from a Stephen King story about a gardener whose modest intellect receives an artificial boost from a scientist who doesn’t think through the experiment very well—particularly as it pertains to the dangers of overexposure to virtual reality. For whatever reason, the streamer only has the sequel (also subtitled “Jobe’s War,” as the trailer suggests), in which Matt “Max Headroom” Frewer plays the enhanced genius hellbent on enacting the most technologically horrifying revenge the mid-1990s can dare to imagine. Watch on Peacock.
This made-for-CBS movie has endured mostly because it features a Bosom Buddies-era Tom Hanks in one of his first movie roles, though it does offer a window into how a nervous mainstream perceived nerdy hobbies in the early 1980s. Not long after starring in this, Hanks become a comedy star thanks to Splash and Big—en route to an Oscar-winning career across different genres—but in Mazes & Monsters, he’s a college kid who comes to believe he’s actually the character he created for a fantasy role-playing game very much in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons. Watch on Peacock.
This batshit Italian import involving humans descended from an evil alien overlord, a telekinetic girl, professional basketball, and conspiratorial Satanists stars a cast of aging legends (John Huston, Shelley Winters, Mel Ferrer, Glenn Ford, Sam Peckinpah) who were hopefully well-compensated for their participation. You, too, will be well-compensated for your time, because the singularly bizarre The Visitor is truly out of this world. Watch on Peacock.
A few years after Star Trek: Nemesis—but also, a few years before his A-list breakthrough—Tom Hardy starred in this fantasy about a Bronze Age man determined to defeat a labyrinth-dwelling Minotaur who’s long been demanding regular sacrifices from the local youth population. (If you drink every time someone says “Minotaur,” you might sacrifice yourself by the end.) Supporting roles are played by Rutger Hauer and Tony Todd, as well as Hammer horror legend Ingrid Pitt. Watch on Peacock.
You’d be forgiven for forgetting Robert Rodriguez directed a sci-fi movie starring Ben Affleck last year—most people did. Here’s your chance to reappraise a movie that dares to ask: “What if the U.S. government had a gang of powerful, reality-altering, mind-controlling hypnotists on its payroll?” Watch on Peacock.
Joseph Ruben—who made horror cult classic The Stepfather a few years later—directed up-and-comers Dennis Quaid and Kate Capshaw, veterans Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer, and cult favorites David Patrick Kelly (The Warriors) and George Wendt (Cheers) in this entertainingly ridiculous tale of a psychic who gains the ability to enter people’s dreams... including, but not limited to, the nightmare-plagued President of the United States. Watch on Peacock.
