The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The kaidan eiga or Japanese ghost story has a fine tradition on screen and there are some excellent films. The Western-made Japanese ghost story is a far less successful prospect. This is one effort concerning three tourists who travel to a haunted Japanese temple
An all-girl lesbian vampire film that sets out to reclaim the genre that had previously existed as a focus of male titillation and tell it as a story of women’s empowerment
Erotic horror film made by Playboy where Kim Delaney is possessed by an incarnation of Kali
An adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel/play And Then There Were None that relocates the story to an African safari and takes more of a horror movie focus
One of the best true crime films, a chillingly good account of British serial killer Reginald Christie with an excellent Richard Attenborough in the role
Typical of the hard-boiled thrillers/action films Charles Bronson made during the 1980s for Cannon Films. This borrows the basics from Dirty Harry with Bronson as a cop required to bend the rules to stop a psycho
This is almost a female version of Vampire’s Kiss. Caroline Williams lets all stop go is an aging rock dj at a radio station who receives a bite from a vampire bat
One of Roman Polanski’s least recognised films in which he both directs and plays the lead as a mousy man driven to a state of paranoia and the point he loses his identity by the neighbours in a Parisian apartment building
An obscure French comedy in which Peter Cushing plays a vampire or more correctly plays a horror actor used to playing vampires. Assorted extremely unfunny shenanigans running around his castle ensue
Interesting portrait of a true-life serial killer that was produced under the auspices of Rainer Werner Fassbinder concerning a vampire-like gay killer who operated in Germany during the 1920s. Not without some shock value, this is more arthouse film than it is horror
Another of Dario Argento’s giallo psycho-thrillers with all the stylistically wild and over-the-top deaths one expects as a horror writer finds people being murdered with pages from his books in their mouths
A variation on the killer clown film that does rack up quite a degree of tension and pushes the material for something edgy. A popular hit that has produced two sequels.
An appealingly politicised variant on the Backwoods Brutality film in which two rogue US border guards decide to set up their own home Guantanamo Bay … not Torture Porn but an effectively brutal study on the effect of torture
Roger Corman film legendarily cobbled together on leftover sets and extra shooting time for Boris Karloff. The result emerges surprisingly well despite
A key work of British exploitation director Norman J. Warren centred a series of supernatural novelty deaths
An entry in the Italian Gothic cycle featuring the great Barbara Steele, This comes with superbly eerie black-and-white mood but proves slow-paced when it comes to its supernatural retribution plot. It even manages to waste Steele in a nothing role.
Troma film in which Lloyd Kaufman turns his own autobiography into a Troma film where the results emerge as something akin to Ed Wood as remade by John Waters
Creaky old film that feels like it belongs in the 1940s about a series of murders at a wax museum. It does have a great cast line-up of genre veterans
This has the distinction of being the film that started off the Filipino exploitation industry. A fairly blatant copy of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau, it is mostly routine
Influential if possibly overrated work in the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s. There’s the haunted figure of Barbara Steele and rich atmosphere, even if the plot doesn’t make much sense
An obscure Canadian film that ambitiously attempts to adapt Bram Stoker’s Dracula on a low-budget. This introduces some elements of the story that other versions ignore and is not uninteresting
Sequel to the remake of the 1980s horror classic, shot back-to-back with its predecessor, this is a better film than the remake was
One of the better entries among the 1980s slasher film cycle – and even featuring the era’s quintessential heroine Jamie Lee Curtis. Essentially Halloween aboard a train, at which the film does the basics of the genre with perfect competence and undeniably stylish photography
Terror Train starring Jamie Lee Curtis was one of the classics of the original slasher film fad. This is a remake
Jean Renoir is considered one of the greatest of all film directors – this is his only venture into genre material, a version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Though Renoir seems disinterested in making a horror film, he offers up the most faithful interpretation of the story on screen to date
An absolute horror classic, a film that has been conceived as a harrowing assault on one’s nerves. This has become a landmark genre classic and led to numerous sequels and copies but rarely any that matched the original
A Texas Chainsaw sequel in 3D with chainsaws and gore coming out at the screen seems the complete antithesis of the raw savagery of the original. The result is like a formulaic modern slasher, while the film is wrecked by a ridiculous reversal of sympathies in the last half
The first sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre where Tobe Hooper returns and pushes the series into an outrageously black sense of humour
A remake of Tobe Hooper’s landmark classic that presaged a host of inferior 70s/80s horror remakes throughout the 2000s/10s. What we have is now a different film although not entirely an uninteresting one
The ninth Texas Chainsaw Massacre film, this offers the intriguing idea of Leatherface vs millennials
Prequel to the 2003 Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake, which sets out to tell the origin story of the cannibal family. New director Jonathan Liebesman pushes the gore and sadism to Torture Porn extremes
Low-budget film about a girl who starts to find bruises on her body that progress until every part of her body is rotting and falling apart. A minimalist film where everything other than the slow observation of the girl’s physical decay has been stripped away – with incredibly raw effect
Eli Roth’s homage to the slasher film that comes with a dark sense of humour and a series of novelty deaths that rival the best of the 80s slasher heyday
Following on from the success of the Dr Phibes films, Vincent Price is cast as a mad Shakespearean actor who employs comically grotesque deaths from Shakespeare’s plays to kill his critics
A horror anthology featuring episodes from seven different directors. As with other anthologies, the episodes vary in quality, ranging between the so-so, the mostly quite good and one standout segment
One of the Hammer Films wannabes of the 1960s that even employs Christopher Lee in a horror film set around the historical Grand Guignol Theatre
Essentially a Norwegian version of Carrie. The ingenious spin it places on the Carrie story is to tell it as an LGBT story and have the psychically empowered heroine not bullied and tormented but struggling against a lesbian attraction to another girl.
French horror film that generates a reasonable level of tension as a couple are attacked in their home by mysterious strangers
A modestly effective indie film with two people fleeing through the desert backroads pursued by a vampire
The Farrelly Brothers have become known for their crude and rude humour but this stalker comedy is one they hit with all barrels firing and has become regarded as a modern comedy classuc
Quite decent Blumhouse film in which children suddenly go bad and begin playing malicious, murderous games with adults
A routine horror about teens that live in fear of creatures that lurk in the dark. Presented by Wes Craven.
Man meets a childhood friend only to find the friend is suffering from possible hallucinations telling him to kill demons. Similar to Take Shelter in leaving you uncertain whether the central character is sane or not, this comes with an extraordinarily fresh indie sensibility
Hordes of killer roaches overrun an island. A reasonable and not too bad run through of the formula of the bugs on the attack film that comes with the benefit of some convincing effects
One of the all-time classic bad movie titles, this is cheap and dreary on almost every level, although does offer mild amusement when it comes to the provision of the title concept near the end
Found Footage film where filmmakers find they are being stalked by other people with cameras. Essentially a Found Footage version of The Strangers
The Found Footage genre has become fairly much strip-mined of all possibilities and I felt little enthusiasm for yet another. That said, this film about a reality tv crew in a heavily superstitious East European village, proves surprisingly well made and entirely wins you over with a bravura climax
Strong and well written independent film about a vampire family trying to survive in the modern world
Martin Lawrence directs and stars in a comedy variant on Fatal Attraction in which he has the role of a player who is stalked by a psycho Lynn Whitfield
Ray Milland is a dying white racist millionaire who has hit head transplanted onto the shoulders of a Black man. A film that sees the absurdities of its premise and plants tongue in cheek.
Ghost story that seems to be intended to play to a more literary level than most of its contemporaries
Adaptation of one of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novels about an obese lawyer afflicted with a thinning curse. There are some great effects but the film’s moral messages come off as wrong
After the success of their remake of House on Haunted Hill, Dark Castle Entertainment remade another William Castle film here, expanding it with a full arsenal of visual and makeup effects
A UK TV mini-series that borrow much from The Wicker Man in a complex and fascinating story about the discovery of folk religion on a small island and becoming caught up in pending rituals
A low-budget ingenue effort by three friends about a tenant who discovers that the third floor of his apartment building contains the ghosts of dead asylum inmates
Modest Australian film where Chantal Contouri is introduced to a secret vampire society that keeps human beings as cattle
Park Chan-wook film in which he rewrites the French literary classic Therese Raquin with the addition of a vampire priest with most effective results
The Asylum made 11/11/11 and 12/12/12 and released them on said dates. Despite running out of exploitable months in the year, they then released a third film here
The English-language remake of the Georgian 13 Tzameti about underground Russian Roulette gambling. This has an impressive cast line-up but lacks the stark tension of the original
Director Daniel E. Falicki’s Alien Implant made my Worst of 2017 list. This is one of his earlier, equally terrible films about a boardgame that possess its players
A zombie film from the director who subsequently went on to make the WolfCop films. The one thing this has going for it are some convincing zombie makeups and exxxxtremely gory splatter effects
Softcore version of Thir13en Ghosts with ghosts hunters wandering through a house and seeing various girls making out. The various encounters seem to lack even the basic conviction from those involved
Slasher film that comes with a great hook – one where various real-life actresses from the Friday the 13th films are stalked by a masked maniac
One of the films from gimmick master William Castle, a more routine ghost story that eventually opts for a mundane ending and was sold with the gimmick of Ghost Viewer glasses. Later remade as Thir13en Ghosts
I was very impressed with Daniel Stamm’s previous film The Last Exorcism; this was his follow-up – a brutal English-language remake of a Thai film where people are offered the challenge of engaging in increasingly more malicious and extreme acts to win large sums of money
Starkly effective Georgian-made film about a young man in need of money being drawn into an underground gambling ring that bets on games of Russian Roulette
Another of David DeCoteau’s bizarre homoerotic horror films featuring a trio of former 80s Scream Queens who are were-cougars
Rob Zombie featuring people abducted and forced to play in a deathsport game. This is largely a re-run of House of 1000 Corpses, while both films in turn draw heavily on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. As always, Rob Zombie has a following but also switches large swathes of his audience off
Solid vampire film produced by Sam Raimi about a small Alaskan town that suddenly finds itself besieged by vampires who have come because of the month of night
Sequel to the modestly effective Alaskan-set vampire film 30 Days of Night, this holds up surprisingly well for something that gives all indication of being a throwaway video sequel
Another crude and witless genre parody in the vein of Jason Friedberg-Aaron Seltzer of Epic Movie, Disaster Movie et al notoriety. I there is anything worse than that it is surely a failed attempt to imitate them
The Hamiltons was an unusual film about a strange family who were eventually revealed to be vampires. By the time of this sequel, all the interesting elements of the original have been eliminated and all that we have is a film of tired poses that fails to add anything to the overworked vampire genre
Film made by several Sam Raimi associates about a crazed cult with Raimi making an acting appearance as the cult’s leader. This wades in much gory enthusiasm
Quite evidently modelled on Se7en even to the lookalike title, this is the novelty of a Christian serial killer thriller. The results are quite strange to say the least
Found Footage film about a stalker secretly filming a couple and abducting the wife, this tepidly circles around thriller cliches where other Found Footage films have delved into the psycho genre with more disturbing effect
Very obscure horror anthology re-edited from episodes of a Canadian tv series featuring names like John Hurt, Charles Gray and Keir Dullea.
Standout horror anthology designed to highlight episodes from three Asian directors – Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan, South Korea’s Park Chan-wook and Japan’s Takashi Miike – all of whom are on top form
A horror anthology featuring episodes from three Asian directors originally titled Three. The better known Three … Extremes was a sequel whereupon this was retitled and re-released as Three Extremes II
Rob Zombie is back,, making the third in his trilogy of Firefly films following House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. It is all fairly much the same as before where Zombie’s sympathies are cleanly with the family of psychopaths and their murderous rampage.
With the Mega Shark and especially the Sharknado films, The Asylum played the killer shark film as ridiculously as possible with delirious results. In this sequel to 2-Headed Shark Attack, they get the blend of the tongue-in-cheek absurdity to a point of near-perfection
The Three Investigators books were an essential part of my youth. This does a fair job of remaining faithful to the stories, albeit with the addition of some grating modernisations, and creates reasonable atmosphere as they investigate a seemingly spooky mansion
A great example of the lurid sensationalism with which films of the so-called grindhouse era were sold, designed with a go-for-broke trashiness intended to get you in the door, something that is promptly let down by the shoddiness of the film itself
One of the better films from cult bad movie maker Ray Dennis Steckler dealing with a quartet of mad killers on the loose. The film also came with a promotional gimmick in which the audience is hypnotised
One of the erotic thrillers made after Basic Instinct, essentially an ripoff of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle where a vengeful Kari Wuhrer becomes a nanny seeking vengeance for the death of her husband
Imagine Baise-Moi or Thelma and Louise by way of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert – a film that hits a perfect note in terms of tongue-in-cheek spirit
Routine variant on the 1970s killer bug film, although the bugs here are gooey and cartoonish not meant to be taken seriously
Usually a scriptwriter, Wesley Strick makes a reasonable directorial debut in this psycho-thriller about a white trash couple killing those in their way to getting back the daughter that was taken away from them
One of the darkest films Clint Eastwood ever made where he is a detective who becomes tempted by the world of BDSM during his pursuit of a serial killer
This had me sold from its one sentence description – Megan Fox is a wife trying to escape hired killers while handcuffed to her husband’s corpse
Somewhat reminiscent of The Shining, this a film about a documentary-maker suffering creative block who descent into dark and disturbing mental spaces
By the numbers Backwoods Brutality where a woman is imprisoned by crazed backwoods fundamentalists in order to bear them a child
The finest moment from gimmick master William Castle with Vincent Price as a coroner searching for a parasite that feeds on fear. Full of Castle’s luridly sensationalistic effects and containing the first portrayal of an LSD trip on screen.
One of the better killer shark copycats made in the immediate aftermath of Jaws, this approaches the familiar in unexpected ways
Julia Ducournau’s Cannes award-winning film is a challenging work that pushes boundaries into uncomfortable places. Not to mention comes with human and car sex scenes
An offering from The Asylum where a replica of the Titanic sets sail only to be beset by the ghosts of those who sank aboard the original ship
Czech-made haunted house story that does not vary far from the traditional basics but generates a sparse but modest atmosphere
One of the first of the modern wave of darkly romantic vampire films that became the in-thing in the 1990s. This is occasionally effective but was eclipsed by later entries
The second-to-last Hammer film, an adaptation of one of Dennis Wheatley’s occult novels, shows them trying to catch up with The Exorcist and its ilk
Animated film that is gore-drenched and certainly not for children. Imagine The Belko Experiment conceived as a videogame where the heroine has to survive an office of people trying to kill her while aliens bet on the outcome
Indie film that seems a mix of A Field in England and The Picnic at Hanging Rock. The first half contains some very realistic scenes of people getting wasted on drugs but the second as characters set out along a path in the woods that leads to Hell proves frustratingly elusive