The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
One of the films from the 1940s fad for light afterlife fantasies in which mobster Paul Muni is sent back from Hell by The Devil in the body of a respectable judge to create mischief
A fearful Peter Lorre is chased about by the disembodied hand of his late employer. A classic psychological horror film that has borrowed more than a few leaves from Val Lewton
Jean Cocteau makes one of the greatest of all fantasy films and the finest of all fairytale adaptations, elaborating the original story out with a visual magic that still manages to dazzle audiences today
The last of the classic Val Lewton produced horror films, a work set around the true-life 18th Century asylum lorded over by Boris Karloff where an innocent Anna Lee is committed
An Old Dark House thriller that has the distinction of being the last horror film made during Universal’s Golden Age of Horror. The results are creaky and impoverished looking
A blatant but far more pedestrian copy of Cat People in which a man has blackouts during which he suspects he turns into a catman who is wanted by police for a string of murders
A rather dull twelve-chapter serial in which a criminologist tries to stop the titular criminal mastermind tries to steal a device that can block electrical transmissions
Mad scientist cheapie from poverty row studio PRC in which George Zucco has found an Aztec Quetzalcoatl bird and kills his enemies by placing one of its feathers on their person
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
British director Michael Powell creates the most visually stunning of all 1940s afterlife fantasies in lush Technicolor, depicting a heaven of dazzling architectural marvels
Overblown production featuring Turhan Bey as the storyteller Aesop engaged in a romantic adventure
Early Vincent Price film with he as a sinister psychiatrist terrorising a woman who witnessed him murdering his wife
Disney film that is difficult to see these days due to its controversial treatments of race issues. Controversies aside, this is undeniably likeable, in particular in its telling a series of tall tales and finding a folk vernacular
A film from the famous poverty row studios of its era that has gained a certain cult reputation. The film transcends its cheapness to create an undeniable spooky atmosphere in its tale of a ghostly revenant, even if the cult has tended to overstate its effectiveness
An Abbott and Costello comedy. Not one of their monster bashes but a variant on the light comedy that had been popular in the last decade with Lou as an 18th Century ghost haunting Bud Abbott in the present. Can’t say I am a big fan of their humour, most of the slapstick that seems dated today