The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An entry in a popular series of French slapstick comedies with Louis de Funes as a comic gendarme. In this, the series sole genre entry, he goes up against alien visitors
One in a series of British spy films made in imitation of the James Bond series. As evidenced by the alternate title The Man from S.E.X., this takes things further than the Bond films do
Episodes of the original Battlestar Galactica tv series that were recut and screened theatrically for international audiences
Way back before Peter Jackson, there was another whole era of Tolkien adaptations, including this animated adaptation of the third book, which is a peculiar oddity if nothing else
The third and last of the theatrically released films recut from the 1970s live-action Spider-Man tv series. The near sleep-inducing plot takes Nicholas Hammond’s Spider-Man to Hong Kong
Sequel to Oh, God, this brings back George Burns as God but pairs him with a cute kid
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
The directorial debut of William Malone later to make House on Haunted HillAlien (one of the first of many such), albeit brought down to Earth. As a novice director, Malone is relatively crude and far removed from the masterful style of Ridley Scott
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
Entry amid the 1980s slasher fad featuring Jamie Lee Curtis. A fairly dreary effort that comes with much disco dancing footage
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
Possibly the worst Kaiju film ever made – produced by a bankrupt studio in order to recoup losses and cheaply slung together by rehashing footage from the other Gamera films
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
Dario Argento’s sequel to Suspiria, the second film in his Third Mothers trilogy. This is an even better work where Argento delights in sadistic and beautifully artistic imagery almost entirely free of any plot
From the notorious 1970s/80s period of Italian cinema, this was listed as one of the notorious Video Nasties. This features a lone cannibal killer amok on a Greek island amid plentiful gore
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
Amid the spate of post-Jaws Animals Amok films, this, which comes armed with a John Sayles script and plays on the urban legend of baby alligators flushed into the sewers, was a rather enjoyable effort that plants tongue in cheek
Shot back-to-back with the first Christopher Reeve film, this then became a mess behind the scenes. The end result emerges fairly well with the show dominated by the magnificent Phantom Zones villains and giving depth to the Superman-Lois relationship
The film that James Cameron would prefer we forget about. A nominal sequel to Joe Dante’s enjoyable tongue-in-cheek Piranha, this misses that film’s sense of humour and lets the show sink amid absurd effects
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 and by general consensus the weakest of The Omen films. It fails to deliver its promise of depicting the Armageddon but Sam Neill gives a performance of magnificently dark charisma as the grown-up Damien
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
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
A sequel that makes an extraordinary leap over its predecessor. It created an entire genre of films – even its own design and clothing aesthetic – and is one of the most kinetic, exciting action films ever made
The first of several sequels to the hit Charles Bronson vigilante film, the first under Cannon Films. While the first film had some interesting things to say, this mostly repeats the original while taking some turns to the nastily exploitative
Disney animated film from the fallow period of the 1970s/early 80s. This concerns the friendship between a talking fox and a hound tempered by the knowledge they will grow into enemies. An okay effort if not up the heights of the studio’s classics
One of the key films from John Carpenter with Kurt Russell giving his best ever performance, a slick exciting action film that imagines a future Manhattan Island having been transformed into a lawless prison
Enormously entertaining David Cronenberg film about psychic powers. Cronenberg is fascinated with the conceptua possibilities and creates some sensational set-pieces
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
The second of the Muppet films made when Jim Henson was alive and one of the best, this bubbles with a double level of sly grown-up humour that many of the later post Henson entries miss
John Landis brings the werewolf film into the modern era with this revisionist work where a modern character is forced to confront it as real, while depicting the transformation with an arsenal of top-drawer effects.
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s homage to the adventure films of the 1940s was a huge hit in its day, spawning several sequels and many imitators. The film is pure action and adventure, delivered with enormous charm and wit
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
A not uninteresting sequel to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this has widely divided reactions among fans
The first sequel to Halloween, with Michael Myers pursuing Jamie Lee Curtis through a hospital. John Carpenter’s suspense is replaced by slasher hackery but in retrospect this is a lot better than the subsequent sequels
Remarkable little no-budget film from Frank Henenlotter about the relationship between a man and the deformed, psychopathic torso of his severed Siamese twin
Don Coscarelli, director of the culty Phantasm, made this as part of the early 1980s sword and sorcery fad with Marc Singer as a muscular hero who has the ability to communicate with animals
Supposedly a feminist parody of the slasher film but one has doubts. For one, the film is lacking in discernible irony and otherwise no different from the other slasher films of the era bar the fact it was directed by a woman
Third of the Friday the 13th films, shot in the brief fad for 3D films in the early 80s. This is also the one where Jason adopts his trademark hockey mask
An Italian exploitation film about gangs fighting in the ruins of a future New York. Director Enzo G. Catsellari has ripped off both Escape from New York and The Warriors
Second of the Star Trek films, usually regarded as the fan favourite because of its often moving character focus on themes of life, death and aging. Ricardo Montalban makes a grandly theatrical villain and the film gets some great suspense out of space war sequences
Made on the coat-tails of Conan the Barbarian, this is a low-budget sword and sorcery film that crackles with the essence of Robert E. Howard. The first film from regular genre director Albert Pyun
Wes Craven makes a film based on the DC Comics character but reduces the mood of the original to something cartoonish. One of Craven’s worst films
The first film from Don Bluth, a Disney animator who formed his own company vowing a return to the studio’s classic tradition. The results are beautiful and quite magical
A psychic powers film like Carrie having been reduced to the crass high school comedy of something like Porky’s
A British-made copy of Alien that has been construed as a series of bizarre images and scenes that make no real sense – even the title is given no explanation
Ridley Scott’s film was not a success at the time but has since been regarded as a SF masterpiece, one of the defining screen treatments of android themes while the incredibly dense Cyberpunk vision of the future was copied by many subsequent films
The third in a trilogy of satirical films from director Lindsay Anderson and star Malcolm McDowell, this takes a biting crosscut of British society as a hospital prepares for a royal visit
The first of The Amityville Horror sequels and a far more entertaining film than its predecessor by abandoning the pretence at telling a true story and adding a possession plot and makeup effects to the mix
A strong contender for Worst Film Ever. Rather than create any effects, it has simply uplifted footage from Star Wars, while the score is a mismash taken from popular films of the era. The dialogue is so bizarrely surreal it makes the brain hurt trying to understand it
Adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s pulp adventure stories and the film that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star. The script from Oliver Stone takes unevenly from Howard but director John Milius gives the film a brutal, primal majesty
Stephen King and George Romero collaborate on a horror anthology made as homage to the EC Comics, telling five tales that replicate the blacker-than-black sense of humour (and even the visual look) of the comic-book with hilarious results
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that doesn’t always make sense but pulls its effects off flawlessly
A flop in its day, nobody at the time saw how revolutionary this was in that it predicted the idea of cyberspace and the internet. The design of the world inside the computer all in candy apple colours and geometric shapes is extraordinary
This was the third of the Amityville films, released amid the early 1980s 3D revival. Nothing more than the usual except for various things popping out of the screen
The second sequel to the hit killer shark film. This is shot with gimmick of the early 80s 3D revival fad but this has the effect of reducing Steven Spielberg’s masterful suspense to a series of novelty pop-up shocks
Dan O’Bannon scripted film about a hi-tech helicopter, this crackles with great writing and some immensely exciting aerial action scenes from director John Badham
The second in a series of Hong Kong slapstick action caper comedies where the action is maintained at such a madcap and dementedly over-the-top pace that it frequently heads into orbit
This was the first film to ever depict the internet with Matthew Broderick as a teen innocent hacker who accidentally hacks in and triggers a nuclear alert thinking he is playing a computer game
The modern beginnings of Wu Xia and the flying swordsman film. Tsui Hark creates a totally nutso film filled with wild martial arts battles with demonic forces. The results are out of this world
Charles B. Pierce, a director who gained a cult with his films for 1970s drive-in audiences, makes a sequel to his earlier pseudo-documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek about the hunt for a Bigfoot creature
The nadir of the Christopher Reeve Superman films, one where the desire to add a comedy element in the form of Richard Pryor overtakes and wrecks what is already a random and unfocused plot
Enzo G. Castellari’s sequel to his Escape from New York ripoff 1990: The Bronx Warriors and a most more polished and entertaining B action movie
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
Very popular mini-series during its day (that was followed by a tv series) concerning the alien invasion and occupation of Earth, this has an utter banality that fails on almost every level – as human drama, science and even basic plausibility
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
Psycho did not need a sequel but this does a scrupulous and exacting job, bringing back Anthony Perkins and paying a great deal of homage in many small details. The script comes with a considerable cleverness
Classic from the heyday of the slasher film. While the plot only recycles Friday the 13th, everything else is above average from the characterisations to the novelty deaths, before the film reaches one of the great unforgettable endings of the cycle
Follow-up to the popular V mini-series, this is an absurd melodrama that is made up of incredibly bad science-fiction writing and directed with zero plausibility
An overrated classic that is nevertheless an undeniable fixture of 1980s pop culture. Overlong, it is largely carried through Bill Murray’s lazy sarcasm and the sterling work from the visual effects team
A fifteen page Stephen King story about a patricidal child cult has spawned this film, nine sequels and a remake. Not a very good film, this is stuck with padding a very slight original out to a full-length film
No-one is pretending that the Bill Murray summer camp comedy Meatballs was a masterpiece but it looks a work of art in comparison to this unfunny sequel, which also throw in a stiff E.T. lookalike
One of the 2-3 most influential SF films since 1980. James Cameron creates a barrelling powerhouse of a film, all lorded over by Arnold Schwarzenegger as the relentless killer machine in the role that defined his career
2001: A Space Odyssey did not need a sequel but this fits the bill surprisingly well. A warmer and much more human film than Stanley Kubrick made, this has some of the very best effects of its era.
This sequel to Conan the Barbarian makes the mistake of watering the primal brutalism down to a PG rating and what results ends up being a pedestrian comic-book adventure
Reboot of the Godzilla series that forgets about all the sequels and acts as a direct follow-up to the original film. This uses top drawer effects technology of the era to create Godzilla as the fearsome creation he originally was
Mini-series adaptation of a novel by John Wyndham, best known for The Day of the Triffids, concerning a young boy who develops an invisible alien companion. Imagine a version of Harvey retold by way of E.T.
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
The film that launched the name of Troma Films. The world’s first superhero splatter film, this readily dives into bad taste just to see what kind of offence it can get away with
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
Leonard Nimoy steps into the director’s chair of the third Star Trek film and his doing marks the shift of the films from intergalactic adventuring into the regulars engaged in a safe, easy set of adventures playing to fan audiences
Classic tv mini-series about rebellion in a future where Earth is controlled by giant alien tripod machines, this still holds up as something great today
Steven Spielberg and George Lucas’s first sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark is like a single 118 minute rollercoaster ride without let-up in terms of action, although is far less polished in the scripting department
Not the first but the most famous of the psycho Santa films. This does the slasher movie formula rather well while digging into Christmas sentiment with a savage bite that takes you aback
The film about malicious creatures that was the runaway box-office hit of 1984. Director Joe Dante runs amok like a schoolboy with a chemistry kit and gleefully trashes the wholesome innocence of producer Steven Spielberg’s E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
A popular fantasy film of the 80s that sits just between the imaginative, particularly when it comes to some its creature effects and design work, and the mawkish. It also comes with an intriguing level of meta-fiction that delivers some odd messages
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
One of the earliest films from Ron Howard as director, a bubbly infectiously light comedy with Tom Hanks in a romance with mermaid Daryl Hannah. This was a hit and offered major career breakthroughs for Howard, Hanks, Hannah and John Candy.
One of the most influential horror films of the 1980s, creating a series of dream horror copycats. Before the campy, makeup effects driven sequels kicked in, Wes Craven’s original creates a genuinely unearthly series of nightmare jumps
Alex Coz’s surreal cult film with Emilio Estevez as an L.A. punk working as a repo driver who gets wound into the hunt for a car with radioactive aliens in the trunk
Based on a non-fiction, fringe science book that makes claims that the US Navy conducted experiments that turned a ship invisible during WWII, this spins the idea out into a modest time travel story
Cult anime about a monosyllabic vampire hunter moving across a hallucinatory post-apocalyptic dispatching mutants and vampires
This lamely updates I Was a Teenage Werewolf to the 1980s high school, strips all horror elements and has Michael J. Fox’s transformation be regarded as an instant injection of cool. The result was a surprising hit
This was one of the classic 1980s splatter films. Stuart Gordon throws most of H.P. Lovecraft’s tone out the window and goes for hilariously black comedy served up with outrageously over-the-top effects
Italian horror directed by Lamberto Bava and produced by Dario Argento, an Evil Dead-inspired work about the possessed dead taking over a cinema, all conducted with a ferocious enthusiasm
Sequel to the bad movie classic of Cannon Films’ Hercules starring Lou Ferrigno and only a marginally less terrible film that its predecessor
The third of the Mad Max films sees the series becoming increasingly more mainstream in focus, along with the conscious resignation that it is impossible to top the previous film
Ron Howard film clearly inspired by the success of E.T.. This story about seniors being rejuvenated after swimming in a pool that has an alien pod in it received critical kudos during its day but the film operates as a simplistic and naive wish-fulfillment fantasy
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
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band with Tim Thomerson giving a highly entertaining performance as a hard-boiled detective travelled back from the future