The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The first of William Castle’s films set around outrageous promotional stunts – here he took an insurance policy out against audience members dying of fright. The film entirely belies its promise to scare an audience to death
The directorial debut of Mario Bava’s son Lamberto, a supposedly based on true life tale about a woman who keeps her late lover’s severed head in the fridge
An Indonesian copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that is one of the most enthusiastically gore-drenched bloodbaths in ages. This announced directors Kimo Stamboel and Timo Tjahjanto to the world
A documentary about the US exploitation film industry in the Philippines in the 1970s filled with mind-boggling anecdotes that uncover a wild west of unregulated filmmaking
French thriller where psychiatrist Gerard Depardieu tests a device that allows him to swap bodies with a serial killer – only for the killer to get free and steal his life
Another highly entertaining entry in the Gonzo Japanese Splatter Film about a schoolgirl who sets out to seeks revenge after having her arm stump replaced by a Gatling gun
This is a film filled with enormous possibilities in its set-up – a Western where Mary Stuart Masterson plays a woman who gets married only to find that her husband is a werewolf
A rather amusing Australian black comedy made very low key starring Craig Pearce as a mad bomber who makes all of his flatmates prisoner
The original Filipino exploitation classic, this pumps the 1940s mad scientist film up with gore, toplessness and tropical locations. A reasonable hit but surprisingly dull and sedate despite
John Barrymore as a ballet master who controls and dominates pupil Marian Marsh. Clearly an attempt to replicate the success that Barrymore had playing the same type of role in the earlier Svengali
Mad scientist George Zucco turns his assistant into a zombie so he can steal his fiancee. Despite a wonderfully mad performance from Zucco, the zombie does almost nothing throughout
The famous Swiss children’s character gets a sarcastic puncturing in this amusingly gonzo OTT exploitation take where she becomes an armed revolutionary against a cruel dictator
The Hollywood remake of The Hands of Orlac, a classic with Colin Clive as a pianist who believes he is possessed after receiving hands transplanted from a killer. With a fascinatingly demented performance from Peter Lorre
Vincent Price had success as the mad waxworks curator in the 3D horror House of Wax. This cheap copycat casts Price as a mad stage magician and is also served up in 3D
A poverty row mad scientist film where a magnificently sinister George Zucco turns his gardener into a werewolf. A copycat that was made not long after Universal’s The Wolf Man
One among the spate of 1960s films that came out influenced by Psycho where Stella Stevens is given responsibility for her younger brother and sister, one of whom is a killer
A rather trashy thriller in which housewife Mia Sara’s car breaks down on a cross-country trip where she is imprisoned by backwoods couple Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson
An attempt to copy the Dr Phibes films with Vincent Price as a horror actor facing a series of killings on the set of his comeback film
A French horror film shot all in a single unbroken take as a deadly infection spreads all around town and we follow various people as they try to survive in the midst
If the phrase ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger zombie film’ doesn’t get you excited, you’re visiting the wrong site. This is surprisingly good, the complete opposite of anything we expect of Schwarzenegger or a zombie film
Muchly under-appreciated film with Anthony Hopkins as a performer dominated by his ventriloquist’s dummy. Great direction from Richard Attenborough, fantastic script and performances
Considered a lost classic of silent cinema for many years, this is a film loosely based on occultist Alesiter Crowley and was considered a daring work that delved into taboo areas
An appealingly sordid little film with Rob Arbogast as a psychopathic mailman who reads people’s mail and blackmails them with information
An entry in the slasher film made by several alumni from the original Night of the Living Dead. Someone is killing the girls of the high school’s cheerleading squad
Roland Emmerich’s second film, a confused oddity that seems to be trying to model itself as a Spielberg film about a kid who gains psychic powers and whose toys come to life
A Bert I. Gordon film with Robert Forster as a P.I. hired to search for a missing girl before finding she was mixed up with a modelling agency and the occult
Effective and unusual French film in which four prisoners in a jail cell discover an occult tome in the walls and start reading its spells thinking it can offer a means of escape
Every B killer shark movie of recent years has tried to become as absurd as possible in (a la Sharknado), but this is one that plays itself seriously and generates okay tension in places
Another film with a sinister adjectives for titles we have had since Insidious. This concerns a pregnant woman finding that the fetus she is carrying has been replaced by an evil spirit.
After overseeing a growing list of worthless sequels and spinoffs, James Wan is back in the director’s chair and goes batshit crazy with this film where Annabelle Wallis is taken over by an evil twin
A Guillermo Del Toro produced ghost story that fails to go anywhere. The promise of the film’s trailer falls apart in the hands of a novice director who blows all of his scares
Produced not long after the success of Young Frankenstein, a Belgian-made parody of the vampire film that falls into excruciating slapstick. Louise Fletcher is absurdly miscast as Countess Dracula
One of the very first Found Footage films, an hilarious Belgian-made black comedy with Benoit Poelvoorde as a cheerful serial killer who demonstrates his techniques to a film crew
Effort from the heyday of mad science cinema about a scientist who has perfected an immortality treatment. Better budgeted than most of the other cheapies of the era and better written
The fourth film version of The Lodger with Jack Palance as a boarder that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper. This has neither the style or melodrama of the previous versions
This Canadian micro-budgeted feature was one of the first films to try to venture into sleep paralysis horrors and is interesting, even if it never truly grapples with its ideas
A fake True Crime film. This is loosely to the point of almost non-existently based on a serial killer who supposedly stalked victims in a van in 1970s Florida
An overlooked latter day Universal monster movie with Lionel Atwill on wonderfully demented form as a mad scientist who turns Lon Chaney, Jr. into an electrified human dynamo
The bastard child among the spate of pre-MCU Marvel Comics adaptations during the mid-2000s, a film based on their swamp-dweller that throws out most of the comic-book
Mad scientist film where Boris Karloff invents a device that allows him to swap minds into different bodies. All the usual Gothic fear-filled view of science from this era, but rather well made
A pre-James Bond Roger Moore plays a mild-mannered businessman who recovers from a car crash only to find his life overrun by a malevolent doppelganger
Full marks for one of the great deliberately ridiculous titles of all time. The film itself is an oddity that almost seems intended to confound your expectations of it
Exquisitely made daptation of a Victor Hugo historical novel about a man with his face surgically altered into a grin – an image that later inspired Batman’s The Joker.
Made just as Hammer Films changed everything, a dreary quota quickie that has the most lunatic scheme of any British horror film involving the revival of Nostradamus’s severed head
Nicolas Cage goes all Death Wish and slaughters a cult that murdered his wife. A regular revenge film is transformed by director Panos Cosmatos into something bizarrely primal
The single worst Stephen King adaptation. Director Tobe Hooper fails to approach the story of a possessed laundry press with the same drollness that King did and inflates it into something ridiculous
Low-budget film about a demon slaughtering a woman’s ex’s. Despite being made by industry professionals, this looks like an amateur-made film
Lucio Fulci film about a series of supernatural deaths caused by an Egyptian amulet. An incoherent and plotless mess filled with random supernatural effects and occasional gore scenes
The very first Hannibal Lecter film. Under Michael Mann, this comes with a stylistic flourish very different to what the films became when Anthony Hopkins took the role
One of the psycho-thrillers made by Hammer Films during the early 1960s. The absurdly contrived plot is blatantly borrowed from Les Diaboliques, although eventually produces passable tension
Muchly reviled slasher film that has undeniable effect in its determination to go all the way. I would argue that it is actually a far better film than Friday the 13th
The first in a series of films starring Robert Z’dar as an hulking, deformed ex-cop seeking revenge. Not as effective as the sequels but is lifted above the routine by a quirky Larry Cohen script
Standout sequel to Maniac Cop, the best of the series, where Larry Cohen turns in a remarkable script and William Lustig delivers incredible action sequences
The third of the Maniac Cop films had production problems and now feels more like a regular slasher film, although is still boosted by a characteristically witty Larry Cohen script
Controversial remake of the 1980 psycho film. The remake’s unique take is that everything is shot in first-person from the point-of-view of the killer.
The one moment of triumph from director William Girdler about a resurrected Indian medicine man. Girdler creates an incredibly eerie blend of H.P. Lovecraft and American Indian mysticism
Barbara Hershey plays an aging woman who moves into a retirement home. The film develops an edgy paranoia about possibly supernatural happenings around her
Manos: The Hands of Fate is considered one of the worst films of all time. 42 years later some of those involved in the original decided to make a sequel that manages to be just as bad a film
Regarded as one of the worst films ever made, more than anything this is just dull and boring. The plot concerns a couple straying into a desert home where a warlock is about to be resurrected
Film about a dog that has been experimentally crossbred with DNA from other animals that proceeds to go amok. The film proceeds to collapse into the completely ridiculous
A standout adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether where a visitor to an asylum discovers the patients are masquerading as the doctors
This first film from B-budget producer Charles Band, a blatant copy of Eyes Without a Face with mad surgeon Richard Basehart abducting women and transplanting their eyeballs into his blind daughter
A fascinatingly torrid US-Japan production, a variant on the Jekyll and Hyde story about a man who develops a second head on his shoulder that takes over his personality
A 1960s LSD film where a stripper kills men while under the influence. Mostly this is just a series of nudie scenes that go on and on without any plot
Olga Kurylenko deals with a demon that appears to those affected by sleep paralysis. Another sleep paralysis horror film that only tepidly dips into the subject
A routine made-for-tv movie where a small Alaskan town comes under attack as it is overrun by a legion of marabunta ants
A horror film that draws on New Zealand’s Māori culture. Drenched in superbly brooding Gothic atmosphere, this concerns a Māori girl who travels to England and find what happened to her family
Strong and effective UK tv thriller where Stephen Tompkinson becomes obsessed with the girlfriend who went missing years earlier after he thinks he sees her again
An obscure Canadian-made psycho-thriller where Robin Ward has his life stolen by his psychopathic twin brother after he escapes from confinement in an asylum
Another depiction of the Middle Ages witch persecutions that becomes a catalogue of the cruelties enacted – Torture Porn way back before anybody ever invented the term
Dracula director Tod Browning reteams with Bela Lugosi in a remake of the silent London After Midnight. A vampire film that has much atmosphere but is ruined by a ridiculous ending
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
A biopic of the Marquis de Sade that is not uninteresting but suffers from being produced by Roger Corman on one of his usual B-budgets
A familiar but modestly effective ghost story in which Gabrielle Anwar rents a haunted farmhouse. Forest Whitaker turns up as a neighbouring occult expert
A strong and tightly wound police procedural, not unreminiscent of the first season of True Detective. What makes the plot stand out is the beautifully desolate setting of the remote Spanish marshlands
Third of The Howling films where director Philippe Mora travels to Australia to show us marsupial werewolves. A conceptually wild mix that fails abysmally due to cheap effects
George Romero’s vampire film is one of his most remarkable films. In contrast to the cliches, the vampire here is a pale teen with an unhealthy obsession contrasted with a religious extremist who demands he be exorcised.
Pascal Laugier makes one of the most horrific films to emerge from France in the 00s. Scenes of grim torture sit alongside a plot that messes with almost everything we take for granted
Martyrs was one of the most grimly disturbing films of the 2000s. This English-language remake is one of the great all-time bad ideas that waters everything down and rewrites the ending
Director Ruth Platt creates a beautifully subtle and delicate ghost story where the appearance of a ghost girl ends up stirring up secrets in a household
The people behind Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey deliver a horror version of the nursery rhyme. Here Mary becomes a middle-aged woman living in the woods with a hulking son who has a lamb’s head
This took a critical drubbing where it came out, especially Julia Roberts’ Irish accent but is a revisionist take on the Jekyll/Hyde story told through the eyes of Dr Jekyll’s maid and an extremely good version of the story
Biopic of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. This places a feminist slant on Mary’s story meaning that she wrote the book less to address themes about science and hubris than because she was in an unhappy marriage
An adaptation of Frankenstein made as companion piece to Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Kenneth Branagh creates a lush production but the attempts to emulate Coppola’s sensuality go awry
Film that has a minor cult reputation for its trippy 3D hallucination scenes. Otherwise it is a dull variant on the Jekyll/Hyde story where a ritual mask causes the wearer’s dark side to emerge
Boris Karloff plays the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu, giving a performance of incredibly malevolent and calculating evil. A film of sublime pulp thrills and exoticism
A dull and dreary version of the Edgar Allan Poe story, especially when placed in contrast to the definitive 1964 version from this film’s producer Roger Corman
The seventh of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations and usually the best regarded. Vincent Price is at his most cruel and the film looks sumptuous thanks to a young Nicolas Roeg on camera
Disappointingly, not an adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story but more of a Poe-themed slasher film about a masked killer dressed as the Red Death
Classic 1970s exploitation film about a new kid in high school who takes violent reprisals against bullies. The film comes with surprising levels of allegory.
A horror comedy set in a hardware store on Christmas Eve as the staff fall to murderous squabbling after the discovery of a dead body and large sum of money
Cheerfully outrageous early Pedro Almodovar black comedy where virginal Antonio Banderas confesses to a series of murders conducted by his death obsessed lawyer
A wonderfully creepy Folk Horror film in which Jemima Rooper returns to her home town after many years and finds very strange things happening
A film about a monster hunter from the 1940s who is thawed out in the present-day. This appears to have been made as a pilot for a tv series that never went ahead
Based on a true-life historical figure, this is a stark and effective film that depicts the barbarism of the 17th century witch hunts. Vincent Price plays seriously and the film is all the more effective as a result
A B-budgeted hit from the video era concerning a possessed housewife. A film that has only been construed around the provision of cheap makeup effects at which it holds an undeniable entertainment value
Ti West and Mia Goth round out their trilogy of films that consisted of X and Pearl. This time they make a psycho film that takes Goth’s starlet to 1980s Hollywood
An almost unclassifiable work from Lucky McKee that plays out as a gonzo love and rejection story featuring an alienated Angela Bettis before an end that tips over into horror
May the Devil Take You was a homage to 1980s films like The Evil Dead. Here Timo Tjahjanto makes a sequel and goes absolutely demented
Indonesia’s Timo Tjahjanto has emerged as a Must Watch director on the basis of his jaw-droppingly brutal action films. Here he pays homage to 1980s horror films in particular The Evil Dead