The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
George A. Romero was hired to make the first Resident Evil film but was abruptly fired and we ended up with films we did. This is a documentary that sets out to find what happened
A documentary about Guillermo Del Toro made on the occasion of an exhibition of props and artwork from his collection. Interviewed, Del Toro talks candidly, granting us an extraordinary insight into his influences and process
A documentary about the career of Superman star Christopher Reeve and his dealing with life following the accident that left him a quadriplegic
Martin Scorsese produces and narrates a documentary about the directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger who made some of the most exquisite colour films of the Wartime era
A documentary about horror legend Christopher Lee covering his life and principal films. Supposedly narrated by Lee who is represented by a voice imitator and animation
A documentary that interviews five people, including Stephen King and Takashi Miike, about the influence that The Texas Chain Saw Massacre had on their lives. The results are fascinating and illuminating
Alexandre O. Philippe has made a host of documentaries about film and fandom. Here he sits down with a 91-year-old William Shatner who talks candidly as he reflects on his life
A documentary focused on the unique and distinctive French director Michel Gondry, tracing his emergence through music video and to the success of films like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
A documentary about the shark film phenomenon, covering all the way from Jaws to the deliberately ridiculous killer shark film with illuminating insight
A documentary that interviews Dario Argento, now in his early eighties, along with his family and those around him, where he discusses his life, films and career
The Star Wars Holiday Special has a legendary awfulness in Star Wars fandom – least of all that George Lucas has done all in his power to quash its existence. This is a documentary about what happened
The late Stan Lee needs no introduction as the most influential figure over the comic-book in the 20th Century. This is a documentary about his life
Fascinating documentary about the life of cult producer Gerry Anderson, the creator of puppet shows like Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet et al. Made by Anderson’s son Jamie
A documentary that explores the intersection between heavy metal music and horror and the frequently intertwined relationship of the two
A documentary that comes with great affection for the SF films of the 1980s and covers these, along with interviews with key people, although leaves quite a number of blank spots in works it does not cover
A documentary about the making of the Child’s Play/Chucky films, this becomes an oddly touching work about family connections. Made by the daughter of series makeup effects artist Tony Gardner.
A documentary charting the history and varying permutations of the Found Footage film, conducting an in-depth examination of the key films and players
Kurt Vonnegut was one of the greatest SF writers, whose work crossed over into rare mainstream appeal. This is documentary where the director befriended Vonnegut in the 1980s and filmed him over a 35 year period
One of the most in-depth film documentaries ever made where Kier-La Janisse exhaustively excavates every example of Folk Horror
A documentary that offers the best discussion of the life of Georges Melies to date. Much of the film is focused on the recent rediscovery of a complete trove of negatives of Melies’s film
A fascinating documentary devoted to a largely forgotten B-budget sf/horror director and his body of films
Rodney Ascher, who made the wacko Room 237, makes another fascinating documentary that discusses the theory that we might all be living in a virtual simulation
A documentary about Hugo Gernsback, the man who coined the term science-fiction and shaped the genre in its infancy
A documentary that charts the history of the horror anthology in considerable depth, including conducting a survey on the best anthologies and individual episodes
A follow-up to the documentary about the 1980s horror film, this deals with some of the lesser-known and overlooked works that were not covered the first time around
Documentary about the making of Flight of the Navigator and the mind-boggling story of Joey Cramer, the film’s child star turned bank robber
A documentary about Rondo Hatton, the 1940s horror actor who suffered acromegaly, and Robert Burns, the eccentric art director from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Documentary about the so-called World’s Worst Director Uwe Boll. We get fascinating insight into Boll’s filmmaking methods, while the documentary fearlessly tackles the controversies associated with its subject
An absorbing documentary about the making of Alien, which charts the film’s origins and the making of the classic chestburster scene
Peter Cushing is one of cornerstone figures in the Hammer Films story. This is documentary based on interviews he made towards the end of his life
Lost in La Mancha was a documentary charting the collapse Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Gilliam later finished the film and brought the same documentary-makers back to chart the process here
A documentary about African-Americans in the horror genre that covers everything from the earliest depictions through the Blaxploitation film to the rise of Black filmmakers
A documentary that discusses the gay subtext in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge and how lead actor Mark Patton claims it ruined his career
A documentary that charts the lurid and frequently distasteful phenomenon of the Nazisploitation film that emerged as a mini-genre in the 1970s
Documentary where director William Friedkin sits down for a fascinating, insightful look at the making of The Exorcist
An exhaustive documentary that charts in enormous detail every facet of the 1980s horror film, although this is not as exhaustive as it seems to think and leaves some big omissions
A documentary about the life of cult Italian horror director Lucio Fulci that is a mix of talking heads interviews and scenes where an actor reenacts aspects of Fulci’s life
Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the greatest of all directors, having made films like Solaris and Stalker. This is a documentary about his life and films made up of archival material
A fascinating documentary about B movie and exploitation director Al Adamson, covering the frequently hilarious making of his films and the bizarre circumstances of his murder
A documentary made about Clark Ashton Smith, a largely unknown but greatly acclaimed author of weird fiction. Smith was a contemporary of and influence on H.P. Lovecraft
The title suggests a work about film fans facing the end of the world but this is actually a documentary about the cult film phenomenon
Documentary about UK’s Hammer Films that focuses on the handful of films that were produced in collaboration with Warner Brothers. Each is discussed in thoughtful detail
Documentary made for HBO about director Steven Spielberg in which he reflects on his life and films. The documentary tends to focus more on his major hits and skips his minor films but does give worthwhile insight into Spielberg, his life and formative years
A documentary about the making of the 1980 Flash Gordon and following the career of its star Sam J. Jones afterwards
A documentary about cult director Larry Cohen, best known for It’s Alive and other works. This is filled with hilariously entertaining stories of his guerrilla film-making methods
The William Shatner documentary is a fascinatingly bizarre beast. This involves Shatner talking to a bunch of scientists and celebrities, before meeting with Stephen Hawking but peculiarly enough seems to have no central thesis or idea about what it is setting out to prove
The shower scene in Psycho is probably the most famous single scene in cinema history. The idea of an entire documentary devoted to analysing a single scene is a bit of a head scratcher at first but quickly the analysis of film’s context and the hidden meaning of shots proves completely fascinating
Documentary about George Lazenby, the former male model who scored the role of James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and then abruptly quit. Lazenby proves a highly entertaining raconteur and his life story is eye-opening to say the very least
A documentary about arthouse director and regular genre contributor Peter Greenaway. This takes an alphabetical look through Greenaway’s themes and offers some peculiar insights into him as a person
While the world knows of Bob Kane as the creator of Batman, few of heard of Bill Finger who created many of the core aspects but had his contributions claimed by Kane. This is a documentary that sets out to find the truth
A documentary about the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe phenomenon. This covers everything from the origins of the toys through the animated series to the live-action film
David Lynch is the king of weird cinema from works like Eraserhead to Twin Peaks. In this documentary, a 70-year-old Lynch sits in his art studio and in a very laidback manner reflects on his process and tells us his life story
A documentary about Luigi Cozzi, director of Starcrash and Hercules, among others. Cozzi proves a highly enjoyable raconteur and often more entertaining than some of the films he has made
Documentary about the life of Leonard Nimoy made for the 50th Anniversary of Star Trek. Directed by Nimoy’s son Adam, this is mostly a biography tracing Nimoy’s life with some fascinating material showing the evolution of Spock
Documentary about the comic-book that ends up trying to address everything and being so hopelessly watered down it feels like an attempt to explain everything to someone who has never read a comic-book before
Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a scene-for-scene remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot on video by two teenagers over seven years, has become the stuff of legend. This is a documentary about its making, filled with hair-raising story of seat of the pants filmmaking
Absolutely fascinating documentary that speculates what the likely reactions would be if aliens were to arrive on Earth where we get input from various scientists and UN spokespeople. The answers are compelling and completely different from anything that you usually get in SF cinema
A documentary devoted to the extras and bit players who appeared in Star Wars. Gently affectionate, it tells the story of people who never much else notable and how being part of such a cultural landmark impacted their lives
Rodney Ascher, director of the fascinatingly whacked Room 237, returns with a documentary about sleep paralysis that travels into a territory more creepy than most horror films get
A film that started as a documentary about a man engaged in the restoration of an Italian villa before its subject died and it morphed into a peculiar fantasy film
Fan-produced documentary about the making of the Back to the Future trilogy. The filmmakers get face time with almost everybody involved. Far less interesting are the scenes dealing with DeLorean restoration
Fascinating documentary examining the proposed Superman Lives film from Tim Burton starring Nicolas Cage that never ended up going ahead. The competing personalities make for compulsive watching
Brian De Palma is one of the most stylish directors in the world. In this documentary, he candidly reflects on his career, wryly accepts his flops and recounts the witty anecdotes from behind the scenes
This is not an adaptation of the Arabian Nights but the title has been appropriated for a collection of quasi-fantastical tales and even documentaries about the Portuguese Austerity Crisis over six hours in length
The 1994 film version of The Fantastic Four is the stuff of legend – made for $1 million budget solely to secure a copyright and never intended to be released. This is a documentary about its making
In the same vein as Ed Wood, a biopic of Art Nelson, director of the bad movie classic The Creeping Terror. Where Wood was an inept innocent, Nelson was a conman and pathological liar, which makes his story wilder
Documentary charting the rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon from independent comic-book to the animated series, toys and live-action films
A documentary about Gerry Anderson and the making of his various puppet tv shows, the most famous of which was Thunderbirds. Each show is covered in depth and surviving personnel interviewed
Documentary about the popularity of zombie films, this covers the history of the genre in reasonable depth, even examines the historical origins and provides an amusing glimpse into the zombie’s pervasion of popular culture
Documentary about H.R. Giger, most famous as the creator of the alien in Alien but has also created an extraordinary body of darkly beautiful art, even if we never gain much insight into who Giger was
Absolutely fascinating documentary about Golan and Globus, the producers of a great deal of action, ninja, Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson films in the 1980s, plus many genre works, under the Cannon Films banner
A documentary about Cannon Films and legendary producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. This one was authorised by Golan and Globus and makes interesting comparison to Electric Boogaloo
A compulsively watchable documentary about the making of the 1996 The Island of Dr Moreau and the bizarre stories of how the personalities and star egos made it into a cinematic train wreck
A documentary about 2000AD, a weekly British comic-book that gave birth to Judge Dredd and featured some of the earliest works from names like Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, among others
A documentary about Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki that offers fascinating insight into the working processes of the amazingly genteel, often frank Miyazaki who seems a fount of youthful vigour
Documentary about the making of Night of the Living Dead. This covers the making of the film, although George Romero is the only person from it interviewed. Far more potent is the documentary’s pinpointing of the film’s cultural influence
A fascinating documentary about one of the most amazing films never made – director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s planned adaptation of Dune in the mid-1970s
Michael Paul Stephenson of Best Worst Movie fame makes a documentary about people who turn their homes into Halloween haunts. While lacking the freakshow aspect of Best Worst Movie, this is a likeable effort that follows its subjects in perfecting their art
Documentary where people offer up various crackpot theories about the hidden meanings of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Fascinating in a bizarre freakshow way, an undeniable cult film in the making
A fascinating documentary about animator Richard Williams that principally focuses on the tragic failure of Williams’s lifework The Thief and the Cobbler, which would have been the most ambitious hand drawn film ever made
The William Shatner directed documentary can be a unique beast. Here he makes a quite reasonable effort to examine what is at the heart of Star Trek fandom
A documentary about the slasher film, which interviews various directors and actors behind the films about the genre’s origins and rules
Supposedly a documentary about the Frankenstein story but no more than a glorified dvd extra to accompany the Danny Boyle stage production of Frankenstein. This covers the life of Mary Shelley but almost entirely sidesteps the Frankenstein cinematic legacy
French documentary made for the 150th celebration of Georges Melies’s birthday. Interesting if never uncovering anything new. Too much focus is placed on A Trip to the Moon and its recent restoration
Fascinating documentary portrait of a series of individuals who dress up in costume and set out to be real-life superheroes
Documentary where William Shatner interviews the actors who played the captains in the other incarnations of Star Trek. The entire show is hijacked by the Shatner ego as he constantly overrides his interview subjects
Documentary-maker Morgan Spurlock of Super-Size Me fame visits the San Diego Comic-Con and follows several attendees but comes away finding surprisingly little to say about the nature of fandom
Documentary about the so-called Scream Queen phenomenon – a series of cheap horror films from the late 80s/early 90s made for the video market featuring a series of starlets who readily got naked and kicked ass. This interviews the principal players and covers the genre with a reasonable degree of insightful candour
A documentary devoted to the life and films of stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen whose films, which include the Sinbad films and Jason and the Argonauts, have gained a cult following
Documentary about legendary B-budget director/producer Roger Corman, although this is more of an awe-struck tribute that disappointingly fails to venture into any of the stories of notorious cheapness and cost-cutting practices attributed to Corman
Documentary about KNB EFX Group, one of the premiere makeup effects companies in contemporary Hollywood. Although nominally focused around KNB and their history, the documentary principally profiles Greg Nicotero, the N of the group
Documentary about Star Wars fandom that critically takes on George Lucas’s merchandising and disappointment with the prequels
A documentary that charts the history of exploitation cinema and covers much ground generally informatively despite the odd omission of some key works and players
Based on Ray Kurzweil’s non-fiction book about the coming evolution of machine intelligence, this is an odd mix of documentary and SF, including a storyline to illustrate Kurzweil’s main theses … The vision is an extraordinarily utopian one but one has just a few plausibility problems with it
Documentary about the making of Dark Star, depicting its’ journey from student film to cult film. The only disappointment is the absence of key players John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon
A documentary about the US exploitation film industry in the Philippines in the 1970s filled with mind-boggling anecdotes that uncover a wild west of unregulated filmmaking
Documentary about the phenomenon of the tv horror host
Using the framework of an SF film, told from the perspective of a devastated future, this is a documentary about Global Warming, although one that falls short of making a convincing argument
Documentary made about Troll 2, which is considered a strong contender for the worst film ever made. The attempt to talk to all those involved in the making of the film proves absolutely hilarious
Hilarious and entertaining documentary about the Australian exploitation film that flourished between the late 1970s and 80s. The film delves into an arena of forgotten films and tells their stories with a great deal of detail