The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the first film’s humour gets lost amid repetition and blown up by a big-budget. William Sadler’s Death however proves a scene-stealer
The third and probably the least regarded of the Chucky films. This for some reason takes place in a military academy. The outrageous black humour of the later entries is absent and in its place a mean-spirited sadism
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series
The second sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story, a slighter effort too reliant on the plot beats of the original. Where it does work is in the enormous degree of slapstick energy with which proceedings are conducted
Jörg Buttgereit’s sequel to his shocking necrophilia film
The second live-action Turtles film is a disappointment. The Turtles are infectiously enjoyable characters but the script has an indifferent laziness, while parental concerns over violence have mandated that the fight scenes be watered down to an absurd level
The second and best in the series of Hong Kong films filled with wonderfully tongue-in-cheek erotica and a series of entertainingly over-the-top fantastical set-pieces
This sequel to Flesh Gordon, the R-rated parody of the Flash Gordon serials, feels like a joke that is belaboured in the retelling. The film does have a crass level of nonsensical absurdity that proves amusing
The first of several sequels to Charles Band’s Trancers with Tim Thomerson as a hard-boiled time-travelling detective. This does a passably okay job of following up on its predecessor
The big screen version of the 1960s tv series and Charles Addams’ cartoons is a highly enjoyable Hollywood Halloween Party, a chance for name actors to put on costume and ape life with a ghoulish, mildly perverse, moderately subversive spin
The first sequel to the Troma hit and with all of the usual bad taste and moron humour you associate with a Troma film, but also better produced then most their films
The start of the 90s renaissance of Disney animation, a beautifully made adaptation of the fairytale that hearkens back to the Disney Golden Age. The only animated film nominated for an Academy Award Best Picture
The third of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case films but by this point the perverse wit of the original has become replaced by a cartoonish absurdity
The first sequel to The Terminator where James Cameron returns with the biggest budget for a film at the time. Cameron harnesses then top-drawer CGI technology to create one of the most original nemeses in any SF film
Excruciating sequel to The Beastmaster that transports Marc Singer’s Dar to contemporary L.A. The whole film is wrecked by an attitude that seems unable to take the proceedings seriously.
Third of the Alien films, a directorial debut for David Fincher. A better film than was perceived at the time, this explores new character depths, while Fincher imprints his own visual style on the film
A shabby sequel where the classic original where Terry O’Quinn is replaced by another actor and everything reduced to no more than a routine slasher film
The third of the Maniac Cop films had production problems and now feels more like a regular slasher film, although is still boosted by a characteristically witty Larry Cohen script
The sixth film based around The Amityville Horror, although by now connections to the original are minimal and this only concerns a mysterious clock taken from the house
Completely ridiculous mix of The Terminator and Die Hard where, for no clear reason, an android terrorist decides to take hostages in an office building and the FBI’s only hope is a cryogenically unfrozen football player
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell make their third Evil Dead film. The series hit a peak with the delirious balance of horror and comedy in the second film but here the comedy over-balances and becomes too broad
Animated film where fairies face the threat to their forest posed by a logging operation. Preachy message-making that is all but a recruitment film for Greenpeace and the Sierra Club
The fourth and last in the series of 1980s horror comedies that began with House produced by Friday the 13th director Sean S. Cunningham. This brings the first film’s William Katt back to round the series out
Sequel to Anthony Hickox’s Waxwork, which ups the number of horror homages but suffers a low budget
Absolutely delightful and charming BBC series about a family of miniature people who live in secrecy inside the walls of human houses. The best of several versions of the popular books
Action film starring Lorenzo Lamas as a detective drawn into underground fight clubs while discovering a mystic sword owned by Alexander the Great
Sequel to their earlier Wu Xia film, although having nothing in common with it. All the moves are pushed to a level of cartoonish absurdity that proves amazingly silly
This slick eroticised thriller was a huge success and made the career of Sharon Stone. The absurd plot bears no resemblance to human motivation but Paul Verhoeven makes an undeniably provocative and entertaining package
The 19th Godzilla film, part of the 1990s revival where the series started to employ modern animatronics. This revives Mothra in quite beautiful ways and mounts to a rousing monster battle
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
The second of the films spun off from the Stephen King short story. This is better that its predecessor, premised around a series of novelty deaths and offering some explanations for what is happening
An entertaining B-budget film about malevolent toys from low-budget producer Charles Band, known for the Ghoulies and Puppetmaster films. One of the first works from screenwriter David S. Goyer
Second of the sequels to David Cronenberg’s Scanners, this features Liliana Komorowska who becomes crazed after taking a scan suppressant drug
Sensational example of the Hong Kong Wu Xia/Flying Swordsman film. Ching Siu-Tung delivers an amazing series of martial arts battles with fantastical moves that are quite out of this world
The last of the popular Hong Kong comedy series about hopping vampires. While the other sequels became very silly, this goes out on an inspired final note
Shinya Tsukamoto makes a better budgeted sequel to his breakthrough hit. The first film was a masterpiece of guerilla filmmaking but the same frenzied fetishism is missing here
An unfunny comedy about a cheerleader vampire slayer. This should have been quickly forgotten but instead it surprisingly became the basis for a much superior hit tv series several years later
Sequel to the 1989 Pet Sematary that reverses the sympathies of the original – now it is a child that resurrects a parent – but this never quite finds the same effectiveness
The Hellraiser sequels begin their descent to mediocrity. Clive Barker’s original vision of dark, forbidden pleasures has been watered down and the Cenobites become little more than campy variations on Freddy Krueger
The third and least interesting of the Hong Kong series that blends erotica and the supernatural. Unlike the other films, this takes itself mostly seriously
A Clive Barker adaptation capped by a magisterial performance from Tony Todd. This was greeted as a horror masterpiece when it came out and went on to spawn two sequels. Not too bad if it falls short of the classic status
The first sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, which far less effectively reverses the scenario and has Rick Moranis accidentally enlarging his child to giant size
The first studio film from Roland Emmerich, a loud, noisy action featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren as Vietnam Vets resurrected as super-soldiers
This has nothing to do with the Stephen King story about a Pan-worshipping lawnmowing service and is a film about Virtual Reality. Harnessing some top-drawer CGI effects of the day, this was influential on subsequent VR films
The second of Tim Burton’s Batman films is even more beautifully dark and glistering than the first, introducing Michelle Pfeiffer as a sizzling Cat Woman and Danny De Vito as a venomous Penguin who respectively own the show
A popular hit among the 1990s renaissance of Disney animation, this is a glib work that allows the original story to be overrun with hip-jokes and Robin Williams being Robin Williams
Hilarious French comedy where a filthy Mediaeval knight and his servant are transported into the present-day
Wim Wenders returns to angels in this sequel to Wings of Desire, along with most of the cast. Again Wenders delivers a work of haunting beauty about the angels invisibly looking in on humanity
The ninth of the Friday the 13th films and the most variant and fun of the series. This cheerfully turns expectations on their head and readily punctures the series cliches
Sequel to the earlier Wu Xia film, which brings back the leads in an enjoyable adventure that places much more emphasis on flying swordplay
Enormously entertaining and hilariously tongue-in-cheek Hong Kong action film featuring three popular actresses as superheroines who go into action in a series of wildly over-the-top moves
A sequel to the earlier H.P. Lovecraft adapted film The Unnamable. Despite having a bigger budget, this is no more of an improvement over its predecessor
Prolific low-budget hack David DeCoteau directs what feels like a very softcore version of a Gidget film crossbred with Earth Girls Are Easy (albeit with the sexes reversed). A film that quickly sinks into awfulness
John Woo made his US debut with this Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle, which is essentially an urban version of The Most Dangerous Game. Woo’s stylised action set-ups give a slight script a dynamism that blows his contemporaries away
The fourth in Charles Band’s most popular series about a group of malevolent dolls. This turns the dolls into good guys and adds an Ancient Egyptian deity who despatches a Terminator robot against them
A Disney live-action film that engenders no believability in its basic premise. Much of the show is regarded as an opportunity for Bette Midler to steal the limelight and play to over-the-top excess
An enormous hit for Steven Spielberg who took new emergent CGI technologies and wowed audiences with dinosaurs brought to life in dazzlingly realistic detail. It doesn’t hurt that he delivers a relentlessly suspenseful film too
Classic Hong Kong Wu Xia film featuring much aerial swordplay and lushly dressing/lighting but also a work of wildly uneven tone
A disappointing sequel to the madcap Hong Kong superheroines film. This reunites the principal cast members but seems to miss all the fun of its predecessor
A really cheap and unconvincing post-apocalyptic action film starring forgotten martial arts star Ron Marchini as a lawman fighting off mutant crazies to obtain a power crystal
Full Moon production that offers the novelty of bringing together their Dollman and Demonic Toys franchises, although nearly a third of the film is comprised of recycled footage from said films
Julian Sands returns in a sequel to Warlock where the frequently unserious effects of director Anthony Hickox turn it into a silly comic-book of a film
In the aftermath of the success of Jurassic Park, Albert and Charles Band quickly responded with this children’s dinosaur film that contains some of the most pitiful effects in any film of this era
Sequel to the live-action Addams Family film that reunites the same cast who fine-tune their roles, while the black comedy has an even more barbed bite second time around
The first in the popular series of films starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun. Fairly cheesy and silly, mostly known today for featuring a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston
Brian Yuzna’s entry is the only worthwhile effort among the sequels to Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Deadwhere Yuzna adds an original plot about a zombie girlfriend and the film is spiked with perverse imagery
A sequel to The Philadelphia Experiment where Brad Johnson is thrown into an alternate timeline where the Nazis have overtaken the USA
Stuart Gordon, a cult director on the basis of Re-Animator, ventures into making an SF action film set in a futuristic prison. The film has a bone-headed script that feels like it is only rehashing cliches from every SF film
A low-budget action copy of RoboCop starring David Bradley as a DEA agent up against drug lord John Rhys-Davies who has transformed his brother into a cyborg
Albert Pyun’s finest film. It is another of his standard killer cyborg films but comes with an often hauntingly written gritty Cyberpunk edge that makes it quite unique
Martial arts film from legendary Hong Kong action coordinator Yuen Wo Ping (behind the fight scenes in The Matrix). Essentially a Wu Xia version of Robin Hood and worth watching for Yuen’s amazing action scenes
The third of the original live-action Turtles films is a lazily conceived affair that transplants the Turtles back in time to feudal Japan in a plot that rips off The Seven Samurai
The third Robocop film killed the series off with a disastrous decision to go for a PG rating and pair Robocop with a cute kid
A Roger Corman produced cheapie about genetically engineered dinosaurs that was quickly rushed out to exploit the success of Jurassic Park. Corman went on to make two sequels
The first Weekend at Bernie’s had the lame concept of two jerks forced to pretend that their boss’s body was still alive. For the sequel, the body is resurrected by voodoo
Sequel that abandons that mindless chop suey of Albert Pyun’s Cyborg and reconstructs it into a halfway reasonable Cyberpunk film. A then unknown Angelina Jolie plays the cyborg
Way back before Blumhouse’s Ouija and the subsequent cheap ouija-titled films, there was the 80s horror Witchboard, which proved popular enough that it produced two sequels starting with this
The third in the Hong Kong Wu Xia/flying swordsman series. After a sensational second entry, this one figures it has to top it, resulting in some utterly whacko scenes even by the usually OTT, anything-goes standards of Hong Kong fantasy
When a Strange Calls is one of the overlooked entries of the original slasher fad but was quite a hit in its day. This is a forgotten sequel that does some undeniably interesting things with the basics.
The fourth and final of the Ghoulies films. This one comes from B-budget hack Jim Wynorski who seems to not be taking any of the show seriously
The second in a series of low-budget vampire films from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions. Nothing much to write home about.
Entry from they heyday of Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cycle. By this point, the moves had become so over-the-top the film verges on the cartoonish, all with rather entertaining results
Seventh of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films where Wes Craven returns to direct the most remarkable of all the sequels, an extraordinary meta-fiction that takes place in the real world
The third sequel to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Usually reviled by fans, this is not unworthwhile, capped by a genuinely insane performance from a then-unknown Matthew McConaughey
The second of Michael Schroeder’s sequels to Albert Pyun’s Cyborg both of which are better than the original. This does interesting things with the hokey idea of a pregnant android.
The first of the Disney live-action remakes of their animated films. Stephen Sommers abandons the talking animals and gives us a film that it more Tarzan than Rudyard Kipling set in a lush fantasy version of India
The first in what later became a fad for replicating cartoon tv series as big-budget live-action films, this does an exacting live-action version of the Hanna-Barbera series
From the height of the 90s RoboCop copycat video release, a sequel that this time pits DEA agent David Bradley up against an army of rogue cyborgs
From the producers of The Matrix, an adaptation of the classic comic-book about a lonely rich kid now made as a vehicle for Macaulay Culkin
The Hidden was a wittily enjoyable hit about body-hopping aliens. This is a cheap sequel that substantially reuses material from the first film, while missing everything that made the original work
The original Emmanuelle was a supposedly autobiographical memoir about the sexual dalliances of a bored wife in Thailand. Here Emmanuelle is now abducted by aliens for further encounters
Third of the sequels to Scanners, this stars Daniel Quinn as a police officer who discovers scanner abilities
A sequel to the killer android school teacher film Class of 1999. The sequel was made on a far lesser budget and is wrecked by an absurd twist ending
One of the best films to come out of Disney’s animation renaissance during the 1990s, this uses all the studio as its disposal to create a work that is epic in its scope
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
Rather confused film about people on a therapy retreat to confront their fears who then have to deal with a wooden dummy that has maybe come to life
One of the better films produced by Charles Band. Despite variable dragon effects, this is a children’s film that captures a genteel sense of innocence
Comic-book adaptation featuring a ballistically OTT Jim Carrey who becomes a zany figure of chaos whenever he puts on a mask. The film has been designed to emulate cartoon physics but its lack of any grounding reality proves annoying
Danish tv mini-series co-directed by Lars von Trier set in a haunted hospital. This comes with a blacker-than-black sense of humour in its interwoven character strands plus moments that are genuinely eerie
The second in the Leprechaun series with Warwick Davis delivering a series of extremely silly novelty deaths accompanied by excruciating one-liners