The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The first film from prolific horror and exploitation director Jesus Franco to which he would later make four sequels. This is a blatant copy of the French Eyes Without a Face served up with little directorial flair
A version of the Baron’s tall tales from the great, underrated Karel Zeman. Zeman’s dizzying blend of live-action, animation and cutouts and deadpan absurdism is perfect, resulting in the best Baron Munchausen film to date
Classic Z budget film about a severed head in a laboratory that has plenty to place it in the bad movie category but is made with such a perverse panache that it is hard to dislike
Bizarre Mexican film about a resurrected warlock who transforms into a bat creature to take retribution against the descendants of those who burned him at the stake
Classic psycho-thriller with Robert Mitchum (who was never better) as an ex-con determined to take revenge against lawyer Gregory Peck. Stark and superbly sustained psychological suspense
Classic film that has gained a cult reputation, this creates a superbly eerie and haunted atmosphere as a woman moves to a new town and finds herself surrounded by mysterious figures
An excellent underrated science-fiction film that was way ahead of its time about a class of androids in a future fighting for their rights as they gain increasing self-awareness
This was one of the last gasps of the 1950s alien body snatchers genre. Conducted on a low budget, this nevertheless comes with some modest effect as a scientist and his family face mysterious doppelgangers
The first film version of John Wyndham’s novel about a catastrophe that renders most of the population blind and leaves them prey to lethal plants. This is killed by variable effects and the abandonment of much of the book
The first of the James Bond films. While the formula of the series is not quite established yet, this is a slick exciting work that did a number of groundbreaking things and created some iconic images
A strange and fascinating Swedish film about a lonely security guard’s obsessive love affair with a mannequin, which duly comes to life. Or does it? The film sits in a place of ambiguity whether he is imagining it or not
Z movie classic with Richard Kiel as a revived caveman facing hot rodding teenagers. Much bad movie hilarity and hilarious dialogue ensues, plus a rock’n’roll soundtrack
An acclaimed surrealistic film from Luis Buñuel in which a group of people attend an upper-class dinner party but then find themselves inexplicably unable to leave the room
One of the other films from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda. This has been incorrectly identified as a Japanese giant monster film but is mostly a colourful space opera about a rogue planet
Fourth film version of The Hands of Orlac about a pianist who receives hand transplants from a murderer and believes they are possessing him. Compared to the first two versions, this is dull and prosaic
Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea created a fad for Jules Verne adaptations throughout the 1950s/60s. Disney returned to Verne in this colourfully absurd adventure with children on a globe-spanning hunt for their missing father
Comedy about two idiot soldiers captured by alien women. The painfully unfunny routines, laughable vegetable monsters and attitudes to women make this one of the great unrecognised bad movies of all time
A blatant attempt to copy Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, night down to employing the same lead actors and director, but this fails through shoddy stop-motion animated effects
Chris Marker’s celebrated 28 minute time paradox film, an experimental work that was made at the height of the French New Wave. This later became the basis of Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys
A low-budget SF film that prefigures Solaris and displays some imagination as astronauts land on a planet to find familiar things recreated from their memories
The third of the Godzilla films wherein Toho managed to obtain a coup in leasing copyright to pit Godzilla against a rather tatty-looking King Kong for one of the great title bouts of the century
One of the more overlooked of the Hammer vampire films. This doesn’t feature Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing but does some reasonable things in its own right
One of the better films from B-budget dircetor Bert I. Gordon, a fantasy adventure where Gordon produces some decent effects
John Frankenheimer film. concerning a Communist plot for creating a brainwashed assassin, Frankenheimer shoots with stark and blackly funny effect and this has duly become a cult classic
Fascinating British film about an experiment in brainwashing where scientist Dirk Bogarde is made to change his personality in an isolation tank
Disney comedy starring Tom Tyron as an astronaut caught up in comedic antics with alien visitor Dany Saval
The most successful of the original monster movies Toho made after the success of Godzilla, the only one to spawn its own sequels, and one of the best kaiju eiga of the era
A film about the outbreak of nuclear war directed by actor Ray Milland. What takes you aback is the naked liberatarian fantasy that Milland engages in, arguing in favour of a brutal ruthlessness in the name of survival
Hammer Films’ attempt to update the classic story went astray – the Paris opera becomes a dreary English repertory house and Terence Fisher misses the tale’s grandeur
The third of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films, the only one without Vincent Price. Here Ray Milland develops a fearful obsession of being buried alive
Obscure B movie about a med student who has no sense of fear until he must take anatomy class
After a decade, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby returned for their sixth and final Road movie. Both they and the knockabout comedy are on great form with the show taking on the influence of the 60s spy movie fad and even sending them to The Moon
An early film from prolific exploitation director Jess Franco, one that comes with some beautifully Gothic photography in its tale of a hooded killer
This is the most famous of the Santo films, one that evinces an often crudely effective poetry out of its assemblage of B movie elements as he goes up against a vampire priestess and her minions
Modestly effective Soviet SF film about an expedition to Venus where the cosmonauts encounter a wild and colourful planet of plants and prehistoric wildlife
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price
The best ever Tarzan films were the series made in the 1960s, which abandoned the cutsie elements of the earlier efforts. This comes with an emphasis on pure spectacle and adventure that is visually amazing
Federico Fellini’s episode of the anthology Boccacio 70 in which a giant size Anita Ekberg steps off a billboard to tempt a moralist with lust
Influential if possibly overrated work in the Italian Gothic cycle of the 1960s. There’s the haunted figure of Barbara Steele and rich atmosphere, even if the plot doesn’t make much sense
Third of the German thrillers of the 1960s featuring the criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse, a remake of the 1933 film where Mabuse continues his criminal schemes via mind control despite being confined to an asylum
The Three Stooges join a number of other comics of this era in taking on the space race. Well they only briefly venture into orbit and mostly this can be described more as a slapstick haunted house comedy with alien invaders
The Three Stooges travel through time to take on the Italian muscleman film in a never particularly funny comedy
This is essentially Shakespeare’s Richard III mounted as a horror film. Roger Corman and Vincent Price take time away in the midst of their Edgar Allan Poe adaptations to turn the same style to matters historical
Orson Welles’s adaptation of the Frank Kafka novel about a man caught in a nightmare bureaucracy is one of the most visually stunning black-and-white films ever shot
The third film version of Curt Siodmak’s novel Donovan’s Brain, this abandons much of the book. Not a terribly interesting effort, mostly noted as the directorial debut of Anglo-horror regular Freddie Francis
Psycho-thriller featuring a mad Bette Davis torturing her sister Joan Crawford. This held considerable shock at the time for seeing two former glamorous Hollywood stars beyond their glory days and going nuts. The film’s success inspired a whole fad of imitators
Anthology of Brothers Grimm stories from George Pal where the brothers are wound in as characters. The film’s effectiveness is killed by Pal pitching everything down at a mawkish and simple-minded level