The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The most well remembered of Abbott and Costello’s films. Universal had shuffled their Famous Monsters through several team-ups and here decided to play them for outright laughs. Undeniably likeable
The second of Abbott and Costello’s outings with Universal’s Famous Monsters. The usual numbskullery is boosted by some excellent invisibility effects
A very young Dean Stockwell stars in this strange anti-war fable about a boy who wakes up to find his hair has turned green
A ghastly sanctimonious Catholic miracle film from the 1940s about the elevation of a Hollywood starlet to sainthood simply because she was glamorous
The very first mermaid film, a wonderfully droll comedy in which a capricious Glynis Johns innocently wreaks havoc on all the men around her
A Hollywood copy of the British mermaid film Miranda in which dull middle-aged William Powell fishes up capricious mermaid Ann Blyth. This has an amiable charm
A classic work of Film Noir adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel featuring Edward G. Robinson as a stage mentalist who suddenly finds he can predict the future for real
Classic, exquisitely made weepie romantic fantasy about an artist obsessed with a woman who appears to travel through time
Sumptuous, beautifully made ballet fantasy from Michael Powell based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale. A Technicolor spectacle at a time when most films were still made in black-and-white
Alfred Hitchcock conducts an experiment in shooting a film in only eight takes. Based on the true-life Leopold-Lowe case where two gay students murdered a child as an exercise in moral superiority.
Fritz Lang made this psychological thriller during his American period – a retelling of the Bluebeard story by way of Rebecca. Lang delivers an times stunning evocation of film noir
The Hollywood version of L’Atlantide about men encountering the impossibly desirable queen of Atlantis in the desert. This was made as a vehicle for famously non-acting Maria Montez but has some fine sets and a brooding quality that makes it not uninteresting
A 15 chapter serial that marks the very first live-action screen appearance of Superman. The superheroics and effects are painfully primitive today (where Superman flying is represented by animation) but the serial gets many aspects of the comic-book down right
Routine B-budget lost world fantasy with a group of explorers stranded on an island filled with dinosaurs
Typical Old Dark House comedy of the 1940s, which has been welded to the formula of the Our Gang comedies with a bunch of kids engaged in a comedic antics in a scary mansion peopled by apes, dead bodies and a sinister scientist