The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Aardman Animation return with a sequel to Shaun the Sheep Movie. More of the same absurdly nonsensical capers and gags, this comes with much in the way of homage and in-jokes to classic SF films
After several other film incarnations that went nowhere, The Fantastic Four make their first appearance in The MCU. The film creates a wonderful retro world of 1960s futurism based on their original comic-books for them to inhabit
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This sequel substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
The first film from French animator Rene Laloux, a trippily surreal vision and one of the few portraits of a genuinely alien world on film
Work of softcore erotica about an alien woman who comes to Earth to catalogue human sexual experience. Consists of lots of tasteful glossily photographed tumblings with only the slimmest of plots connecting
A big-budget space opera from Luc Besson. This offers a dazzlingly designed future but the plot is an inane hodgepodge of bad SF elements with a tone that flails between action and camp
Darryl Hannah is the queen of a species of body-snatching insects intent on invading Earth. This is a clear winner head and shoulders above any other contenders for the most ridiculous alien invasion work ever made.
One among a sub-genre of 1950s outer space sex fantasies where astronauts encounter all-women planets and sort them out with some good lovin’, Cat Women of the Moon is held as the Z movie of this genre but this is an even cheaper
Adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel about a Victorian journey to the Moon and encounter with its denizens. The film comes with Ray Harryhausen effects but is considerably weakened by a buffoonish tone
Very nicely produced BBC retelling of the H.G. Wells novel that conducts an extremely faithful adaptation of the story and captures a perfect period sense of wonder
The original and greatest of all SF serial adventures and a huge influence on George Lucas. Despite the primitive effects, this still has a marvellously rousing imagination that stands up today. Two serial sequels followed
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
The third of the Flash Gordon serials, not quite at the heights of the previous two but with a colour and exoticism that was head and shoulders above the other serials of the era
The second of the Flash Gordon serials, which relocates action to Mars following the popularity of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast. The film has a wonderful imagination that far outshines the tattiness of usual serial production values
This offers the amusing idea of a softcore parody of the old Flash Gordon serials. A surprisingly well-made film in terms of effects but the jokes often seems belaboured amid the witless mugging
This sequel to Flesh Gordon, the R-rated parody of the Flash Gordon serials, feels like a joke that is belaboured in the retelling. The film does have a crass level of nonsensical absurdity that proves amusing
1950s SF film about an expedition to Mars. This fails to find anything interesting to happen once there where the astronauts do no more than engage in romances with the Martian women
Sequel to the live-action The Flintstones film. Whether we asked for it or not, this offers up a Flintstones origin story where we see familiar elements of the series fall into place
Twelve-chapter serial that offers one of the first ever depictions of an alien invader on screen. The results are oddly mundane in comparison to the onslaught of great 1950s alien invasion films that came only a couple of years later
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a director who specialises in cryptic spooky horror films. This is a sequel to his earlier alien invasion film Before We Vanish about aliens come to steal concepts from people’s minds
Julianne Moore discovers her late son has been erased from photos and people’s memories eventually leading her to an explanation involving mysterious aliens
A film with a bad movie reputation where a NASA android returns to Earth damaged and goes amok where it tackles alien invaders come to Earth to abduct women
A South African variant on a film like Starman where a man is inhabited by an alien and stumbles through a series of encounters on the seedier side of life
A strangely affecting SF film that takes place entirely in a hotel room with Bill Paterson as a journalist in a Jordanian war zone and Tilda Swinton who insists she is an alien android
The major distinction this has is in starring murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. An SF comedy made in the aftermath of Star Wars where Stratten is an android on a ship voyage romancing her human commander
A really bad copy of The Terminator featuring an Amazonian Brigitte Nielsen as an alien come to Earth to stop an evil intergalactic warlord
An ultra low-budget film about a man on a space journey returning to Earth to find it invaded by aliens. This tries to do Mad Max and Star Wars on the budget of about $1.99
Japanese comedy with various humans and aliens interacting around an interstellar burger restaurant on the road from Earth, although none of it seems that funny
An extremely funny parody of Star Trek that sends up both the show, the actors and the fandom. A very witty and knowing script that has definitely been written by fans
Possibly the worst Kaiju film ever made – produced by a bankrupt studio in order to recoup losses and cheaply slung together by rehashing footage from the other Gamera films
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure set on a world where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
A beautifully shot b/w homage to exploitation films that feels like a 1950s rock‘n’roll musical injected with a host of gonzo elements including aliens, UFOs and the resurrected dead
The fifth Godzilla film, the point where Godzilla becomes a good guy joining Mothra and Rodan to battle Ghidrah. The best Godzilla film from this period with the effects team operating at the peak of their game
John Carpenter returns to cinema screens amid the 2000-1 spate of Mars movies. Despite promise, this ends up being not much more than his early film Assault on Precinct 13 relocated on Mars
The live-action adaptation of a popular anime and manga, this takes place in an alternate history version of Japan where samurai fight following an alien invasion
Hal Hartley was one of the foremost independent directors of the 1990s. Here he makes a film set in satiric future dominated by the advertising industry featuring a visit from an alien girl
One of the key films in the cult of director Larry Cohen, this throws in a mind-bending mix involving an androgynous alien messiah, random shootings, alien abduction and Catholicism
The second of the anime Godzilla films and much more successful than its predecessor. The reconceptions of some of the classic monsters has a dazzling ambitiousness while Godzilla has all the ferocity it should have had in the first film
The 28th Godzilla film, made for the series fiftieth anniversary and bringing every monster ever created by Toho together for a massive battle. The results are immensely satisfying
The 30th Japanese Godzilla film, this is the first anime Godzilla film and the first in a trilogy. More disappointingly, it is more a space opera and planetary adventure than it is ever a Godzilla film
The concluding chapter in the trilogy of Godzilla anime films. This reintroduces two familiar monsters but takes a long time to build to the monster bash we have come to see
The twelfth Godzilla film. Under director Jun Fukuda, a juvenile inanity had by now come to dominate the series by this point. The special effects, often recycled from previous films, are very cheesy
The fourteenth Godzilla film, noted for the introduction of Mecha-Godzilla, a robot copy of Godzilla that became a recurring nemesis. By this point in the series, the effects and quality of production had become very shabby
A thoroughly demented Japanese sf/horror film about passengers of a crashed plane being menaced by a body-snatching alien vampire. Quite unlike any other Japanese monster movie, the colour schemes alone leave you giddy
An infuriatingly inane film about a boy discovering that all dogs can talk and are alien visitors from Jim Henson Pictures. No sooner is the dog talking that it is tossing off smartass one-liners
A film based on the hugely popular children’s horror series. The film creates a story where the creatures from all the books are unleashed. This is fun to watch, yet what we ultimately have is easy, undemanding horror for family audiences
We have had a few UFO Found Footage films, most of which are rehashes on The Blair Witch Project with aliens instead of backwoods hauntings. This is one entry that produces a series of eerie jumps
This received a lot of bad flak, including from star Ryan Reynolds, but I’m not one of the haters. There is the terrible CGI suit and a miscast Reynolds but it does get a good deal of the comic-book mythos right
Green Lantern is a classic comic-book character but his screen presence were damaged by the Ryan Reynolds film. This conducts a severe reset of the character’s continuity
Animated film that tells different stories of various members of the Green Lantern Corps (including two stories from Alan Moore). Another of the worthwhile animated DC adaptations
The DC Universe Original Animated Movies conduct a solid and worthwhile animated retelling of the Green Lantern origin story, which delves into all the aspects of the mythos
Cheesily entertaining film about a crew aboard a space station fighting off an alien monster. Cited as one of the films that influenced Alien. With a screenplay co-written by Batman co-creator Bill Finger
The first in a trilogy of connected video anthology films that tell stories about alien visitors and abductions
A triumphal Marvel Comics adaptations that manages to mainline the spirit of the original Star Wars, while in in its wryly, self-deflating culture savvy suggesting a Star Wars rewritten by a 14 year-old Quentin Tarantino
Guardians of the Galaxy was an audience winner with its eccentric humour and effortless charm; this sequel feels buried under bloated production overkill where the charms of the original remain thinly drawn
Third of the Guardians of the Galaxy films, this successfully recaptures the nature of the goofy ensemble comedy caper that made the first film such a winner but seemed to be missing in the second
US-made live-action adaptation of a popular manga/anime about a power-suit superhero. Directed by two makeup effects artists mostly as a vehicle for their creature creations
Sequel to the live-action US-made adaptation of the manga about a power-suit superhero. As with the first film, there are lots of rubbery aliens and martial arts fights
Web-series, later released as a film, based on the Halo 4 videogame. While the games have a massively detailed backhistory of the universe, this is disappointingly only a low-budget military recruits in training scenario
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the Halo videogame universe. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories but nothing standout
At last a good film spun off from the Halo videogame (and produced Ridley Scott!). A harsh story of planetary survival as stranded soldiers fight to escape aboard a two-person ship
Adaptation of the Strugatski Brothers’ book about human observers becoming involved in the affairs of a barbarous alien society. Essentially a Star Trek Prime Directive story, the Strugatskis didn’t much like this version
A modern cinematic masterpiece? A plotless three-hour work that rubs our face in the squalour of the Middle Ages while feeling like people crowded into a narrow room all trying to do cryptic things at cross-purpose
Cult animated film that adapts several stories from the adult fantasy comic-book Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal. These vary but in its better moments that has a trippy cult hallucinatory quality
Sequel to the animated Heavy Metal that failed to attract the same cult audience that its predecessor did. Telling only one story instead of several, it only offers a routine space opera adventure
This was a minor cult hit at the time and concerns an alien that hops between human host bodies while having the invincibility of a Terminator. The idea is played with considerable panache and directed with great flair
The Hidden was a wittily enjoyable hit about body-hopping aliens. This is a cheap sequel that substantially reuses material from the first film, while missing everything that made the original work
Roland Emmerich produced comedy about a group of crusaders abducted by aliens where their bumbling ends up accidentally winning a space war. A promising idea rendered as idiotic knockabout farce.
Probably THE worst sequel ever made. The script’s treatment of continuity to the first film is utterly incoherent, while director Russell Mulcahy and most of the cast go at it with unrestrained OTT excess
Aliens come to Earth and form a bluegrass band! The basic idea holds an undeniable appeal but the film seems caught between wanting to be a B-movie parody and an indie film that takes itself seriously
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a multi-media phenomenon that has developed a cult. The tv series with a less-than-stellar BBC budget was not the most effective incarnation of these but still hits the wittily absurd nerve of Douglas Adams’ humour
The big-budget film version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide phenomenon is a disaster that fumbles Douglas Adams’s absurdist wit and blows everything up with big-budget effects and a pitch to American audiences
A pitifully cheap copy of Gremlins about alien creatures locked in a soundstage and now accidentally unleashed. One of the worst films ever made.
An animated alien visitor film that is more likeable than anything suggests – it has a bubbly, juvenile pitch but generates a good deal of humour out of the alien fish of water amid human culture routines
A newlywed couple head to a cabin in the woods for their honeymoon. This seems to be a traditional backwoods horror but instead travels into an increasingly unnerving and way out territory
Wonderfully madcap film with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing travelling aboard the Trans-Siberian Express in the 1900s realising they are facing a body-hopping alien
Andrew Niccol, a director of smart conceptual sf, seems mismatched on an adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel but Niccol tones down Meyer’s overripe teen romance to deliver a smart take on the alien body snatchers genre
Though the title seems more suitable to a book of pick-up lines, this is about a romance with an alien visitor set during the punk era. John Cameron Mitchell adapts a Neil Gaiman story but seems to have forgotten the comedy elements
This adaptation of the cult Marvel comic-book from Lucasfilm should have been a classic but went tail-feathers up in a big way such that it became the term used for a film that bombs for years afterwards
This is regarded as a bad movie classic. An alien invasion tale, it was the first film on the theme of humans being replaced by androids. No worse than any other B movie of the era, it does suffer from a dullness
An SF film with minimal resources – just two characters in a desert – that deliver a modest variant on the Enemy Mine scenario about an alien and human enemy stranded on a planet
This is a derivative and dull copy of E.T. about two alien kids and pet who run away from their family on The Moon and found by a teenage cowboy on a ranch in rural Wyoming
Produced by Michael Bay and directed by the perpetually insipid D.J. Caruso, this is no more than a Young Adult high school version of Disney’s Witch Mountain films concerning an alien teenager with psi powers
Defying the sensationalistic title, this is actually a fairly reasonable entry in the 1950s alien body snatchers fad in which wives discover their husbands have been taken over by aliens come to Earth to repopulate their species
Rather tatty remake of I Married a Monster from Outer Space made for tv. This is routine tv filler that has been churned out with little care or feel for the original.
Odd film about 19th Century body snatchers that is like a low-budget version of a Burke and Hare story. This develops a sense of humour and starts to go in some very strange directions
A space opera that was made in the aftermath of Star Wars. It is a magpie collage of influences that are not always the most coherently presented and given a comic emphasis
Comic-book creator Enki Bilal creates a visually extraordinary film about Ancient Egyptian gods awakening in a future New York
The film that made Roland Emmerich’s name as a specialist in mass destruction spectacle. At heart, this rehashes a 1950s alien invasion film on a big-budget and adds blatantly sentimentalised American flag-waving
Roland Emmerich returns with more of the same. The problem is how to top the first film and here everything is so big and with so much happening that it cannot be taken in and slips into tedium
The Asylum’s mockbuster answer to Independence Day: Resurgence, a rehash of Independence Day on a cheaper budget. The desire to copy the title has forced some plotting oddities onto the film
The fourth of the Indiana Jones films, returning after a 19 year gap to general disappointment. Largely a film about Indy getting old, this tries but the action scenes pale against what the series was in its heyday
An Australian effort that is less the usual people being hunted by alien nasties in darkened corridors standard than ‘The Crazies in Space’. Crippled by a fatal lack of tension and suspense
TV mini-series that adapts six less well known short stories by H.G. Wells into an anthology with Wells as the central character. A couple of good stories, some that never hit the mark
A deranged madcap film produced by the Shaw Brothers featuring an enhanced superhero fighting off a bizarre menagerie of monsters commanded by an alien princess
Fairly trashy low-budget British copy of Alien with several well-known actors running around a series of caves after Judy Geeson becomes impregnated by an alien embryo
Dance music duo Daft Punk collaborate with anime directors to create an animated space opera based on their album Discovery about an intergalactic rock band and their fight to save the galaxy
One of the earliest works about Alien Abduction, predating the fascination with the topic that came not long after with tv’s The X Files. From genre regular Dan Curtis, the creator of tv’s Dark Shadows
Classic of the 1950s alien invader genre in which a young boy discovers that the adults around him are being taken over by Martian invaders. Director William Cameron Menzies makes striking use of sets to further a sense of alienation