The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The first two Human Centipede films are masterpieces of twisted extremes. The third entry goes astray in giving the show over to Dieter Laser in one of the most over-the-top performances ever unleashed
An astonishingly perverse work where a mad surgeon abducts three people intending to connect their bodies as a single digestive tract. This is a work that pushes itself into truly warped territory
I was sold on this from the title. A droll Canadian (Quebec-made) vampire comedy about a vampire girl who cannot bring herself to kill and a suicidal teenager who becomes her willing victim
Monster movie featuring mutant fish monsters come onto land to breed with women. Absurdly entertaining, this at least brings the interspecies lust in films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon out into the open
Canadian-made slasher film from the director of the original Prom Night. This mixes slasher standard with a variant on the Mad/Deformed Relative in the Attic plot but mostly seems terminally dull
The finest screen adaptation of Victor Hugo’s oft-filmed historical novel. This is visually stunning and featuring an awards-worthy performance from Charles Laughton as the malformed Quasimodo
Largely overlooked, this is the first version of the story in colour and has a lavishness that the previous versions lacked. On the minus side, Anthony Quinn’s Quasimodo is no more than a simpleton lacking in pathos
The debut film from Tony Scott was a commercial flop but is a sumptuous, elegant, beautifully filmed work that is often a case of style over substance. It is nevertheless a challenging attempt to create a modern day vampire film
Controversial variant on the human bloodsports plot of The Most Dangerous Game but where liberals hunt conservatives. A film with a darkly satiric bite that sets out to offend people on both sides of the political fence
A variation on The Most Dangerous Game that comes with a nasty feminist agenda where women are hunted by men who feel a disappearing sense of entitlement
Solidly effective Belgian film about a woman fleeing through the woods from a killer who wants to make snuff movies. One of several films about people hunted in the woods to come out around the same time
A solid and well-made film that creates quite a reasonable tension as a family that live in the woods deal with a lurking wolf. What is going on sits in an interesting state of ambiguity.
A quite reasonable Backwoods Brutality item with a group who go hunting in backwoods Oklahoma but stir up the inbred poachers and end up being hunted themselves
A decent variant on The Most Dangerous Game with a woman forced to survive with her bare hands while pursued by a hunter, this places emphasis on the psychological interplay between hunter and hunted
Histrionic thriller that reminds of the various copies of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? in which pregnant Gwyneth Paltrow has evil mother-in-law Jessica Lange trying to steal her baby
A British psycho-thriller that draws much from Steven Spielberg’s Duel with its story of a motorist trying to rescue his girlfriend after she is abducted by a never-seen truck driver
A Mike Flanagan film that keeps you in a state of seat-edge tension. The premise is a simple one – a deaf woman is terrorised by a killer waiting outside her house – but Flanagan delivers it with electrifying effect
Robert Aldrich’s successor to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? with Bette Davis on the receiving end this time. This is arguably a superior film with a tightly contorted psycho-thriller plot and a decaying Southern setting
An intent seriousness fails to disguise a ridiculous premise – a haunted cornfield where interlopers are made to sit at a sewing machine to sew burlap masks that turn them into undead scarecrows
From the director of Hellbound: Hellraiser II, this is an unfunny monster comedy that plays out like it is trying to be a live-action version of the Hotel Transylvania films
Fascinatingly lurid B movie clearly influenced by Horrors of the Black Museum about women being hypnotised to mutilate themselves. This achieves a rather compulsive atmosphere
A Larry Fessenden produced monster movie that takes place around a hundred square feet of a frozen-over lake with people being hunted by a monster beneath the ice
Unique and quite remarkable film about a teen in a nowhere town who recognises the traits of a serial killer in himself and then discovers that aging neighbour Christopher Lloyd is actually a shapechanging monster
A ghost story directed by Osgood Perkins. Essentially a two-person show where all the atmosphere is provided by haunting voicover narration but this has undeniable effect
A British venture into the gonzo splatter film about a motorcycle that develops vampiric tendencies after blood is spilled in its tank in a Satanist ceremony. Beyond an amusing title, this is crude and heavy-handed
Fascinating forgotten film with Richard Boone as a cemetery keeper who finds he can kill by placing pins on a map of the cemetery. This feels like a forgotten Twilight Zone episode and develops some quite creepy effect.
Form the fine and underrated Babak Anvari, a tight thriller about a duo of graffiti artists who get more than they planned for when they break into the home of a psycho Hugh Bonneville
Claire Denis makes a film loosely based on the activities of a true-life drag performer/serial killer. However, she seems uninterested in developing plot or suspense
From they heyday of 1970s exploitation cinema, this is a rather sick and nasty little psycho film. Its themes would never be able to play today without major protests.
A classic horror film undeniably influenced by Night of the Living Dead wherein a group of hippies are turned into zombies after they are fed rabies-infected meat pies
The greatest distinction this has is that it was released on a double-bill with I Drink Your Blood. While I Drink‘s vision of rabid hippies was highly entertaining, this is a dreary and uninteresting voodoo film
An empty-headed work that seems entirely premised around the provision of CGI effects spectacle and actively resists engagement on any other level. A spectacularly ridiculous film in almost every way
Kevin Williamson’s follow-up to Scream. There is not quite the same witty game-playing but this is still an above-average slasher film with a reasonable cast and more-than-adequate suspense generated
In recent years, we have seen successful revivals of the Scream and Halloween franchises. Now it is the turn of another classic 1990s slasher film, a reworking that emerges with hugely underwhelming results
Widely ridiculed psycho-thriller starring Lindsay Lohan at the height of her tabloid headline phase and giving a zero effort performance as twins. Quite what is going on in the confused screenplay is anybody’s guess
A rather interesting horror film in which both the heroine and the heroine of the story she is reading are stalked by a disfigured madman, as the boundary between fiction and reality begins to dissolve
The title and names are changed, otherwise this is an extremely faithful adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Christopher Lee. Not very successful at the time, this interestingly opens the story out with Freudian psychology
A film directed by Chris D, lead singer of The Flesh Eaters, about a heroin addict who starts to see ghosts. A strong portrait of addiction but less effective as a horror film
Overrated South Korean revenge thriller about a detective obsessively pursuing a serial killer that has a mild level of ultra-violence going for it but otherwise fails to grip or dig into a psychological darkness
Gimmick master William Castle turns to making a psycho-thriller about two teenage girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a man who has just killed his wife
TV movie remake of a 1960s psycho-thriller about two girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a killer. The premise makes a lot more sense updated to the 80s
Odd film about 19th Century body snatchers that is like a low-budget version of a Burke and Hare story. This develops a sense of humour and starts to go in some very strange directions
These rape-revenge films leave you wanting to conduct the moral equivalent of taking a shower after watching them. This sequel to the 2010 remake also ends up being undeniably brutal and effective
These I Spit on Your Grave films have considerable brutal effect. On the other hand, by the time of this second sequel to a remake, it does seem exploitative watching the heroine being abused again because the previous films made money
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
The harrowing 1970s raped woman on a revenge spree film is given the remake treatment, although is watered down in many key areas. The revenge scenes however are played up for a particular nastiness
I don’t enjoy watching these rape and revenge films. Continuing to make sequels showing abuse definitely crosses an exploitative line. After 41 years, director Meir Zarchi and star Camille Keaton re-team to make a sequel to the original
The sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer. This misses the playful humour and twists of Kevin Williamson’s script and becomes no more than a routine slasher movie
A New Zealand-made entry into the zombie comedy stakes. This has the amusing idea of having a zombie outbreak occur during the shooting of a zombie film
Low-budget film that absorbs you in an intensive headspace as family members visit a reclusive brother who claims to have The Devil locked in the cellar
One of the key films from the legendary Val Lewton, this exploits a topical interest in voodoo. As with Lewton’s films, this sits in an ambiguous place that leaves the actuality of the supernatural uncertain
Producer Herman Cohen had a huge hit with I Was a Teenage Werewolf and quick on its tail released this companion piece, an enjoyably tongue-in-cheek film concerning a Frankenstein descendant turning a teen into a monster
This was a hit in its dayo by tapping the burgeoning teenage market who had just realised they were misunderstood thanks to James Dean. Not a particularly great film but it is one that carries a great deal of primal ferocity
In the overworked vein the zombie film, one of the most unique and original voices has been British director Andrew Parkinson. This was the first of Parkinson’s kitchen sink zombie films
British lad culture take on the zombie film. Think a version of Shaun of the Dead inhabited by guys around the age of 20 whose only real concerns is getting laid and wasted. The constant vulgarity becomes tiresome
A horror film about a psycho ice cream truck driver prowling a suburban neighbourhood. The film is made appealing by its characterisation of the heroine
A Russian dark fantasy work that generates quite spooky atmosphere in its story of a missing husband who returns in a coma possessed by an evil force
One of the key films upon which the Takashi Miike cult is based. Miike takes a nominal Yakuza plot based on a manga where he pushes the sadism and ultra-violence to a mind-boggling extreme
John Cusack leads a star cast line-up in what appears to be a slasher where a group of people gathered at a motel are being killed by someone among their number. Big conceptual twists then ensue
Surely the first slacker horror film in which teenager Devon Sawa’s hand becomes possessed. A comedy that feels as though it should have been a lot funnier than it ends up being on screen
The third of the Lifetime Channel’s films based on the Gothic incest melodramas of Virginia C. Andrews that began with Flowers in the Attic. The plotting is absurd and the film feels uninhabited by human beings
Another shabby Troma release concerning the activities of a crazed cult. This features some nasty deaths but little else
A standout adaptation of the oft-filmed kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) Yotsuya Kaidan/The Yotsuya Ghost Story. A beautifully filmed classic version of the story
The first of the sequels to the notorious Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. The dispenses with the first film’s unpleasant use of the Nazi concentration camps as a source of exploitation grist and is an altogether better film
One of the most tasteless films ever made, a sado-sexual work set in a Nazi concentration camp with Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic commandant torturing and having sex with prisoners.
This was the third of the notorious Ilsa films featuring a hyper-sexed Dyanne Thorne. This locates everything in Russian where she is the commandant torturing the prisoners of a Soviet gulag
A New Zealand-made film about a crime writer joining a party tramping through the bush as the group starts to be killed off by one among their number
A largely routine Blumhouse film where a woman’s return to her childhood home ends up awakening her imaginary companion who has now turned sinister
A horror film where Sydney Sweeney stars as a virginal nun who appears to be experiencing an immaculate conception. This is only a slightly better version of The Nun
One of the key films from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, a quartet of exquisitely photographed and art directed erotic tales, including one about Countess Bathory
A Roger Corman produced erotic horror in which Cliff De Young inherits a castle in Spain where he is tempted by a witch who appears in his dreams
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a Nazi war criminal confined to an iron lung and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy reading his journals
A uniquely original film. Almost an arthouse take on a slasher film where we are placed in the hulking killer’s shoes and the rest of the show takes place in abstract brushstrokes
This is sold with the appealing idea of someone slaughtering their way through a bitchy teen clique. However, the film on show is far tamer than anything that it is promises to be
From Peter Strickland who is fast developing a cult name, this is on one level a horror film about a killer dress; on another level, it is a captivating film of textures and surrealistic deadpan humour
English variation on the Backwoods Brutality film that almost entirely takes place inside a car as a couple become lost and are taunted by unseen figures. This generates an incredible degree of ominous foreboding
An extremely good Filipino film about a family abandoned at the end of WWII where the only recourse seems to be the children trusting a malevolent fairy
Fascinatingly perverse film directed and written by its star French actress Marina de Van who plays a woman who becomes obsessed with mutilating her own skin
An exhaustive documentary that charts in enormous detail every facet of the 1980s horror film, although this is not as exhaustive as it seems to think and leaves some big omissions
A follow-up to the documentary about the 1980s horror film, this deals with some of the lesser-known and overlooked works that were not covered the first time around
A documentary that explores Bram Stoker and the creation of Dracula, Transylvania and Vlad the Impaler. Narrated by Christopher Lee, who we see playing both Dracula and Vlad the Impaler
A Found Footage film about a tv crew investigating Lovecraftian cultists who are trying to raise an elder god. This makes an okay stab but is distinctly hampered by a low budget
Jane Campion makes one of the best post-Basic Instinct erotic thrillers with Meg Ryan as a teacher in New York caught between erotic awakening and a lurking killer
A bland tv movie thriller in which a blinded woman Elisabeth Röhm finds that her homecare aid is an obsessive stalker who has fixated on her
Ben Wheatley has become a cult director in recent years with films like Kill List and High Rise. Here he conducts his own unique take on Folk Horror. A film shot during the Covid lockdown
Scottish director Lawrie Brewster, a promising newcomer on the genre horizon, has obtained the rights to revive the Amicus Films name and conducts a strong homage to the studio’s signature anthology film
In one of his last really good films, John Carpenter pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft in this horror film that becomes an amazing blurring of the line between reality and fiction
Vincenzo Natali, the director of Cube, adapts a novella by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill about people becoming lost in a topographically and temporally shifting sea of grass
Film about a man in his home fearful of demonic forces attacking those around him, this comes with decent atmosphere and at least one highly effective twist
A film about mysterious happenings on a farm in the Australian Outback that creates an intensely haunted mood concerning something that might be lurking out there
Canadian-made home invasion thriller that reminds of Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. A film that seems set to brutalise a middle class couple’s sensibilities only to slip into utter tameness
The most successful Taiwanese horror film of all time, a Found Footage film about paranormal investigators who witness a ritual and are afterwards haunted by it
Ever since The Exorcist, filmmakers have been recycling the same cliches for the last forty years. This slings the cliches together with the dream incursion concept from Inception, which makes things somewhat interesting
A striking variant on the vampire film full of rich metaphor. Set against the backdrop of Oxford university, this explains vampirism as a psychological condition brought on by sexual impotence and academic pressure
From an early script by S. Craig Zahler, this is an incredibly brutal and harrowing work about a group of cooks trapped inside an asylum for the criminally insane during a power cut
Hideo Nakata, director of Ring, offers his take on reality tv shows – where contestants are locked up Big Brother-style and encouraged to kill one another. The film comes with much homage to classic murder mysteries
Mad scientist Bruce Dern creates a two-headed transplant. Unlike The Thing with Two Heads from the same company, this lacks an appreciable sense of its own absurdity
One of the great ridiculous titles of all time. It’s a shame there’s nothing that comes anywhere near matching it in this tatty, poorly made film about a fortune teller turning men into disfigured, hypnotised slaves
The novelty of the only film ever made in Esperanto. Featuring a young William Shatner as a man who stumbles into a village of demonic temptresses
A film about a shapeshifting demonic rapist. This is far more tastefully presented than its premise would suggest, in fact comes with he plodding sedateness of a tv movie