The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The original evil child film featuring an unforgettable performance from Patty McCormack (who received an Academy Award nomination along with most of the cast). Dated somewhat today but still holds a real charge
The very last gasp of the 1930s/40s mad scientist film, a swansong that brings together an amazing cast from the era including Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Jr, John Carradine, Basil Rathbone and Tor Johnson. Slightly better produced than most of the era’s cheapies
A Rodgers and Hammerstein musical that has gained a classic status. On the other hand, it doesn’t resonate so well today in its story about the redemption of a wife-beater.
The second and last of the sequels to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, which comes with the intriguing premise of the creature undergoing an operation to make it human
Fascinatingly torrid Mexican-made film about voodoo, which prefigures much of The Serpent and the Rainbow with striking effect
Cult stop-motion animator Ray Harryhausen jumps aboard the 1950s flying saucer fad, making one of the era’s better alien invader films, climaxing in some great scenes with the saucers demolishing much of Washington D.C.
One among a sub-genre of 1950s outer space sex fantasies where astronauts encounter all-women planets and sort them out with some good lovin’, Cat Women of the Moon is held as the Z movie of this genre but this is an even cheaper
A classic of 1950s SF that creates one of the most well remembered screen robots. An uncredited adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, there are few other films that devote so much attention to creating a sense of wonder
One of the early films from Anglo-horror director John Gilling, this takes place in a fictional Soviet republic and features experiments to create a race of super-children
Largely overlooked, this is the first version of the story in colour and has a lavishness that the previous versions lacked. On the minus side, Anthony Quinn’s Quasimodo is no more than a simpleton lacking in pathos
The finest film to come out of 1950s SF cinema, concerning an invasion of pods that replicate people but for their emotions. The sense of paranoia and psychological tension is unsurpassed
One of the early directorial films from Roger Corman, a surprisingly vigorous and well written variant on the alien body snatcher film featuring one of the memorable alien creations of the era
Lushly beautiful Japanese film from a Chinese folklore tale about a mortal who marries a snake goddess. An early Japanese colour film with fantastical touches way ahead of their time
An eerie work of film noir adapted from Cornell Woolrich in which Kevin McCarthy has a nightmare of killing a man and then wakes up and finds that details of his dream are starting to come true
The first film adaptation of the classic George Orwell dystopian work. The brilliance of the book only comes through in occasional moments but mostly the film befalls the leaden hand of director Michael Anderson
Dramatic recount of a true-life sensation during the 1950s when an amateur hypnotist claimed that he had regressed a housewife to recall her past life in 19th Century Ireland. The film has an earnestly prostheletysing belief in its own case but sceptical examination pulls holes in its credibility
A strange mix of 1950s hypnotic regression fad and AIP B monster movie elements that has undeniable mood and verve
Fascinating quasi-documentary from the early days of the UFO phenomenon, made before all the nonsense about Greys, abductions, alien impregnation etc came in, which gives it a sober groundedness than many more polished productions lack
The first Japanese entry in the great alien invader fad of the 1950s. Nothing great but it does boast the awesomeness of starfish-shaped aliens
A real oddity among the werewolf genre – a film that tries to mix the werewolf up with the 1950s fad for the atomic monster movie in having the transformation brought on by atomically irradiated wolf blood
An early Hammer film, an attempt to exploit the success of their Quatermass films. This prefigures the menace of The Blob by a couple of years (while adding a few dashes of the atomic monster fad) but comes with a stark b/w urgency that makes this by far the better film