The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Peter Watkins is the most underrated director of the 1960s – his films are fiercely anti-establishment attacks that come with an extraordinary incendiary charge. This mockumentary depiction of a near future where the government uses a rock star to manipulate the public rings even more true today
The third and in the opinion of many the best of Hammer’s Quatermass films in which Nigel Kneale introduces a conceptually wild array of ideas about Martians, race memory, psychic powers and The Devil
Mario Bava directs a sublimely stylish and tongue-in-cheek adaptation of an Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief who delights in outwitting and taunting the bumbling authorities
LSD film from Roger Corman featuring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper and full of hilariously surreal and trippily psychedelic moments
One of the psycho-thrillers made by he great and underrated Curtis Harrington during the 60s/70s. The film draws much from Les Diaboliques, right down to casting its leading lady. Harrington delivers suspense with an expert hand
The fifth James Bond film takes the series to Japan. New director Lewis Gilbert is determined to outdo what has come before in terms of the spectacular, especially WITH the construction of the massive volcano set
A whimsical Italian fantasy with Sophia Loren as a peasant girl who connects with price Omar Sharif amid romance and magic
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
Toho Films obtained the rights to King Kong to pit him against Godzilla in King Kong Vs Godzilla and then made this entertainingly silly sequel where Kong fights a robot copy of himself
A horror film made as homage to the classic Freaks, this is a fascinatingly sordid work set during the vanished era of the carnival sideshow
The Disney animated version of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli tales, the one that everybody remembers, a lively affair with talking and singing animals
One of the more obscure H.P. Lovecraft adaptations based on an unfinished pastiche, not widely seen but well worth reconsideration
A World War II comedy from Richard Lester that heads into a wild absurdism, a film that is both brilliant and numbingly noisy. Most did not get the surreal blacker-than-black tone and the film was not a success
The fifth of the theatrically released films based on tv’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E.. This is one of the more overtly comic films with an entertainingly madcap plot that has Napoleon Solo forced into a shotgun wedding and Jack Palance as a mad winemaker attempting to divert the Gulf Stream
Another of the delightful Steampunk adventures from Karel Zeman that blend animation and live-action in unique ways
One of the less remembered Disney live-action films starring the children from Mary Poppins who join their grandfather in a road journey caper to help a gnome
Amid the mostly silly output of James Bond copies in the 1960s, this is one that comes with a sharp satiric bite in which president’s analyst James Coburn finds himself caught in the midst of a series of conspiracies
The only horror film ever made in Communist Russia. Adaptation of a classic story about a monk sequestered with the body of a woman for three nights, the film creates an undeniable atmosphere and mounts to a wildly fantastical climax where he must face all the minions of Hell
British comedy made with an acerbic bite featuring Dudley Moore as a hapless loser who makes a pact with Peter Cook’s Devil to win the love of his life but has the wording of each wish contorted around on him
The second and more sophisticated of the Ze do Caixao/Coffin Joe films with director Jose Mojica Marins as a diabolic undertaker who delights in inflicting a catalogue of tortures on the weak-minded
One among the series of German krimi films adapted from Edgar Wallace about a series of murders at a girls college. Shot with wonderfully lurid and colourful schemes
The third of Daiei’s 1960s Gamera films, this takes the series back into children’s movie territory. Some moments of goofy silliness and variable effects ensue in a likeable enough combination
The fourth of Hammer’s Frankenstein films and the most conceptually wild with Frankenstein conducting soul transplants, including transferring his assistant’s soul into a woman’s body
Film about a series of sensationalistic murders at a circus. Producer Herman Cohen is clearly trying to replicate the success of his Horrors of the Black Museum. Joan Crawford chews the scenery in grand style as the circus owner
Pakistani film that is a blatant copy of Hammer’s The Horror of Dracula often scene for scene. Not without some effect and it is fascinating to see the familiar story translated into different cultural terms
One of a handful of prehistoric adventure films made by Hammer Studios. This eschews the stop-motion animated dinosaurs of their earlier One Million Years B.C. but does give the stage to Martine Beswick who injects a sizzling dose of sexuality and camps a silly plot up by playing to the hilt
An early Robert Altman film about the planning and launch of a Moon Landing starring then unknown James Caan and Robert Duvall. The most realistic depiction of a space launch up to that point.
A wannabe entry in the Japanese monster movie, this has the distinction of featuring possibly the most ridiculous monster to ever turn up in one of these films
Most of the comics of the 1960s made a film dealing with the Space Race and here it is the turn of Don Knotts. Lots of bumbling slapstick ensues in this hardly inspiring entry
Following the success of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, this was the second of Amicus’s trademark horror anthologies with Burgess Meredith as a carnival barker showing people their fates
The third of the fifilms with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu and generally the point the series started to go downhill
Pearl White was the original serial heroine in The Perils of Pauline. During the 1960s Batman craze, the serial was revived as this campy comedy
Here gimmick master William Castle turns his attention away from the usual into making a light fantasy comedy about a family who buy a house inhabited by ghosts
One of the Hammer Films wannabes of the 1960s that even employs Christopher Lee in a horror film set around the historical Grand Guignol Theatre
Producer Sy Weintraub made some of the best of all Tarzan films in the 1960s, shooting in real locations and with thrilling adventure elements. This is one of his weaker ones that takes Tarzan to Brazil accompanied by an annoying cute kid
SF effort from the UK’s Amicus Films with an ambitious plot about communication from the stars that manages to prefigure films like Contact and 2001. On the other hand, the film fails is in its pitiful and utterly inadequate special effects
A Soviet SF film about the exploration of an alien planet. Though they tended to the dramatically stolid, these Soviet films had amazing budgets their US counterparts of the era never did
With the success of the James Bond films in the 1960s, someone had the idea of casting Sean Connery’s younger brother Neil in a spy film
Sequel to the James Coburn-starring Our Man Flint, one of the James Bond parodies of the 1960s. Unlike its predecessor, this one is less interested in the humour and seems to be taking the silliness seriously
Third of the Harry Palmer spy films starring Michael Caine, which were made as a more grounded alternative to James Bond. Unfortunately, this has been placed in the hands of Ken Russell who overblows everything with a giddy eatravagance
The Arthurian legends become the basis of this filmed version of a musical by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. On screen with a name cast, the film is slow and stodgy
This gets the nonsensical absurdity of the original Doctor Dolittle stories far more than the Eddie Murphy version. On the other hand, this was the era of Mary Poppins and this is made as a lumbering musical
Roman Polanski misfired with this vampire comedy intended as a spoof of Hammer Films. Beautifully produced but comedy is not Polanski’s forte and the film seems to consists of much slapstick running around
One of a trilogy of SF films made by Hammer director Terence Fisher during the mid-1960s, none of which have a very good reputation. This is an alien invasion film but Fisher fails to create the paranoid atmosphere of the better US counterparts of this period
A lightweight Italian comedy of errors where Sophia Loren and husband move into a mansion being offered cheaply only to find it is haunted by the ghosts of the previous owners
One of the numerous spy films of the 1960s, featuring Patrick O’Neal who goes into action with a magic invisibility ring
One of the appealingly colourful theatrical films edited together from the tv series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. – although surprisingly given the title this is not a martial arts film
Sax Rohmer created the super-villain Fu Manchu, less well-known was his character of the female super-villain Sumuru who leads an all-woman army in a world domination plot. This was one of two Sumuru films
A British film that jumps into a full flight Reds Under the Bed hysteria concerning the discovery of Communist Chinese saboteurs building a vast network of tunnels beneath the USA
This was a fairly crappy and terrible Japanese monster movie from a rival company seeking to copy the success of Toho’s Godzilla films
In this rather shabby effort, Santo (in the sixteenth of his 52 films) takes on invaders from Mars whose entire plan seems to hang on the need to have to defeat Santo in the wrestling ring
UK’s Amicus Films had a reasonable hit with their horror anthology Dr Terror’s House of Horrors. Director/producer David L. Hewitt jumped in with a copy with a soundalike title produced on a poverty row budget
An Amicus film directed by Freddie Francis and with a script by Robert Bloch that proves the dictum that there is no such thing as a good killer bee movie
During the James Bond craze of the 1960s, the only Ian Fleming novel not owned by Albert R. Broccoli was turned into a giant farce. The film has five directors, a host of stars (including three playing Bond) and is an incoherent mess
This jumps aboard the 1960s fad for Jules Verne film adaptations but it has nothing to do with Verne and is instead a slapstick caper film about the building of a rocket during the Victorian era
Possibly the most conceptually demented film to come out of the 1960s-70s Anglo-horror cycle – one part The Fly, one part a witch’s retribution film about a man who transforms into a vulture creature after teleporting into his ancestor’s grave whereupon he is driven to enact a centuries old curse
Jean-Luc Godard’s classic of the French New Wave where a couple’s journey into the countryside for the weekend becomes increasingly more surreal and anarchic
South Korean copy of the Japanese Godzilla films and a painfully cheap effort on all counts
One of the splatter films from the cult figure of Herschell Gordon Lewis, who made some terrible films whose only watchability was extreme gore. This concerns a wigmaker who scalps them victims and sells their hair as wigs.
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s film, this features a totally demented plot involving a man who develops psychic powers and his encounters with witches and LSD trips
An incredibly dreary film about an alien monster menacing a small town. The alien invasion cinema equivalent of watching paint dry. Unseen during its original release, it was then resurrected in the VHS era as an E.T. copy called E.T.n – The Extra-Terrestrial Nasty
A very cheaply made film (actually a remake of The Time Travelers) about a research laboratory propelled through time. Most of the historical scenes are represented by stock footage
A film of legendarily bad proportions where a group of Country and Western singers end up in a haunted house. Despite casting some famous horror actors, this is more interested in its excruciating country performances