The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Howling was a witty and genre savvy werewolf film; this is one of several all-terrible sequels. The plot tiresomely rehashes the first film and the only point of note are the variably effective wolf transformation effects
The first of a string of bad follow-ups to Joe Dante’s classic. Sybil Danning plays the werewolf queen and displays her impressive chest measurements, while Christopher Lee was somehow persuaded to appear
The film that made the name of Joe Dante who fills it with a barrage of werewolf movie references and in-jokes. The film’s reputation rests on an amazing mid-film effects sequence where a man transforms into a wolf
The third of the trilogy of animated films from Arcana Studios based around the adventures of a young H.P. Lovecraft
This is a film that leaves you in two minds – one that is constantly going wow at the animated artistry and detail before us; the other that is realising that this is yet another formula animated film
Popular animated adaptation of a children’s book. This hits all the right story arcs and in sufficiently likeable measure to work amiably. Two sequels and a live-action remake followed.
One of the most beautifully made formula animated films of recent vintage but at the end of the day no more than a film that is by the numbers where the artistry is unsupported by the banal script
Sequel to The Houses October Built with the same group touring Halloween haunts encountered sinister figures beneath the masquerade as everything starts happening all over again
A Found Footage film with a camera crew searching Halloween attractions for the most extreme haunt only to find something else. The film has a certain effect where we are not entirely sure what is real
The announcement of the remake of The Haunting was followed by this remake of the 1959 William Castle film, which turns out far more unpretentious and altogether more fun than the bloated flop of The Haunting
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
The second of Universal’s team-ups of their in-house monsters and superior to the first of these, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. Despite some imaginative moments, the script has a stitched-together improbability
The third of Universal’s monster bashes, a successor to the previous House of Frankenstein. These Universal crossovers felt contrived in their reasons to bring the monsters together but this works better than the others
Rob Zombie’s debut film was propelled into an infamy it didn’t deserve it was banned by its distributor. Zombie only slavishly rehashes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a constant posturing for shock effect that becomes tiresome
The fourth and last in the series of 1980s horror comedies that began with House produced by Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. This brings the first film’s William Katt back to round the series out
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
Amiably silly haunted house film with William Katt fighting rubbery pop-up monsters. This doesn’t take itself too seriously. A minor hit that produced three sequels.
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
The first in a series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, who became the definitive Holmes for many years, and a reasonable adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here, in some search for novelty on what has gone before, the monsters are turned back into humans
I’m not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
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 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
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten
A raucous and vulgar, if at times undeniably funny, comedy where John Cusack and three friends use a hot tub at a resort that causes them to travel back in time to the 1980s.
Third in the Hostel series, an indifferent piece of formula hackwork minus Eli Roth where suspension of disbelief is constantly being disrupted by absurdly contrived scenes
Eli Roth’s sequel to his earlier hit, this emerges as a pallid copy of its predecessor, having merely changed the sexes of the protagonists and lacking the original’s gut-churning impact
The film that put the term Torture Porn on the map. Eli Roth determines to push boundaries with one of the most brutal films ever seen in mainstream release in the tale of tourists made prisoners at an East European hostel for paying clients to torture
A compilation of short horror films from Denmark
Routine executed killer comes back from the electric chair film made to exploit the success of Wes Craven’s Shocker. In some places this was sold as another of the House films
A modest Found Footage film that builds up an effective mystery about the disappearance of a hiker in the Nevada backwoods. Three sequels followed.
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
A wholly unnecessary sequel to Hoodwinked!, this again runs the fairytale characters over with modern quips and pop culture references
Animated film that offers a revisionist take on Little Red Riding Hood. Everything is played in a manic barrage of pop culture gags and level of inanity that is seriously mind damaging
The second sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. Things are feeling uninspired by this point and this just repeats the first film except makes it the adults who are miniaturised
A delightful Disney film about the adventures of a group of kids who are accidentally miniaturised and have to make their way across a now giant-sized backyard. The effects are top-notch and the film pure and unabashed fun
The first sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which far less effectively reverses the scenario and has Rick Moranis accidentally enlarging his child to giant size
A film from cult director Ray Dennis Steckler about psychos lurking around Hollywood Boulevard. Things get admirably twisted, while the work is a unique time capsule of the period
Utterly generic sequel to Paul Verhoeven’s invisible man film Hollow Man. This one has been so cheaply made that it even recycles its effects from the first film
Paul Verhoeven uses CGI effects to revamp the invisible man film with amazing results. On the other hand, Verhoeven’s penchant for sex and violence overkill quickly emerges with distasteful results
A Disney live-action film that engenders no believability in its basic premise. Much of the show is regarded as an opportunity for Bette Midler to steal the limelight and play to over-the-top excess
As part of their attempt to sell everything including the family silver, Disney make a sequel to their witch comedy, bringing back the three original actresses who are now looking a lot longer in the tooth
A pitifully cheap copy of Gremlins about alien creatures locked in a soundstage and now accidentally unleashed. One of the worst films ever made.
The Hobbit became Peter Jackson’s equivalent of the Star Wars prequels and this is the weakest work he has produced under the J.R.R. Tolkien banner. Five picaresque chapters of the book are extruded into bloated set-pieces
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
Peter Jackson returns to J.R.R. Tolkien and epic-sized adventure in the first of his Hobbit films. The visual sweep is there but the film feels over-extruded and over-burdened by its own self-importance.
After two bloated and over-padded Hobbit films, Peter Jackson finally gets it together and produces what everyone was expecting him to deliver, even if it means dragging one battle scene out to last an entire film
The Hitcher was a classic of 1980s horror. This is a cheap and indifferently made sequel that brings back C. Thomas Howell but misses all of the seat-edge suspense of the original
One of the best horror films of the 1980s, a grippingly suspenseful work where C. Thomas Howell is caught in a series of taunting psychological games across the interstate after offering psychopathic hitcher Rutger Hauer a ride
Wes Craven makes a sequel to his earlier Backwoods Brutality classic but the result is a mess that is all over the place and counts as one of Craven’s worst films
Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic gets a gore-drenched makeover from Alexandre Aja. One of the better amid the 2000s fad for horror remakes where the original is dragged into the modern day in some interesting ways
The second film from Wes Craven, a classic in the 1970s Backwoods Brutality cycle with a family stranded in the desert as they come under attack from a family of cannibals lurking in the hills
Sequel to the 2006 remake of Wes Craven’s Backwoods Brutality classic (not to be confused with the sequel that Craven made to his original), this is premised around a series of extremely gory set-pieces
The fifth of the Highlander films. It is hard to believe people could actually make a film worse than Highlander II but this is akin to Edward D. Wood Jr on a multi-million dollar budget
The Highlander series conducts an anime variant on the franchise set in a post-apocalyptic future. Co-directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri of Ninja Scroll fame who adds some highly stylised moves
The third Highlander film is better than the abysmal second one was. It comes with slick visuals but an often absurd plot that strains to spin the concept out any further
Probably THE worst sequel ever made. The script’s treatment of continuity to the first film is utterly incoherent, while director Russell Mulcahy and most of the cast go at it with unrestrained OTT excess
The fourth Highlander film sets out to merge the film and tv series, bringing together Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. This only produces a continuity nightmare that is a headache trying to follow
Before this was spun out into a series of sequels and tv series, the first film had an original and captivating idea about immortals warring across the ages, Everything is propelled into high gear by Russell Mulcahy’s visually dazzling direction
The Hidden was a wittily enjoyable hit about body-hopping aliens. This is a cheap sequel that substantially reuses material from the first film, while missing everything that made the original work
This was a minor cult hit at the time and concerns an alien that hops between human host bodies while having the invincibility of a Terminator. The idea is played with considerable panache and directed with great flair
A disappointing sequel to the madcap Hong Kong superheroines film. This reunites the principal cast members but seems to miss all the fun of its predecessor
Enormously entertaining and hilariously tongue-in-cheek Hong Kong action film featuring three popular actresses as superheroines who go into action in a series of wildly over-the-top moves
Sequel to the Steve Reeves-starring Hercules where Hercules is wooed by an evil queen after drinking the Waters of Forgetfulness. Spectacular but stolid
An incredibly bad Hercules film from Cannon Films made in Italy by Luigi Cozzi. This was the immediate aftermath of Star Wars so we get a bizarre attempt to rework Greek mythology as science-fiction
The hugely successful film that started the Italian peplum cycle featuring muscle-builder heroes in togas. This is rather stolid and strips much of the fantasy out of the Greek legends, nevertheless has its own pulp spectacle
This was the second and best of Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug films. Here the entire show hits an inspired height of nonsensical absurdity in terms of cars doing wacky things
Third of the original Herbie the Love Bug films from Disney. This is an amiable effort that takes place at a car race across Europe and sees the return of Dean Jones, plus has Herbie fall in love
The fourth and last of the original Herbie the Love Bug films from Disney, this takes a trip to South America where the inanity reaches a nadir for the series
This was a revival of Disney’s Herbie the Love Bug films. Here it becomes a vehicle for Lindsay Lohan who is cast as a racing driver but is missing all the cute charms the original films had
A sequel to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer that lacks the raw and disturbing quality of its predecessor both in its direction and in the recasting of anonymous Neil Giuntoli as Henry
An immensely disturbing film loosely based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. John McNaughton directs with a chillingly understated ordinariness and Michael Rooker has never been better in a role.
The ninth of the
The ninth Hellraiser sequel. Most of the others are a far call from Clive Barker’s original. This demonstrates that all hope is not lost in a wild and imaginative opening sequence
Fifth and best of Hellraiser sequels after Clive Barker bowed out. Scott Derrickson made his directorial debut here and infuses the series with some of the wild imagery and perverse darkness that Barker gave the original
The eighth of the Hellraiser films. By now a long way from Clive Barker’s original vision and no more than a haunted house story where the Cenobites occasionally turn up. With a young unknown Henry Cavill
Fourth of the Hellraiser films. This attempts to tell a story set in three different eras but was subject to much studio interference that waters the vision down to something forgettable
The film that put the name of Clive Barker on the map. A work of considerable imagination where Barker delves into forbidden pleasures and fuses the film with S&M imagery for the memorable creations of the Cenobites
Seventh and worst of the Hellraiser films. Clive Barker had departed three films ago and the copyright taken by a company that specialises in cheap sequels. This blurs reality and illusion so much it makes no sense
The fifth Hellraiser sequel and the only one among the last four worth watching. It brings back Ashley Laurence but abandons the Cenobites for a fascinating series of reality bending games
The Hellraiser sequels begin their descent to mediocrity. Clive Barker’s original vision of dark, forbidden pleasures has been watered down and the Cenobites become little more than campy variations on Freddy Krueger
Unrelated in any way to the slasher film Prom Night, this plants tongue in cheek as it tries to imitate the A Nightmare on Elm Street films in its story of a vengeful undead prom queen
After a disastrous reboot of the Hellboy franchise, Millennium Media get it right, employing the comic’s creator on script, taking the series into wild directions with Hellboy up against Appalachian folk horrors
In the second and the best of his two Hellboy films, Guillermo Del Toro expands the first out with an amazing menagerie of eccentric and offbeat creatures, while Ron Perlman is again on winning form in the title role
The first of two animated Hellboy spinoffs with the live-action actors returning to voice their parts. This is the better of the two animated films, developing a weirdness as it takes Hellboy inside a Japanese spirit realm
The second of two animated Hellboy spinoffs, this renders what might have been impressive superheroics had they been conducted in live-action down at the level of children’s animation
The first of Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptations of Mike Mignola’s comic-book about a demon superhero. Not as good as the sequel, the film’s ace in the hole is Ron Perlman in the title role
The first of the Hellraiser sequels. This lacks Clive Barker’s original dark obsessive vision but is worthwhile in its own right, expanding the scope of the story out into a magnificent vision of Hell
Sequel to the animated Heavy Metal that failed to attract the same cult audience that its predecessor did. Telling only one story instead of several, it only offers a routine space opera adventure
Cult animated film that adapts several stories from the adult fantasy comic-book Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal. These vary but in its better moments that has a trippy cult hallucinatory quality
Henry Rollins is a man who may be immortal. Sort of like a dark version of The Man from Earth, this is made by the wittily phlegmatic indifference of Rollins’s performance and fascinatingly littered clues about who he might be
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
Mike Flanagan follows up the hit of The Haunting of Hill House with a mini-series that adapts another classic work The Turn of the Screw out into a similar kind of cross-generational ghost story. The results are extraordinary
The Haunting in Connecticut was a reasonable success in the claim to being a true story ghost story stakes. This is a sequel, seemingly unaware that Connecticut and Georgia are about a thousand miles apart
Another supposed true-life ghost story, an early case by Ed and Lorraine Warren. The film exists as a progression of pop-up scares that through the need to keep producing effect produces no effect at all.
Sequel to A Haunted House where writer/star Marlon Wayans conducted a riff on the Scary Movie films. This is marginally more amusing than its predecessor
Marlon Wayans treads the same territory as the Scary Movie films in this parody take on Paranormal Activity. Most of the film is pitched as a series of crude lowest common denominator gags
A madcap Hong Kong comedy that takes more than a few leaves from the Mr Vampire films with cops fighting off vampires in a haunted police station. A popular hit.
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
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