The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Droll, elegant camp masterpiece with Vincent Price giving the best performance of his life as a deformed madman employing the Biblical Plagues of Egypt as a motif to take revenge against the surgeons who killed his wife
Robert Wise’s standout adaptation of Michael Crichton’s first novel about scientists trying to contain a virus brought back from space. This does a very faithful job of capturing Crichton’s fascination with the science
Very slight Disney live-action comedy with Kurt Russell as a tv network mailboy with a chimpanzee that can predict which tv shows are going to be hits
Third of the Filipino-shot Blood Island films. This has a slow first half before getting to what we expect of a Filipino monster movie – an overacting mad scientist, a cheesy monster, schlocky gore and gratuitous toplessness
One of the films from the heyday of the Filipino exploitation cinema fad. John Ashley makes a pact with the Devil,up in another man’s body and periodically turns into what is a werewolf in all but name
Obvious but likeable attempt by Disney to replicate the success of Mary Poppins with Angela Lansbury as a good witch taking a group of children on a series of nonsense adventures
Underrated work of Southern Gothic with Clint Eastwood as a wounded soldier sheltered at a Confederate girl’s school during the Civil War where he succeeds in manipulating the sexual tensions of the teachers and schoolgirls to his advantage
Classic tv movie that is one of the earliest horror/Westerns hybrids where Roy Thinnes plays a preacher who ends up in town only to find he cannot leave amid mysterious goings-on
Hammer Films adapt Bram Stoker’s Jewel of the Seven Stars about a revived mummy queen. A troubled production that ended up being one of Hammer’s never-quite-rans
English horror film influenced by both the witch persecution themes of The Witchfinder General and the early 70s witchcraft film. Well made but that doesn’t quite disguise an unstructured screenplay
An unofficial copycat of the Filipino-made Blood Island from exploitation director Al Adamson, a trashy mix involving a dictator’s transplanted brain, Frankenstein monsters and a perverted dwarf
One of the most eccentric and strangest films in the oeuvre of Robert Altman in which Bud Cort set out to build a set of wings to fly, amid aid from angels and lots of bird symbolism
An entry among the 1970s occult cycle post-Rosemary’s Baby where a family stray into a sinister small town where a coven of Satanists are abducting children for sinister purpose
Dario Argento’s third film as director sees him firmly in giallo thriller territory, delivering a series of extravagantly arty and sadistic set-pieces as James Franciscus tries to find clues to a killer’s identity
Cheaply made and mind bogglingly bizarre Quebecois film about a Martian who takes two children on a journey around the world at Christmas
Irwin Allen offers a variant on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea in this film about an underwater city. A tv pilot that was foisted onto international audiences as a theatrical film after it failed to be picked up as a series
One of the key films by Stanley Kubrick, centred around ultra-violent thugs in a near-future setting. Everybody was outraged at Kubrick choreographing scenes of violence to classical music but the film has a considerable brilliance and very dark sense of humour
Key film from cult exploitation director Ted V. Mikels. The film’s premise – “pet food company uses bodies from the graveyard as their cat food, making the cats hungry for human flesh” – seems the essence of the grindhouse film
Not another of Hammer’s Dracula films despite the title. This still builds on the brand name but is instead their loose adaptation of the story of the infamous blood-bathing Elizabeth Bathory.
The fourth and final of Hammer Films’ cycle of prehistoric adventure films, this far less interestingly throws out stop-motion animated dinosaurs and opts for relative anthropological realism
One of several Elizabeth Bathory films that came out at the same time, this has gained a cult reputation. Delphine Seyrig gives a marvellously arch performance, while director Harry Kumel films with a gorgeous and dreamy colour palette
Ken Russell makes an historical work about the Catholic Church’s persecution of a supposed outbreak of possession at a convent in 17th Century France. As to be expected of Russell, this is shocking and outrageous. Oliver Reed gives one of his best performance
The seventh James Bond film where Sean Connery was inveigled back to the role with a heft salary increase. However, the result is the worst of all the Connery Bonds with an incoherent plot and uneven action scenes
Pete Walker was one of the most underrated directors of the 1970s Anglo-horror wave. This was his first film. Compared to Walker’s later works, this is more a psycho-thriller that sits on the borderline of being horror
The film that made Clint Eastwood’s name. He is a rule-bending cop who decides he has to defy the system in his pursuit of a psycho (a thinly disguised version of the then active Zodiac Killer)
Rather enjoyable latter day Hammer Film, which plays its title pun surprisingly seriously. Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick are perfectly matched as the gender-changing Dr Jekyll
A film that was the cause of much censorship controversy when it came out where two teenage girls decide to become devil worshippers and engage on a spree of cruel and malicious acts
Sequel to The Abominable Dr Phibes that brings back Vincent Price and seeks to replicate the same droll campy humour as before but with more mixed results this time
One of the great title matches of all-time and a surprise that Universal never thought to do it. In the hands of Z-budget director Al Adamson it is a wasted opportunity nd Zandor Vorkov the worst screen Dracula ever
The first film from Steven Spielberg, a tv movie that was released to theatres. Spielberg demonstrates style to spare in the gripping tale of a lone man on the road who finds himself stalked and followed by a murderous truck
Third of the original Planet of the Apes films. This is an enjoyable take that brings the talking apes back in time to the present-day and where the emphasis is more on comedy
British-made film with Tony Beckley as a sexually repressed psycho raised in a religious cult who goes out and kills women. The film seems more interested in the sexploitation elements than it does in the psycho elements
A modest and well directed psycho-thriller from the Anglo-horror cycle with Susan George as a babysitter stalked by a deranged Ian Bannen
This was the seventh of the 1960s Gamera films and one of the worst of the series. By now, the film is pitched entirely to juvenile audiences, while the effects are pitiful
One of a handful of 70s films about how the Love Children would inherit the Earth. A fascinating, almost Terrence Malick-like work about innocents drifting through the detritus of civilisation, trying to understand what they see
The eleventh Godzilla in which Godzilla faces the pollution monster Hedorah. For some reason, this gets a listing in The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time, but there are far worse entries in the series
A forgotten effort made during the 1960s/70s resurgence of the vampire film. One of the first films to depict Dracula in the present-day. The answer to the title question is that he is now running a nightclub in L.A.
Classic effort from Hammer Films in which a psychologist discovers a troubled patient responsible for a string of murders is Jack the Ripper’s daughter. Made with much class
One of four cheap Mexican films that were the last works an 81 year old Boris Karloff appeared in. Here he presides over relatives gathered for the reading of his will as they are killed by malevolent toys
The title and names are changed, otherwise this is an extremely faithful adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Christopher Lee. Not very successful at the time, this interestingly opens the story out with Freudian psychology
Mad scientist Bruce Dern creates a two-headed transplant. Unlike The Thing with Two Heads from the same company, this lacks an appreciable sense of its own absurdity
One of four cheap and tatty Mexican films made by Boris Karloff just before his death. Here Karloff plays a Caribbean plantation owner obsessed with voodoo rituals
Classic anti-war film with Timothy Bottoms as a limbless, sightless soldier in a hospital bed as his mind wanders between hallucinations, visions of the afterlife and attempts to communicate with the medical staff
One of several continental Frankenstein films of the 1970s, concerning Frankenstein’s daughter. This tries to imitate Hammer Films on a lesser budget and with more nudity
The second in a trilogy of Japanese vampire films that came influenced by the Hammer Dracula films. This generates a reasonable degree of spooky eerieness.
TV movie set in a dystopian future where law mandates that couples can only have one child, concerning a couple who go on the run after becoming pregnant a second time
Part post Night of the Living Dead zombie film, part flower child ghost story, part Body Snatchers and lacking in much explanatory logic, this is nevertheless a film of unnerving and eerie effect
Giallo thriller from Lucio Fulci who gained a cult following in the 1980s for his gore-drenched films. This comes with more style than all of Fulci’s other unadulterated hackwork put together
The second of Hammer’s Karenstein films based on the lesbian vampire story Carmilla. This is killed by its laughable unsubtlety and an air of adolescent masturbatory fantasy
A clear attempt to copy Rosemary’s Baby made with extraordinary stylishnessas Jacqueline Bisset believes husband Alan Alda’s body has been stolen by a dead man
Disney live-action comedy where Dean Jones accidentally creates a duck that lays golden eggs
In one’s efforts to track down all Edward D. Wood Jr’s films, one finally comes to Necromania, which was believed lost for many years … This turns out to be a pornographic film, consisting of little more than serial sex scenes, this far less interesting because it lacks all of Wood’s typical gaffes and ineptitudes
A giallo film with Anthony Steffen as an aristocrat who likes to pick up red-haired girls and kill them in the dungeon in his villa, who then becomes haunted by the ghost of his late wife
The second and better of the films spun off from tv’s Dark Shadows. At last the show gets production values and atmosphere that do it justice, although the series cult figure of Barnabas Collins does not appear
Michael Winner makes a prequel to the classic, multiply filmed psychological ghost story The Turn of the Screw but erases all the ambiguity in his clodding and unsubtle direction
A monster movie from the screenwriter of The Creature from the Black Lagoon that should have a place in any list of bad movies
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
Popular entry among the early 1970s spate of British sex comedies featuring Hywell Bennett as the recipient of the world’s first penis transplant. Mostly this serves as an excuse to string a series of sexual encounters together.
Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut is a psycho-thriller that prefigures Fatal Attraction with Eastwood playing a radio DJ who is stalked by a deranged Jessica Walter
A Secret Life of Walter Mitty for movie lovers wherein a milquetoast projectionist daydreams himself into a variety of movie scenarios as an inept superhero. Quirkily charming if never more than a single idea. Something you feel should have been a cult film
From Peter Watkins, a remarkably stark and brutal film set in a near-future USA where political prisoners are allowed to run for freedom through the desert while hunted by law enforcement officials
One of the rare cinematic ventures into alternate history, a British film adapted from a story by John Wyndham. This holds up as a fair and reasonable alternate history outing, driven by a strong and original romantic story
A psycho-thriller directed by renowned cinematographer William A. Fraker that is never more than a series of elliptical, soft-focus images
This has the distinction of being the first film to depict cloning. An edgy conspiracy thriller where Senator Bradford Dillman wakes in a secret medical facility that clones important people
Count Yorga, Vampire was a minor success that started a spate of modern-day vampire films. This was a slightly lesser sequel that has the same droll wit but gets sidetracked in the middle sections
In something like his 30th film and amid the tatty production values of a Edward D. Wood Jr film, El Santo fight mobsters who have employed alien monsters that look like giant ambulatory bean bags
The sixth of the Hammer Dracula films and generally regarded as the low point of the series. It feels as though nobody involved seemed to be making an effort anymore.
Tense psycho-thriller with Mia Farrow as a blind woman stalked through her home by a killer who has slaughtered her family
Entry in the spate of 1970s occult films, purportedly written by a real witch, that offers a sometimes comical portrait of the everyday life of a warlock
Strong and powerful formative entry in the Backwoods Brutality genre where Dustin Hoffman and wife Susan George stir up locals in a small Cornwall town and are forced to mount a brutal siege after he shelters a man hunted by a lynch mob
A ballet adaptation of the stories of Beatrix Potter performed by The Royal Ballet with performers in animal costumes
The only film ever directed by actor Roddy McDowall. Based on a folktale, it is the story of two lovers trying to escape when one is in thrall to the Queen of the Fairies. McDowall creates a lush film that is oddly ponderous and non-fantastical but what a cast he assembles
TV movie psycho-thriller produced by Aaron Spelling (plus assorted Anglo-horror veterans) where heiress Barbara Parkins thinks she is going crazy. Barbara Stanwyck goes the Baby Jane route
One of the best true crime films, a chillingly good account of British serial killer Reginald Christie with an excellent Richard Attenborough in the role
George Lucas’s first film and always a puzzle to those who come to it after the Star Wars series where its antiseptic, dehumanised aesthetic and dystopian future seems almost the polar opposite of the Star Wars universe
The first in a series of films from Spanish director Amando de Ossorio about blind Knights Templar zombies. De Ossorio is clearly influenced by Night of the Living Dead but creates considerable atmosphere
A giallo thriller from Mario Bava that is often regarded as the prototype of the slasher film. The film borrows from Agatha Christie with people isolated on an island being killed amid Bava’s artily extravagant set-ups
David Hemmings stars in a well written thriller about a school teacher whose pupils confess to a murder and engage in a series of psychological games with him
Freddie Francis was one of the finest stylists of the Anglo-horror cycle. Here he makes a comedy spoofing the vampire film that comes out feeling like Benny Hill routines running around a big castle
From cult director Stephanie Rothman, a provocative and intriguing entry in the 1970s lesbian vampire film
1970s British film about two sisters being drawn into the coven of witches. This comes with much in the way of softcore nudity but there is a surprising degree of innocence about all of it
Obscure film in which director Fernando Arrabal depicts a series of vignettes from his childhood depicting the sadism and cruelty of the Spanish Fascists
The third of Spanish star Paul Naschy’s films about the werewolf Waldemar Daninsky. This becomes a crossover where Daninsky meets up to fight Countess Bathory
The werewolf underwent some bizarre title mashups in the 1970s. This has the amusing idea of mashing the werewolf film up with the biker film. The results are played surprisingly seriously.
Fine little tale of an introverted man who befriends a horde of rats and uses these to gain comeuppance. A hit that presaged a host of Animals Attack films throughout the 1970s.
A Roald Dahl children’s film that has become a cult classic, set in a deliriously nonsensical world with Gene Wilder give a sinisterly threatening performance in the title role
A bad movie classic about a scientist turning himself into a fish monster and trying to get fish to walk and take over the Earth. Filled with prize bad movie writing, laughable effects and a ridiculously cheesy monster suit
A film based on the Zodiac Killer. Unlike other Zodiac films, this was made while the killer was still active. The film comes with a fascinating backstory where it was made as part of an elaborate trap to lure the Zodiac Killer out