The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Val Lewton produced a body of works beginning with Cat People that are the finest horror films of the 1940s. This is a documentary that looks at Lewton’s life and films in detail, produced and narrated by no less than Martin Scorsese
Following the revival of the slasher film with the success of Scream, this was a slick but forgettable studio copycat set around a Valentine’s Day motif
There is considerable conceptual ambition to this – a giallo homage, most of which takes place inside a limo. Charitably, you call it is a micro-budgeted collision between Cosmopolis and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears, alas the film lets narrative fragment into incoherence in the latter half
Very 80s film that feels like Martin Scorsese’s After Hours rewritten with vampires set around vampire nightclub. The comedy is uneven but there is is a striking performance from Grace Jones as the vampire
The entirely unappealing notion of a vampire frat rat comedy, The film is agonisingly unfunny on almost every level, while Adam Johnson’s professor may count as possibly the wimpiest and most non-threatening vampire in the history of cinema
Dismissed at the time as a copy of Young Frankenstein even though it had been made earlier, this is a none too funny vampire comedy featuring David Niven as Dracula
One of the first films about a medically rationalised vampire concerning a doctor who discovers pills that turn him into a vampire monster
A vampire movie from the creators of Hill Street Blues, the greatest tv cop show ever made??? The mind boggles as to the possibilities and wonder what amazing creative possibilities they could put on it – alas, the show only ends up staying with the tried and true
Technically not a vampire film at all, rather about a kind and caring serial killer with a blood-drinking fetish who frequents suicide support boards looking for victims. A remarkable film, shot in a plain, unaffected manner and managing to discover an extraordinary intimacy between the characters
One has zero enthusiasm for this, which has been sold as Twilight meets Harry Potter. Defying expectation, it is written with a sarcastic amusement puncturing its own seriousness and has a great performance from its leading lady, if in the end it is too weighted down by story exposition needed to set up its sequels to ever open up dramatically
Lionel Atwill and Fay Wray star in a film about a mad scientist conducting a series of vampire bat killings. A minor but watchable entry in the Golden Age of Horror.
This is essentially intended as a gay version of Twilight and features a near-identical plot in which a vampire fixates on a youth and decides he is his true love.
Rather drab and cheap Japanese horror film about a disfigured actress who returns to life as a hairy vampire creature to exact vengeance. Not without its schlocky appeals, the hairy vampire bride looks more funny than threatening
Fascinating vampire film from the latter days of Hammer Films, this tries to do something different to the usual
Revival of the Hong Kong hopping vampire film phenomenon of the late 80s as personified by the Mr Vampire films. This lacks the slapstick silliness of the originals but settles in with a goofy nuttiness, getting some winning charms out of the romance between mortal and hopping vampire girl
Not to be confused with tv’s i>The Vampire Diaries, this is a British film that sets out to reconstruct the lesbian vampire film within the frame of modern LGBT relationships. It is also Found Footage, an early and rather amateurish variant, but not without some effect
Completely insane Japanese film that wades in gore while playing everything up at a level of demented cartoonish absurdity. Possibly the most delirious movie-watching fun it is possible to have
Freddie Francis was one of the finest stylists of the Anglo-horror cycle. Here he makes a comedy spoofing the vampire film that comes out feeling like Benny Hill routines running around a big castle
Filipino exploitation film that has a reputation as something more trashy than it is. A dull and aimless effort where an aging John Carradine delivers a largely incoherent performance as the head vampire
Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires
Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Ninja Scroll and Wicked City, steps in to make a sequel(?)/reboot(?) to the cult 1985 anime with visually enthralling regard
An odd mismatch of talent where Wes Craven directs Eddie Murphy as a vampire who arrives in present-day New York. Craven and Murphy seem to drown either;s distinctive voices out
The first in Hammer’s trilogy of lesbian vampire films, an adaptation of the classic story Carmilla. Unfortunately in Hammer’’s hands, the story’s subtlety is killed by an emphasis on softcore titillation
Low-budget video release about a group of people holed up in a house preyed on by a vampire. Passable but never amounts to much
John Carpenter revitalises the vampire film with a sharp action edge as James Woods heads a team of vampire hunters. Woods gives a ferociously determined performance way above and beyond the call of duty
Low-budget independently made film that manages to effectively use a singe warehouse location to suggest a gateway to Hell
Bizarre comedy where Nicolas Cage is a literary agent who believes he is a vampire. Cage gives the most absurdly over-the-top performance ever put on film
Sequel to John Carpenter’s Vampires given over to his regular associate Tommy Lee Wallace, this looks tatty in trying to replicate the action sequences on a B-budget and with the script holes showing through
Quite possibly the most boring 1970s Euro horror film ever made. Innocent travellers stray into a village of vampires but hardly anything happens in this soporific Spanish effort least of all the title orgy
The movie parodies of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer witlessly run a series of crude, unfunny gags over films and celebrities of the previous twelve months vintage. Here they take on the Twilight series
Supposedly a second sequel to John Carpenter’s Vampires but of little connection otherwise, this is a film of uneven effect about warring vampire clans in Thailand
Essentially a US version of Attack the Block with vampires instead of aliens, this is a smart, fun effort that adapts the vampire film to local hood culture
The Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s had an amazing visual flair – this is where it started. This is more a 1940s mad scientist film but comes with all the decaying castles and beautifully moody b&w lighting
Carl Dreyer’s cult film is not a vampire film as we know it but creates an incredibly haunted uncanny mood
Another film in the cult of Jess Franco. Jumping aboard the early 1970s fad for lesbian vampire films, Franco offers up a sofctore take on the story of Dracula but cast with women.
Stephen Sommers conducts a big-budget rehash of a 1940s Universal monster bash. A film so overloaded with CGI bombast and general overkill it becomes utterly absurd.
A grippingly good Dutch thriller about a husband who becomes obsessed following the disappearance of his wife, while at the tame time we also get a parallel plot about the comically jolly serial killer responsible
Disastrous English-language remake of the brilliant Dutch thriller The Vanishing, which miscalculates everything including mangling the classic ending
One of the best Indian-made horror films. A standout work about a mysterious stranger who enters a family household and exerts sinister control over the daughter
The exorcism film has made a big comeback in the 00s. From one of the co-directors of the Crank films, this only offers up the same mix of cliches as usual – indeed, often seems like a series of random jump scares without any rationale as to why they would be happening
A film with a captivatingly original idea – bank robbers break into a bank vault, only to find they have stirred something supernatural imprisoned there. A film that builds a more than reasonable head of tension before losing it with a weak payoff
The second of Amicus Films’ adaptations from EC Comics, a follow-up to their earlier Tales from the Crypt and one of their weaker horror anthologies with the episodes much more variable in overall quality
This has a great premise – a camera crew revisiting the site of a cult mass suicide stir up the ghosts of the cult members – and a director who I always maintained had much untapped potential. Alas, the finished result seems to slip by his hands
This gets full marks for an eye-catching title, even if it is one that has next to no relevancy in the film. The film itself is set in the world of art dealership and concerns a series of cursed paintings that kill all who seek to acquire them
From cult director Stephanie Rothman, a provocative and intriguing entry in the 1970s lesbian vampire film
The third film version of Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain, this abandons much of the book. Not a terribly interesting effort, mostly noted as the directorial debut of Anglo-horror regular Freddie Francis
One of the few films to come out after George Romero where zombies are still associated with voodoo. Spanish horror star Paul Naschy writes and plays three roles in a film with a wild mix of cross-cultural ideas
Jaume Balaguero of [Rec] fame returns with an occult horror where a woman on the run is drawn into sinister happenings at an apartment
One of the better films from exploitation director Jess Franco that develops a haunted atmosphere that while crude is hard to shake
Paco Plaza has become one of the premiere names in Spanish horror due to the [Rec] films. Here he attempts to follow in the footsteps of The Conjuring with a film based on a supposedly true supernatural incident in 90s Madrid but fails to make a terribly interesting work
The directorial debut of Ryuhei Kitamura. A film premised on the idea of mashing the John Woo-styled gangster film up with the gore-drenched George Romero zombie film.
Joe Begos makes a homage to John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 with a group of war veterans in a bar in an ultra-violent siege against a horde of crazed drug addicts outside
An anthology of five short Found Footage horror films each from a different director. As with any anthology these are variable in tone but are on the whole mostly effective and contain a number of alternately unearthly and spooky moments
Sequel to the modest success of V/H/S, an anthology of short Found Footage horror films featuring a different line-up of genre directors. The episodes are competent at best, none standout and mostly forgettable
The popular V/H/S series, an anthology of Found Footage horror tales, is revived for a fourth entry
The fifth film of the Found Footage horror anthology series, including one episode that is among the best of the series so far
Third of the V/H/S films, all horror anthologies in the Found Footage style. While the other two were fairly hit and miss, this is extremely good. Each of the four stories sits among the very best episodes among the current crop of multi-director horror anthologies
The sixth entry among the popular multi-director anthology series, this includes episodes from Scott Derrickson among others but is also one of the weaker of the V/H/S films overall
Bryan Bertino has become a Must Watch director ever since The Strangers. Here he makes a film where Dakota Fanning receives a cursed box and will die unless she places several requested items inside
Horror comedy set around the wonderfully appealing idea of a support group for serial killers
Adam Green has enjoyed some success with the Hatchet films; this is the fourth entry in the series … Most of the other films have consisted of not much more than buckets of gore and a host of genre cameos – here though, Green adds a considerable sense of humour to the mix
Less well known adaptation of the Frankenstein story that can arguably be considered the most faithful of all the film versions
A ludicrously overwrought version of the Frankenstein story. How more nutzoid can you get than a version where Igor the hunchback (a completely miscast Daniel Radcliffe) is the main character?
An entry from the classic 1980s era of the zombie film about zombies that emerge from a cursed tv set
Standout film set among the Orthodox Jewish community where a man sitting an all-night vigil with a corpse finds it possessed by a demonic force that starts toying with him
A Norwegian-made werewolf film where you have to admit the title Viking Wolf sets up some intriguing possibilities
I’m tempted to make a comment about this being a film that offers its own critical summary in its title but this Saw wannabe is so tame it fails even that. Hard to believe a film with a premise about a group of people forced to torture one another could emerge so dramatically uninteresting
M. Night Shyamalan creates three-quarters of a tense and eerie film about a 19th Century village under siege from mysterious creatures only for it to fall apart when he produces a damp squib of a twist ending
A film with a wonderfully eccentric and offbeat sense of humour where Bill Skarsgård and Maika Monroe are inept criminals fleeing after a robbery who end up prisoners of a psychopathic couple
The second film from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz is an intensely haunted albeit enigmatic journey into Southeast Asian jungles in search of a missing child
A Spanish thriller about the investigation into mysterious payment made to an executed killer, which is then followed by a series of copycat killings that mimic those conducted by the dead killer
Strange but by no means uninteresting film that takes several weird doglegs going from biker parties to a possession film and then a home invasion by seemingly resurrected 1950s rockers
Boundary-pushing film that consists almost entirely of very enthusiastic splatter and gore scenes. Amateurishly shot on video nevertheless this gained a cult following and produced sequels
The original i>Violent Shit films were a series of plotless, gore-drenched German films of the 80-90s. This is a very loose Italian-made remake that is more about the activities of an occult serial killer. Not very well made but there are a lot of homages to classic giallo cinema
Effort from the near-ubiquitous Blumhouse that is constantly confounding expectations – a plague outbreak drama but not quite, a zombie film but not quite. In the end, not a great or groundbreaking film but certainly a modest one that takes things in some interesting and original directions
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired
Full marks for an attention-grabbing exploitation title, this is a horror film that takes place on a horror film set where film being shot and sinister characters on the sideline blur in a rubber reality
A fine example of the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s that overruns the screen with brooding Gothic dungeons, visually stunning colour schemes, a mad nobleman and Christopher Lee as a sinister manservant
One of the classic works from Ingmar Bergman, uncreditedly remade by Wes Craven as The Last House on the Left, with Max Von Sydow as a virtuous farmer who is driven to vengeance after three youths rape and kill his daughter
1970s British film about two sisters being drawn into the coven of witches. This comes with much in the way of softcore nudity but there is a surprising degree of innocence about all of it
Documentary about the phenomenon of the tv horror host
Slapped with a misleading pandemic-related title, this is an Argentinean zombie film made with an admirable ferocity
Another effort from the near-ubiquitous Blumhouse horror company. A film that teases many things – occult rituals, cultists after the pregnant heroine’s baby – that prove red herrings as it eventually telescopes down to a frustratingly ordinary explanation
M. Night Shyamalan makes one of his best films in ages. He kicks back his heels and goes nuts – at the same time as he is spooking us he also has us laughing; he ventures into making a Found Footage film but at the same time is also deconstructing the process with hilarious results
The novelty of the first Christian horror film. As opposed to much of the message-heavy tripe that usually gets peddled in this niche market, this is actually well structured with a number of interesting ambiguities and engaging as a story for the better part
Taut and effective effort from the heyday of the slasher film, one of several films on the theme of a woman newscaster being stalked by a psycho. A young Michael Ironside goes to town on the role of the psycho and plays to the gallery with nastily effective results
Blumhouse production where Finn Jones moves to a small town and finds the portrait of the town’s founder is a ringer for him
One of the key films in the cult of Takashi Miike that has been frequently banned for its taboo-defying outrages in which a mysterious visitor causes a family household to descend into perverse extremes
Strong return to genre material for Australian director Richard Franklin with Radha Mitchell as a yachtswoman in a round the world race facing ghosts on board that may well all be in her imagination
Obscure film in which director Fernando Arrabal depicts a series of vignettes from his childhood depicting the sadism and cruelty of the Spanish Fascists
Another excruciatingly bad mock exploitation film from Tony Watt, who may well be the world’s worst filmmaker. This mixes killer women, aliens, UFOs, Mafia into an incomprehensible mix
The only horror film ever made in Communist Russia. Adaptation of a classic story about a monk sequestered with the body of a woman for three nights, the film creates an undeniable atmosphere and mounts to a wildly fantastical climax where he must face all the minions of Hell
Russian-made adaptation of a classic horror story that takes place as an exquisitely stylised 19th Century Gothic fantasy world but is a head-scratchingly incoherent mishmash on a plotting level
Romanian-made film about the real-life historical tyrant Vlad Tepes who loaned his name to Bram Stoker’s Dracula
A film based on the historic tyrant that gave the world the name Dracula. This ends up being too sympathetic and loses all credibility when it tries to tie in vampire mythology
Strongly reminiscent of The Innocents, Emilia Clarke from Game of Thrones plays a nanny arriving at an estate to tend a boy who claims to hear his dead mother’s voice in the stone walls.
In his follow-up to Manborg, Steven Kostanski abandons the affectionate homages to 1980s video-released genre films he has specialised in so far. A homage to the works of H.P. Lovecraft, this should be seen for the utterly wild and outlandish makeup effects that Kostanski delivers
A low-budget film where Corey Feldman is a university student who signs into an oddball fraternity only to find that it practices voodoo rites and he has signed away his soul
Completely ridiculous David DeCoteau film about voodoo rites in a boys boarding school that gets hijacked by DeCoteau’s typical homo-erotic predilections
Essentially a 1940s mummy film with a voodoo priest resurrected in the present and stalking the reincarnation of his love. In English translation, this has been thrown together with a meaningless word salad title to appeal to the era’s fads for Blaxploitation and exorcism films