The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The femme fatale (French for ‘fatal woman’) is an impossibly beautiful and desirable woman whose allure proves deadly for any male who befalls her temptations. The archetype began on the screen in the silent era and gained a popularity in 1940s Film Noir.
There have been a number of genre variants from the immortal queens of various versions of She (1887) and L’Atlantide (1919) to various sirens and supernatural creatures. In the 1990s, a whole body of erotic thrillers derived from Basic Instinct (1992) were awash with sizzling and deadly femme fatales.
A classic German Expressionist film where Metropolis‘s Brigitte Helm gives a sizzlingly seductive performance as a woman born via artificial insemination who grows up as an emotionless man-eater
Michael Polish is one of the underrated American directors. Here an amnesiac Wes Bentley wakes up a prisoner of a wonderfully chilling Kate Bosworth who insists that she is his wife
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
A cheap 1950s B alien invader film with mobsters holed up at a mountainside cabin who are then visited by Shirley Kilpatrick as a radioactive alien
The first and best film version of a classic story about an expedition finding the city ruled by an immortal queen in the desert. This was shot in the real locations and comes with a stunning sense of expansiveness
The sixth film version of a classic lost world story about explorers finding Atlantis and its immortal queen in the desert. This is a more mundane version that waters down the fantastic elements
A film that feels like it should be an erotic thriller but isn’t. Antonio Sabato Jr. rescues an amnesiac Annalynne McCord who proceeds to exert a fatal influence
This slick eroticised thriller was a huge success and made the career of Sharon Stone. The absurd plot bears no resemblance to human motivation but Paul Verhoeven makes an undeniably provocative and entertaining package
Sequel to Basic Instinct made fourteen years later. Sharon Stone vamps her way across the screen but the heated sexuality of the original has been watered down to a lukewarm whimper
A sharp, sophisticated thriller reminiscent of 1940s film noir with FBI agent Debra Winger tracking Theresa Russell as a femme fatale who marries and kills her husbands
A rather dull fifteen-chapter serial about the efforts a detective who sets out to stop Sombra, an Asian spy intent on stealing US atomic rocket secrets
Modest film about a man who becomes involved with a woman who increasingly appears to be responsible for a series of murders. The director and lead actress create a sense of mystery and fascination about what is happening
An early film from Jess Franco in which an exotic dancer is turned into a mind-controlled assassin who lures and kills victims with her six-inch long fingernails as part of a revenge scheme
Scientist Rock Hudson brings an unborn embryo to life as beautiful emotionless Barbara Carrera. Though it uses the trappings of modern science, this still has its feet in the creaky old mad scientist film
A strange thriller in the Basic Instinct-mold with surveillance expert Ewan McGregor obsessed with tracking serial killer Ashley Judd, while haunted by the imaginary companion of his daughter
One of the early films from Paul Verhoeven, an amusingly blasphemous tale that draws more than a little from Don’t Look Now with gay writer Jeroen Krabbe becoming wound into the dealings of femme fatale Renee Soutendijk
Supposedly a slasher film that purports to tell the truth about university fraternity rites, the delves into depicting hazing rituals with gory relish
One of the lesser films made by the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene. Wiene employs the same stark angular sets and exaggerated shadows in the tale of a predatory femme fatale
Wrestler C.M. Punk does a halfway reasonable job of branching out as an actor, playing a regular guy engaged in home renovation who has to deal with a malevolent house
An interesting, if not completely successful, attempt to revive the horror anthology – in this case with four tales that all take place in a Western setting
One of the most tasteless films ever made, a sado-sexual work set in a Nazi concentration camp with Dyanne Thorne as a sadistic commandant torturing and having sex with prisoners.
Eli Roth home invasion thriller where two malicious girls turn family man Keanu Reeves’ life upside down. Roth creates a strong opening but hits the peak of the film not too far in and thereafter loses direction
Based on an acclaimed book, once to be directed by David Cronenberg. This opened to bad reviews but is not uninteresting. A near future setting, precognitive dreams and Amber Heard as a sizzling femme fatale
Beguiling work about a modern witch that becomes a heady swim of provocative ideas about gender issues that is never less than captivating and the most gorgeously colour coordinated films you will ever see
Sax Rohmer created the super-villain Fu Manchu, less well-known was his character of the female super-villain Sumuru who leads an all-woman army in a world domination plot. This was one of two Sumuru films
It would be safe to say that without Inception there would be no Mindscape, which involves people entering memories rather than dreams but is similar in many other ways. Where this fails is in having no interest in the sf potential of the idea beyond using it as springboard for a thriller plot
Jaume Balaguero has become one of the most promising of modern Spanish genre directors, principally on the basis of the [Rec] films. However, this supernatural mystery that resembles one of Dario Argento’s Three Mothers films fails to quite come together
Erotic horror as the demon Lilith attempts to take over a fashion magazine
A splendidly trashy film that throws all good taste to the wind The title role is played by a sizzling, substantially undressed Paz de la Huerta. While deficient in acting ability, she delivers an hilarious voiceover
Beautifully made arthouse film about the real-life Japanese horror writer who becomes wound up in in enigmatic meta-fiction with his own creation
Lisa Joy, co-creator of tv’s Westworld, directs a work of future noir in an ingenious plot involving a memory recording device and Hugh Jackman obsessed with a missing woman
Part of the fad for gonzo Japanese splatter films we had in the late 00s, featuring absurdly over-the-top splatter effects and demented action sequences.; Concerning cyborg-enhanced geisha who wade into battle going through a deliriously silly range of bio-mechanical transformations
A supernatural version of Fatal Attraction where Jeff Fahey is lured into an affair with a neighbour who is a succubus
What starts out seeming like a frat boy comedy about a guy receiving a list of all the women he will sleep with turns into an intriguingly different beast altogether
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
The most lavish of the silent screen adaptations of H. Rider Haggard’s classic, multiply filmed adventure novel about the discovery of a lost city ruled over by an immortal queen
The first sound version of H. Rider Haggard’s lost city adventure about explorers finding an immortal queen (Helen Gahagan). From the producers of the original King Kong
Hammer Films conduct an adaptation of the classic H. Rider Haggard adventure story about the discovery of a lost city and its immortal queen but the epic spectacle never much comes to life
1950s mad scientist film where a scientist develops a regeneration serum only to turn Mari Blanchard into a man-eating femme fatale
Robert Rodriguez makes his return to Frank Miller’s classic film noir-styled graphic novels. You keep expecting this to hit in with the astonishing freshness the first film did. Rodriguez and Miller give us more of the same amazing visuals but there is the feeling it is no longer original and new
Four guys on a stag night encounter a mysterious nightclub that features a woman with a mesmerising and unearthly song. The feature length expansion of the V/H/S segment Amateur Night, this is a film that is rather pleasingly driven by a series of wild and outlandish images
Perry Blackshear is a director more people should know about. Here in his fascinatingly minimalist way he makes a film about the relationship between a man and a deadly mermaid creature
The Hollywood version of L’Atlantide about men encountering the impossibly desirable queen of Atlantis in the desert. This was made as a vehicle for famously non-acting Maria Montez but has some fine sets and a brooding quality that makes it not uninteresting
Not to be confused with the more high-profile
Slick and rather silly copy of Alien that conceptually cross-hatches it to emerge as essentially Basic Instinct with tentacles
The third of the Species films, which follows Sil’s daughter. Some okay makeup effects but the plotting gets fairly silly
Fourth entry in the Species series where at least the series seems to have gravitated to the arena of the trashily absurd B movie it belongs
Modest 1980s video release that builds with some unnerving effect as Timothy Daly grants shelter to Kelly Preston only to earn the wrath of a pursuing Satanic cult
An Indian horror film about a folk tale of a witch spirit the Stree, this was a popular success that was then built out into an Indian version of The Conjuring Universe
80s slasher film about a teenage temptress who leaves a trail of dead men around her. An impressive cast but the film sits on a very dubious line
An anthology of horror tales from Indonesia, most being too short to make much distinction,, the exception being The Mo Brothers gore-drenched first film Dara
The only film ever directed by actor Roddy McDowall. Based on a folktale, it is the story of two lovers trying to escape when one is in thrall to the Queen of the Fairies. McDowall creates a lush film that is oddly ponderous and non-fantastical but what a cast he assembles
A Fatal Attraction copycat in which executive Timothy Hutton finds that seductive temp secretary Lara Flynn Boyle is killing off all rivals at his firm. This has the reputation as a Golden Turkey classic.
Roger Corman film legendarily cobbled together on leftover sets and extra shooting time for Boris Karloff. The result emerges surprisingly well despite
A disappointingly poor copy of Basic Instinct with Lorraine Bracco giving a really bad performance as the Sharon Stone equivalent who may be killing people around detective James Belushi
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
European arthouse film that feels like it should have been a horror film. This starts well but when it veers into genre territory, its big twist has been done by too many genre films of recent and holds nothing interesting in its treatment
This wants to be a little of everything – part 1960s spy film, part British sex comedy, and another part an sf film involving invading alien women – and proves none too satisfying at any of them. The softcore scenes featuring semi-clad alien women are fairly much allowed to overrun the show