The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An otherworld is a world that does not resemble this one and operates on the rules of Magic. A different world that operates on implied rules of science is either a Planet, an Other Dimension or perhaps an Alternate Reality.
Written Epic Fantasy usually takes place in an otherworld – a land that is self-contained, although sometimes can be tied to this – in the case of Narnia is reached through a Portal, in the case of Conan’s Hyboria exists in the ancient past, or Oz where it is travelled to via a tornado.
The otherworld is often filled with an array of exotic creatures, which can include Elves, Fairies, Dwarves, Dragons, Goblins and Trolls, Orcs and assorted mythical creatures, as well as ones invented for the particular story. The peoples of the land usually live in some type of feudal world, before the industrial revolution (where swordmaking has at least evolved) and the political system is a monarchy.
Fairytales can take place in some variation on this land, although details of the world are usually nebulous. An otherworld need not be a detailed world on the order of J.R.R. Tolkien. Places like Oz, Alice’s Wonderland, the realms of Dr Seuss, the world of Labyrinth (1986) and the Lego universe take place in a realm of exotic colour and design and/or nonsensical denizens and happenings.
A fairly reasonable tv mini-series adaptation of Lewis Carroll – a version that excels in terms of design and in using The Jim Henson Workshop to bring the Wonderland creatures to life
This is an appealingly strange Charles Band produced children’s film about a kid who discovers a miniature magical kingdom that is located under the kitchen sink
An adaptation of the fairytale from Martin Gates, a largely unknown British animator. This embellishes the traditional telling of the story considerably
Fantasy film set in a magical otherworld defended by martial arts wielding kangaroos
Passable children’s fantasy film where the young deposed prince of a kingdom gains the aid of a magical creature that grows bigger each time it eats metal
Extraordinary Belgian fabulist film, part-animated, part live-action, that takes place in a surreal alternate world
Abysmal third entry in the series. The creatures lack any conviction and everything is wrecked by taking the story out of Fantasia back to Earth amid hip contemporary jokes
Amiable if lightweight film where a live-action Macaulay Culkin gets animated and has a series of adventures in a Land of Fiction where he must pass through various classic stories
Steven Spielberg’s long-planned live-action version of Peter Pan emerges as a sequel that asks the question “What would happen if Peter Pan grew up?” Unfortunately, the results are not one of Spielberg’s better films
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
Sequel to The Neverending Story made with a better budget. This delivers some amazing sets and creature designs but is killed with a script that discards the metaphors and complex level of meta-fiction of the original
The second of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, the slightest of the works where the story is reduced to two half-hour episode
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
A work of bizarre genius from stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer. A surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland that is more Eraserhead than Lewis Carroll, filled with Svankmajer’s bizarre Claymation creatures
Outside of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films, not much else that George Lucas has made has been a success. This Ron Howard-directed epic fantasy proved to be a big flop where Howard’s lightweight touch fails to make a one-dimensional plot fly
Obscure animated children’s movie adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that commits the sin of modernising and Americanizing Alice
Stunning Jim Henson directed fantasy film set in a world of visual illusions where the Henson team’s puppetry effects are at the peak of their game to provide the creature effects
From Irwin Allen, the creator of Lost in Space etc, a tv version of Alice in Wonderland, conceived as an all-star musical that comes out as ponderous and leaden in Allen’s hands
A popular fantasy film of the 80s that sits just between the imaginative, particularly when it comes to some its creature effects and design work, and the mawkish. It also comes with an intriguing level of meta-fiction that delivers some odd messages
Head-scratchingly odd fantasy film produced by John Boorman and family where a young boy is transported to a world where he mingles with characters from fiction
This sequel to Conan the Barbarian makes the mistake of watering the primal brutalism down to a PG rating and what results ends up being a pedestrian comic-book adventure
A big-budget fantasy film made too much in the shadow of Star Wars by people with little understanding of the genre. The fantasy elements feel leaden and fail to take any imaginative flight
Adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s pulp adventure stories and the film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. The script from Oliver Stone takes unevenly from Howard but director John Milius gives the film a brutal, primal majesty
The film that Jim Henson chose to make as successor to The Muppets. An astonishing technical leap beyond Muppetry to create an entire fantasy world in living, breathing detail all only inhabited by puppets
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
Earlier less well known adaptation of the C.S. Lewis book made for tv. This is faithful to the book but is badly hampered by primitive animation and an exceedingly simplistic rendering of the story
Forgotten Japanese film about a man searching for a friend finding a village where a bell must be struck to prevents creatures escaping from a pond. Beautiful, bizarre and quite unlike any fantasy film you have seen before
Way back before Peter Jackson, Ralph Bakshi made this not uninteresting animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien. The film was not a success and Bakshi failed to return to complete the second part of the story
Generally overlooked animated adaptation of the J.R.R. Tolkien book made for tv by Rankin-Bass. This keeps to the text very faithfully – more so than Peter Jackson – and is only let down by some limited animation
A live-action film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland that conducts a passable run through of Lewis Carroll with the supporting characters populated by an all-star British cast
A Roald Dahl children’s film that has become a cult classic, set in a deliriously nonsensical world with Gene Wilder give a sinisterly threatening performance in the title role
Chuck Jones, the director of numerous Warner Brothers cartoons, adapts a popular children’s book that comes with a dizzying array of surreal visuals and puns
The third of The Beatles films, in this case an animated work that features likenesses of The Fab Four as they trip through some amazing nonsensical psychedelic visuals
A Soviet equivalent of Alice in Wonderland or even more so Alice Through the Looking Glass where a young girl ventures into a fantasy on the other side of the mirror
The Disney musical version of a story that takes place among the denizens of fairytale. Some visual nonsense but the film dies a slow lumbering death amid the sugary sentiment
Disney’s animated adaptation is usually hated by Lewis Carroll purists for its free and easy treatment of the story but for everyone else comes with a splendidly demented visual absurdism
Studio adaptation that freely mixes elements from Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and features an all-star cast line-up, this works far better than the purists would have it