The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Abbott and Costello take time out from comic hijinks with the Famous Monsters to go to Venus (despite the title) and engage in various datedly sexist gags with a planetful of women
The third of Abbott and Costello’s comedic meet ups with the Famous Monsters – in this case a series of lowjinks as they encounter Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (played by Boris Karloff)
A classic of the genre for a number of reason – it was the film that kicked off the 1950s fad for atomic monsters, featuring an archetypal story about a dinosaur brought back to life by atomic tests. It also featured among the very first screen credits for both Ray Bradbury and stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen
Classic bad movie in which astronauts land on The Moon and encounter an all-female society. Some really datedly war of the sexes politics play out amid the laughably impoverished sets and effects
The second version of the multiply filmed novel by Curt Siodmak about a malevolent brain in a tank. Its greatest distinction is featuring later to be First Lady Nancy Davis Reagan as the heroine
Live-action film from a Dr Seuss script about children imprisoned by a mad piano teacher. As to be expected from Seuss, this is gloriously madcap with extravagantly surreal set designs and nonsense choreogrphy
An early effort from Hammer Films and director Terence Fisher. Rather than the florid Gothic that Hammer and Fisher would discover four years later, this is a film with one foot in the mad science genre of the 1940s about the invention of a matter duplication machine
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.
Classic of the 1950s alien invader genre in which a young boy discovers that the adults around him are being taken over by Martian invaders. Director William Cameron Menzies makes striking use of sets to further a sense of alienation
The very first alien body snatchers film. With Jack Arnold’s eerily haunted landscapes and a memorably literate Ray Bradbury script, this is one of the classic SF films of the 1950s era
A cheesily bad alien invader film from the 1950s that seems to be trying to throw every element in SF of the era into the mix from mind controlling aliens to atomic monsters
One of the most unique 1950s atomic monster movies – in which the monster is an amok radioactive isotope. Low-budget SF film that is pushed into the decidedly watchable by a driving documentary-like urgency and in being one of the few 1950s SF films reasonably grounded in scientific methodology
The fourth film version of The Lodger with Jack Palance as a new tenant that a family believe might be Jack the Ripper This has neither the style or the melodrama that the previous versions did
William Cameron Menzies built a standout genre reputation with films like Things to Come and Invaders from Mars. This is a haunted house film, albeit with an ending that goes into WTF territory. Menzies was also a production designer and his films come with a design scheme superbly attuned to the mood of the film
One of the forgotten comedies from UK’s Ealing Studios, this rails against the evils of the then new medium of television where The Devil contrives to make people miserable by getting them to watch tv
British quota quickie, a comedy about a man who discovers an oracle in a well that gives him tips on horse races
Low-budget film set aboard a space station clearly springboarding from the success of Destination Moon and featuring a Robert Heinlein script
One of the most entertaining bad movies ever made, an alien invader film featuring the famous Ro-Man, a gorilla suit with a diving helmet
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
The last of the Tarzan outings featuring Lex Barker, as well as an interesting cast line-up including Raymond Burr as the villain
Arch Oboler makes this madcap comic where milquetoast Hans Conreid’s life is turned upside down when his tv set becomes possessed by a mischief-making robot from the future
Classic Japanese kaidan eiga (or ghost story). Made not long after Akira Kurosawa’s new realism in Japanese cinema, this comes with a superb formalism as it slowly moves over into the supernatural
First and best adaptation of the book, this takes liberties with the H.G. Wells original but smartly updates the book’s underlying anxieties to the Cold War era (in so doing becoming the grandaddy of the 1950s alien invader film) and providing what was top notch effects spectacle for the era