The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Fourth of the original Star Trek films jumps on board the popularity of time travel themes following Back to the Future to have the regulars time travel back to the present for a series of amiable, easy comic encounters
An uninspired comedy about a neighbourhood watch encountering alien invaders that falls somewhere between Ghostbusters and The ‘Burbs. The film’s virtues lie less in the weak premise than in the director allowing the stars to freely improvise with occasionally funny results
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
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
Christopher Landon, director of Happy Death Day and Freaky, makes a comedy about a family who turn the ghost in their house into a viral sensation
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
A gender-swapped remake of What Women Want in which Taraji P. Henson gets the ability to read men’s thoughts. Henson displays no talent for comedy and this is a spectacularly unfunny film
A sex-changed version of My Stepmother is an Alien in which Garry Shandling is an alien come to Earth to breed with a woman. Despite being directed by Mike Nichols this is as lame as it sounds and stumbles through tired routines that were not even funny the first time around
Hands down, this is the best vampire comedy ever made. An incredibly witty effort that contrasts the cliches of the genre with the mundane business of a group of vampires flatting together in New Zealand. A film that comes with sly deadpan gags packed into the corner of every frame
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
Mary Tyler Moore stars as a beatnik in a bizarre comedy where people are infected with a virus that makes them happy
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
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
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
The big screen remake of the 1960s Western/spy mashup tv series is transformed into an overblown and painfully unfunny Will Smith vehicle that loudly signals it is taking none of itself seriously
Quirkily eccentric comedy written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan about two feuding brothers with pyrokinetic abilities
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
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
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
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
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
A Disney live-action comedy that puts a Tarzan character on the athletics field for some inspired nonsense
Frenetic Hong Kong comedy about fairy enchantments involving all the cast undergoing gender reversals
Not very funny comedy from Harold Ramis and Judd Apatow where Jack Black and Michael Cera are cavemen who stumble through many incidents from the Old Testament
Kevin Smith’s follow-up to Tusk slides off the cliff somewhere between Johnny Depp’s incredibly silly performance, a nemesis you can’t take seriously and what largely becomes a vanity exercise in nepotism – Smith and Depp creating a vehicle to highlight their daughters
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
Bizarrely surreal comedy directed by and starring Yahoo Serious who plays Albert Einstein as an Australian who discovers surfing and rock
Mel Brooks’ finest moment, a witty stylistic homage to and spoof of the Universal Frankenstein films. A great cast are on perfect form all around.
The epic fantasy quest film is well due a parody, unfortunately this majorly unfunny effort written by its leading man Danny McBride only makes a beeline for the witless and vulgar
A psychic powers film like Carrie having been reduced to the crass high school comedy of something like Porky’s
A sequel to the teen psychic powers comedy Zapped! that takes things even more crass and vulgar
Cleverly made Woody Allen mockumentary in which he plays a human chameleon who has managed to appear in the margins of historical events
A rather charming South Korean comedy about a family who try to exploit the commercial aspects of having a tame zombie
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
Animals in a zoo offer schmuck zoo keeper Kevin James romantic advice based on their mating behaviours. The premise runs out of steam soon in, the rest is an irritating smartass CGI talking animals comedy
Family-friendly superhero film that places more focus on slapstick than superheroics and contains an embarrassing return to the screen for Chevy Chase