The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The second and more sophisticated of the Ze do Caixao/Coffin Joe films with director Jose Mojica Marins as a diabolic undertaker who delights in inflicting a catalogue of tortures on the weak-minded
The third and in the opinion of many the best of Hammer’s Quatermass films in which Nigel Kneale introduces a conceptually wild array of ideas about Martians, race memory, psychic powers and The Devil
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
The fourth of Hammer’s Frankenstein films and the most conceptually wild with Frankenstein conducting soul transplants, including transferring his assistant’s soul into a woman’s body
Third of the Harry Palmer spy films starring Michael Caine, which were made as a more grounded alternative to James Bond. Unfortunately, this has been placed in the hands of Ken Russell who overblows everything with a giddy eatravagance
The third of Daiei’s 1960s Gamera films, this takes the series back into children’s movie territory. Some moments of goofy silliness and variable effects ensue in a likeable enough combination
The third of the fifilms with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu and generally the point the series started to go downhill
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
From Ishiro Honda, the creator of Godzilla, this bizarrely features two giant Frankenstein monsters battling it out. A fairly typical Japanese monster movie of its era featuring cheesily ridiculous rubber monsters, copious mass destruction and a largely irrelevant human element
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 of the theatrically released Doctor Who films intended to highlight the popularity of The Daleks, this is an improvement in that it dispenses with the first film’s buffoonish comedy elements
A Japanese monster movie with a difference. The second in a trilogy of films about a giant stone deity that awakens to defend villagers in trouble
One of the best Tarzan films of the 1960s, the first starring US footballer Mike Henry. This goes to shoot in Mexico with Tarzan in search of a lost valley and plays the action with a fine gritty edge
The sixth Godzilla film and the point where the series started to become silly and juvenile in its focus. A weak entry featuring some of the shabbiest effects of this era.
Italian-made sequel to the campy Vincent Price starring Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. Directed by the usually great Mario Bava and overrun by the buffoonish clowning of Italian comics Franco and Ciccio
An excruciating copy of the James Bond films, the second of the Matt Helm films starring Dean Martin as a drunken lounge lizard spy
The second film with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. Not quite up with its predecessor The Face of Fu Manchu but still an exciting blend of pulp melodrama, super-science and Yellow Peril
Regarded as one of the worst films ever made, more than anything this is just dull and boring. The plot concerns a couple straying into a desert home where a warlock is about to be resurrected
The first and probably the least worst in a series of James Bond copycat films starring Dean Martin as agent Matt Helm. Martin plays the part as a tipsy lounge lizard and the film comes stuffed with excruciating double entendres
One of the more amusing of the numerous James Bond copies of the 1960s featuring James Coburn as agent Derek Flint, this plants tongue in cheek and cheerfully spoofs the whole spy fad
The third of Hammer’s Dracula films. Christopher Lee returns to the role but is given no dialogue. Nevertheless, Terence Fisher delivers some vivid directorial set-pieces that make this one of the better sequels in the series
One of the more unusual Japanese monster movies, one that operates just as much a samurai film, concerning the stone god of a mountain that awakens to defend downtrodden peasants
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
This was the first of two Doctor Who movies produced during the height of Dalekmania during the 1960s. Alas a comedy element in the form of the asinine buffoonery of Roy Castle is allowed to dominate and kills the show off
Very silly AIP comedy that parodies the massively popular James Bond films of the era, as well as features Vincent Price as the villain spoofing his appearances in the studio’s Edgar Allan Poe films
This was made as a copy of the Godzilla films by rival studio Daiei. This proved sufficiently successful that it too spawned a long-running series of sequels and monster bashes
The first and best of the series of films featuring Christopher Lee at his ice cold best as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. This was made at the height of the Anglo-horror cycle and employs the production values to superlative regard.
The second sequel to the original The Fly, which does feature more teleporter accidents and mutations but for some reason no fly hybrids this time
The fourth Godzilla film, the first in which Godzilla battled another Toho monster, namely Mothra. Colourfully enjoyable and taking itself more seriously than many of the entries that would follow
Brazil’s Ze do Caixao or Coffin Joe is one of the most evil characters ever created on film, spearheaded by director/star Jose Mojica Marins’s contempt for the weak and catalogue of brutalities and blasphemies
Prolific exploitation director Jesus Franco creates a sequel to his first horror film about a mad scientist creating a mind-controlled man that he sends to go out and kill strippers
This is surely one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Another Mexican wrestling superhero film where a duo of woman wrestlers take on the Aztec Mummy from another Mexican horror series
The third of the James Bond films and the point where everything that has been defined as the formula of the series – the gadgets, the villains, the henchmen, the cars, the world domination plots – falls into place perfectly
The fifth Godzilla film, the point where Godzilla becomes a good guy joining Mothra and Rodan to battle Ghidrah. The best Godzilla film from this period with the effects team operating at the peak of their game
One of the popular Beach Party comedies of the 1960s. Tommy Kirk turns up as a bumbling Martian to romance Annette Funicello
This was the third of Hammer’s Frankenstein films. A usually overlooked entry in the series, this is made into something vivid and quite memorable by Freddie Francis’s direction
Quirky and charming sequel to The Mouse That Roared in which the world’s smallest country decides to launch a mission to the Moon and accidentally end up winning the Space Race
Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film inspired a series of Nature’s Revenge films throughout the 1970s. Expectedly, Hitchcock creates masterful set-pieces but the most effective thing the film does is to remove explanations creating a work of anxious uncertainty
The sequel to Village of the Damned, this makes the mistake of humanising the cold alienness of the children and taking their side against humanity, losing much of the stark effect of the original
Sequel to Disney’s The Absent-Minded Professor that only unimaginatively shuffles around the same elements and lacks the inspired touch of the first film
The first film from prolific horror and exploitation director Jesus Franco to which he would later make four sequels. This is a blatant copy of the French Eyes Without a Face served up with little directorial flair
The third of the Godzilla films wherein Toho managed to obtain a coup in leasing copyright to pit Godzilla against a rather tatty-looking King Kong for one of the great title bouts of the century
The first of the James Bond films. While the formula of the series is not quite established yet, this is a slick exciting work that did a number of groundbreaking things and created some iconic images
The best ever Tarzan films were the series made in the 1960s, which abandoned the cutsie elements of the earlier efforts. This comes with an emphasis on pure spectacle and adventure that is visually amazing
One of the inspired delights from Disney’s live-action era, a hit that became the template for their subsequent live-action films. The scenes with flying vehicles and basketball teams are entirely charming.
The first of five West German-made sequels featuring Fritz Lang’s great criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse, who this time is masterminding a plot to create mind controlled zombies
The film that inspired the popular tv series. As always with Irwin Allen, stolid dramatics, bad science and colourful spectacle
The last really good animated film made during Walt Disney’s lifetime and for the next couple of decades. Filled with cuddly anthropomorphism and charmed delights
One of the defining classics of the genre, enormously influential, muchly imitated and parodied and possibly the most over-analysed film ever. Alfred Hitchcock expertly creates a creepy psycho-thriller in which he delights in lulling us and undermining expectation
The third film about the title criminal mastermind from Fritz Lang. Here Lang returns to a radically different Germany to the one he fled in the 1930s, the West Germany of the Cold War, to deliver a creepily paranoid work about the surveillance society
The second of Hammer’s Dracula films has to work around the absence of Christopher Lee. Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing is brought to the forefront and Terence Fisher provides some standout directorial sequences
Classic adaptation of the John Wyndham novel about the women in a sleepy English village being impregnated and producing emotionless alien children with vast psychic powers. This translates the paranoia of US alien invasion films with considerable effectiveness
The second Tarzan film from producer Sy Weintraub who threw out the custie elements of the Johnny Weissmuller films, while going to Africa to shoot rather than a studio backlot. The effort makes a satisfying difference
The first of the sequels to the original The Fly where the scientist’s son begins his own experiments
The first of Disney’s live-action comedies, a comic variant on the werewolf story with Tommy Kirk turning into a dog. Mildly amusing but later efforts would do this type of comedy better
One of the best of all Tarzan films made under producer Sy Weintraub who dispensed with the cutsie elements of the earlier films and focused on gritty adventure
Sequel to the Steve Reeves-starring Hercules where Hercules is wooed by an evil queen after drinking the Waters of Forgetfulness. Spectacular but stolid
Peter Sellers comedy where the smallest country in the world invades the USA and ends up accidentally winning
The point where the legend of Hammer Films and the careers of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing began. A vivid colour remake of the Bram Stoker book that put a stake through the heart of the staid Universal horrors and created a new English horror industry
One of the classic films from cult stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, an Arabian Nights fantasy adventure where Harryhausen’s creations prove to be quite wondrous
Film about a monstrous blob that devours everything in its path. This has become a 1950s B movie classic more through its chessiness value, not to mention theme of teenage rebellion, than necessarily being a great film
Bert I. Gordon makes a sequel to The Amazing Colossal Man. The film cheats where a good chunk of running time is padded with footage from the original
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
A teleporter accident causes a scientist to swap head and arm with a fly. This requires you to suspend believability but is otherwise one of the classic monster movies of the era. Several sequels and a remake followed.
Third of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films, the second in colour and to be shot in real African locations
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
The second of Hammer’s Frankenstein films and a fine work that finds positively ingenious ways to continue on from its predecessor. Terence Fisher and the production team are all on top form.
This and The Horror of Dracula the following year set Hammer Films on the map. A remake of Frankenstein very different to the 1931 version that comes in vibrant colour and places Peter Cushing’s ruthlessly amoral Baron at the centre of the show
The second of the Quatermass films. An alien body snatchers tale that suggests even the British government has been infiltrated. This is regarded by many as the best of the series
The second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
One of the better of Bert I. Gordon’s B movies of the 1950s. This was rushed out not long after The Incredible Shrinking Man and displays some imagination despite cheap effects
The second and last of the sequels to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which comes with the intriguing premise of the creature undergoing an operation to make it human
The US release of several short Japanese films featuring the superhero Starman. Cheap and entertainingly absurd, filled with tatty superheroics and laughable science
The first of the Quatermass films and the first major genre hit for Hammer Films. Nigel Kneale creates a literate work of science-fiction horror about a returned astronaut mutating after exposure to an alien fungus
The first of the Gordon Scott Tarzan films although it does little to vary from the well-established formula of the previous eighteen entries
A Disney animation classic about two talking dogs from different walks of life who fall in together. It is impossible not to be charmed by the plaintive delights and sweetly romantic tenderness of the film
The first sequel to The Creature from the Black Lagoon where The Creature is brought back to civilisation. Director Jack Arnold again creates sympathy and pathos for the monster
Underrated 1950s SF film, a murder mystery as the equipment at a space research laboratory tries to kill people. Contains the first ever depiction of a computer virus
The very first Godzilla film. Essentially a copy of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, it has incredibly stark effect despite the primitiveness of the effects. In it you can see Japanese nation struggling to expiate the pain of the Atomic Bomb.
A classic 1950s monster movie where an expedition up the Amazon discovers a Gill Man. Here an average story is propelled into the memorable by Jack Arnold’s moody direction. Two sequels followed.
A sequel to the charming British mermaid comedy Miranda with Glynis Johns again owning the show with her flirtatiously coy sparkle as she swaps places with a lookalike relative
The very first alien body snatchers film. With Jack Arnold’s eerily haunted landscapes and a memorably literate Ray Bradbury script, this is one of the classic SF films of the 1950s era
One of the most unique 1950s atomic monster movies – in which the monster is an amok radioactive isotope. Low-budget SF film that is pushed into the decidedly watchable by a driving documentary-like urgency and in being one of the few 1950s SF films reasonably grounded in scientific methodology
One of the animated Disney classics, if probably an overrated film. It throws slapstick and derring-do together in a likeable package
The last of the Tarzan outings featuring Lex Barker, as well as an interesting cast line-up including Raymond Burr as the villain
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
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
This was the first in a series of excruciating comedies that pairs hapless Donald O’Connor with Francis, a talking mule. Six sequels followed
A Disney animated film whose classic stature has been overrated. The fairytale is too familiar to hold much interest, while the cutsie talking animals get to take over proceedings
This fifteen chapter serial was the second ever Superman film. It is a vigorously entertaining run through the comic’s basics and features the first screen appearance of Lex Luthor
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
Not to be confused with the Joel Schumacher atrocity, this was the second Batman film ever made, a 15-chapter serial. This is mostly worth watching as a novelty in its laughable attempts to approximate the superheroics of the comic-book in comparison to modern counterparts
An obscure and little-seen but fascinating Japanese copy of The Invisible Man films wherein a scientist becomes an invisible man after taking his formula. Let down by weak effects.
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
From the early days of Hammer Films, one of several films based on Dick Barton, a popular radio hero. A progenitor of the spy movie with the title hero trying to prevent foreign agents unleashing a deadly sonic ray
The very first mermaid film, a wonderfully droll comedy in which a capricious Glynis Johns innocently wreaks havoc on all the men around her
A 15 chapter serial that marks the very first live-action screen appearance of Superman. The superheroics and effects are painfully primitive today (where Superman flying is represented by animation) but the serial gets many aspects of the comic-book down right
This was a semi-sequel to Here Comes Mr Jordan featuring Rita Hayworth as the goddess Terpsichore descended to Earth to inspire a Broadway producer
Classic Christmas film with Edmund Gwenn as a man who is placed on trial after he insists he is the real Santa Claus
Sentimental Frank Capra film that had become a Christmas classic where an angel shows depressed everyman James Stewart the alternate world that would happen if he had never been born