The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Adventure Films are similar to Action Films but usually take place in an exotic realm (jungles, desert, lost worlds, foreign lands, fantasy and space settings). They feature quest plots where the hero(es) are in search of a treasure, attempting to rescue someone, to simply survive or find a way home. Action Films emphasise muscular heroism whereas adventure films focuses more on the realm the heroes are exploring and the often colourful characters and creatures they encounter.
Most of the films that fall into the themes of Serials, Lost Worlds, Epic Fantasy Films, Arabian Nights Fantasy, Space Opera and Planetary Adventure Films can be considered as Adventure Films. The adventure film also includes many films that take place in historical settings such as Swashbucklers.
Yet another adaptation of a series of Young Adult fantasy books that failed to fly. The idea of an Indiana Jones-type adventure set in Victorian England holds promise but the film only sporadically manages to let the adventure fly
Pearl White was the original serial heroine in The Perils of Pauline. During the 1960s Batman craze, the serial was revived as this campy comedy
About the ninth film version of Jules Verne’s desert island survival story. This doesn’t add the giant animals/insects other versions do, although we still get a number of wild sf elements the original book never had. Problem though is that the film never adds enough to make proceedings very interesting
Big screen adaptation of the popular comic-strip superhero. This aims for the tone of an old fashioned serial adventure and is nicely mounted but crucially never comes to life.
Widely rididculed attempt to market Gilbert & Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance as a teen pop film by way of The Blue Lagoon. A mind-spinning film that seems to have no limit on how silly it is prepared to be, including numerous anachronistic contemporary pop culture in-jokes and fourth-wall breaking gags
A fairly blatant copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories – even more so of the then recent 1994 live-action Disney remake – all having been conducted on a B-budget
The director of Battlefield Earth teams up with Uwe Boll to deliver a sub-Indiana Jones adventure about venturing into an Egyptian pyramid in search of Ancient Astronauts. The tomb raider cliches are so tired and creaky that the film fails to generate any excitement
A Peruvian children’s animated film about a device that allows people to enter an author’s imagination. This mostly has children having adventures in a facsimile of Jules Verne
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of Jules Verne’s desert island drama featuring no less than Patrick Stewart as Captain Nemo. This sinks badly amid incredibly shoddy giant animal digital effects
Disastrous Brooke Shields starring film adaptation of the famous comic-strip about a girl reporter. Nobody involved is taking the show seriously and everything is blown into camp farce.
Syfy Channel film that mashes the disaster movie together with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The result is peculiarly unsatisfying either as disaster movie or the tomb raiding adventure we expect
TV mini-series that turns the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb into an Indiana Jones adventure. But everything is played with a constant barrage of one-liners and action sequences so silly you can’t take any of the show seriously
Film about an expedition through the jungles of the Yucatan to investigate a Mayan pyramid that is revealed to contain alien artefacts. This ventures well inside wacky fringe science theories
The third of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films that feels like it has no point other than to steal $10 from your hand and give you a bucket of content free mental popcorn in return
A low-budget film about a venture into the Hollow Earth in search of a missing person and encounters with creatures there. So low budget the underground caves seem shot in a darkened room
Sequel to the 1999 The Mummy. Here Stephen Sommers amplifies everything in that film by a factor of ten where the constant bombardment by the spectacular reaches an point of absurd overkill
Tarzan turned into a tedious softcore work designed to highlight the talent-free Bo Derek in a state of undress. This directly remakes the 1932 Johnny Weissmuller film – the original was an adventure classic, this is just an expensive nudie film
Sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, a supposed adaptation of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and a consistently silly, nonsensical film that operates at the level of a children’s cartoon
A mockbusters from The Asylum made to coincide with the big-budget Brendan Fraser film. Resemblance to the Jules Verne book fairly much ends at the title
Cheap and ridiculous attempt to cash-in on the 1976 remake of King Kong made by Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers. A classic bad movie on most counts
Action film with Dave Bautista as a treasure hunter retrieving items in a post-apocalyptic world. Directed by a former stuntman, this plays much to the action element with little else of substance
Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jackie Chan. One of Chan’s biggest flops, an overblown turkey packed with celebrity cameos and replacing Verne’s adventure with incredibly unfunny slapstick
This is a sequel to Cannon Films’ excruciating camp version of King Solomon’s Mines. Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone are back. This is a marginal improvement but far from a good film
This has nothing to do with King Kong and is an adventure film that features a female Tarzan and a mad scientist creating an army of mind-controlled gorillas
The premise of a group of adventurers seeking artifacts from fairytales has mild possibilities but is given zero conviction by anybody involved. A sub-Indiana Jones adventure that was made as a tv pilot
From prolific B-budget director Fred Olen Ray, this is a softcore parody of the Indiana Jones films
Cannon Films’ remake of the H. Rider Haggard adventure novel was made to exploit the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark but that does not excuse what an awful film it is where everything is played up for excruciating camp humour
Supposedly an adaptation of Jules Verns’s Mysterious Island from low-budget Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon, one that gives the impression nobody actually read the book
A copycat of King Kong made on a budget of about $1.98 and featuring some pitiful giant ape effects
Ostensibly as a teen version of the Jules Verne novel made by Cannon Films. However, this started under one director and finished under another with totally incomprehensible results