The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Aramis Sartorio (aka porn actor Tommy Pistol) directs/stars in this anthology, a trio of Hollywood horror tales where everything is aimed at the farcical bad taste level of a Troma film
One of the splatter films from the cult figure of Herschell Gordon Lewis, who made some terrible films whose only watchability was extreme gore. This concerns a wigmaker who scalps them victims and sells their hair as wigs.
An early Kiyoshi Kurosawa film, this starts out as a peculiar deadpan comedy about an office filled with strange characters before emerging as a slasher film of sorts as a hulking security guard eliminating people
William Friedkin film with Jenny Seagrove as a sinister nanny who is really a baby-snatching druidic tree spirit. Friedkin and all concerned play a B movie idea in remarkably straight face
Utterly generic action film with Mario Van Peebles as a detective tracing a street drug that turns people psychothic before finding he is up against a body-hopping demon
A forgotten effort made during the 1960s/70s resurgence of the vampire film. One of the first films to depict Dracula in the present-day. The answer to the title question is that he is now running a nightclub in L.A.
Adam Wingard thriller about a sinister stranger who inveigles his way into a household. This does well playing off the handsomely polished charms of Dan Stevens, less well when it turns into an a left field action film
Black comedy in which Rod Steiger sets up a private prison to execute the guilty that get away. Halfway between a vigilante film and a gonzo comedy, this never settles on what it wants to be and only comes out a frenetic farce
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain, ordinary manner that bleeds the J-horror film of atmosphere
Film about a series of gory deaths at a bowling alley, this really pushes an envelope of good taste. This gained attention for makeup effects artist Ryan Nicholson and was the cause of much censorship controversy
A South Korean copy of The Silence of the Lambs where detectives find that a serial killer imprisoned in a cell is somehow causing others to continue his trail of killings
Low-budget director Albert Pyun, best known for his kickboxing cyborg action films, conducts a micro-budgeted adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft story about a scientist who fends off death by keeping their room chilled
Low-budget film about a woman who inherits a British country estate to find someone has opened a portal to unleash entities. One of several low-budget films of late to appropriate Lovecraft’s name
Another low-budget film that appropriates H.P. Lovecraft’s name above its title. From low-budget director Chad Ferrin who previously ventured into Lovecraft with The Deep Ones
A low-budget adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story Dreams in the Witch House about a student who moves into a house with occult geometry and stirs dark forces
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
A low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth. That is if you can imagine Lovecraft’s story about fish people mating with humans relocated to a California AirBNB
Larry Fessenden film in which he also plays a man who gets into a relationship with a vampire woman. Low key and with an emphasis on kitchen sink realism, leading to some quite striking scenes
Undeniably effective film set in Manchester where a young man is drawn into a secret world of people that live on the periphery of society and enjoy eating human flesh.
Not a film about computer hackers living together as you initially think but a slasher film set in a halfway house for violent offenders. An original setting but the film does nothing terribly interesting
A bizarre film involving Halloween killings and devil worship that seems to have been made without a clear script. Everything is wrecked by a astonishingly awful performance from Hy Pike
Quebecois (French-speaking Canadian) historical werewolf film. The plot proves entertaining in its whisplash reversals, although the film’s provision of a werewolf falls down amid some ratty CGI effects
Adult actress Tori Black plays a straight role as a hooker who goes to a meet with a client in a motel room where claims that he is a werewolf
A zombie film (of sorts) from Mexico, although it could just as easily be about a man infected with a flesh-eating bacteria. A zombie film in which almost nothing happens, we just sit watching a man getting ill
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
The first sequel to Halloween, with Michael Myers pursuing Jamie Lee Curtis through a hospital. John Carpenter’s suspense is replaced by slasher hackery but in retrospect this is a lot better than the subsequent sequels
Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his Halloween remake is a better film and closer to what the previous film should have been but his approach is still based on callous brutality than John Carpenter’s eerie suspense
Unrelated to the Michael Myers saga, John Carpenter tried to use the Halloween name to launch an original horror series. The plot is a baffling mix of Celtic magic and hi-tech but Tommy Lee Wallace creates some way out effects scenes
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
The fourth of the Halloween sequels where the series is by now is no more than a crudely directed slasher film, a far cry from John Carpenter’s eerily suspenseful original
David Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis return to round out their highly underwhelming Halloween reboot trilogy. By now, this feels like a Halloween film in name only
The seventh Halloween film, made for the original’s twentieth anniversary. This erases continuity to the other sequels and has Jamie Lee Curtis alive and pursued by Michael Myers again. Better than most of the other sequels.
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but is still the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
The sixth of the Halloween films, the fifth with Michael Myers. By now John Carpenter’s original eerie suspense has been reduced to crude slasher movie payoffs. This tries to add some nonsense about druidic cults
An indie horror film about a strange and disturbing family of adult children. The whole film hangs on an interesting mid-film conceptual revelation
Documentary about UK’s Hammer Films that focuses on the handful of films that were produced in collaboration with Warner Brothers. Each is discussed in thoughtful detail
In his second film as director, Oliver Stone ventures into the disembodied hand theme. An amazingly OTT Michael Caine plays a cartoonist who believes the hand he lost in an accident is exacting vengeance against his enemies
One of the thrillers influenced by Fatal Attraction with Rebecca De Mornay giving an ice cold performance as a nanny who infiltrates a family seeking revenge for the death of her husband.
A remake of the 1992 film that starred Rebecca De Mornay as a psychopathic babysitter who enters a household seeking revenge. This updates the story for the 2020s, although is no less a conservative version than the original
A film adapted from a book by the writer of Let the Right One In concerning the resurrected dead, this goes some way to divorce itself from the zombie film and develops its horrors with striking slow burn effect
Fourth film version of The Hands of Orlac about a pianist who receives hand transplants from a murderer and believes they are possessing him. Compared to the first two versions, this is dull and prosaic
Classic German silent film about a pianist who receives hand transplants and believes they are possessed. Superbly stylised direction from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari director Robert Wiene and with Conrad Veidt putting his all into the contorted mime work
The third film and least version of the classic horror story about a pianist who receives hands transplanted from a murderer and is driven mad believing they are possessing him
Classic effort from Hammer Films in which a psychologist discovers a troubled patient responsible for a string of murders is Jack the Ripper’s daughter. Made with much class
A serial killer thriller with Lou Diamond Phillips as a detective investigating a killer who challenges the police to games of hangman
A dreary revival of the 1990s serial killer thriller. The surprise for a work that has no ambition beyond cable filler is that it has attracted a name like Al Pacino who mugs and showboats through the worst performance of his career
Big man Laird Cregar gained a sudden fame as the killer in The Lodger and was quickly repackaged as another psychopathic killer in this vehicle where he plays a mentally disturbed composer
A Euro vampire film that exists under several different titles. Andrew Prine goes to an island after the death of his father only to disturb the tomb of a vampire queen
The immediate sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins is back but Jodie Foster is not. Ridley Scott takes the director’s chair and creates a slick film but it lacks the compulsive grip the original held
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
A painfully unfunny endurance test created by star Kevon Ward centred around the deformed, imbecilic hillbilly he played at Halloween shows. The film is little more than people playing morons in silly voices
Confusingly, despite the title, this is not an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale but a cryptic and often baffling South Korean horror film about people trapped by children at a sinister house in the forest
Amid the 2010s spate of fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasies, this was a quite good mockbuster copy from The Asylum. From the director of Sharknado, this is Hansel and Gretel by way of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Two guys’ trip across the border into Mexico goes wrong as they end up imprisoned and tortured by cartel. This dives into a dangerous world with an askew sense of humour and becomes more bizarrely twisted as it goes on
Slasher film from the 1980s heyday directed by the once great J. Lee Thompson. This drags drearily where the only going for it are some novelty splatter effects and a twist ending that makes no sense whatsoever
A Christopher Landon film released by Blumhouse. This has been conceived as a mash-up between Groundhog Day and a slasher film with a girl who wakes up every day to be pursued by a masked killer
Solid, well made variant on The Most Dangerous Game human hunting scenario with an alcoholic man fighting for his life in a small border town that holds an annual hunt to eliminate the socially worthless
A standout work concerning a demon that invades dreams and then erases all memory of the person in others. Shot during Covid lockdown and haunted by an incredible sense of isolation
Brilliantly nasty film where Ellen Page is a 14 year-old who is lured by a paedophile Patrick Wilson and promptly turns the tables, preparing to castrate him. Filled with razor sharp dialogue and career-best performances from Page and Wilson
Brazilian film about a haunted supermarket, which becomes a metaphor for post-Recession economic stress. While the film sets up a host of haunted house elements, it fails to ever reach a resolution
Mario Van Peebles directs a beyond ridiculous getaway thriller that turns into Torture Porn. Cybill Shepherd gives a performance that seems determined to trash her image
Deranged entry in the 80s fad for heavy metal horror films where a band are resurrected from the dead to play an all-important concert, while fighting off conservative townspeople and a very much alive Adolf Hitler
Hard Target was one of Jean-Claude Van Damme’s better films, featuring an on-fire John Woo as director. While most have forgotten it, we get a sequel here that copycats Woo’s moves to a point of tedium
John Woo made his US debut with this Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, which is essentially an urban version of The Most Dangerous Game. Woo’s stylised action set-ups give a slight script a dynamism that blows his contemporaries away
Amid the plethora of zombie parodies and gonzo title mash-ups, this British comedy is appealing. Rather than grim battles for survival, this is down-to-earth in its humour and quite affecting by the end
A British version of Gran Torino featuring Michael Caine as an aging man who becomes fed up with youth crime in the neighbourhood and takes up arms to go all Charles Bronson on them
This starts out seeming a backwoods horror before plants in the woods start erotically influencing the characters, resulting in a series of provocative scenes that combine plants and sex
This was Adam Green’s homage to the Friday the 13th series that comes with the virtue of a high level of gore and a sense of humour. This was subsequently spun out to several sequels
Hatchet was a homage to the 1980s slasher film that had a mild amusement. In the sequels, Adam Green upped the number of genre cameos and in-jokes, while pushing the gore effects to an extreme
Third in the series of slasher homage films where Adam Green steps back from the director’s chair. This ups the gore content and number of genre cameos, otherwise is fairly much the same as before
Mario Bava essentially created the giallo film. Here he returns to the genre with an entry about an man obsessed with killing brides that comes filled with exquisitely stylish surroundings and directorial set-pieces
There feels like there should be something tongue-in-cheek about the idea of a killer crocodile film set in the British lakelands. Surprisingly, this plays itself seriously
A fascinatingly creepy Finnish film in which a young girl adopts and bonds with a grotesque bird-like creature, which proves murderous at the same time as it starts to become more human-like
A modern ghost story that aims for a slow, delicate atmosphere. Noble ambitions but what we end up with is a film that fails to produce any boo moment that makes us leap out of our seats
A directorial outing from the screenwriters of A Quiet Place produced by Eli Roth set around a Halloween haunt. This avoids the pitfall of other Halloween haunt films and creates some effective games of reality and illusion
An old fashioned Victorian ghost story based on a James Herbert novel, this suffers a very laidback pace but is redeemed by its left field twist ending. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola
Robert Pattinson (before he was a recognised name) as a convalescing pilot during WWII who is haunted by demonic spiders in an adaptation of a book by occult writer Dennis Wheatley.
A Singaporean entry in the Found Footage genre with a camera crew searching a supposedly haunted abandoned hospital. Constant hyped build-up without much payoff
Both directing and starring here, Gene Wilder attempts to revive the Old Dark House comedy. By the 1980s, this was datedly creaky, while Wilder’s comedy mugging histrionics are excruciating to sit through
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
Sequel to A Haunted House where writer/star Marlon Wayans conducted a riff on the Scary Movie films. This is marginally more amusing than its predecessor
The haunted part of the title is misleading but this is an attempt to update the Old Dark House thriller of the 1930s and 40s to the midst of Swinging 60s London and featuring a youth cast
Lightweight film based around the Disney theme park attraction that becomes a Eddie Murphy comedy where he and his family enter a big old mansion that proves to be haunted
The second attempt to spin a film off from the Disney theme park ride, this comes in a more serious tone than the prior Eddie Murphy film but still emerges as lightweight in terms of horror
This was ostensibly another in Roger Corman’s series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Vincent Price possessed by his ancestor. This only borrows Poe’s title and instead adapts an H.P. Lovecraft story.
A split-personality killer film from the early days of the English horror cycle that fails through fundamentally absurd psychology and a hammy performance from Boris Karloff
Another version of the events at the Villa Diodati in 1816 with Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al. With the material in the script, this should have been a far more interesting film than the dull affair it is
Vincenzo Natali tackles the ghost story, turning everything on its head in a series of mind-boggling twists. One of the few post-Sixth Sense films to take the film’s big twist as its starting point and build from there
This is the finest haunted house film of all. In Robert Wise’s hands, the ghosts are unseen and only ever psychological and suggested – the results are terrifying. Adapted from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House
The original 1963 version of The Haunting was a masterpiece of unseen psychological horrors. This, in which all of the psychological horrors are replaced by loud and unsubtle CGI bombast, is one of the worst remakes of all time
Another supposedly based on a true story ghost story, although the absurdity of plotting makes this a nonsense. The film quickly slides to the irredeemably banal without a single spooky moment
Another supposed true-life ghost story, an early case by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The film exists as a progression of pop-up scares that through the need to keep producing effect produces no effect at all.
The Haunting in Connecticut was a reasonable success in the claim to being a true story ghost story stakes. This is a sequel, seemingly unaware that Connecticut and Georgia are about a thousand miles apart
Mike Flanagan follows up the hit of The Haunting of Hill House with a mini-series that adapts another classic work The Turn of the Screw out into a similar kind of cross-generational ghost story. The results are extraordinary
An Irish shot adaptation of a Henry James ghost story that was repackaged by Roger Corman to take advantage of the release of the remake of The Haunting
The original The Haunting is the finest ghost story ever made. One was sceptical that this remake as a tv mini-series of ten 50 minute episodes would come anywhere near that. Happily, Mike Flanagan proved me wrong.
A dull and mannered ghost story that makes a good effort at period atmosphere but places almost nothing into attempting to produce anything spooky