The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Mark L. Lester’s follow-up to his earlier The Class of 1982 about a teacher forced to adopt vigilante actions in a lawless classroom. In the interim, The Terminator came out and this now has killer android schoolteachers
Qurkily appealing Cyberpunk film in which a female bodyguard and a male pleasure android must make a journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland
Standout sequel to Maniac Cop, the best of the series, where Larry Cohen turns in a remarkable script and William Lustig delivers incredible action sequences
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Sequel to the cult splatter hit of Re-Animator, directed by the original’s producer Brian Yuzna. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale are back. This has some amazing effects work but lacks the first film’s outrageous black humour
From regular horror director Brian Yuzna, a sequel to the Christmas slasher films series. This is quite possibly not only the weirdest Christmas film ever made but the weirdest Christmas horror film ever made
Frank Henenlotter takes the commercial route and makes a sequel to his no-budget cult film. A bigger budget allows the film to become a comic variant on Freaks featuring a series of way-out makeup effects
The first in a highly enjoyable series of flying swordsman films produced by Tsui Hark. The series hit its peak with the second film but this is an enjoyably energetic and busy effort in its own
A sequel to Killer Crocodile, which was a dreary Italian-made Jaws ripoff. Here another radioactive waste mutated crocodile stalks people. Indifferently made.
Second film to follow-on from The Slumber Party Massacre. While the original was a straight-up slasher film, the second became completely ludicrous as it veered off in trying to copy the A Nightmare on Elm Street films but this returns to the slasher basics for a vigorous workout of the formula
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
The first Child’s Play felt like an incredibly silly film. However, this first sequel takes the same elements and constructs them into a much tighter, better package
William Shatner tries to emulate the success had by Leonard Nimoy in directing a Star Trek film but falls on his face, badly overstressing the comedy elements and delivering the worst of the Classic Trek films
The first Sleepaway Camp was a classic of the slasher film for its unforgettable ending. This was the second of two back-to-back shot sequels starring Bruce Springsteen’s younger sister Pamela as the murderous Angela
The third in the Christmas slasher series where the killer’s brother is resurrected like a Frankenstein monster and develops an obsession with a blind girl. Played with far more seriousness than it deserves
The fourth of the Halloween sequels where the series is by now is no more than a crudely directed slasher film, a far cry from John Carpenter’s eerily suspenseful original
One of the better animated films from Don Bluth that sets up a likeable arc in the relationship between a redeemable mobster dog who returns from Heaven and a young girl
Sequel to the hit psycho-thriller. Terry O’Quinn is back and on fine form but this just repeats the original, bumps up the number of killings with extra gore to become no more than a B psycho film
Third of the Indiana Jones films. This comes with all the breakneck action sequences and Sean Connery doing a fine comic turn as Indiana’s irascible father but also plays to a much greater slapstick emphasis
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
An Italian exploitation ripoff of Jaws with a group of environmentalists in South America dealing with a killer crocodile that has been made giant size by radioactive waste
An incredibly bad Canadian-made sequel to Food of the Gods about a scientist who devises a growth hormone that accidentally creates a horde of giant rats
The 17th Godzilla film and the second of the modern era where Toho started to employ top drawer effects. Toho created a new nemesis, the plant monster Biollante, although this was not popular with the public
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
Wes Craven’s adaptation of DC’s Swamp Thing was not a very good film. This sequel has been handed over to prolific B-budget hack Jim Wynorski who shows he is unable to take any of it seriously
A weak follow-up to the hit original that essentially killed off any further Ghostbusters sequels. Most of the the cast are back but the plot and proceedings feel like a walk-through for all involved.
A popular thriller in its day about a cop tracking a serial killer (played by Brat Packer Judd Nelson). This prefigures The Silence of the Lambs in some interesting ways. Several sequels followed
The beginning of the big Disney renaissance of the 1990s. An adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale that is conducted with an enormous degree of energy, colour and good cheer
The fourth and one of the worst of the numerous Amityville films. This reduces everything to a series of crude and increasingly more preposterous, eventually laughable, shocks
This is not even a sequel The Amityville Horror but a cheaply and tattily made Canadian effort seeking to sell itself using the name. The first in an industry of films employing some relevance to Amityville
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
Richard E. Grant is a witchfinder who pursues warlock Julian Sands through a time vortex into the present day. David Twohy’s script takes all the Old Wives’ tale aspects of Middle Ages superstition seriously to immensely entertaining regard
The first of two OVA sequels to the anime classic Legend of the Overfiend, this lacks the perverse imagery of the original
The first of Albert Pyun’s kickboxing killer cyborg films featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme who was largely unknown at the time. Pyun creates wall-to-wall action but there is almost nothing else to the film
An okay Stephen King adaptation that does nothing particularly wrong but lacks the impact that has caused people to regard the novel as one of the best of King’s works
The first in a series of killer doll films from Charles Band, which has generated some ten sequels. The original has an undeniable atmosphere
From the heyday of the 1980s VHS release, a slasher film with the requisite group of partying teens being stalked by a psychopathic, devil-worshipping police officer
Tim Burton borrows from the dark brooding graphic novels of the era and gives us a beautiful, stunningly designed film that digs deep into the psychological recesses of the masks and funny faces
One of the first of the modern wave of darkly romantic vampire films that became the in-thing in the 1990s. This is occasionally effective but was eclipsed by later entries
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
Sequel to Fright Night, this basically rehashes what went before but introduces Jerry Dandridge’s sister. This does come with the benefit of some way-out stylistic effects from director Tommy Lee Wallace
Boundary-pushing film that consists almost entirely of very enthusiastic splatter and gore scenes. Amateurishly shot on video nevertheless this gained a cult following and produced sequels
An appealing bittersweet film based around the improbable premise of a young girl finding what she believes is one of Santa’s reindeer. In a genre that usually deals in sugary sentiment, this has a much more rewarding downbeat realism
A quirky hit that jumped aboard the 1980s popularity of time travel themes and laid into them with an appealingly offbeat eccentricity. The film that propelled Keanu Reeves onto become a star
1990s VHS SF/action with David Carradine as a future cyborg bounty hunter on the run with a wrongly convicted girl while hunted by his own side
A cult anime about a demon war on Earth and a half-demon child who has been born in the body of a teenager. This quite takes you aback with its extremes of violence and sexual fetishism
The first of the Back to the Future sequels has a whiplash ingenuity that propels us through several different scenarios, including a trip to the future, a dark alternate present and requiring Michael J. Fox to duck unseen in and around the margins of the first film
Roger Corman produces a blatant copy of Alien with a group of people being pursued around a desert laboratory by a rubbery mutant creature
Extraordinary directorial debut from Japan’s Shinya Tsukamoto, a frenetic, fetishistic and surreally deranged vision of man-machine fusion that feels like David Lynch having gone away and done a crash reading course of William Gibson
The fifth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films offers up the same old thing but director Stephen Hopkins enters at an inspired level that transforms the set-pieces with a genuine weirdness
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Corey Haim adopts an unusually intelligent dog unaware it is part of a genetically engineered killing machine. Produced by Roger Corman who spun out a series of sequels.
One of the spate of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations that came out in the late 80s/early 90s. This feels like an effort by earnest amateurs but does take its Lovecraft seriously unlike most of the other films of this cycle.
A dreadful sequel to the Ron Howard hit Cocoon about seniors encountering aliens. This misses all the interesting potential of a sequel and drowns in schmaltz and unfunny comedy routines
The fifth and last of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, the weakest of the series. Dirty Harry comes up against a betting pool on celebrity deaths and a killer who decides to help it along
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 very first ever team-up between Marvel Comics characters on the screen in which Bill Bixby’s Hulk meets Thor. The film has a camp reputation because of its Thor who resembles a Swedish bodybuilder
The first and best of Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm sequels, one that creates an eerie twilight zone ambience that sits between dream and reality
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
A completely ignored sequel to Arthur, the non-genre comedy hit with Dudley Moore as an alcoholic millionaire. Included here because butler John Gielgud turns up as a ghost
Ostensibly as a teen version of the Jules Verne novel made by Cannon Films. However, this started under one director and finished under another with totally incomprehensible results
The first in a series of films starring Robert Z’dar as an hulking, deformed ex-cop seeking revenge. Not as effective as the sequels but is lifted above the routine by a quirky Larry Cohen script
Riding on his fame as Freddy Krueger in the Elm Street films, actor Robert Englund made his directorial debut here but the film is lumbered with the lame concept of a demonic phone line
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 cute robot film pushes the cutsie elements to a nauseatingly anthropomorphished extreme, having it spout smartass colloquialisms and erasing even basic credibility
One of a rare handful of films that can be considered the most extreme ever made, this a catalogue of the true-life atrocities and experiments inflicted on prisoners during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in WWII. An intensely uncomfortable watch not recommended for the faint-hearted
Made not longer after the buddy cop hit of Lethal Weapon, this has a curmudgeonly human paired up with an alien partner. A fairly ordinary cop show plot is boosted by two fantastic central performances
Critters was an entertaining ripoff of Gremlins. This sequel alas draws that appeal thin by being placed in the directorial ham fists of the perpetually awful Mick Garris
The seventh of the Friday the 13th films, this tries to add some novelty with a heroine who has psychic powers but is mostly the same thing as before
Sequel to Nosferatu the Vampyre featuring a return performance from Klaus Kinski with the action (or lack thereof) relocated to Venice
Likeable but lightweight talking dinosaur film. This aims to be a prehistoric Bambi but never quite finds the depth. A large number of video-released sequels followed
The third of the Poltergeist sequels, which moves the locale to an apartment building and is better than its predecessor thanks to a series of eerie mirror effects
Sleepaway Camp with its unforgettable twist ending stood out in the wasteland of most 80s slasher films. This was the first of four sequels where Bruce Springsteen’s younger sister inherits the role of Angela. While the original stood out, this merely slips into unmemorable formula
The very first of the Chucky films. At the time, this seemed a very silly and at times ridiculous killer doll film and not the basis of an ongoing series of sequels that have lasted more than three decades
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
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
Sequel to Graveyard Shift with a vampire appearing on a vampire film set and taking over the role in the film
Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead came with a cheerfully black cynicism that was a wonderfully fresh alternative to George Romero amid the 1980s zombie fad – this sequel has a painfully unfunny lameness that could not sit at more removed extreme to that
This was where the world took notice of Tim Burton in his second film. This throws the standard ghost story on its head with the dead trying to exorcise the living. The show is dominated by Burton’s wild set-pieces and Michael Keaton’s OTT title performance
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
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure proved a quirky hit and so Pee-Wee was spun out in this sequel. This lacks the zany touch of Tim Burton in the director’s chair, nevertheless has its own moments
The first of the sequels to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Featuring the first screen appearance of George Clooney.
Fourth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Under Renny Harlin’s hand, the unworldly atmosphere of Wes Craven’s original is replaced by moments of incredible silliness
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
The third of Larry Cohen’s killer mutant baby films that began with the cult It’s Alive. Cohen’s humour is again present but the film feels like a hodgepodge of ideas left over from the other films
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell return in a sequel to their earlier low-budget cult hit. With a far better budget this time, Raimi goes completely over-the-top with a delirious silliness that will bring tears to the eyes
The very first film with the plot of a woman cop going undercover in a strip club. The police procedural plot and psycho element takes a very clear backseat to the stripper set-pieces, some of which are imaginatively staged. On the plus side, the film is directed by a woman
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.
The sequel to the hit George Romero-Stephen King horror anthology. This misses the original’s black humour by a mile and instead becomes overblown and filled with shrill unlikable characters
It is hard to believe this ever received a greenlight, a film in which Andrew McCarthy falls for a storefront mannequin (Kim Cattrall) who comes to life. The comedy has an excruciating inanity
Film from Ray Dennis Steckler, the cult director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies concerning a maniac on a killing spree in Las Vegas
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
Third of The Howling films where director Philippe Mora travels to Australia to show us marsupial werewolves. A conceptually wild mix that fails abysmally due to cheap effects and Mora not taking things seriously
Not the tv series, this is an unsold earlier tv pilot that attempted to spin a series off from Psycho, An ill-conceived disaster, the film’s clumsy
direction could not be further away from Alfred Hitchcock if it tried
The first sequel to the Santa slasher film. This has become a bad movie classic because half the film brazenly consists of footage recycled from the first, while the other half is dominated by the hilariously bad acting of psycho Eric Freeman
This takes the previous year’s big hit of Aliens and fuses it with The Most Dangerous Game, swapping that story’s bored aristocratic hunter for an alien hunting Arnold Schwarzenegger and a team of soldiers in the jungles of South America
My introduction to Wu Xia – imagine some vision of Kwaidan as directed by Sam Raimi, filled with sensationally beautiful and out of this world imagery and completely nutsoid fantastical battles with ghosts and demons
A popular hit that spins the cyborg cop theme through a Cyberpunk future, while director Paul Verhoeven piles on excesses of violence and black humour. A darkly funny satire of Reaganite America, this is an entertainingly slick comic-book of a movie
The Slumber Party Massacre was an mundane and unmemorable slasher entry; this is a nonsensical sequel that tries to turn it into a copy of A Nightmare on Elm Street. Contains some of the bizarrely ridiculous scenes to ever take part in any slasher film of the era
The point where Robert Englund’s Freddy went from a boogeyman into the equivalent of Wile E. Coyote, popping up like a malevolent jack-in-a-box to quip a one-liner and dispatch victims