The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Overlooked psycho-thriller from Robert Fuest, director of the Dr Phibes films, about a girl whose friend goes missing while on a cycling tour through France. Fuest does an great job in making the French countryside into something sinister
An obscure oddity in which elderly Jewish man Zero Mostel finds Harry Belafonte in his home insisting that he is an angel sent to help
One of the better animated films made by Disney during the lean years between Walt’s death in 1966 and the studio’s return to form in the late 1980s. Not the best but it recaptures some of the classic charms of works like Lady and the Tramp
Variant on the Mad Relative Locked in the Attic/Cellar film made as part of the British horror cycle. Unfortunately, this plods where it should have developed tension
The second and most underrated of the Planet of the Apes films. For a time it repeats the original but gains considerable imagination and a striking satiric bite with the introduction of the mutants
The public obsession with Bigfoot grew out of a piece of amateur film shot in 1967 purporting to show a Bigfoot in the world and led to a spate of films and throughout the 1970s. This has the distinction of being the first ever Bigfoot film
Italy’s Dario Argento laid out the essence of the style – the arty murder set-pieces; flamboyant camerawork; the stylish music scores; and the psycho-thriller plots – in his first giallo film here
Influenced by the classic Eyes Without a Face, this is a work of French Gothic about an aristocrat trying to find the right woman to use her face for his disfigured wife
Made not long after the success of The Witchfinder General, a film based on the notorious historical figure of Judge Jeffreys. In the hands of exploitation director Jess Franco, the historical account is sidetracked by sado-sexual scenes
Documentary based on the book by Erich von Daniken and his much ridiculed theories that aliens visited Earth in the past and evidence of this can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions and monuments
Christopher Lee was inveigled to play the title role in what was advertised as an adaptation of the book as Bram Stoker wrote it. While this was somewhat true, such ambitions befell the cheapness of exploitation director Jess Franco
One of the better efforts among a spate of attempts to modernise the vampire that came out the 1970s. Robert Quarry gives a witty, urbane performance in the title role. A sequel followed.
One of Hammer Films’ psycho-thrillers. Unlike the others, this is in colour where it loses much of the edgy tension the others had from shooting in b/w. The plot is slow to kick in but does produce some worthwhile twists
The second film from David Cronenberg. Despite the SF title, this is more a work of arthouse surrealism where Cronenberg spends the film documenting strange behaviours in an hilarious deadpan tone that mimics a scientific paper
TV movie that was an early effort from celebrated producer Aaron Spelling, concerning an occult conspiracy surrounding a couple who inherit a farmhouse
Dreary film in which Vincent Price is a magistrate who is haunted by a manifestation of The Devil for his witch persecutions. The publicity falsely tried to sell this as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
Eccentric French fairytale filled with appealingly absurdist and surreal touches and with visuals that remind of the extravagance of a Barbarella. Charming and visually engaging
This was one several different films with the same title that came out around the same time. This painful effort comes from Spanish horror star Paul Naschy who plays his signature role of the wolfman Waldemar Daninksy
A film about backwoods occult that comes with much H.P. Lovecraft influence. An inngenue film made by several unknowns who later became key figures at Industrial Light and Magic
A vehicle for Marty Feldman, a peculiar comedy where he plays an advertising executive who has Walter Mitty-like sexual fantasies
It’s anybody’s guess what possessed Veronica Lake, a great screen beauty of the 1940s, to return to screens playing a Nazi mad scientist having created flesh-eating maggots. A true Z film if there ever was
One of the early films of French director Jean Rollin who gained a cult following for his vampire films that offer a near-plotless blend of artily surreal imagery and erotica
The fifth of the 1960s Gamera films. This comes with inane plotting, sub-par effects and silly monster fight scenes, even a plot stolen from Fantastic Voyage about a submarine journey into the monster’s body
Satiric Roger Corman film in which a gas kills everyone in the world over the age of 25. Corman indulges his droll and surreal sense of humour in what amounts to a parody of his own films
A X-rated, West German-made film that blends together several fairytales in a very adult adaptation. The result should be seen for its sheer bizarreness
Mario Bava essentially created the giallo film. Here he returns to the genre with an entry about an man obsessed with killing brides that comes filled with exquisitely stylish surroundings and directorial set-pieces
A not terribly funny parody of the Italian-made Hercules films of the 1960s. This is mostly known for featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger (billed as Arnold Strong) in his first acting role
A film based on true-life killers Martha Beck-Raymond Fernandez who lured and killed women from Lonely Hearts ads. This comes with an incredible rawness and an unforgettable performance from Shirley Stoler
Work of 1970s Euro horror from Spain that comes influenced by the Hammer Dracula films. The rather dreary film on show belies the sensational promise of the English-language title
The fifth and worst of Hammer’s Frankenstein films. In a play for younger audiences, Peter Cushing was dumped in favour of Ralph Bates in a retelling of the original and an unfunny comedic approach
Film from Z-budget filmmaker Al Adamson. Most of this is reissued from a Filipino caveman film, along with a handful of filler scenes slung together from odds of Adamson’s other half-finished films
The first film based on the cult Gothic tv soap opera Dark Shadows, this is designed to highlight the series breakout character of Jonathan Frid’s vampire Barnabas Collins
Another of the Amicus horror anthologies from a series of stories by Robert Bloch. An okay effort, mostly being remembered for Jon Pertwee’s turn as a comic vampire
A routine haunted house film that was made as a tv movie,. One of the several early genre works made by celebrated tv producer Aaron Spelling.
A classic horror film undeniably influenced by Night of the Living Dead wherein a group of hippies are turned into zombies after they are fed rabies-infected meat pies
The first of a trilogy of Japanese vampire films, although this does not feature Dracula despite the title and should be considered more of ghost story.
Unusually effective tv movie about two warring alien species fighting for the fate of the Earth. An early effort from producer Aaron Spelling with an eye-opening cast of before they were famous names
A pre-James Bond Roger Moore plays a mild-mannered businessman who finds his life overrun by a malevolent doppelganger
Another depiction of the Middle Ages witch persecutions that becomes a catalogue of the cruelties enacted – Torture Porn way back before anybody ever invented the term
Antonio Margheriti, better known for his Gothic horror and giallo films, makes an invisible man comedy
The second in the works of arty vampire erotica that gained French director Jean Rollin a cult following. The surreal visuals and in particular the costuming make for mind-boggling visuals
TV movies of the 1970s can be this unexplored treasure trove of sophisticated and intelligent genre treatments. Case in point being this effort, a variant on a 1950s body snatchers film in which a man with a steel plate in his head discovers that the people of a small town are being taken over at night by aliens
Romantic musical in Barbra Steisand discovers psychic powers and her reincarnated past lives. Despite being a flop, this is a film of oddball charms and features an effervescent Stresiand
I have raved elsewhere about Czech director Karel Zeman and his amazing blends of live-action and animation. This, his adaptation of a lesser-known Jules Verne work, is not quite up there with his earlier films but is an enjoyably colourful knockabout adventure
A British children’s tv mini-series about a mysterious dinner service that presages the playing out of a Welsh myth, this is seen as one of the original influences on the Folk Horror genre
A mind-boggling oddity – a slapstick comedy Western where there seems no limit on how nutty things are allowed to go, including characters venturing to Heaven and Hell
Chuck Jones, the director of numerous Warner Brothers cartoons, adapts a popular children’s book that comes with a dizzying array of surreal visuals and puns
The second of the excruciatingly dull Swedish-made Pippi Longstocking live-action films
Third of the Swedish live-action Pippi Longstocking films and more likeable than the others due to capturing some of Astrid Lindgren’s absurdism
Mind-spinning film spinoff of the tv series H.R. Pufnstuf, this plays out like The Wizard of Oz on hallucinogens
Another of the films from the Mexican wrestling superhero Santo where he and his friend Blue Demon encounter assorted Famous Monsters raised by a mad scientist
Cult Anglo-horror film with a series of vampire killings that lead to Vincent Price trying to replace bureaucrats with androids
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney as Scrooge, this is made on a big budget, leading to an extravagant and often over-produced film
One of the most original variants on the deathdream film where pilots crashed in the desert come to the realisation they are dead
The fifth of Hammer’s Dracula films and by general consensus the last worthwhile entry. New director Peter Sasdy brings something fresh and this has an interesting plot that digs beneath Victorian hypocrisy
Film that feels construed to blend 60s rock films post The Beatles and an intergalactic trippiness post 2001: A Space Odyssey where alien try to abduct a rock band. From the producer of the James Bond films and the man who created The Monkees
Cult film from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a surrealistic Western that comes with an incoherent mishmash of symbolism, Zen mysticism and 1960s raised consciousness
A revived caveman effort that is fairly terrible on all accounts. This has gained bad movie status because it features Joan Crawford as a scientist in her last theatrical role
Little-seen Czech film that sits on the blurred edge of a dream in its hazily surreal view of the world through the eyes of a young girl where the figures around her seem to become vampires that constantly loom with darkly allegorical sexual threat
The first in Hammer’s trilogy of lesbian vampire films, an adaptation of the classic story Carmilla. Unfortunately in Hammer’’s hands, the story’s subtlety is killed by an emphasis on softcore titillation
Another film in the cult of Jess Franco. Jumping aboard the early 1970s fad for lesbian vampire films, Franco offers up a sofctore take on the story of Dracula but cast with women.
One of the better films from exploitation director Jess Franco that develops a haunted atmosphere that while crude is hard to shake
From Melvin Van Peebles who made the first Blaxploitation film, a satire in which a white man wakes up to find he has turned black. This takes a savage bite out of race relations but ends up without teeth in being distracted by Godfrey Cambridge’s raucous loudmouth performance
After the success of their earlier caveman vs stop-motion animated dinosaurs epic One Million Years B.C., Hammer made several other prehistoric films, including this effort that purportedly had a script by an uncredited J.G. Ballard
One of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s splatter films about a stage magician who cuts up women on stage and real life. The film makes mind boggling plays between reality and illusion
One of the more forgettable films from Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda about an alien entity taking the form of giant animals on a Pacific island