The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The success of Star Wars saw a host of copies made over the next few years. This was one of several low-budget Italian space opera knockoffs of this period, featuring invading aliens from Ganymede
Early 1960s Italian space opera from Antonio Margheriti about a rogue planet on a course towards Earth. Not nearly as interesting as it suggests it is going to be.
An entertainingly violent Japanese comic-book of a movie in which a classroom of school pupils is abandoned on an island with weapons to eliminate one another. Frequently cited as the inspiration for The Hunger Games
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
Prolific bad movie director Mark Polonia offers his own no-budget take on the Transformers films where the Transformers are two men in bulky costume who wrestle one another
The adaptation of the alien invasion novel by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard starring John Travolta is a completely ridiculous film that was laughed off screens and is regarded as a classic bad movie
Adaptation of the Battleship boardgame that emerges at best as wannabe Michael Bay. Imagine Pearl Harbor mashed up with a Transformers film and lots of bone-headed glorification of American militarism
Mini-series that reconstructs the old Battlestar Galactica into smart and intelligent SF with strong characters, a gritty realism and sensational effects. A tv series followed and became one of the best SF shows of the 2000s
Web-series/film prequel to the 2003-9 revival of Battlestar Galactica with a rookie Commander Adama arriving aboard the Galactica. Easily one the best of the Galactica spinoff films to date
The original Battlestar Galactica tv series was an incredibly blatant copy built on the success of Star Wars. This is the pilot, which aired on tv in the US but was released theatrically to theatres in other countries
A spinoff film from the Battlestar Galactica revival series that flashes back to tell the story of the divisive figure of Commander Cain, featuring fine performances and the series’ usual high level of writing
This was the second of the films spun off from the 2000s Battlestar Galactica revival series, and ingeniously retells the events of the series as seen through the eyes of the Cylons
A fairly blatant copy of Mad Max 2, although this is one of the better-made and budgeted. Crucially what is lacking is much in the way of the action that made Mad Max a hit
Barry Levinson becomes one of the few name directors to venture into the Found Footage genre and soberingly portrays the outbreak of an ecological catastrophe from multiple viewpoints
Prolific low-budget hack David DeCoteau directs what feels like a very softcore version of a Gidget film crossbred with Earth Girls Are Easy (albeit with the sexes reversed). A film that quickly sinks into awfulness
Fine film in which a young couple’s idyllic getaway to the title location becomes a nightmare as the ocean produces a fog that starts to create mutations
A gonzo post holocaust film that was put out under the National Lampoon label. Beyond having a great title, this represents as close to near-total ineptitude in filmmaking as it is possible to get
A classic of the genre for a number of reason – it was the film that kicked off the 1950s fad for atomic monsters, featuring an archetypal story about a dinosaur brought back to life by atomic tests. It also featured among the very first screen credits for both Ray Bradbury and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen
Modest and occasionally atmospheric 1950s B-budget alien invasion film where the title is explained as the alien’s ability to control animals, making this arguably the first Animals Amok film
Documentary about George Lazenby, the former male model who scored the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and then abruptly quit. Lazenby proves a highly entertaining raconteur and his life story is eye-opening to say the very least
Richard Lester adapts an absurdist Spike Milligan play set in the aftermath of the nuclear holocaust where the survivors are mutating into animals and items of furniture. A film with a really bizarre sense of humour that most at the time did not get
This was made as a quickie cash-in on Irwin Allen’s big-budgeted bomb The Swarm. Cheap effects and ridiculous plotting cause it to topple well over into bad movie stakes
Released in March 2020 just before the arrival of Covid-19, this makes an uncanny prediction about the US being affected by a nationwide pandemic
Japan’s Kiyoshi Kurosawa is known for his intensely uncanny and bafflingly cryptic horror films. Here he makes an alien invasion film, although a minimalist and very different one that proves quite fascinating
Giant grasshoppers invade Chicago – what’s not to like? A sterling example of the 1950s atomically enlarged insect film from Bert I. Gordon who found his calling make cheap giant animals/people films during this era.
A documentary about the original Planet of the Apes series (made before the modern reboot series) that examines the making of and behind the scenes in all the detail that any fan could want
From The Blair Witch Project co-director Daniel Myrick, a film about two paramedics abducted into a crazed UFO cult who believe their delivery is coming
A beautiful anime from Momoru Hosoda that retells Beauty and the Beast and spins it in SF terms as tale about a girl who finds fame as a singer in Virtual Reality
Rather silly thriller in which Richard Chamberlain tries to track a madman who has discovered a means of transmitting explosions by telephone
The second and most underrated of the Planet of the Apes films. For a time it repeats the original but gains considerable imagination and a striking satiric bite with the introduction of the mutants
A documentary that purports to examine the mystery of the so-called Bermuda Triangle but soon dives off into an hilarious series of claims involving UFOs, Atlantis, time warps and The Philadelphia Experiment
This has the interesting idea of mind-controlled people being used as shooters in a live-action videogame. However, the rest of the film is a routine low-budget action film
A sequel to The Blob, although this plays everything for comedy. The one and only film directed by actor Larry Hagman, no less than J.R. Ewing of Dallas fame
A highly ambitious film about a mysterious alien portal that appears in Earth orbit and the attempts to explore what is on the other side
This offers the novelty of a Loch Ness monster film that takes place in Canada! This is otherwise a routine monster of the era made for the Syfy Channel
Skyline was a modest alien invasion film; this is a long-planned sequel. The new director has simply turned it into an action film and tediously deals with every alien encounter with gunfire, stunts and explosions
A homage to 1970s SF cinema, full of trippy journeys through transcendental space and white antisceptic corridors. In aiming for this look, the film also forgot a small thing like a plot or coherent explanation of what is happening
B budget film from Edgar G. Ulmer that was made quickly to exploit the success of George Pal’s The Time Machine concerning an Air Force pilot who is thrown through time into a mutant ruled future
Isaac Asimov may not have been the best science-fiction writer ever but his stories buzzed with challenging ideas. In the hands of Chris Columbus, one of Asimov’s robot stories is reduced to mawkish sentimentalism
Giant spider film that seems to be aiming for the same gonzo territory the killer shark film has of recent. Instead we get an average B movie with some good effects and a line of comic banter that falls flat in the delivery
French-Belgian adult animated film in the gonzo trippy vein of Ralph Bakshi and Bill Plympton – a visually madcap satire of science-fiction tropes and 1980s East-West tensions, full of wackily surreal visuals
This is one of Takashi Miike’s most incomprehensible films – what appears to be a murder mystery and gay love story set in a prison, along with random SF elements
Intermittently amusing parody of the disaster movie set aboard an atomically-powered luxury bus where everything proceeds to go wrong. The better parody of the genre would have to wait for Airplane
Disney animation and Marvel Comics come together; Marvel loses and most of the comic-book is tossed out the window and this becomes a simple story about a boy and his robot story before settling into familiar sueprheroics
Highly enjoyable Canadian-made parody of bad 1950s B movies that throws in everything from alien invaders to zombies and splatter. And is a musical to boot!
A flop comedy based on a Dave Barry novel about various characters trying to obtain a nuclear weapon. Despite a reasonable name cast, this becomes slapstick inanity in director Barry Sonnenfeld’s hands
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of The City of Lost Children and Amelie fame returns with an appealingly eccentric, beautifully designed comedic take on the machine revolution
From the director of Trump vs the Illuminati, gonzo animation where Bigfoot and several resurrected historical figures fight off invading aliens that include Stalin, Aleister Crowley and Anubis
The two time-travelling slackers are back after nearly thirty years and the film amusingly sees them having reached uneasy middle-age. But was the wait worth it?
The sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the first film’s humour gets lost amid repetition and blown up by a big-budget. William Sadler’s Death however proves a scene-stealer
A quirky hit that jumped aboard the 1980s popularity of time travel themes and laid into them with an appealingly offbeat eccentricity. The film that propelled Keanu Reeves onto become a star
Harry Harrison’s Bill the Galactic Hero is hands down the funniest science-fiction book of all time; it is painful watching it rendered in the hands of Alex Cox who has only the budget and resources of an amateur film
Third of the Harry Palmer spy films starring Michael Caine, which were made as a more grounded alternative to James Bond. Unfortunately, this has been placed in the hands of Ken Russell who overblows everything with a giddy eatravagance
A TV movie that was released theatrically outside the US with Dale Robinette as a James Bond copycat with Dale Robinette up against villain Patrick MacNee who has weaponised the ozone layer
An obnoxious comedy that has the view that it is fun to watch Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin wreck a bio-dome because the scientists are a bunch of tight-asses
Very similar to A Quiet Place from several months earlier where here people cannot look outdoors and must remain blindfolded. Hindered by a frustrating lack of any explanations as to what is happening
Bird Box was a hit on Netflix and this is a sequel. The talented Pastor Brothers take the basics of the original and actually make a much better film out of them filled with fine tension
An excruciatingly unfunny slapstick comedy with Soupy Sales as the janitor at an space laboratory who is accidentally made weightless
Blumhouse film in which an initial plot about a man suffering amnesia undergoes a twist to become a body theft story
From the extraordinary and underrated Scooter McCrae, a dark and very disturbing film about the development of a sex robot for men who like to beat and abuse women
A peculiar mixture of 1940s mad scientist and gangster film in which Boris Karloff transplants a mob boss’s brain into the body of a mild-mannered English professor
Disney’s attempt to join the post-Star Wars SF boom proved a flop that flounders in bad writing and ponderous pretensions. On the other hand, it is almost worth watching for the stunning design and effects
Of all the concepts in physics, the wildest of these is the black hole. It seems highly disappointing that this set out to be a film about a black hole but all we get is a film about an electrical monster amok
Cryptic Spanish film that eventually coalesces into a unique time travel story, like a more enigmatic version of Timecrimes as we watch pieces of a beautifully wrought temporal jigsaw puzzle slot into place
A Jet Li vehicle that falls into the masked superhero genre where the show has taken a few leaves from the tv series The Green Hornet. Enjoyable fun with some exhilarating action sequences
Tsui Hark takes over the directorial reins of the sequel, filling it with much more fantastical elements, pitting the hero against a mad scientist and his mutant creations in a series of wild martial arts scenes
Made from an old John Carpenter script, this is a reasonable action film starring Tommy Lee Jones as a professional thief who is tasked with stealing a hi-tech car
A team of mercenaries arrive on an island on a retrieval mission only to find everybody has been turned to dust and a mysterious piercing noise that causes them to hallucinate
The most successful Marvel Comics adaptation of all-time up to that point. Enjoyable if I fall short of calling it the best Marvel film ever and its receiving a nomination for a Best Picture Academy Award
The MCU’s sequel to Black Panther. This offers the peculiarity of a work in which the superhero of the title never actually appears and is instead set around his absence following the death of Chadwick Boseman
Modest and quite effective Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Jay Mohr is trapped in a small town run by an A.I. that does everything it can to prevent him from leaving
Near future set science-fiction noir as a cyborg-enhanced hero is drawn in to conduct an investigation on behalf of a morally ambiguous femme fatale. Despite a reasonable effort made, this is a little too low key
This was designed as a copy of the giant ant film Them! substituting scorpions for ants. The plot is average but what stands it out are the excellent stop-motion animated effects from King Kong creator Willis O’Brien
Following Michelle Pfeiffer’s turn as Cat Woman in Batman Returns, this was a copycat from Roger Corman in which Joan Severance becomes a black vinyl clad superheroine exacting justice
The second of the low-budget Roger Corman produced films made for cable featuring Joan Severance as a black vinyl-clad masked superheroine
Low-budget action film that blatantly rehshes the plot of Firefox with Michael Dudikoff as a pilot recruited to go into enemy territory and steal back a hi-tech plane
The first MCU film to emerge since the Great Pause of the pandemic, the question is whether one of the least interesting characters in The Avengers can carry a film all by herself
A rather dull fifteen-chapter serial about the efforts a detective who sets out to stop Sombra, an Asian spy intent on stealing US atomic rocket secrets
An impressively large-scale SF film about a military sortie into an area of western Russian that is all that is left unaffected after aliens create a worldwide power cut
Ridley Scott’s film was not a success at the time but has since been regarded as a SF masterpiece, one of the defining screen treatments of android themes while the incredibly dense Cyberpunk vision of the future was copied by many subsequent films
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
A film about a writer who retreats to a fully automated smarthome in order to complete a novel only to end up imprisoned by a malfunctioning A.I.
One of the original superheroes with no powers comedies, a not particularly funny variant based on a Saturday Night Live sketch. Written by and starring Damon Wayans.
A comedy with the amusing premise where Brendan Fraser is raised in a nuclear fallout shelter since the Cuban Missile Crisis and emerges into the present for the first time, mistaking it for a post-apocalyptic world
Norwegian comedy where two friends who were a champion laser tag duo in their teens are now in adult life where they are forced to pair back up to fight off alien invaders
Jackie Chan starring action film that reads like an earthbound Star Wars with he up against a villain in black and his army of super-soldiers
A hugely underrated film that depicts the brutal collapse of society that occurs when the entire world is affected by a plague that causes blindness. Directed in strong and powerful images
Quite an entertaining film based on the conspiracy theory that we are all living in The Matrix where Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek become wound up in virtual simulation
Film about a monstrous blob that devours everything in its path. This has become a 1950s B movie classic more through its chessiness value, not to mention theme of teenage rebellion, than necessarily being a great film
The original 1958 The Blob gets a full makeover via some sensational state-of-the-art animatronics and makeup effects with impressive results. A much superior work to the original in all ways
An enigmatic and undeniably effective film about mysterious happenings where those who journey out into a bay return having been affected in disturbing ways
The fourth of the Christopher Lee-starring Fu Manchu films and the point the series was handed over to exploitation director Jess Franco and started to go badly downhill
Luigi Cozzi’s return to screens after 26 years, a head-scratchingly bizarre effort overloaded with ideas about parallel worlds, cosmic journeys and homage to the early cinema of Georges Melies and others
That starts out seeming a standard mindless action film in which Vin Diesel is resurrected as an augmented super-soldier only for everything we assume to get turned on its head in interesting ways
The DC Comics superhero Blue Beetle, one of the Teen Titans, is given his own film. One of the more quickly forgettable entries among DC Comics’ attempts to compete with the MCU
Low-budget but not uninteresting film that throws in a mind-bending mix of aliens, dream and alternate realities
Epic and beautifully animated anime set largely underwater about the struggle to save a dying Earth from an evil super-computer that wants eradicate humanity
Dan O’Bannon scripted film about a hi-tech helicopter, this crackles with great writing and some immensely exciting aerial action scenes from director John Badham
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
Abel Ferrara’s remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is an overlooked film that settles in with an undeniable creepiness that is just as effective as the earlier versions. The metaphor for the pod people is more diffuse in this one but that does not mitigate the film’s effect