The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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
Charmingly nonsensical comedy variant on Firestarter where a girl’s dating life is a nightmare due to her causing things to spontaneously combust when she becomes emotionally aroused
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
This rather appealingly plays out as a sex-reversed version of Shaun of the Dead with Maria Thayer as a slightly clueless woman who ends up in the midst of the zombie apocalypse with the guy she spent the night with. Thayer gives a winning performance and the humour is smart and witty
Your mind struggles to process the premise of Nine Lives – where Kevin Spacey finds himself in the body of a cat. It seems a variation on the earlier Oh Heavenly Dog in which Chevy Chase was reincarnated as Benji. Some cute effects but what a lightweight effort for an actor of Spacey’s calibre
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 really funny parody of Japanese monster movies. Sublimely silly nonsense
The second of Disney’s Dexter Reilly films with Kurt Russell as a teen genius who invents an invisibility formula
A flop theatrical film spinoff from the Get Smart tv series with Don Adams’ Maxwell Smart trying to stop a bomb that renders people naked
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
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
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
Irish-made comedy with Robbie Coltrane who has a Aborigine head in a jar that can predict horse races
One of several vampire comedies that came out in the 1980s , an unfunny effort with a young unknown Jim Carrey as a teen looking to lose his virginity being seduced by vampire countess Lauren Hutton
British quota quickie, a comedy about a man who discovers an oracle in a well that gives him tips on horse races
An early work from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone about a Mormon who becomes a porn star and then turns superhero
Bizarre attempt to mix the 1970s SF film with the British sex comedy as a group of people are abducted by three alien women who are ignorant about sex
Unfunny comedy in which Eva Longoria dies and returns as a ghost to make life miserable for fiance Paul Rudd as he becomes involved with another woman
Vin Diesel seemed to fairly much kill his career off with this excruciating comedy in which he deflates his tough guy persona by playing off a bunch of kids
One of the popular Beach Party comedies of the 1960s. Tommy Kirk turns up as a bumbling Martian to romance Annette Funicello
Variation on the Groundhog Day timeloop theme, this has two people trapped on the same day at a wedding. Of all the copies, this is a delight that has a really hilariously madcap creativity
The slasher film only really came into existence in 1980 but was so prolifically milked that by even two years later it had spawned its own sub-cycle of parodies. This hits in with a wacky anything goes absurdity but, aside from an amusing Carrie spoof, little of it is funny
Oddball German comedy in which a toy table footballer magically comes to life and becomes a star soccer player
Charming post-War Ealing Studios comedy where the London suburb of Pimlico declares themselves a separate country
Hilarious Simon Pegg-written homage to science-fiction fandom and alien visitor cinema. imagine Starman recast with two science-fiction fans and tv’s sarcastically wisecracking ALF (voiced by Seth Rogen)
Pee-Wee Herman is someone who polarises crowds to love or extreme hate. The was the first film from Tim Burton who seems charmingly attuned to the kitsch banality of Pee-Wee’s universe
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
Popular entry among the early 1970s spate of British sex comedies featuring Hywell Bennett as the recipient of the world’s first penis transplant. Mostly this serves as an excuse to string a series of sexual encounters together.
Sequel to the British sex comedy Percy about the world’s first penis transplant in which the central character is now the last fertile man on Earth
One of the first depictions of an android on film, a madcap British comedy of manners about the creation of an android woman
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
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
Fourth of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films, this lets all restraints go and becomes completely madcap
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
This has a certain cuteness to its premise – of seeing a bunch of classic videogames brought to life. Beyond that, Pixels is a one gimmick film that suffers from two people whose films I hate – the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the irritatingly smug presence of Adam Sandler
Absolutely fascinating Bollywood venture into science-fiction. A comedic variant on the theme of the blankly innocent alien visitor trying to make sense of human culture, this has a daringly ambitious bite in tackling the topic of religion and delivering some sharply pointed barbs
Comedy based on a Woody Allen play in which Allen plays his usual hapless character who receives romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart
Film based on a Saturday Night Life sketch with Lance Crouther as a superhero who speaks a nonsense babble
Chick Flick with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock as two sisters from a family of witches. The film never really settles on a consistent tone between comedy, thriller or romance and veers all over the place
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
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
Woody Allen comedy in which mousy housewife Mia Farrow is the fan of a film whereupon lead character Jeff Daniels steps out into the real world to romance her
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
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
A spectacularly terrible film. Designed to exploit the 1976 remake, this offers up a sex-reversed parody of King Kong – only the Kong producers didn’t see that way and sued to stop the film being released. Robin Askwith, the star of the softcore Confessions films, engages in a romance with a female Kong amid excruciating puns
There is irresistible appeal to the idea of a comedy that conducts a spoof of the Biblical Rapture. Despite a script from one of the Bill and Ted writers, this emerges as a remarkably unfunny film that consists of about an hour of Craig Robinson delivering crude sexual innuendos
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
A really strange comedy where John Ritter is dragged away by Jim Belushi who claims to be a spy supposedly dealing with aliens
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
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
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
Comedy released under the National Lampoon banner in which a nerdy student accidentally creates a clone of his object of desire. This feels like a mash-up between Weird Science and a frat rat comedy
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
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
The first of the sequels to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Featuring the first screen appearance of George Clooney.
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
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
A Hong Kong take on RoboCop with Sally Yeh as crimefighting android. Though produced by and also starring Tsui Hark, a very silly slapstick element comes to dominate what are otherwise imaginative action sequences
A comedy variant on android/A.I. themes where two people use robot doubles for romantic subterfuge only for the two androids to elope together
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.
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
Friday the 13th so changed the horror genre that within two years it produced two four parodies of its title. From Roger Corman, this is more of an occasionally amusing parody of classic monster movies than the slasher film
The most demented premise of the year – an animated film about the lives of the talking produce in a supermarket. This is crude, rude and guaranteed to offend (as might be expected from a Seth Rogen penned vehicle); it is also one of the funniest and cleverest films of the year
Comedy that comes comes with a winning concept – clueless hipsters try to get away from their social media devices for a weekend only to find the Earth has been invaded by aliens
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
The first in a popular series of comedies, this spoofs the recent hits of Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer in the most vulgar and witless way possible
The first of the Scary Movie sequels. The Wayans Brothers extend the gag beyond the slasher movie to take on the ghost story and exorcism film while aiming squarely for Lowest Common Denominator humour
David Zucker takes over the reins of the franchise from the Wayans Brothers. With a lack of big scary movies in 2002 to parody, the film takes a scattershot approach, parodying any film at all
Fourth of the Scary Movie films and the usual crude inanity, although under David Zucker the movie parodies have expanded well beyond what can be labelled scary movies any longer
Just when you thought that this witless and unfunny series has died off, it drags itself out of mothballs for another outing. As with the other entries, it is a bunch of recent movies overrun with crude, moronic gags
The Wayans Brothers and most of the regulars return to revive the franchise to make more crude farce of the Scream and Halloween revivals and other horror films to come out in the last few years
Director Paul Bartel and a reasonable name cast make a comedy about the sex lives of the Beverly Hills elites
A side-splittingly funny spoof of Found Footage films as a crime scene video crew uncover evidence of a serial killer and decide to make a documentary about it
The very first film from John Landis, a rather amusing spoof of revived caveman films, As with many of Landis’s films, has a substantial level of playful in-joking and genre in-referencing. Mostly, it plays out with an appealingly nonsensical absurdity
In the vein of frat house comedies of the era like Animal House and Porky’s, this is an embarrassingly cringey film about a teen who is killed while trying to get laid and insists on lingering about to finish the job
The live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Sequel to the live-action Scooby-Doo, this is at least a better film than its predecessor, being more polished in its slapstick and effects but still has no more ambition beyond being a silly no-brain film
One of the more forgettable Woody Allen comedies with Scarlett Johansson as a journalism student who gets tips from the afterlife
A modernised version of A Christmas Carol that seems to have been construed in the shadow of Ghostbusters right down to casting Bill Murray as Scrooge
An attempt to copy Ghostbusters concerning a psychic detective agency that degenerates into painfully bad slapstick
One of the most excruciatingly painful films ever made – a softcore comedy in which God and The Devil make a bet to replay the Garden of Eden by reincarnating Adam and Eve throughout history. Filled with ghastly over-the-top performances and much eye-rolling innuendo
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
Ben Stiller’s remake of the unfunny Danny Kaye vehicle about an impractical daydreamer has no more depth than an inspirational postcard and takes a long time to deliver it
The End of the World seems the least likely backdrop for a romantic comedy. Newcomer Lorene Scafaria seems less interested in depicting social collapse than in making an insipid romcom road movie with two leads who fail to strike up any connection
Comedy vehicle for Marlon Wayans in which he becomes a test subject for a sense-heightening drug. Marlon’s natural comic energy far exceeds the slightness of the premise
Charming and delightful Hong Kong erotic comedy about a scholar who sets out on a journey of sexual freedom
A popular Polish comedy in its day about two men who awake from cryogenic suspension in a women-ruled future where men are obsolete. Some of the comedy reads as very dated watching the film today
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 remake of the old Disney comedy becomes a vehicle for Tim Allen, played with a manic slapstickery wherein Allen demonstrates there are few levels of silliness he will travel to in imitating dog-like behaviours
Farrelly Brothers comedy where Jack Black is hypnotised by Tony Robbins and 300 pound Gwyneth Paltrow as beautiful
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he parodies The Matrix et al with Buddhist monks using flying martial arts moves to aid a failing soccer team
A warm parody/tribute to the George Romero zombie films that saw the emergence of Simon Pegg as a star. It also saw the zombie film move towards a more comedic emphasis, although few subsequent entries come with such good-natured humour
Madcap Hong Kong comedy variant on Firestarter where Chingmy Yau has a curse that she starts fires when aroused
The late Bud Spencer and his compatriot Terence Hill appeared in seventeen badly dubbed, slapstick comedies in the 1970s/80s … Spencer went it alone for this excruciating slapstick take on Close Encounters of the Third Kind in which that film’s kid Cary Guffey is an alien found by Spencer’s sheriff
An Airplane/Naked Gun styled parody of The Silence of the Lambs
A directorial debut from Woody Allen co-writer Marshall Brickman, an offbeat comedy where scientists hypnotise Alan Arkin into believing he is an alien
Film spinoff from the long-running animated tv series. The familiar gags are there but show feels awkward extruded out to a full-length plot. You keep feeling the film should have been more than it is.
Another failed attempt to film the works of Kurt Vonnegut where Vonnegut’s ironic pessimism ends up as witless slapstick chaos on screen
Simon Pegg produces/stars in a comedy spoofing the British boarding school tradition – but with the addition of monsters running around
An hilarious Woody Allen film in which he plays a contemporary man cryogenically unthawed in the 22nd century. This satirisises SF cliches and contains some side-slitting comedy sequences