The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A curse is an invocation that calls upon a supernatural power to inflict ill will against a person or persons. The curse is usually invoked by speaking words of power such as a ritual or invocation.
In the horror genre, curses are often placed on individuals, their families, their descendants, even entire towns. These can often occur on a particular occasion such as a birthday or an anniversary of some crime in the past. This may often be because of the persecution of a wronged innocent such as a Witch who was burned at the stake. Voodoo also offers a variety of curses.
In fantasy, curses are enacted by wizards and witches. Curses can often be responsible for afflicting a person with bodily transformation of some type (notedly The Beast in various versions of Beauty and the Beast). It can also afflict people with Immortality, leaving them unaging as punishment or until they seek restitution for their crimes.
Places can also be regarded as cursed where those that intrude bring death and retribution on themselves. This has even extended into real-life such as the tabloid belief that those who opened Tutankhamun’s tomb were cursed for doing so. See also Cursed Objects for artefacts that exude evil influence.
An incredibly good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. Thought lost for many years, this was made at the height of German Expressionism and has a vividness that other adaptations lack
The original mummy film starring Boris Karloff. Unlike the sequels where the mummy became a slow, shuffling creature, this is a subtle classic with haunted mood.
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
The first in a series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, who became the definitive Holmes for many years, and a reasonable adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel
An Arabian Nights adventure that offers up one of the purest blends of fantasy and romance of its era. Filled with stunning directorial set-pieces and magnificent sets and all shot in colour.
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
Overblown production featuring Turhan Bey as the storyteller Aesop engaged in a romantic adventure
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
Exquisitely shot Technicolor fantasy in which Ava Gardner is romanced by James Mason as the Flying Dutchman, cursed to eternally sail the seas
Classic occult film from former Val Lewton associate Jacques Tourneur that sits in a wonderfully ambiguous place where we cannot be certain whether the supernatural is real or imagined
Fascinating forgotten film with Richard Boone as a cemetery keeper who finds he can kill by placing pins on a map of the cemetery. This feels like a forgotten Twilight Zone episode and develops some quite creepy effect.
One of the finest of all Disney animated films, an adaptation of the fairytale made with the full artistic resources that studio could bring to bear
Hammer Films’ one and only Sherlock Holmes adaptation. It is beautiful to see the opulence of early Hammer productions brought to bear giving the story unusually effective life
Someone decided to make a horror film about the practice of shrinking heads conducted by some South American Indian tribes. Despite starting well, this is mostly dull and pedestrian
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s. While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects
Largely forgotten version of the fairytale that is too rudimentary and pedestrian to find much flight of fantasy compared to other classic versions
A blatant attempt to copy Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, night down to employing the same lead actors and director, but this fails through shoddy stop-motion animated effects
One of the better films from B-budget dircetor Bert I. Gordon, a fantasy adventure where Gordon produces some decent effects
One of the entries from the Italian Gothic cycle featuring a big decaying castle, lurking disfigured figures, sinister hypnotists and moodily atmospheric black-and-white photography
With the success of the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, this was a copycat attempt that cast Price in a trio of tales adapted from another writer of American horror stories, Nathaniel Hawthorne
A small masterpiece of 1960s Italian Gothic cinema. Exquisitely moody black-and-white photography with Barbara Steele as the ideal of a Gothic dominatrix twisting men around her finger and setting a town against itself
Possibly the most conceptually demented film to come out of the 1960s-70s Anglo-horror cycle – one part The Fly, one part a witch’s retribution film about a man who transforms into a vulture creature after teleporting into his ancestor’s grave whereupon he is driven to enact a centuries old curse
Dreary film in which Vincent Price is a magistrate who is haunted by a manifestation of The Devil for his witch persecutions. The publicity falsely tried to sell this as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
Obscure 1970s horror that generates a certain creepy effect with four girls gathered at a big old house for sinister purpose. before going sidewise during the second half amid a profusion of competing tropes
Director Freddie Francis had had great success making several of the Amicus horror anthologies then went independent to made another Amicus-styled anthology here with mixed results
This is nominally a Western – one of the harsh and realistic ones made at the end of the 1970s – and quite a good one too. It comes with a real surprise ending that takes it over into fantasy
Maybe the worst Edgar Allan Poe adaptation ever, a version made for tv that fails utterly to project any of Poe’s gloom and despair, while a badly overacting Martin Landau is disastrously miscast as Roderick Usher
TV movie about the historical discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb by Howard Carter that inflates the tabloid notion there was a curse and so distorts the historical record that it more properly enters the realm of fantasy
Adaptation of the Finn Mac Coll legend, filmed in Gaelic with a cast that learned their lines by rote. An interesting idea that suffers a painful amateurism
One of the original Nazi zombies films with zombies protecting an oasis that hides a gold treasure. This was made by prolific exploitation director Jess Franco meaning that much of the film’s potential is drowned in cheap production values and bad dubbing
This seems to have been slung together as a mash-up of Jaws and the 1970s fad for occult films. Ridiculous and badly made on all levels, no more so than the climax with a giant snake conducting a devil worship ceremony
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 remake of Cat People. In the hands of Paul Schrader, all the ambiguity is made overt and the film becomes one of Schrader’s allegories for tormented sexuality. On its own terms, this is an often smoulderingly sensual work
A B-budgeted hit from the video era concerning a possessed housewife. This is a film that has only ever been construed around the provision of cheap makeup effects at regular intervals, all of which hold an undeniable entertainment value in their cheesy ridiculousness
Given lavish period settings and featuring a sterling cast line-up of British talent from the day, this is probably the most faithful film adaptation of the Conan Doyle story
One of the earliest films from Charles Band. In the years following, Band went onto produce and occasionally direct a great many often enterprisingly cheap low-budget genre films – this is not one of them
A beautifully made Richard Donner mediaeval fantasy with two lovers suffering a curse that transforms them into animals only able to touch in person for a second at dusk and dawn
John Carpenter film that was marketed as a Raiders of the Lost Ark copy but is more Carpenter trying to emulate Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cinema, which was largely unknown in the West at the time. All with highly enjoyable conic results.
The title sounds like that of an erotic horror film but all that we get is an inane teen comedy in which Scott Valentine turns into a demon whenever he gets turned on
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films in the 1980s. A dreary impoverished run through by the numbers with Morgan Fairchild as the Wicked Stepmother and Tahnee Welch in the title role
An incredibly bad film from the heyday of the VHS era. The incoherent plot involves hauntings and a voodoo curse before arriving at a totally surreal ending
Big serious film about Santeria religion that readily delves into the voodoo side of it as detective Martin Sheen and his family are targeted by cultists
Australian horror that sets out to combine US models like A Nightmare on Elm Street and a few dashes of Poltergeist with the idea of an Aborigine curse but emerges as poorly executed
This is what might result if Greenpeace were allowed to take over the BBC arts division. Nicely made but not necessarily a great period drama about a whale curse
A much better than usual film from Charles Band, an erotic fairytale in which Sherilyn Fenn becomes involved with a circusmaster and his twin brother who turns into a werewolf
Painfully unfunny vampire comedy from Cannon Films about a vampire teenager who becomes a rock star. This has one of the least credible premises I’ve ever seen in a film. Mostly it seems to have been conceived around placing various musicians of the day in acting roles with bizarre results
The start of the 90s renaissance of Disney animation, a beautifully made adaptation of the fairytale that hearkens back to the Disney Golden Age. The only animated film nominated for an Academy Award Best Picture
Part of the 80s/90s fad for makeup effects driven popcorn horror – in this case, actually directed by an effects artist. The film moves slow as molasses but the giant zombie poodle and zombie Phyllis Diller do compensate
Essentially Fatal Attraction with voodoo in which Mark Hamill engages in an affair with Apollonia and breaks it off only to find a voodoo curse has been placed on him
This holds the distinction of being the world’s first gonzo zombie film – oh and the first zombie musical too. Not many zombies (or nude bodies), the song lyrics are occasionally amusing but the film’s humour is schoolboyish, and the effort amateurish on the whole
Madcap Hong Kong comedy variant on Firestarter where Chingmy Yau has a curse that she starts fires when aroused
Hayao Miyazaki in a more whimsical comedic mood with this story of the adventures of a talking pig aviator. Even when in a lighter vein, Miyazaki cannot help but fill the film with images of charm and considerable beauty
Incredibly insipid animated film from Don Bluth about a kind-hearted troll that relocates to Central Park. This feels like a wannabe Disney film that is merely going through the moves.
Nicely animated film from Richard Rich that tells the story of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in which a princess is turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer
A romantic comedy in which Amanda Pays has a curse that gives her the ability to read thoughts
Adaptation of one of Stephen King’s Richard Bachman novels about an obese lawyer afflicted with a thinning curse. There are some great effects but the film’s moral messages come off as wrong
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, plus a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude, nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
The second of the Japanese Ring/Ringu films where director Hideo Nakata improves over the original with a series of eerie scares if a frequently incomprehensible mishmash of story ideas
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
Frothy work of Magical Realism with Penelope Cruz as a woman whose cooking weaves a magical spell
Hallmark mini-series set in a world 200 years after the classic fairytales have occurred, this wittily deflates or contrasts classic story elements with the present-day
This is the English-language version of the Japanese horror Ring and actually a much better and far spookier film, where the new script gives the story more depth
A new and extremely good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story featuring Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This offers some radical shakeups of the story and characters
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
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
Enjoyably tongue-in-cheek pirate swashbuckler based on the Disney theme park that proved an enormous hit and spun off a series of sequels, as well as giving Johnny Depp one of his iconic roles
This Hayao Miyazaki film about a girl who becomes assistant to a mysterious magician is not quite in the same league as Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away but has the sublime beauty, eccentric characters and tender charms that all his work does
An amazing breakout hit from Russia, a film that is busy to the point of overcrowding with ideas and its’ director’s visual excess but delivers the goods in ways that make your jaw drop
Sequel to the Japanese original, not the English-language remake. This quickly forgets about haunted phonecalls and becomes even more of a copy of Ring, the inspiration of the original, and fails at generating spooky atmosphere
Film based on the supposed real-life Bell Witch Haunting of the 19th Century. Director Courtney Solomon’s constant efforts to make us jump become so tedious that they produce no effect at all.
Disastrous tv movie version of the classic musical based on The Princess and the Pea
The first of The Asylum’s mockbusters intended as a soundalike copy of Snakes on a Plane, this ends up defeated by low-budget and one of the most absurd premises of any film in recent memory
This has the feel of a fairytale where Christina Ricci plays a girl who suffers from a hereditary curse that has left her with a pig-like snout
The second of the Japanese Death Note films, released almost back-to-back with the first. This is an even better film than its predecessor, delighting in the twists and turns in the games as Light and his nemesis L outwit each other
Uniquely original Japanese horror film adapted from a manga concerning a book that kills anyone whose name is written in it. This has spawned several sequels and an American remake. The show is stolen by the supremely weird Kenichi Matsuyama
Rapper Snoog Dogg fails badly at branding himself as a horror anthology host, while the stories prove nothing to write home about either
Takashi Miike’s One Missed Call was one of the more popular of the Ringu-influenced Japanese ghost stories, concerning a viral curse passed by cellphone calls. This was the second Japanese sequel
Film about a sinister small town where the population must always be kept at the title figure. An interestingly strange scenario suffers from far too laidback direction
A low-budget ingenue effort by three friends about a tenant who discovers that the third floor of his apartment building contains the ghosts of dead asylum inmates
Incredibly tepid New Zealand horror film about an American tattooist who unleashes evil forces after he appropriates Samoan cultural tattoos
Beautifully filmed Victorian-set fantasy in which orphan Dakota Blue Richards moves to her uncle’s estate and discovers the magical secrets it holds
The Ju-on/The Grudge series has spawned thirteen films to date. This was the second sequel to the English-language remake but by this point everything disappears into formulaic scares
This seems to want to do for the lesbian vampire film what Shaun of the Dead did for the zombie film. Alas, the film makes its appeal fairly and squarely into the crude, sexism of British lad culture
Cheaply made attempt to turn the fairytale into a fantasy adventure where Beauty becomes a kick-ass heroine who joins the Beast in defeating an evil lord and witch
Sam Raimi chose to follow up his hugely successful Spider-Man trilogy with this incredibly silly film about Gypsy curses. Raimi piles on ridiculous shock effects that become so over-the-top that the film ends up somewhere in orbit
Fruit Chan conducts an English-language remake of a Japanese horror film. A confused and hokey effort about a haunted film set that is only centred around the provision of schlock effects
Hatchet was a homage to the 1980s slasher film that had a mild amusement. In the sequels, Adam Green upped the number of genre cameos and in-jokes, while pushing the gore effects to an extreme
Catherine Breillat, a director usually known for tackling issues of female sexuality, adapts the classic fairytale in a muddled effort that singularly fails to fly either as fairytale or deconstruction
Absolutely fascinating Irish-Scottish film about people hunting each other with arcane sorceries on a rundown Edinburgh council estate … Compulsively fascinating in its often enigmatic approach, while depicting magic on screen in a way unlike anything we have seen before
The perpetually terrible Mick Garris is allowed loose on another Stephen King book where he promptly reduces a subtle, ambiguous ghost story to a series of lunging pop-up scares without any concept of atmosphere or nuance
Long-winded French film largely about criticising the country’s problematic immigration and asylum seeking system. This also has a B plot about a series of cursed documents
The interesting idea of the fairytale Beauty and the Beast retold in a modern high school setting. Despite itself, the film manages to wring a reasonable sincerity out of the premise
Medieavel fantasy action film with Nicolas Cage and Ron Perlman assigned to escort a witch who may be able to deliver the land from the Black Plague. The wider moral issues of the film are buried under action and CGI
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Harry Potter series but the final chapter rounds out the boy wizard saga in rousing style, mounting an epic-sized battle and finding characters depths that hold some of the best writing of the series
The original Ring was a classic, an eerie ghost story that was a success that spawned a series of copies right around the Asian region. Here the Ring cycle has been rebooted in a heavy letdown that abandons all of the creepy atmospherics of the original for a series of pop-up CGI effects
In this homage to the 1970s occult film, Rob Zombie tones back the posturing shock effect of his earlier films and creates atmosphere. Eventually though, Zombie creates a film that feels coiled to unleash something bad but falters
Eddie Murphy’s presence is not enough to lift the lame premise of this comedy where he is given a curse where he has a thousand words to say before he dies … a film that has a soggy marshmallow heart rather than one that lets Murphy loose to do what he does best
Tim Burton’s slide into mediocrity continues with this comedic update of the cult Gothic soap opera tv series, which is now played at a level of cartoonish unseriousness that resembles the Addams Family
Third in the series of slasher homage films where Adam Green steps back from the director’s chair. This ups the gore content and number of genre cameos, otherwise is fairly much the same as before
Another in the early 2010s fad for fairytales rewritten as dark adult fantasy films – in this case, a version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty told from the viewpoint of the witch