The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The first sequel to the 1931 Boris Karloff Frankenstein, which many prefer to the original. Director James Whale comes into his element and provides a whole other level of droll humour that the first film did not have
The Hollywood remake of The Hands of Orlac, a classic with Colin Clive as a pianist who believes he is possessed after receiving hands transplanted from a killer. With a fascinatingly demented performance from Peter Lorre
A stylishly made historical horror where Boris Karloff plays an evil heir to a European province who seeks to gain power by masquerading as his good twin brother
A serial Tarzan adventure that stood outside the regular Johnny Weissmuller films. A producer formed a business partnership with Edgar Rice Burroughs and went to Guatemala to shoot
An entertainingly madcap screen pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi with the latter as a Poe-obsessed surgeon who has built a house of Poe-inspired torture devices
A light fantasy comedy with Lucas Donat as the inheritor of a Scottish castle that is haunted by a ghost and the problems faced when the castle is sold to be shipped to America
Hollywood’s first werewolf film. Largely overlooked and overshadowed by The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr, it takes an approach to the subject that is not uninteresting
Dante Aligheri’s famous poem is dragged down to a tatty morality play with Spencer Tracy as a carnival barker running an Inferno exhibit. The film is worth watching for its stunning hallucinatory vision of Hell
Dracula director Tod Browning reteams with Bela Lugosi in a remake of the silent London After Midnight. A vampire film that has much atmosphere but is ruined by a ridiculous ending
A 1930s screwball comedy about the invention of a ray that can petrify people that is then used to bring statues of Greek gods to life
An oddity from the heyday of the serial that has singing cowboy star Gene Autry discover the doorway to an underground kingdom on his ranch Made with a crude pulp vigour
The first sound version of H. Rider Haggard’s lost city adventure about explorers finding an immortal queen (Helen Gahagan). From the producers of the original King Kong
Early sound era depiction of the attempts to build a tunnel between the UK and USA. The film conjures something of the epic architectural imagination of Metropolis but is crippled by dull, static scenes with characters sitting around talking (a novelty for early sound audiences)
The novelty of a film that was science-fiction at the time it was made but no longer is today – namely concerning the invention of a television. This is rather dull Bela Lugosi starring murder mystery but what makes it fascinating is watching what people thought television would be vs the reality today