The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The original Battlestar Galactica tv series was an incredibly blatant copy built on the success of Star Wars. This is the pilot, which aired on tv in the US but was released theatrically to theatres in other countries
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
The Australian-made Black Water was a gripping thriller about three people in a tree being menaced by a crocodile in the water below. This is a sequel with a further group trapped in a cave and menaced by a killer crocodile
A hit among the Blaxploitation fad of the 1970s, this has the novelty of casting a vampire film with African-American actor William Marshall. A whole series of Blaxploitation takes on horror themes followed.
The first of the Blood Island films, a classic of Filipino exploitation cinema. Although not as polished as later efforts, this serves up all the requisite cheesy monsters, mad scientists and gratuitous toplessness you expect
The second of Lex Barker’s Tarzan films, another traipse through the studio backlot jungle sets and well-worn formula – lost cities, mysterious tribes, Jane abducted, Cheeta comic relief antics – with little to distinguish it
The last of the Christopher Reeve Superman films after the series was taken over by Cannon Films. Usually regarded as the series low point due to the cheapness of the effects, this to its credits abandons the comedy focus of the preceding two films and has some not uninteresting aspects
Aside from two earlier serials, this was the first Superman feature film, featuring George Reeves in a dry run for tv’s Adventures of Superman. With its crude effects and avoidance of much in the way of superheroics, this makes fascinating contrast to the modern Superman of Man of Steel
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
Perhaps the best thing about this is that the Twilight saga is finally ended. This provides a moderately spectacular showdown but also wraps its plotlines up with absurd deus ex machina wimp outs and an infuriating twist ending
Sequel to The Boy in which a nanny was hired to tend a sinister doll. Now in what is clearly an attempt to imitate the Annabelle franchise, the doll gains life
Sequel to Stephen Fung’s Taichi Zero. The first film was distractingly self-conscious and hyper-active; by contrast, this is much less so, allowing it to settle down and start being the fantastic martial arts film it sets out to be. Even so, classic Wu Xia directors leave everything Fung does for dead
From the high-profile release this had, I was expecting it to be a Wu Xia epic – instead we get what feels like a martial arts film by way of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World where instead of amazing us with the fight scenes the director seems in love with self-conscious cuteness of his own visuals
Probably the most well-known film from hackmeister Ulli Lommel. An odd mix of Halloween ripoff and an occult film but nothing that stands out beyond a couple of weird novelty deaths
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
The ninth of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films. All but the first two Weissmuller films slip into the utterly banal and formulaic. The novelty this time is Tarzan encountering a city inhabited all by all women
The last of the Tarzan outings featuring Lex Barker, as well as an interesting cast line-up including Raymond Burr as the villain
Third of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, the point where the formula of the series started to kick in
The Blair Witch Project was genuinely innovative. It is a surprise that we never saw a string of sequels. Adam Wingard finally does here but at a time when the Found Footage genre feels played out of moves
A modern slasher film that slavishly rehashes Friday the 13th. Routine on most counts, excepting perhaps the oddity of it being made by a director/producer of Christian films
The second in a series of low-budget vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Nothing much to write home about.
The second in Uwe Boll’s trilogy adapted from the videogame, this plays out as a mix of Western and vampire hunter film and is marginally better than Boll’s usual standards
The seventh of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films made as a work of Wartime propaganda where Tarzan faces Nazis
The eight of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films. The same formula as before but in a desire for novelty the action is relocated to North Africa
Third of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films, the second in colour and to be shot in real African locations
The first of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films although it does little to vary from the well-established formula of the previous eighteen entries
The first Tarzan film after Johnny Weissmuller’s departure and replacement by a blank Lex Barker, although in all other ways is still the same tired formula. One of the few Tarzan films of the era to employ fantastic plot devices (a Fountain of Youth) but seems to have little idea what to do with it
Sixth of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films, this takes Tarzan out of the jungle to civilisation and is mostly played for comedy
Fifth of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films and a thoroughly ordinary run through of the by now well-established formula of the series
The fourth of the Christopher Lee-starring Fu Manchu films and the point the series was handed over to exploitation director Jess Franco and started to go badly downhill
Less another sequel than a spinoff of the Paranormal Activity series, this takes place with Latino characters and in a whole different culture and socio-economic strata. While this gives the series a face change, everything else it feels like the shuffling of a well-worn deck of plot cards
A reboot of the Jason Bourne series with Jeremy Renner replacing Matt Damon. The exhiliratingly kinetic action scenes are watered down, while the plot lacks the same focus. The first of the series to enter genre territory however
Blumhouse resurrects the Paranormal Activity series for another outing about an investigation into the secrets of an Amish cult
This is the Bollywood version of E.T.. That is if one can imagine an E.T. with singing, dancing and romantic scenes. A simplistic but popular hit that spawned several sequels
The eighth Halloween film. This tries to throw in some novelty by combining Michael Myers with a reality tv show being filmed in his family home but is still the same uninspired thrills of the other sequels
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
Apparently the biggest grossing film in China ever. What we get is not much more than a rehash of E.T. with the addition of flying swordsmen. What kills the film is an emphasis of excrutiating slapstick and low-res CGI that makes the various creatures resemble versions of Mr Blobby
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.
One of the wacky inventor live-action comedies Disney made in the 1960s, a sequel to The Misadventures of Merlin Jones where Tommy Kirk variously adopts a chimpanzee and tries to sleep-coach football jocks
The Monkey King films are a series of extraordinary works that exists somewhere between CGI and live-action and have a lushness of design. That is balanced against a dated plot that basically rehashes Cat Women of the Moon
40 years later, Jamie Lee Curtis returns to pay homage to Halloween in what is a direct sequel to the original, erasing the continuity of every other sequel. This fails to conjure what made the original a classic
The long promised crossover between the Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street films, this seems caught in a juggling act that fails to satisfy the requirements of either franchise
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
Sequel to Mommy, which featured Patty McCormack as a psychopathic mother
Sequel to the live-action US-made adaptation of the manga about a power-suit superhero. As with the first film, there are lots of rubbery aliens and martial arts fights
Guardians of the Galaxy was an audience winner with its eccentric humour and effortless charm; this sequel feels buried under bloated production overkill where the charms of the original remain thinly drawn
The Ju-on/The Grudge series has spawned thirteen films to date. This was the second sequel to the English-language remake but by this point everything disappears into formulaic scares
Patty McCormack played a psychopathic child in The Bad Seed. This is essentially a sequel where McCormack has grown up and become a mother
Follow-up to The Grudge, the English-language remake of the Japanese horror film. Although original Japanese director Takashi Shimizu is present, this is one of the weaker Ju-on/Grudge films
Fourth and final of the Killer Tomatoes films by which time the slight appeal of the original concept has been well and truly worn out
There seems something redundant in 2021 with the world in the grip of a very real apocalypse about watching an old-fashioned mass destruction disaster movie about an oncoming comet impact
The fifth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, all having been made for very young children
The fourth Friday the 13th film, called the final chapter in an effort to kill the series off, only to be such a success this was rescinded in the next film. Joseph Zito directs with more style than usual
The fourth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, having been made for very young children
The eighth of the Friday the 13th films that offers the novelty of taking a revived Jason to New York City. Actually, one of the better entries in the series, which plays his encounters with New York locals for some amusement
Stylish New Wave film about an existential vampire taxi driver meeting a woman film director who has received a terminal diagnosis. From the underrated Gerard Ciccoritti
David E. Kelley, better known as a high-profile tv producer, turns his hand to writing a killer crocodile film, although the result never ends up satisfying either as a monster movie or the jokey tone Kelley wants to take
The second of the Friday the 13th films. This was the point where the formula of the series slipped into place and Jason emerges to become an invincible killing machine
One of a cluster of faith-based films made around the turn of the millennium dealing with the biblical apocalypse and The Rapture, this has not dated well
Spinoff from the Japanese Death Note films from Ring director Hideo Nakata featuring the weird detective L. L was a scene-stealer but this fails to come up with an interesting enough plot for him
A copy of John Carpenter’s Halloween that proved a big success and spawned a long-running series of sequels. Both films created the slasher film, which came to overrun horror in the 1980s, although this is a cruder film than Halloween
The fourth entry in DreamWorks popular animated series, which by now is just another entry in the series that is coasting by on recognition factor, while offering minimal difference
The Kung Fu Panda series are films for couch potatoes – martial arts films with a hero who proclaims the virtues of laziness, overeating and goes into combat with an self-inflated sense of his own awesomeness
A far less successful sequel to the mega-hit of Gremlins where director Joe Dante brings the gremlins to Manhattan and allows the silliness to go completely over-the-top and into orbit, even breaking the fourth wall
Despite being a huge box-office and critical success and being nominated for an Academy Award, I am in a minority in disliking this. Maybe it’s something to do with the fact that it appropriates the culture from my neck of the woods and only spins it out as a series of glib jokes and one-liners
This was the third of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes films. This hits an appealingly silly and wilfully ridiculous note that makes it the best of the sequels.
Not a Frankenstein film but a werewolf film. Spanish actor Paul Naschy debuts his signature role of the wolfman Waldemar Daninsky. Naschy would return to the role nine times, as well as play most of the classic horror characters
Alexandre Aja film about haunted mirrors. Aja is more a director of physical horror and seems less attuned to the supernatural mood
A revival of Jumanji. The original’s boardgame is now a videogame that sucks the players inside. The adventure elements are routine but the film’s has comedic fun with its bodyswapped characters
Third in the popular series of Hong Kong hopping vampire films. As in the previous entry, a frenetic slapstick element dominates
A popular Hong Kong hit in its day where a schoolgirl gains a ghostly scholar as an invisible companion, resulting in a series of slapstick sequences. Several sequels followed
In this, the fifth film in The Purge series, the scenario becomes even more interestingly political, becoming a satiric take on MAGA America and the Capitol Riots
Sequel to the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly directed by that film’s effects creator Chris Walas. This reduces Cronenberg’s obsessive bodily transformation film into just another monster on the loose tale
The second of Universal’s trilogy that began with Captive Wild Woman, starring the exotic Acquanetta as a woman who transforms into an ape. Mostly routine
The second of the Harry Potter films and better than its predecessor. Chris Columbus has his tendency to overblown effects more in check but that does leave the film more dependent on J.K. Rowling’s contrived deus ex machina plotting
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the reboot of the 90s Jumanji, was a box-office success. That mandated a sequel. The central problem is where exactly does a film about characters sucked inside a videogame go with its premise?
Steven Spielberg handed the directorial reins of the series over to Joe Johnston and this emerges as a better film than The Lost World was, even if it is only ever arranged around a series of effects set-pieces
Nominal remake of the Boris Karloff The Mummy, which has now been inflated into a big budget Indiana Jones adventure. Stephen Sommers lets the film overspill with CGI spectacle but the exercise is deflated by a jokey, unserious attitude
The 1960s Gamera films were always a copy of the Godzilla films, aimed at a more juvenile level and with crappier effects. This was the second of them, somewhat better produced than the others and taking proceedings seriously
The tenth of the Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge series. Newcomer Masayuki Ochiai has some effective touches but the series is running out of original moves
The first of the Harry Potter films. The first is the weakest and lumbers due to being placed in the hands of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus who allows visual effects wow and simplistic emotional cues to dominate
The Japanese Ju-on/The Grudge is one of the most popular modern kaidan eiga series, having produced fourteen films to date. This was the very first of the series
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
Fourth in the popular hopping vampire saga that spawned six films and an uncredited copycat series, all blending a manic mix of comedy, fantastique moves and Eastern beliefs
Fifth of the Jurassic Park films. Industrial Light and Magic do their usual excellent job but this time the film is just recycling the same thing as before with minimal change
The first film in which Universal teamed-up their in-house monsters, leading to several other monster bashes throughout the decade. For all that, this fails to make any interesting use of the title set-up
Another of the animated DC Comics films in which various of their regular characters find themselves incarnated in simulated combat arenas
Pixar’s creative decline has been the point they started making these sequels to their hits. This is a disappointing prequel to Monsters, Inc. that largely recycles the cliches of the Revenge of the Nerds films and seems lacking in any of the wacky humour or moments of cuteness we expect of a Pixar film
From they heyday of the 1970s martial arts film, karate champion James Ryan must reunite the old gang to take on a super-villain who wants to enslave the world with a mind control drug derived from potatoes
The second of the Mortal Kombat animated films, this continues into another tournament, introducing a bewildering array of characters from the games amid a high degree of violence and bloodshed
One of the strangest of Japanese monster movies in which the heart of the Frankenstein monster is caught in the Hiroshima atomic blast and grows into a giant boy
The second in a surprisingly popular series of comedies about Francis the talking mule, this involves Donald O’Connor and Francis in a series of hijinks set around horse racing track
The immediate sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Anthony Hopkins is back but Jodie Foster is not. Ridley Scott takes the director’s chair and creates a slick film but it lacks the compulsive grip the original held
Building on the successes of the Hannibal Lecter films, this is a prequel that goes back sets out to tell an origin story of how the young teenage Hannibal came to be who he was during World War II
Sequel to the Christopher Lambert starring future prison film, this relocates the action to an orbiting space station. Less brainless than its predecessor if in the end no more than average
Zack Snyder completes his run through DC superheroes with mixed results. The introduction of the characters works well but Snyder too readily throws established continuity out the window, while the visual dourness becomes tedious
This was the sixth film in the Jurassic Park/World franchise and offers very much a return to the familiar. It at least also shakes several familiar things up
After 27 years, Dario Argento finally rounds out his Three Mothers trilogy begun way back with Suspiria but the underwhelming results give all evidence of his having lost his mojo
47 Meters Down, with two sisters trapped underwater in a shark cage with a failing supply of air, didn’t require a sequel. Here we get two different sisters trapped underwater with a limited air supply and surrounded by sharks
Peter Sellers comedy where the smallest country in the world invades the USA and ends up accidentally winning