The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Deformity and Disfigurement refers to characters afflicted with bodily deformities and/or disfiguring appearances. There is the common association made that that which is ugly, horrific and unappealing to look at should be shunned, or that is it represents some form of moral degeneracy.
In the horror film, deformity and disfigurement is commonplace. Often horror films feature characters that become afflicted with wasting diseases and mutations or are maddened as a result of scarring in some accident. Mad Surgeons also have a frequent fixation with grafting faces taken from others onto their disfigured wives and daughters.
There are also a number of works that create sympathy for the disfigured and outcast – as in the various versions of Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the more modern versions of The Phantom of the Opera.
Deformity and disfigurement are frequently the character traits that affect Super-Villains and their henchpeople – villains with hook hands or eye patches are commonplace. Often the hurt over their disfigurement will create a psychic split that will leave a villain seeking Revenge against those associated. There are a lesser number of heroes afflicted with disfigurement with examples such as Darkman and Deadpool.
Droll, elegant camp masterpiece with Vincent Price giving the best performance of his life as a deformed madman employing the Biblical Plagues of Egypt as a motif to take revenge against the surgeons who killed his wife
The directorial debut of Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia, a planetary adventure about a group of mutant terrorists that comes with a bizarrely wacky sense of humour
Tony Watt strikes again with another of wilfully bad, agonisingly unwatchable films. All the bad acting, plotlessly rambling scenes and random exploitation movie homages that one expects of a Tony Watt film
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a Women in Prison film set in space. Known under several different names, this is another of Olen Ray’s bimbo pictures where he plants tongue well in cheek
Fine thriller about the hunt for a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam. The police procedural plot is not so important as the entertaining dispatches and some of the finest action sequence of the 1980s
Despite the possibilities set up by the title, this features no vampires nor atomic monsters but is an Italian film influenced by Eyes Without a Face about a mad surgeon trying to restore a woman’s disfigured face
The first film from prolific horror and exploitation director Jesus Franco to which he would later make four sequels. This is a blatant copy of the French Eyes Without a Face served up with little directorial flair
The directorial debut of Zach Cregger that received great word-of-mouth. A film that shifts points-of-views to tell the story of people discovering a horrible secret in the basement of an AirBNB
Frank Henenlotter takes the commercial route and makes a sequel to his no-budget cult film. A bigger budget allows the film to become a comic variant on Freaks featuring a series of way-out makeup effects
The third of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case films but by this point the perverse wit of the original has become replaced by a cartoonish absurdity
Remarkable little no-budget film from Frank Henenlotter about the relationship between a man and the deformed, psychopathic torso of his severed Siamese twin
Tim Burton borrows from the dark brooding graphic novels of the era and gives us a beautiful, stunningly designed film that digs deep into the psychological recesses of the masks and funny faces
Tim Burton’s superlative duo of Batman films were wrecked after Joel Schumacher took up the director’s chair and turned the films into giant camp fests. Here he allows a madly overacting Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones loose as the villains
The second of Tim Burton’s Batman films is even more beautifully dark and glistering than the first, introducing Michelle Pfeiffer as a sizzling Cat Woman and Danny De Vito as a venomous Penguin who respectively own the show
The first of a two-part animated adaptation of the classic graphic novel ever written. The film lacks the same impact because, firstly, it is an incomplete story, and secondly, Frank Miller’s ideas have now become so much part of the modern Batman
Adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel, one of the most famous comic-book titles of all time. The notoriously cranky Moore need have no reason to shun this film version, which recreates his work right down to preserving his dialogue and replicating the set-up of individual panels
Variant on the Mad Relative Locked in the Attic/Cellar film made as part of the British horror cycle. Unfortunately, this plods where it should have developed tension
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
A quite enjoyable attempt to modernise the story of Beauty and the Beast with Martin Clunes as a disfigured reclusive aristocrat and Sienna Guillory as a plumber who connects with him
South Korean-made anime that takes a dive into horror grotesquerie in the story of a beauty product that offers to reshape flesh and a girl who becomes obsessed with it
Girl returns to her hometown after many years, encounters family secrets, ghostly figures, clairvoyant visions. The film holds interest for a time as you try to figure out what is going on but eventually proves a letdown
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
Another in the mid-2000s fad for 1970s remakes. This revives what has been cited as the first slasher film but throws most of the original out and turns the rest into a gore-drenched slasher film
Blacula was a big Blaxploitation hit and was quickly followed by this Blaxploitation take on the Frankenstein film. While others that followed did great things, this only seems a quickie designed to jump aboard the fad
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
Another of Charles Band’s doll horror films a la the Puppetmaster and Demonic Toys films. Here Band goes totally gonzo and makes one of the strangest films of his entire career
Influenced by the classic Eyes Without a Face, this is a work of French Gothic about an aristocrat trying to find the right woman to use her face for his disfigured wife
David Lynch’s daughter Jennifer directs a film about a surgeon who abducts a woman and amputates her limbs to make her love him. A critical bomb, it is a not uninteresting work about woman’s desire handled with more taste than you would think
An unofficial copycat of the Filipino-made Blood Island from exploitation director Al Adamson, a trashy mix involving a dictator’s transplanted brain, Frankenstein monsters and a perverted dwarf
Classic Z budget film about a severed head in a laboratory that has plenty to place it in the bad movie category but is made with such a perverse panache that it is hard to dislike
The first sequel to the 1931 Boris Karloff Frankenstein, which many prefer to the original. Director James Whale comes into his element and provides a whole other level of droll humour that the first film did not have
Uneven George Romero film from his less satisfying latter period in which Jason Flemyng wakes up with a blank white mask on his face and finds it allows him to unleash vengeance against those who wronged him
Shabbily made entry in the 1980s slasher genre. Noted in retrospect for several before they were famous names and being the first producing credit of Harvey Weinstein
J-horror film based on the Japanese urban legend of a boogeywoman with a face slit from ear to ear who appears to kill people
Stuart Gordon had a cult hit with Re-Animator and much of the rest of his career felt like his attempting to repeat that. Here he re-teams with many of the Re-Animator personnel for what is essentially a rehash of a 1960s Italian Gothic film
Fascinatingly sordid film from the early days of the English horror cycle in which Anton Diffring is a mad surgeon obsessed with facial disfiguration hiding as a circus master and arranging a series of circus-themed deaths for his failed experiments
Adaptation of a series of Young Adult books that should have emerged as Harry Potter made with the sensibilities of a Tim Burton. But the result fails to come to life in Paul Weitz’s hands
This would be the last of the films made by stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen where he turns his creations towards conducting another Greek Mythology adventure. With an all-star cast playing the Greek gods.
Director Jon Knautz and actress Alexis Kendra made the quite impressive Goddess of Love and reteam for this film where Alexis befriends the disturbed, disfigured cleaning lady of the title
A horror film produced by Seth Rogen that gains some really creepy effect as a boy finds something is living in the walls of his home
Peter Cushing plays a surgeon who devises an advanced technique to restore his wife’s burn-disfigured face – only to find he must kill to maintain it. An Anglo-horror effort that borrows the basics of Eyes Without a Face/Les Yeux Sans Visage
A tense and well sustained horror with Franka Potente trapped in the London Underground after hours and menaced by a deformed creature that lurks in the tunnels
From the heyday of the giallo film, an extravagantly colourful psycho-thriller involving the killing of models by a killer with a black cat. This works all the tropes of the genre with considerable style
Micheal Bafaro is a justifiably obscure director whose entire career has been built on recycling other horror films. This is his version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which is passable until a Sixth Sense-styled twist ending
The first film in 24 years from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surreal journey through his own childhood. Gone is Jodorowsky, the mad prophet of El Topo, replaced by a warm, wryly self-reflexive Jodorowsky looking back in on his own life
A really strange comedy with Judd Nelson as a socially inept man who tries to make it as a stand-up comedy act after growing a third arm out of his back. Audiences scratched their heads and the film bombed
Christopher Nolan brought the cinematic Batman franchise back to life with Batman Begins and here expands it into something amazing. The show is capped off by Heath Leder’s towering Academy Award winning performance as The Joker
The Dark Knight is a hard act to follow and Christopher Nolan almost does but not quite. The story keeps Batman off-screen for half the film. Tom Hardy’s Bane dominates the show, while Catwoman is surprisingly subdued
Amid the early 1990s spate of dark superhero films, Sam Raimi created one of the few original screen superheroes with Darkman, essentially a superhero film where The Joker (by way of The Phantom of the Opera) is the hero of the piece
The first of two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman now starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This also brings back Larry Drake as the villain Durant
This was the second and better of the two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This adds a much more interestingly complex plot to the mix
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street
Maybe the smartest and wittiest of the modern Marvel Comics adaptations, this takes every opportunity to deflate its own seriousness, not to mention frequently breaks the fourth wall with side-splitting results
The first of three sequels (actually a prequel) to Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race, this gives the origins of Frankenstein and the Death Race. This rehashes much of the first film as generic direct-to-dvd fodder
The Warren Beatty directed and starring adaptation of the popular newspaper comic-strip detective proved a flop. Beatty creates a highly stylised world and peoples it with an all-star cast but fails to invest the world with any depth
Sequel to The Abominable Dr Phibes that brings back Vincent Price and seeks to replicate the same droll campy humour as before but with more mixed results this time
An old-fashioned weepie melodrama about a cottage that allows a disfigured soldier and a plain woman to find love where the magic there allows them to see the other as perfect
A modern remake of an old play filmed twice before about a magical cottage that allows plain and disfigured lovers who stay there to see the other one as beautiful
British director Charlie Steeds delivers a well tuned homage to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that gets it right in ways that most of the Texas Chainsaw sequels don’t
Classic French thriller about a mad surgeon who abducts women to graft their faces onto his disfigured daughter. The film has a rare visual poetry combined with moments of horror that are still effective decades later
A neglected Japanese classic. This is a haunting existential meditation on identity as a man loses his face in an accident but is then granted a lifelike mask
Cult exploitation director Jesus Franco pays homage to the mad surgeon films of his heyday. Essentially one of Franco’s Dr Orloff films by way of the sadistic despatches of the giallo film
From the producers of the ABCs of Death films, a further horror anthology where nine directors from around the world deliver eight episodes based on the folklore of their region
A really great and overlooked anthology of fantastical tales from the 1940s. The three stories told here by Julien Duvivier blow you away with their extraordinary visual stylishness
Danny Boyle’s stage adaptation, broadcast live on movie screens, wrings up some unique changes on the classic tale. The role of Frankenstein and creation alternated between Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller
One of the early films from The Asylum, this offers a modernised retelling of Frankenstein where some interesting attempts to find modern-day equivalents for parts of the story befall one of their usual low-budgets
A series of short film interpretations of the Frankenstein story, with interpretations ranging from BDSM to kung fu and modern police procedural
Shock film in which director Tod Browning depicts the lives of the deformities at a circus, casting real-life freaks in the roles. This was banned for many years before being discovered as a cult classic
Another 1980s horror remake that had much potential. However, this proves to be just another Friday the 13th film by the numbers, albeit with a bigger budget, and widely misses the mark
The second of the Friday the 13th films. This was the point where the formula of the series slipped into place and Jason emerges to become an invincible killing machine
Third of the Friday the 13th films, shot in the brief fad for 3D films in the early 80s. This is also the one where Jason adopts his trademark hockey mask
The fifth and arguably the worst of the Friday the 13th films. Jason is resurrected and engaged in much butchering, before an end reveals it was someone else altogether
The seventh of the Friday the 13th films, this tries to add some novelty with a heroine who has psychic powers but is mostly the same thing as before
The eighth of the Friday the 13th films that offers the novelty of taking a revived Jason to New York City. Actually, one of the better entries in the series, which plays his encounters with New York locals for some amusement
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
One of the more underrated horror anthologies featuring an aging Vincent Price as narrator. All four stories are equally strong and venture into some pleasingly dark and grisly places
Tobe Hooper makes a slasher film that is well above the average and one of his better films. Taking place in a carnival haunted house, Hooper shakes the slasher tropes up with undeniably freakish effect at times
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure set on a world where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
Japanese ghost story based on a kabuki play that has been filmed numerous times. Much more character and story driven than modern kaidan eiga, this builds to a grim and spooky climax with undeniable effect
Latter day Anglo-horror film from Freddie Francis that assembles many Hammer regulars in a story where Peter Cushing keeps a cannibalistic son on his country estate
Dario Argento makes a disappointing return to the giallo thriller where he made his name. With Argento’s characteristic murder set-pieces having been toned down, the results are nothing special
For the most part, this plays out as a mundane drama about someone with a terrible deformity – similar to The Elephant Man or Mask – but who also has daydreams in which he is a giant
The second of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, an Arabian Nights adventure. Made as a vehicle for Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects, which are stunning. Everything about the film is classic
One of the bizarrely colourful German krimi thrillers of the 1960s based on the works of Edgar Wallace involving a series of killings conducted by someone dressed in a gorilla suit
A festival of H.P. Lovecraft short films held in Vancouver, which display a quality and faithfulness to the original texts that far outstrips the professional efforts being made elsewhere
A painfully unfunny endurance test created by star Kevon Ward centred around the deformed, imbecilic hillbilly he played at Halloween shows. The film is little more than people playing morons in silly voices
This was Adam Green’s homage to the Friday the 13th series that comes with the virtue of a high level of gore and a sense of humour. This was subsequently spun out to several sequels
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
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
British-made sword and sorcery adventure in the early 80s fantasy cycle. This suffers from a cheap and impoverished budget that makes everything look tatty
Fascinating British film about pacts with an ambiguous Devil figure. The film largely exists to push protagonist Jim Sturgess into as many morally uncomfortable places as possible
Robert Harmon made the classic The Hitcher, but failed to ever follow up on it. This is the sole work that ever came close – a beautifully tense series of games between Jim Caviezel and a motorised killer on the backroads
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
A Spanish horror film that develops some reasonable effect in its story about a writer who moves to a small town only to find the locals are keeping sinister secrets
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.
Despite borrowing the title, this has the no connection to the 1953 film with Vincent Price as a mad waxworks curator and is a modern slasher film. Nevertheless, director Jaume Collet-Serra does come up with some very inventive dispatches
Canadian-made slasher film from the director of the original Prom Night. This mixes slasher standard with a variant on the Mad/Deformed Relative in the Attic plot but mostly seems terminally dull
The finest screen adaptation of Victor Hugo’s oft-filmed historical novel. This is visually stunning and featuring an awards-worthy performance from Charles Laughton as the malformed Quasimodo
Largely overlooked, this is the first version of the story in colour and has a lavishness that the previous versions lacked. On the minus side, Anthony Quinn’s Quasimodo is no more than a simpleton lacking in pathos