The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The third film adapted from the Stephen King short story, which dispenses with connection to the other films and now concerns occult forces in an Arctic base
Nobody knew it at the time but this was the beginning of the huge surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on screen in the 00s/10s. This distills the basics of the vampire hunter comic-book down into a smart, kinetic action film
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, plus a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude, nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
Sequel to Species that this time offers up the male of the species. The film feels put together as an exercise in makeup effects but their physiological absurdity causes the film to topple into silliness
A surprisingly good work of vampire erotica made with some sensuality and apparent care by those involved, along with some quite imaginative touches of fantastique
Disney animated film based on the Chinese legend of the girl who posed as a warrior. Unlike the similar historically-based Pocahontas, this emerges as well rounded and satisfying
Quite who the audience for these Children of the Corn films is that they keep making more of them is a mystery. This was the fifth of eleven films and at least better than the last two entries
Fourth of the Child’s Play films where the importation of Hong Kong director Ronnie Yu doesn’t do much to enliven proceedings, although this does embellish the black humour element considerably
Following the success of Scream, this was an attempt to make an upmarket slasher film based around the motif of urban legends in the same way that Scream used 1980s slasher films. It is a stretch to make urban legends fit in some cases but director Jamie Blanks delivers reasonable tension
The black sheep among the Japanese Ringu films. A sequel released the same time as the first film, this lacks the other’s uncanny atmosphere and was ignored
Another of the interminable video sequels to their animated classics that Disney made throughout the 90s-00s. This is somewhat better than most of the others
A solid variant on the Hong Kong flying swordsman genre that contains some epic plotting This is the point where the Wu Xia film discovered CGI effects
Complete and utter bastardisation of Hugh Lofting’s charming Doctor Dolittle stories, which are turned into a modern comedy with Eddie Murphy and talking animals doing lots of pee and poop jokes
One of the better among the cheap video-released sequels to their animated films Disney released during the 1990s/2000s, this actually works better than the original
One of the better copies of Fatal Attraction with Rose McGowan as school pupil with a crush on her teacher who proceeds to ruthlessly eliminate all in her way
The seventh Halloween film, made for the original’s twentieth anniversary. This erases continuity to the other sequels and has Jamie Lee Curtis alive and pursued by Michael Myers again. Better than most of the other sequels.
John Carpenter revitalises the vampire film with a sharp action edge as James Woods heads a team of vampire hunters. Woods gives a ferociously determined performance way above and beyond the call of duty
One of the numerous Virtual Reality films to come out in the mid-90s, this seems undecided whether it wants to be an SF or an erotic film
In this sequel to their earlier film, director Brian Yuzna and star Corbin Bernsen return to the role of the psychopathic dentist and successfully tap the same outrageously sadistic nastiness and black humour once again
An okay sequel to the angel wars film The Prophecy, the first of several. As in the previous film, a returning Christopher Walken steals the show and gets all the best lines
When the Bough Breaks was one of the better 1990s serial killer thrillers; though it didn’t need it, this is a sequel, albeit with a completely different cast. While the original was clever, this falls into drawing too much from The Silence of the Lambs, the inspiration behind both films
The big screen Addams Family films ended with the death of Raul Julia. Subsequently the rights were sold to Saban Entertainment who made this cheap, terrible direct-to-video film with a new cast
Third of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films has Jonathan Frakes back in the director’s seat where he again plays to his strengths with great visual effects scenes but the story feels like a filler episode
John Landis and Dan Aykroyd minus the late John Belushi revisit their cult classic but the reunion exercise smacks of poor judgement and emerges as a haphazard arrangement made only to exploit the appeal of the original
The sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer. This misses the playful humour and twists of Kevin Williamson’s script and becomes no more than a routine slasher movie
For this sequel to the hit talking pig film, producer George Miller of Mad Max films fame steps into the director’s chair. However, the cuteness of the original promptly becomes buried under careening slapstick
Low-budget and fairly indifferently made sequel to David Twohy’s quite good alien invasion film
The debut film from French animator Michel Ocelot, a beautifully simple series of African folk tales about a young boy whose plain-speaking truths outwit a witch
A film about a killer snowman. Conceived as a one-liner spouting villain and outfitted with a series of novelty Christmas-themed deaths, this does not take itself too seriously with rather appealing results
Ridiculous disaster movie where air hostess Lauren Holly must deal with serial killer Ray Liotta while trying to land the plane
The fourth of the Alien films. French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet comes on board and delivers a comic-bookish run through of a Joss Whedon script that overspills with too many ideas
A Chinese Ghost Story was a classic in Hong Kong cinema, followed by two sequels and then animated spinoff sold in the West under the name of series producer and cult director Tsui Hark
Kevin Williamson’s follow-up to Scream. There is not quite the same witty game-playing but this is still an above-average slasher film with a reasonable cast and more-than-adequate suspense generated
Travesty of Robert Heinlein’s classic SF novel from Paul Verhoeven. Heinlein’s philosophical argument for militarism is junked in favour of blackly comic mindless violence
Third of the Brave Little Toaster films, this takes the talking appliances to Mars and comes with an appealingly zany sense of humour
The first of two Brave Little Toaster sequels, this plays more along the lines of a regular animated film formula but has its charms
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
Lesser budgeted sequel to the 1994 remake of The Jungle Book, which actually comes closer in tone to the original Rudyard Kipling stories
This was the second film from Guillermo Del Toro, a modest and quite good Alien copy with Mira Sorvino hunting evolved insects in the New York subway tunnels
Wes Craven’s Scream was a clever and witty homage to/deconstruction of the slasher film of the 1980s; for the sequel, he and Kevin Williamson naturally turn to deconstructing the slasher sequel
The fifth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, all having been made for very young children
The first sequel to the massive success of Jurassic Park where Steven Spielberg returns to direct with a script that seems a mishmash of loose ends that only weakly rehashes the original
Sequel to the Mortal Kombat film. While the first film was fun, here anything resembling plot has been stripped away to concentrate on fight scenes such that the film blurs into a single shapeless action sequence
TV movie revival of Disney’s Herbie films and one of the better sequels, playing around with the concept and even adding a Herbie origin story
A film crew in the Amazon headed by Jennifer Lopez encounter a giant snake. Mounted as a CGI monster movie in the aftermath of Jurassic Park, this has scripting that frequently descends into the ludicrous
Considerable return to form for animator Don Bluth even if the story of the Russian Royals he is telling is based on a hoax and manages to entirely excise any mention of the Communist Revolution
Spinoff of characters featured in David Lynch’s Wild at Heart and a greatly underrated film for Alex de la Iglesia. this pushes into even darker and more anarchic places than Lynch did, featuring outlaw lovers who are black sorcerers on a trail of murder and kidmap
The first of Mike Myers’ Austin Powers films is at times extremely silly and scatological but does offer a knowing and witty parody of the James Bond films. The result became a cult phenomenon
After their successful revival of Godzilla in the 1990s, Toho revived Mothra for a series of standalone battles, albeit with a very juvenile focus made for children. This was the second and better of the three films
An excellent conceptual SF film, a directorial debut for Vincenzo Natali with six people trapped in a labyrinth of identical rooms some of which contain death traps where they must solve the puzzle to find the way out
Pierce Brosnan’s second outing as James Bond holds up fairly well, especially in the action department, although Jonathan Pryce seems miscast as a Rupert Murdoch-modeled super-villain
The first film adapted from James Patterson’s books about forensic profiler Alex Cross, featuring standout performances from Morgan Freeman (cast as Cross) and Ashley Judd
Sequel to An American Werewolf in London, which copies the set-up with a different city but misses all of the sense of humour, even fails to offer anything like the classic transformation effects
Follow-up to Lars von Trier’s haunted hospital mini-series The Kingdom. The story is continued, although the plot seems rickety and either drops elements or veers off on other tangents as though it is being made up as people go along
Rather enjoyable effort about an evil djinn that grants cursed wishes. Directed by makeup effects artist Robert Kurtzman, this has been designed to highlight various effects. Three sequels followed.
A mind-boggling and frequently hilarious documentary that charts the eccentricities of Star Trek fandom, profiling the lives of several fans and how the fandom is part of their lives
A huge box-office hit, this comedy turns UFO conspiracy of
Possibly the worst film ever made on a big studio budget, Joel Schumacher’s follow-up to Tim Buton’s standout Batman films where he turns everything into an absurd Day Glo realm with a script for two year-olds, campy puns and badly overacting super-villains
The second of the Star Trek: The Next Generation films where series regular Jonathan Frakes takes the director’s chair and delivers an exciting adventure, showing an excellent hand with the special effects. Far more satisfying than the previous film
Remake of the Jerry Lewis film is a comedic tour-de-force for Eddie Murphy as he swings between a shy 400 lb professor and a manic, testostoronally charged health junkie
Brian Yuzna plays on everybody’s fear of the dentist in this outrageously nasty film top-lining Corbin Bernsen in wildly over-the-top mode as a psychopathic dentist amid a series of imaginatively sadistic dental-themed dispatches
The first of several sequels to the modest hit of Tremors with Fred Ward and Michael Gross repeating their roles, hunting Graboids in Mexico this time. As with the first film, this ably balances suspense, creature effects and a considerable sense of humour
Low-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a softcore variation on Fatal Attraction with a vengeful Shauna O’Brien obtaining a job as the babysitter with the married man who jilted her
One of the worst among the usually worthwhile Japanese monster movie revivals of the 1990s. Much of the film is played down at an inanely silly children’s movie level, with there only being the requisite mass destruction effects to enliven the show
This was the second and better of the two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This adds a much more interestingly complex plot to the mix
John Carpenter’s sequel to Escape from New York falls too much in the shadow of its predecessor, nevertheless has some effective moments of its own, with Carpenter in particular creating a satiric fundamentalist future
Sequel to the classic Karen Black-starring horror anthology tv movie with Lysette Anthony starring in a trio of horror tales
This places an amusing spin on the standard dragon fantasy, having the dragon and its would-be slayer team up to fool the peasantry out of money. The Sean Connery-voiced dragon looks like a big CGI cartoon
A Jet Li vehicle that falls into the masked superhero genre where the show has taken a few leaves from the tv series The Green Hornet. Enjoyable fun with some exhilarating action sequences
Sequel to the Stephen King adapted film about hoodlums resurrected from the dead, this descends into an incredible silliness. Featuring a teenage Hillary Swank
This live-action remake of the classic Disney animated film benefits from Glenn Close chewing scenery in grand style as Cruella De Ville but the latter half essentially degenerates into no more than a series of Home Alone-styled slapstick violence scenes
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
The second of the low-budget Roger Corman produced films made for cable featuring Joan Severance as a black vinyl-clad masked superheroine
A smart and well cast film about a quartet of modern teen high school girls who form a coven of witches. This starts well but loses it in an overblown second act
Wes Craven and scriptwriter Kevin Williamson make a witty homage to the 1980s slasher film, turning the genre on its head by having the characters perfectly aware they are in a horror film and of the genre’s cliches
Sequel to the Hong Kong erotic film, an entirely unrelated work that inflates the original into a madcap Wu Xia film filled with crude, rude humour
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
After the massive success of Jurassic Park, anything with Michael Crichton’s name on it was hot property. This is made from his script about tornado chasers and is a rather entertaining film made with no other purpose that to keep producing a series of spectacular mass destruction scenes on an ever-expanding scale
Matthew Bright’s extraordinary modernisation/trashing of Little Red Riding Hood who becomes Reese Witherspoon’s juvenile delinquent who goes hitchhiking and is targeted by serial killer Kiefer Sutherland
An alien invasion and takeover film that was clearly inspired by the success of tv’s The X Files. This is a smart effort that emerges as something unworldly in David Twohy’s hands
Work of softcore erotica about an alien woman who comes to Earth to catalogue human sexual experience. Consists of lots of tasteful glossily photographed tumblings with only the slimmest of plots connecting
Another of the string of cyborg action films that low-budget director Albert Pyun made in the 1990s. This has a head-scratching fascination, featuring very weird cyborg sex scenes, the unearthly bodybuilder heroine Sue Price and a series of strange philosophical ruminations
Sequel to the Charles Band produced children’s film Leapin’ Leprechauns!, this is a much superior film that gets quite darker and ventures into the underworld
A Disney animated film that turns Victor Hugo’s classic oft-filmed novel about Quasimodo, a misshapen figure of pity, into a slightly ugly teenager who now comes accompanied by talking gargoyles
The second of two video-released sequels to Disney’s Aladdin that brings back Robin Williams as the genie and goes madcap with the pop culture jokes
This was a live-action version of the popular story given a reasonable budget and where Pinocchio is brought to life with a blend of CGI and animatronics
Sequel to the delightfully madcap Magic in the Mirror set in a world of talking ducks
This is a video-released sequel to the Don Bluth animated film with dogs again returning from the afterlife. This is churned out with passable effort
One of the best children’s films from Charles Band, an utterly bizarre effort about a world through a magic mirror ruled by talking ducks
The Lawnmower Man was far from a classic but this sequel has an absurdity that pushes it into extremely bad movie stakes with Matt Frewer as a messiah trying to move everybody into cyberspace
Shusuke Kaneko did extraordinary things in revitalising the Japanese monster movie in the 1990s with his trilogy of Gamera films. This was the second of them, usually seen as the weakest of the trilogy
The fourth of the Josh Kirby juveniles and the point the series started to become quite well made. This takes a visit to Azabeth’s homeworld of warrior people.
The fifth of the Josh Kirby juvenile adventures where the young time-travelling hero sets out on a quest to the Magic Cavern to find the Shroom People
The sixth and last of the Josh Kirby time-travelling juvenile adventures produced by Charles Band and the best of the series, which takes a trip into Josh’s past
Sequel to Mommy, which featured Patty McCormack as a psychopathic mother
This was the third of the Josh Kirby juvenile time travelling adventures from Charles Band that takes Josh and his companions to a planet of living toys
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
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 made Roland Emmerich’s name as a specialist in mass destruction spectacle. At heart, this rehashes a 1950s alien invasion film on a big-budget and adds blatantly sentimentalised American flag-waving
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino combine forces on a film that begins as a getaway thriller and then abruptly morphs into a vampire film. This has a smart edginess to it but the vampire scenes have not dated well