The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
One amid the popular fad of Arabian Nights adventures made by Hollywood during the 1940s. Here the story of Ali Baba is subverted to become a swashbuckling romantic adventure
Poverty row cheapie with Bela Lugosi as a mad scientist transformed into an ape-man after an experiment gone wrong who goes out hunting victims for their spinal fluids with his pet gorilla
Batman’s first screen appearance in a fifteen-chapter serial. This is a dull, impoverished adaptation, which sees Batman and Robin rewritten in the service of the US government fighting a Japanese invasion force
Not long after RKO had a hit with Cat People, Universal responded with this in which the exotically beautiful Acquanetta turns into a gorilla (actually vice versa). The Jungle Woman went on to appear in two sequels
Excellent film from Carl Dreyer, the director of Vampyr director set during the time of witch persecutions about a woman who believes she has the powers of a witch. Everything is told with a beautifully subtle ambiguity
A really great and overlooked anthology of fantastical tales from the 1940s. The three stories told here by Julien Duvivier blow you away with their extraordinary visual stylishness
The first film in which Universal teamed-up their in-house monsters, leading to several other monster bashes throughout the decade. For all that, this fails to make any interesting use of the title set-up
The most obscure among the classic horror titles produced by Val Lewton – a beautifully stark and haunted piece about a man trapped at sea aboard a ship with a murderous captain
Comedy where the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys encounter Bela Lugosi running a Nazi fifth column operation from a haunted house, although the ghosts part eventually proves misleading
Classic 1940s afterlife fantasy with Spencer Tracy as a pilot killed in action who is sent back as a guardian angel. This works fantastically well due to a great character arc and a sharp Dalton Trumbo script
An entry in the 1940s light fantasy films in which compulsive womaniser Don Ameche arrives in the afterlife where he tells his life story to The Devil
One of the key films from the legendary Val Lewton, this exploits a topical interest in voodoo. As with Lewton’s films, this sits in an ambiguous place that leaves the actuality of the supernatural uncertain
An entry from the great era of mad scientist films wherein George Zucco turns his assistant into a zombie so he can steal his fiancee. Despite a wonderfully mad performance from Zucco, the effort is prosaic and routine, while the zombie gets to do almost nothing throughout
Fascinating, epically sized versions of the adventures of Baron Münchausen produced by the Nazis
Film made during World War II about the locals of small English town dealing with a haunted mine and uncovering a Nazi infiltration plot
Serial adaptation of the famous comic-strip superhero. One of the better serial comic-book adaptations, featuring some great cliffhangers and maintaining great faith to the comic-strip original
The second film version of the story, lavishly remaking the classic 1925 Lon Chaney version in sound and colour. Alas, all this serves to do is stuff and mount the story. With the addition of a sympathetic backstory and cast with a wimpily diminutive Claude Rains, Chaney’s magnificently mad Phantom comes across like an indignant fox terrier
One of the classic films from producer Val Lewton concerning a secret society of Satanists. An oppressive atmosphere of gloom and morbidity hangs over the film and, as always with Lewton, it comes with striking directorial effects that play on the imagination
Considered one of Alfred Hitchcock’s greatest films, this centres around Joseph Cotten as the favourite uncle who comes to town as his niece increasingly suspects that he may be a serial killer
The third of Universal’s Dracula films in which Dracula travels to Louisiana in search of a wife. A flabby Lon Chaney Jr makes a poor replacement for Bela Lugosi, while the script seems improbably stitched together – despite the title, the film features Dracula, not his son
The seventh of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films made as a work of Wartime propaganda where Tarzan faces Nazis
The eight of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films. The same formula as before but in a desire for novelty the action is relocated to North Africa