The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This fifteen chapter serial was the second ever Superman film. It is a vigorously entertaining run through the comic’s basics and features the first screen appearance of Lex Luthor
A Disney animated film whose classic stature has been overrated. The fairytale is too familiar to hold much interest, while the cutsie talking animals get to take over proceedings
The film that started the great 1950s age of science fiction. A bold exciting work from George Pal and Robert Heinlein that says the Moon is our to conquer and lays out a credible road map about how to do so
Twelve-chapter serial that offers one of the first ever depictions of an alien invader on screen. The results are oddly mundane in comparison to the onslaught of great 1950s alien invasion films that came only a couple of years later
The very first film ever made about UFOs. This is fascinating as a work about UFOs made before all the other claptrap about abductions, impregnations etc came in. The film itself is rather dull
This was the first in a series of excruciating comedies that pairs hapless Donald O’Connor with Francis, a talking mule. Six sequels followed
Wonderfully charming classic with James Stewart who has an invisible 6’3″ rabbit companion. The film proves absolutely winning with its standing up in favour of the right to be eccentric
A twelve chapter serial about the hunt for The Phantom, a criminal who operates with the use of a ray that can render him invisible
A film that could have only been made in the 1950s where the voice of God suddenly appears on the radio around the world. Starring later-to-be US First Lady Nancy Reagan
Jean Cocteau’s beautiful modernisation of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice updated to post-War France
Laughable prehistoric drama about cave women searching for mates – too cheap to afford stop-motion animated dinosaurs and filled with ridiculous dialogue howlers
Classic film from Akira Kurosawa about the subjectivity of perception in which a trial is held about a murder and all four witnesses retell an entirely different story about what happened
Low-budget film designed to copy the success of Destination Moon that ended up being the first film of the 1950s Golden Age. A surprisingly modest effort about a rocketship going off course to land on Mars
The second of Lex Barker’s Tarzan films, another traipse through the studio backlot jungle sets and well-worn formula – lost cities, mysterious tribes, Jane abducted, Cheeta comic relief antics – with little to distinguish it