The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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 horror legend Christopher Lee covering his life and principal films. Supposedly narrated by Lee who is represented by a voice imitator and animation
Documentary charting the rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon from independent comic-book to the animated series, toys and live-action films
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 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
Documentary about science in the modern world and its reflections in the media
A documentary that charts the lurid and frequently distasteful phenomenon of the Nazisploitation film that emerged as a mini-genre in the 1970s
A documentary about George Romero that was filmed during the shooting of Dawn of the Dead. Originally made as a teaching aid for a film school class before being given commercial release
A documentary about David Lynch made by one of his assistants during the shooting of Inland Empire. Lynch tells assorted anecdotes from his childhood and we see him working on his artworks.
A documentary about the making of the 1980 Flash Gordon and following the career of its star Sam J. Jones afterwards
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
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
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 title suggests a work about film fans facing the end of the world but this is actually a documentary about the cult film phenomenon
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
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
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
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
A documentary that purports to examine the mystery of the so-called Bermuda Triangle but soon dives off into an hilarious series of claims involving UFOs, Atlantis, time warps and The Philadelphia Experiment
Documentary based on the book by Erich von Daniken and his much ridiculed theories that aliens visited Earth in the past and evidence of this can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions and monuments
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
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
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
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
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
A documentary that explores the intersection between heavy metal music and horror and the frequently intertwined relationship of the two
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 the Alien series (although only covers the first four films). Contains some fascinating behind-the-scenes footage and anecdotes, interviews and cut material
Chris Marker, the director of La Jetee, returns to SF. Though this is set around a Virtual Reality game, it is in fact a documentary essay about the Battle of Okinawa
A William Shatner-hosted documentary based on the works of pseudo-science author Erich von Daniken and his claims that various archaeological mysteries were created by alien visitors
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
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
Beyond the attention-grabbing title, this is a documentary about the influence that Star Trek has had in the real world. A not uninteresting concept wrecked by Shatner’s condescending attitude to interview subjects
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
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