The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An earlier silent version of The Wizard of Oz, which twists the story considerably out of shape as a vehicle for the slapstick comedy of star Larry Semon who plays The Scarecrow
This was one of the first US films to depict the future. It is essentially Metropolis having been remade as a Broadway musical with an emphasis on comedy
W.C. Fields starring screwball comedy set at a hotel around a series of variety sketches and featuring an early prediction of television
A 1930s screwball comedy about the invention of a ray that can petrify people that is then used to bring statues of Greek gods to life
A light fantasy comedy with Lucas Donat as the inheritor of a Scottish castle that is haunted by a ghost and the problems faced when the castle is sold to be shipped to America
A deliriously frothy screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as two socialites killed in a crash who then haunt the car’s new owner. Several sequels followed.
British air adventure story with Ralph Richardson trying to stop an enemy armed with a raygun and all played with an appealingly eccentric comic tone
The classic Bob Hope comedy version of the Old Dark House play. Probably overrated, this has a creaky affected atmosphere and laughs but fails to hold a candle to the far superior and more stylish silent version
The Old Dark House film hit a peak in the late 1930s. This was a comedy variant featuring the entirely forgotten comedy act The Ritz Brothers stumbling around an old mansion
The 1939 Bob Hope comedy remake of The Cat and the Canary was a big hit; here he and Paulette Goddard are put through the same in what is all but a sequel. Hope is on top form again
A madcap screwball comedy in which a husband and wife swap bodies. The very first bodyswap film. From director Hal Roach who discovered Laurel and Hardy
Third entry in Universal’s Invisible Man series. Though less recognised, The Invisible Man series had a level of creativity higher than Universal’s other monster series. This one plays everything for broad comedy
Old Dark House comedy set around the antics of big band leader Kay Kyser. Starring several horror names of the day – Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre
Second sequel to Topper , the screwball light fantasy comedy about a dull man who is driven crazy by ghosts only he can see. This throws everything into an Old Dark House setting but proves there is still a good deal of droll, nonsensical humour to be found in the formula
The East Side Kids, a popular comedy group during the 1940s/50s, conduct a variant on the Old Dark House film featuring a sinisterly lurking Bela Lugosi … The East Side Kids’ films were made on impoverished budgets – this one of their better but still aimlessly circles around creaky and dated gags
The fourth of Abbott and Costello’s films, a knockoff of the then recent hit of the Bob Hope remake of The Cat and the Canary involving much comedic running around a supposedly haunted mansion
Charming and delightful film starring Veronica Lake as a witch burned at the stake who returns to life in the present to make life miserable for her judge’s descendant Frederic March
A screwball comedy with Jack Benny as a trumpeter send down from Heaven to Earth to blow the Last Trumpet who ends up getting distracted by a series of comic mishaps
Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre make an unexpectedly great comic pairing in this mad scientist screwball comedy that comes with an exhaustingly madcap pace
Road to Morocco was the third of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films and takes them on a parody of the Arabian Nights adventure
Comedy where the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys encounter Bela Lugosi running a Nazi fifth column operation from a haunted house, although the ghosts part eventually proves misleading
A classic screwball comedy with Dick Powell as a journalist who becomes recipient of newspapers that predict tomorrow’s headlines. The same premise has appeared in a number of other works since.
Amiable comedy adapted from an Oscar Wllde story with Charles Laughton as a ghost condemned to walks the family castle for his cowardice. Contains much Wartime comedy about the clash between British and American cultures
Madcap screwball comedy with Danny Kaye required to pose as his dead twin brother who is then taken over by his ghost during a trial
An early David Lean film, an adaptation of a Noel Coward play, a drawing room comedy in which a medium conjures a man’s late wife amid much malarkey and mayhem
An Abbott and Costello comedy. Not one of their monster bashes but a variant on the light comedy that had been popular in the last decade with Lou as an 18th Century ghost haunting Bud Abbott in the present. Can’t say I am a big fan of their humour, most of the slapstick that seems dated today
A light whimsical short story about a daydreamer is turned into a bloated and ponderous vehicle for the musical and comedy set-pieces of the perpetually wet-eared Danny Kaye
A Hollywood copy of the British mermaid film Miranda in which dull middle-aged William Powell fishes up capricious mermaid Ann Blyth. This has an amiable charm
The most well remembered of Abbott and Costello’s films. Universal had shuffled their Famous Monsters through several team-ups and here decided to play them for outright laughs. Undeniably likeable
The very first mermaid film, a wonderfully droll comedy in which a capricious Glynis Johns innocently wreaks havoc on all the men around her
Typical Old Dark House comedy of the 1940s, which has been welded to the formula of the Our Gang comedies with a bunch of kids engaged in a comedic antics in a scary mansion peopled by apes, dead bodies and a sinister scientist
Charming post-War Ealing Studios comedy where the London suburb of Pimlico declares themselves a separate country
A comedy in which Ray Milland is cast as a chemistry professor who becomes a baseball star after inventing a wood-repelling chemical
Adaptation of Mark Twain’s classic about a modern man thrown back to the time of King Arthur. This has been made as a vehicle for Bing Crosby and makes for fairly excruciating viewing today
One of the first depictions of an android on film, a madcap British comedy of manners about the creation of an android woman
This was the first in a series of excruciating comedies that pairs hapless Donald O’Connor with Francis, a talking mule. Six sequels followed
Another of the films from the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys, a prolific comedy act of the era. Here the boys set out to bust a fake medium racket during the course of which they are aided by a ghost
Classic Ealing comedy where Alex Guinness causes social disruption when he invents a suit that never wears out or gets dirty
The second of Abbott and Costello’s outings with Universal’s Famous Monsters. The usual numbskullery is boosted by some excellent invisibility effects
Abbott and Costello take on the fairytale as a vehicle for their usual inanities. This is the only film the two made in colour and financed it themselves, but is not one of their more inspired offerings.
One in a series of popular British drag comedies, this imports Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist for a series of frenetic and none-too-funny goings-on that make little sense
British quota quickie that is a likeable light fantasy comedy about a haunted Scottish castle and comes peopled with a cast of eccentrics
The only film that Marilyn Monroe will be written about for on this site. A classic screwball comedy about the accidental discovery of a formula that causes all who take it to revert to adolescence. Much madcap malarkey ensues but it does get very silly
The third of Abbott and Costello’s comedic meet ups with the Famous Monsters – in this case a series of lowjinks as they encounter Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (played by Boris Karloff)
One of the forgotten comedies from UK’s Ealing Studios, this rails against the evils of the then new medium of television where The Devil contrives to make people miserable by getting them to watch tv
British quota quickie, a comedy about a man who discovers an oracle in a well that gives him tips on horse races
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
Arch Oboler makes this madcap comic where milquetoast Hans Conreid’s life is turned upside down when his tv set becomes possessed by a mischief-making robot from the future
Abbott and Costello take time out from comic hijinks with the Famous Monsters to go to Venus (despite the title) and engage in various datedly sexist gags with a planetful of women
Perhaps the strangest film Mickey Rooney ever made, a comedy in which he is a prospector caught in an atomic explosion and afterwards gains the ability to cause things to explode
A sequel to the charming British mermaid comedy Miranda with Glynis Johns again owning the show with her flirtatiously coy sparkle as she swaps places with a lookalike relative
The Bowery Boys were a poor man’s Abbott and Costello; here in one of their most entertaining outings they try to compete with Abbott and Costello’s monster bashes
Abbott and Costello’s fourth and final meeting with the Famous Monsters. However, this is a desultory outing where nobody seems to be making much of an effort
Charming fantasy in which James Stewart is tempted by capricious witch Kim Novak. This almost certainly served as the inspiration for tv’s Bewitched
The one and only solo outing from Lou Costello of Abbott and Costello fame made after the duo’s split-up and just before Lou’s death. The film is essentially a comedy remake of the previous year’s Attack of the 50 Foot Woman in which Lou’s newlywed wife abruptly becomes a giant
Full-length comedy from The Three Stooges where the idiots are janitors at a space centre who accidentally launch themselves into space. One of several Space Age films where popular comics where launched into space
Peter Sellers comedy where the smallest country in the world invades the USA and ends up accidentally winning
The first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
The popular fairytale has the sexes reversed and is reworked as a comedy vehicle for Jerry Lewis, although the upshot of this is that we get a Cinderella who is now a near-imbecilic Beverly Hills stepchild
A satirical Gore Vidal play is bent out of shape to become a vehicle for the slapstick nonsense of Jerry Lewis, cast as an alien visitor. Lewis is a love him or hate him actor; depending on one’s tolerance for such, this has much fast-paced silliness
In the 1960s, a number of popular comics made films about the Space Race. This was a vehicle for Norman Wisdom, a minor British comic of the era, and has him enrolled in the Navy and launched into orbit
The Three Stooges are transplanted into a retelling of the fairytale, although their slapstick inanity feels drowned out amid the maudlin banality and Cinemascope spectacle
One of the inspired delights from Disney’s live-action era, a hit that became the template for their subsequent live-action films. The scenes with flying vehicles and basketball teams are entirely charming.
After a decade, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby returned for their sixth and final Road movie. Both they and the knockabout comedy are on great form with the show taking on the influence of the 60s spy movie fad and even sending them to The Moon
Federico Fellini’s episode of the anthology Boccacio 70 in which a giant size Anita Ekberg steps off a billboard to tempt a moralist with lust
Disney comedy starring Tom Tyron as an astronaut caught up in comedic antics with alien visitor Dany Saval
The Three Stooges travel through time to take on the Italian muscleman film in a never particularly funny comedy
Comedy about two idiot soldiers captured by alien women. The painfully unfunny routines, laughable vegetable monsters and attitudes to women make this one of the great unrecognised bad movies of all time
The Three Stooges join a number of other comics of this era in taking on the space race. Well they only briefly venture into orbit and mostly this can be described more as a slapstick haunted house comedy with alien invaders
Sequel to Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor that only unimaginatively shuffles around the same elements and lacks the inspired touch of the first film
Jerry Lewis is either a low him or hate him figure; whatever the case, one should give this, his best film, a chance … It is Lewis offering his own comedic spin on the Jekyll/Hyde story, which contains a great performance on his part as he swings between a socially inept nerd and smooth lounge singer
Quirky and charming sequel to The Mouse That Roared in which the world’s smallest country decides to launch a mission to the Moon and accidentally end up winning the Space Race
A legendarily awful spy movie where assorted characters run around a ranch in ethnic disguise trying to stop a Russian who is unleashing a rabbit that contains a deadly virus
This was the eighth of the Carry On films. The popular British comedy series turn their bawdy sights to conducting a spoof the James Bond film during the height of the spy movie fad
One of the popular Beach Party comedies of the 1960s. Tommy Kirk turns up as a bumbling Martian to romance Annette Funicello
One of the wacky inventor live-action comedies Disney made in the 1960s, a sequel to The Misadventures of Merlin Jones where Tommy Kirk variously adopts a chimpanzee and tries to sleep-coach football jocks
Very silly AIP comedy that parodies the massively popular James Bond films of the era, as well as features Vincent Price as the villain spoofing his appearances in the studio’s Edgar Allan Poe films
Twelfth of the popular British comedy series, here the Carry On team conduct a bawdy farce on the Hammer horror film that was all the in-thing at the time
Comedy where Doris Day is a NASA employee drawn into spy shenanigans. It feels as though Day has been cast in a Jerry Lewis role and the whole film is nothing more than a series of slapstick set-pieces
Film spinoff from tv’s The Munsters, a likeable knockabout farce featuring the original cast
Zany Czech film where a scientist invents a device that can cause dream to manifest only to cause the sexy comic-book heroine her husband is dreaming about to appear
Comedy in which Jerry Lewis and Connie Stevens are forced to marry to go to The Moon. The sexual politics play out pretty embarrassingly today
Don Knotts was a popular comic of the era who specialised in a craven fearfulness. Here he plays in a haunted house comedy. Beyond Knotts’ comedic antics, the film never seems very interested in the haunted house aspect
An excruciatingly unfunny slapstick comedy with Soupy Sales as the janitor at an space laboratory who is accidentally made weightless
Italian-made sequel to the campy Vincent Price starring Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. Directed by the usually great Mario Bava and overrun by the buffoonish clowning of Italian comics Franco and Ciccio
Roman Polanski misfired with this vampire comedy intended as a spoof of Hammer Films. Beautifully produced but comedy is not Polanski’s forte and the film seems to consists of much slapstick running around
Most of the comics of the 1960s made a film dealing with the Space Race and here it is the turn of Don Knotts. Lots of bumbling slapstick ensues in this hardly inspiring entry
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
Here gimmick master William Castle turns his attention away from the usual into making a light fantasy comedy about a family who buy a house inhabited by ghosts
A lightweight Italian comedy of errors where Sophia Loren and husband move into a mansion being offered cheaply only to find it is haunted by the ghosts of the previous owners
This jumps aboard the 1960s fad for Jules Verne film adaptations but it has nothing to do with Verne and is instead a slapstick caper film about the building of a rocket during the Victorian era
Disney live-action comedy with Peter Ustinov as the ghost of a resurrected pirate who comes to the aid of an ailing collage track team
Mary Tyler Moore stars as a beatnik in a bizarre comedy where people are infected with a virus that makes them happy
Comedy about aliens who have invaded Earth and keep broadcasting commercials to tell how wonderful life is. You feel like this should be great satire but instead the film flounders about without any plot tapping a 60s counter-culture vibe before finding it doesn’t have anything to say
Director Jack Arnold was one of the great voices of 1950s SF cinema. Here he turns to making a none-too-funny comedy set in an underwater habitat. Featuring a teenage Richard Dreyfuss
A not terribly funny parody of the Italian-made Hercules films of the 1960s. This is mostly known for featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger (billed as Arnold Strong) in his first acting role
From Melvin Van Peebles who made the first Blaxploitation film, a satire in which a white man wakes up to find he has turned black. This takes a savage bite out of race relations but ends up without teeth in being distracted by Godfrey Cambridge’s raucous loudmouth performance
A vehicle for Marty Feldman, a peculiar comedy where he plays an advertising executive who has Walter Mitty-like sexual fantasies
A mind-boggling oddity – a slapstick comedy Western where there seems no limit on how nutty things are allowed to go, including characters venturing to Heaven and Hell
Antonio Margheriti, better known for his Gothic horror and giallo films, makes an invisible man comedy