The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Likeable live-action adaptation of the animated series, which was construed as a parody of Tarzan. The sight gags work well and the creature effects are accomplished
An early work from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about a Mormon who becomes a porn star and then turns superhero
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
A film with a children’s movie premise – an amoral lawyer is forced to be honest for a day when his kid makes a wish – is over-taken by Jim Carrey in full over the top mode
Unfunny comedy in which Harland Williams plays a bumbling idiot who is recruited to take part in a NASA Mars landing mission. Slapstick inanity results.
A huge box-office hit, this comedy turns UFO conspiracy of
Styled in the same movie parody style vein as Airplane, this digs into the spy movie, although in actuality it is more of a scattershot spoof of films of then-recent vintage. Leslie Nielsen found regular employ in these types of film
Woody Allen makes a musical. It is Allen in a much lighter mood than he was in the early 1990s and the film comes with some appealingly eccentric and often downright surreal touches
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he plays an agent of the emperor in a series of gonzo exploits that go crazily over-the-top, including breaking the fourth wall
Martin Lawrence directs and stars in a comedy variant on Fatal Attraction in which he has the role of a player who is stalked by a psycho Lynn Whitfield
Nora Ephron romantic comedy with John Travolta cast as angel who is a slob. A rather aimless shapeless comedy that thinks it is funnier than it is
Before The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson flopped badly with this ghost comedy. Jackson allows his obsession with the effects technology to take over at the expense of much else and provides little that is funny
Tim Burton makes a film based on the old Topps bubblegum card series about Martian invaders, which becomes an affectionately goofy tribute to 1950s alien invasion cinema
Harold Ramis followed up the hit of Groundhog Day with this amiable comedy in which Michael Keaton is an overworked husband who creates several clones of himself to help with the workload
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
Film spinoff from tv’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its deplorable habit of inserting jokes into old films. Here it is the turn of This Island Earth, which is a far better film than the attempt to send it up here
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
This seems to be intended as a parody of a 1960s beach party film but with the addition of comic aliens. Well and truly a black star film, this is excruciating on every level
Remake of the Jerry Lewis film is a comedic tour-de-force for Eddie Murphy as he swings between a shy 400 lb professor and a manic, testostoronally charged health junkie
A tv movie revival of the hit 1980s tv sitcom ALF. Looking back it’s hard to wonder what ever seemed funny about the show at the time
A film spun off from the popular Canadian comedy troupe Kids in the Hall. The loose plot concerns a happiness drug but is mostly there to feature the regulars playing multiple character
Ben Stiller directed comedy with Jim Carrey playing a stalkerish cable installer who makes Matthew Broderick’s life a misery. Carrey’s fans didn’t seem to want to see him play psycho and this was his only flop of this period
Another variation on the Dr Jekyll and Hyde becomes a woman theme. This version is played as a modern comedy wherein Tim Daly turns into Sean Young who plays to bitchy excess
An odd mismatch of talent where Wes Craven directs Eddie Murphy as a vampire who arrives in present-day New York. Craven and Murphy seem to drown either;s distinctive voices out
The one and only fiction film made by documentary-maker Michael Moore of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame, a broad farce concerning an imaginary war declared on Canada by the USA for political purposes
Mel Brooks had a huge hit with Young Frankenstein, an affectionate spoof of the Universal Frankenstein films. Two decades on he returns to do the same for the Dracula film but with far more scattershot results.
One of Woody Allen’s most warmly funny films of the 90s with a side-splitting and award-winning performance from Mira Sorvino. Throughout, Allen gently spoofs Greek tragedy.
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.
Way before Austin Powers, Hong Kong director/star Stephen Chow made the funniest of all James Bond parodies with this deliriously madcap comedy
An Airplane/Naked Gun styled parody of The Silence of the Lambs
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.
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
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
Rather silly and plotless Hong Kong comedy with Chow Yun Fat as a CIA agent encountering a magical girl at a monastery in China
Robert Townsend directs and stars as the screen’s first Black superhero in this comedy take on the superhero film
Hilarious French comedy where a filthy Mediaeval knight and his servant are transported into the present-day
A very eccentric comedy in which momma’s boy Steve Buscemi accepts a deal from a strange salesman to resurrect his beloved mother (Miriam Margolyes) from the dead
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
Quirkily eccentric comedy written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan about two feuding brothers with pyrokinetic abilities
An occasionally amusing Airplane-styled spoof of film noir and psycho-thrillers, including parodies of then recent films like Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction, among others
Winning comedy with Bill Murray trapped in a timeloop and forced to repeat the same day over. Murray is at a career-peak best and served by a great script. The surprise is how much the timeloop theme was copied by subsequent films
Manically paced Hong Kong action comedy about a time-travelling action team purportedly inspired by the Street Fighter videogame. Imagine The Terminator as a manic slapstick comedy with martial arts sequences.
Rather silly and not particularly funny Disney comedy in which a teenager returns from the dead as a zombie and nobody seems to notice any difference. Does contain a number of before-they-were-famous names
Excrutiatingly unfunny Australian film that has taken an old Italian 1960s Italian Hercules film and redubbed it with a comedy rifftrack
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.
Sequel to the live-action Addams Family film that reunites the same cast who fine-tune their roles, while the black comedy has an even more barbed bite second time around
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
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
The first Weekend at Bernie’s had the lame concept of two jerks forced to pretend that their boss’s body was still alive. For the sequel, the body is resurrected by voodoo
The first of the insipid Muppet movies made following Jim Henson’s death, directed by his son Brian. This twists the Muppets out of shape to fit them into a retelling of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol
Madcap Hong Kong comedy variant on Firestarter where Chingmy Yau has a curse that she starts fires when aroused
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
Unfunny comedy in which husband and wife John Ritter and Pam Dawber are trapped in Hell, which consists of various parodies of popular tv shows
Films about stupid people are rarely funny – this concerns a whole planet of stupid people. Despite reasonable production values, there is little that raises even a mild smile in this comedic take on Flash Gordon
A frenetic Hong Kong slapstick comedy about hoodlums trying to obtain a stash of money from a house that is inhabited by a ghost boy
A comedy based on the hit song starring a then unknown Sandra Bullock as a nerd scientist who synthesizes a Gypsy love potion that causes anyone she gives it to to fall in love with her
An excruciatingly unfunny teen comedy with Brendan Fraser as a caveman who is unfrozen in the present-day. The film served to introduce Pauly Shore, one of the most annoying figures to ever appear on screen
Fourth and final of the Killer Tomatoes films by which time the slight appeal of the original concept has been well and truly worn out
A sequel to the Mannequin, the inane comedy about a romance with a storefront dummy come to life. Here Kristy Swanson plays a princess who is turned into a statue before being awoken in the present
Way back before Austin Powers, the James Bond/spy movie parody began here with this silly effort in which teenager Richard Grieco is propelled into an international spy caper
The only film ever directed by Dan Aykroyd, a bizarre oddity that was a huge flop on its initial release. The film is a strange comedy set in an American Gothic junkyard town where even the smallest legal infractions are punished by death. Aykroyd can’t seem to decide it the tone is comedy or horror
A comedy where the Royal Family is wiped out and vulgar American nightclub singer John Goodman inherits the crown. Much comedic play between American vulgarity and British ceremony ensues.
This was the third of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes films. This hits an appealingly silly and wilfully ridiculous note that makes it the best of the sequels.
One of a popular spate of 80s/90s Hong Kong ghost comedies where a man gets the aid of an annoying ghost girl as he pursues the woman of his dreams
Rather funny satiric comedy about a family of insects who set up house in suburbia posing as humans
Comedy where real-life husband and wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick play a couple who are so passionate they start fires whenever they have sex
The fourth of Jim Varney’s Ernest P. Worrel comedies. This pits Ernest in a series of knockabouts routines against a troll that is resurrected on Halloween
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
Charming and delightful Hong Kong erotic comedy about a scholar who sets out on a journey of sexual freedom
The most bizarre of the variants on the buddy cop film that came out after Lethal Weapon in which Anthony Michael Hall is partnered with a gnome. Directed by makeup effects man Stan Winston and an embarrassment to all involved
Comedy in which John Candy wakes up inside the world of the tv soap opera he writes. This feels like it misses most of the possibilities inherent in its idea
After making the groundbreaking anime Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo then chose to direct this oddity – a live-action comedy about a frustrated Yakuza enforcer trying to evict an apartment of foreigners that turns into a horror film in its last third
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
Written by and starring 80s Scream Queen Brinke Stevens, this offers an occasionally amusing comedy take on the possession and exorcism film
The big screen version of the 1960s tv series and Charles Addams’ cartoons is a highly enjoyable Hollywood Halloween Party, a chance for name actors to put on costume and ape life with a ghoulish, mildly perverse, moderately subversive spin
Albert Brooks directed/starring comedy in which he plays a man in the afterlife on trial, required to defend the dull and ordinary life he led, at the same time as he begins a romance with Meryl Streep
Riding high on the success of The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby flopped on cinema screens with this comedy where he appears as a father who returns as a ghost to sort out his children’s lives
One of Woody Allen’s less interesting films, a modernised version of Alice in Wonderland with Mia Farrow as a bored housewife who passes through various surreal experiences
The third of Jim Varney’s Ernest films where he is mistaken for a wanted criminal who is his double – only to go to the electric chair and this to cause his body to become magnetised
Clearly an attempt to copy the success of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, this is a comedy with time travellers visiting the 1970s. Lots of 70s pop culture and faces without any of it being funny
A majorly unfunny film about the arrival of aliens in Hawaiian shirts that do bad stand-up comedy routines and tell everybody’s embarrassing secrets
Well produced but otherwise unfunny comedy about a group of bumbling Martian invaders who turn up on Halloween, following a rebroadcast of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio show
Paul Hogan became a huge international star with the Crocodile Dundee films. He next went on to appear in this oddity star as an aging ex-con who believes he is an angel
This wants to conduct an Airplane styled parody of The Exorcist to which extent it conducts the coup of casting a grown-up Linda Blair
A sequel to the teen psychic powers comedy Zapped! that takes things even more crass and vulgar
A wannabe entry aboard the HK supernatural fantasy fad of the late 80s/early 90s sparked by the likes of the Mr Vampire and A Chinese Ghost Story films … This, which involves a time travel plot, is crippled by a pandering to a slapstick inanity that makes it a painful watching experience
Oddball New Zealand-made comedy with various characters in pursuit of a statuette with rejuvenative properties
Amiably lightweight 80s comedy in which average teenage underdog Robyn Lively gains magical abilities and the complications these create
An inane comedy in which a wimpy teenager goes on a date with Liane Curtis who then becomes possessed by The Devil who is pursued by a chaser of devils
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
A weak follow-up to the hit original that essentially killed off any further Ghostbusters sequels. Most of the the cast are back but the plot and proceedings feel like a walk-through for all involved.
An absolutely delightful comedy from Maurizio Nichetti, a parody of Bicycle Thieves, which becomes a meta-fiction where the characters emerge from the screen and enter the modern world
Light fantasy comedy with Audrey Landers as a writer who befriends the ghost of a starlet played by real-life sister Judy Landers
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
The worst film from the usually great Larry Cohen, an unfunny comedy in which a household is taken over by a witch. Bette Davis quit soon into shooting and is replaced partway through by Barbara Carrera
Wackily funny SF musical with Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey as aliens who land in the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Julien Temple with a giddily effervescent silliness
Director Paul Bartel and a reasonable name cast make a comedy about the sex lives of the Beverly Hills elites
Anthology where directors Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola and Woody Allen each contribute an episode set in New York. Allen’s contribution in which a magician’s trick manifests a giant nagging mother in the sky is side-splitting
A completely ridiculous thriller with Kevin Kline playing a fireman-detective who is tracking a serial killer. It is hard to tell if it was intended as a comedy but it managed to attract an impressive cast list
Comedy take on the Tarzan character with Joe Lara playing Tarzan who comes to New York and promptly proves to be a fish out of water. The filmmakers were likely inspired by the then recent hit of Crocodile Dundee