The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An entry in the spate of 1980s bodyswap comedies with Dudley Moore and Kirk Cameron as father and son who swap bodies. Enjoyably silly with good performances from both.
An enjoyable comedy where a scientist is visited by his older self who has travelled back in time to beg him not to invent the time machine that he is about to create
Extremely silly and at times undeniably funny spoof on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – here Dr Jekyll becomes a coke addict who snorts his formula and turns into a swinger with a giant afro
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
Likeable comedy variant on E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial in which senior citizen Ben Kingsley befriends an alien visitor after its UFO crashes in his backyard. Few films are made with such an acute awareness of aging
Rob Zombie conducts a big-screen remake of The Munsters and surprisingly enough makes his best film yet
Film spinoff from tv’s The Munsters, a likeable knockabout farce featuring the original cast
A really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
A Bollywood film about an invisible superhero, this is sparing on effects but should be seen for the lunatic entertainment value it offers, including several surreal song and dance numbers and much frenetic slapstick
Rather funny comedy about Satanists and a virginal pizza girl who is chased as their intended victim. This comes with a bizarrely akilter sense of humour that reminds of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours
Highly enjoyable comedy set among the hi-tech hijinks of a group of university science geeks. Val Kilmer owns the show in his second screen performance
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
Witty and overlooked parody of the superhero with Alan Arkin as a retired superhero trying to get back into the game. Made before superhero films became big and has a number of charms that were ahead of its time
Genial and very likeable spoof of Dracula and the vampire film that succeeds where other works have failed and is very funny. George Hamilton steps into the role of Dracula with debonair charm
The sort of film that might make Troma radioactive green with envy they didn’t make it concerning a giant rampaging ass. Mind-boggling and willing to be stupid and in frequent bad taste
The second of the films directed, written by and starring Yahoo Serious where he plays a descendant of Australian outlaw Ned Kelly who discovers fame in Hollywood
A really strange comedy where John Ritter is dragged away by Jim Belushi who claims to be a spy supposedly dealing with aliens
An appealingly witty comedy where two losers set out to become vampire hunters with fumblingly inept results. Written and played with a snappy, sarcastic appeal
Madcap slapstick caper comedy with Bruce Willis as a cat burglar. This was a massive box-office flop at the time but remains a lunatically out-of-control mess that is frequently hilarious
Likeable light fantasy comedy where Robert Downey Jr is possessed by four disembodies souls and sets out to help them achieve their purpose. Filled with some great performances.
The very first mermaid film, a wonderfully droll comedy in which a capricious Glynis Johns innocently wreaks havoc on all the men around her
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
Pee-Wee Herman is a deliberately annoying character that is either adored or intensely loathed by audiences. This third film closely follows the structure of the first film with Pee-Wee in a series of nonsense adventures on a cross-country journey
A raucous and vulgar, if at times undeniably funny, comedy where John Cusack and three friends use a hot tub at a resort that causes them to travel back in time to the 1980s.
A shot during the Covid lockdown film. An amiable comedy set on the last day of the world where Zoe Lister-Jones and her imaginary younger self Cailee Spaeny walk across L.A. to find closure with the people in her life
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
Classic Ealing comedy where Alex Guinness causes social disruption when he invents a suit that never wears out or gets dirty
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
Wes Anderson’s quirky individualistic films can be an acquired taste. This is set in a stunningly designed retro 1950s town as various oddball characters intersect in between the appearance of an alien visitor
Fourth of the live-action films adapted from the Asterix comic-books with Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This replicates the absurdist historical wit of the originals while poking fun at the foibles of the British
An eccentrically oddball comedy in which a man discovers that his strange roommate may be a comic-book super-villain. Made independently but with a dry wit that is hard to resist
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
The first of the live-action films based on the famous comic-books set during the Roman period, starring Gerard Depardieu who seems born to play the part of Obelix
Film spinoff of a Dan Aykroyd skit on Saturday Night Live about a family of aliens ho attempting to maintain ordinary suburban life on Earth The film has a really wacky sense of humour, which is probably why it was a box-office flop
The third of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This faithfully replicates the look and visuals of the original comic-books as the two head off to the Olympics
The second live-action tv adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books (in fact combining two books). This is uneven and oddly padded but beautifully produced
Very loosely based on a real-life incident, this is an Animals Attack film about a rampaging bear wired on cocaine. Director Elizabeth Banks makes a play for darkly funny humour
A miracle of $1.98 no-budget film-making, this Bigfoot comedy shouts out its sheer good nature from every pore. It is a film that wears its shortcomings with pride, while the director and cast have a great comic timing
One of the original genre parodies, a very silly and amateurish film that also manages to be occasionally quite funny. Three sequels and an animated tv series followed
An amiable comedy that relocates the basic story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame to a modern American campus about the taming of a scruffy hunchback who lives in the university belltower
The second of the Austin Powers films is less sharp in its parody of the James Bond film and more focused on a series of broad scatological gags. Mike Myers owns the show in a trio of entertainingly gregarious performances
Hong Kong director/writer Stephen Chow is the star of his own highly creative comedy films. Here in one of his quieter films, Chow conducts a comedy take on E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
Riding at a peak during the mid-2000s, cult director Michel Gondry made this head-scratcher where he eccentrically devotes an entire film to homemade amateur fan filmmaking – all with appealingly wacky results
A laidback slacker comedy where a man is befriended by the ghost of a school friend who proves annoyingly needy and won’t go away
A French film about a time traveller come to prevent the catastrophic explosion of a nuclear power plant. A low expectation film that turns out to be a comedy that sparkles with wit and inventivity
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
Rather funny film that parodies the Hong Kong fad for lush erotic films that popped up in the 1990s. It even manages to wind in a parody of A Chinese Ghost Story
A raucous and eminently predictable variant on the bodyswap comedy that also manages to be expertly played by leads Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds and pulls off some genuine laugh-out-loud moments
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
Charming fantasy in which James Stewart is tempted by capricious witch Kim Novak. This almost certainly served as the inspiration for tv’s Bewitched
Not another killer clown film as you might initially assume, but a really funny Irish comedy about a group of dysfunctional clowns in the aftermath of the collapse of civilisation
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the trio behind Shaun of the Dead, return to conduct a very similar effort – the story of a pub crawl that is affectionately mocking the characters’ nowhere lives, before taking an abrupt dogleg turn to become a comedic take on the alien body snatchers film
Enjoyable zombie comedy that has been regarded as a classic by many and contains an appealing nonchalant sense of humour and some great performances, even if it owes much to Shaun of the Dead
An amusing superhero spoof from the UK, a mockumentary following the everyday Bob, who is rather of a twit, as he goes on a date and his frustrations dealing with the bureaucracy required to go into action
The film that Bill Maher would prefer to forget. Beyond the deliberately absurd title, this is an amusing spoof of the jungle adventure and contains a far cleverer degree of wit than you expect
A parody of British boys adventure stories like Biggles and Bulldog Drummond. This is made with a manic silliness that eventually becomes rather entertaining.
Another film amid Woody Allen’s European renaissance, four tales all set around the gorgeously shot location of Rome. The stories are on the slight side and it is lesser Allen but there is great casting and moments where Allen is on good form
Canadian-made parody of a cheesy 1950s SF film that emerges more wittily amusingly than most Deliberately Bad SF Films
A Disney live-action comedy that puts a Tarzan character on the athletics field for some inspired nonsense
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
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
Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre make an unexpectedly great comic pairing in this mad scientist screwball comedy that comes with an exhaustingly madcap pace
The second in a series of Hong Kong slapstick action caper comedies where the action is maintained at such a madcap and dementedly over-the-top pace that it frequently heads into orbit
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
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
An appealingly eccentric indie comedy directed by and starring Noah Segan as a vampire who suddenly discovers he has fathered a kid
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
Quirkily eccentric comedy written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan about two feuding brothers with pyrokinetic abilities
A mind-bogglingly surreal John Landis film about a family who take everything literally. A completely demented viewing experience in watching as they bumble around trying to puzzle over who is stealing the garbage
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
Eccentric Coming of Age story set during the 1970s punk era where, among the usual other funny travails, the protagonist’s father starts demonstrating psychic abilities
Comedy about a foul-mouthed talking teddy bear. This gets its laughs from much scatological, decidedly non-PC humour that occasionally manages to be funny, especially when it comes to some of the 80s pop culture jokes
Bizarrely surreal comedy directed by and starring Yahoo Serious who plays Albert Einstein as an Australian who discovers surfing and rock
Conceived in the aftermath of the Austin Powers films, this is a rather funny parody of the Blaxploitation film from Spike Lee’s cousin Malcolm D. Lee
Sequel to the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor. That film’s tour-de-force was a scene with Murphy playing all the members of his family. Here the family have been brought to the fore. Murphy’s performance and the effects are expectedly great but the plot is all over the place
Oddball German comedy in which a toy table footballer magically comes to life and becomes a star soccer player
An early work from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about a Mormon who becomes a porn star and then turns superhero
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
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
Off-the wall Eddie Murphy comedy in which he plays an alien spaceship disguised as a human come to Earth. All the fun comes from watching Murphy’s wacky antics, which buoy it up over its weaker moments
Amiable comedy about an annoyingly intrusive artificially intelligent mobile assistant that wreaks havoc on its owner’s life
The third film in the series of stoner comedies trips off into gonzo genre territory. A relentlessly and unashamedly vulgar film that also manages to be occasionally quite funny
Film spinoff from the popular British comedy series sees the familiar characters entering the real world to meet their creators and deal with the cancellation of the show
Sequel to the hit multi-director anthology has a less high-profile line-up of directors, nor hits the astonishingly perverse heights of its predecessor. As always some entries never do much but the film finds its stride in the last few episodes
Madcap Hong Kong comedy starring Stephen Chow as a man sent back down from the afterlife to get three people to repent of their ways. Full of deliriously crazed action and slapstick
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
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films, a sexual rondeau set at the turn of the 20th Century, although mostly riffing on Allen’s familiar sexual neuroses. Contains minor fantasy elements.
A light fantasy comedy from Australia in which Rafe Spall finds he is moving ahead through his life one year at a time every few minutes
Danny Boyle eccentricity with Ewan McGregor as an inept kidnapper and Cameron Diaz as his more astute abductee. A head-scratching comedy that also throws gun-toting angels into the mix
Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia makes what is essentially a comedy version of From Dusk Till Dawn albeit with witches instead of vampires. This has one of the funniest openings I’ve seen in some time but thereafter dissipates into broadly farcical and overlong runnings around
Comedy from China about a man abandoned on the Moon, the last person left alive in the aftermath of the destruction of the Earth
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
A sleeper awakes comedy where Seth Rogen falls into a vat of pickles in 1919 and is awakened in the present-day. A decided change of pace for Rogen who plays two lead roles throughout
The last of the popular Hong Kong comedy series about hopping vampires. While the other sequels became very silly, this goes out on an inspired final note
Lightweight and likeable Meg Ryan romcom in which she is romanced by a chivalrous and perfectly mannered Hugh Jackman travelled through time from the 19th Century
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny DeVito and director Ivan Reitman set out to repeat the success of their hit Twins in this amiable comedy with Schwarzenegger as a pregnant man
The Muppets were successfully revived in The Muppets; this is a lesser follow-up that leaves us with a feeling that the creative team used their best ammunition first time around
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
Albert Brooks film with Sharon Stone as a Greek muse. This suggests a Woody Allen whimsy crossed with something of Robert Altman’s The Player and its satire on Hollywood with real-life celebrities playing themselves