The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Amicus Films venture into the haunted house genre with a newlywed Stephanie Beacham haunted by a disembodied hand but atmosphere is weakened by the constant reaching for crude shock effect
Companion piece to Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein, a duo of horror films sold with Andy Warhol’s name for some reason. Dracula is revamped with a good deal of sex and gore but not uninterestingly so.
An outrageous gore-drenched version of the Frankenstein story that frequently ventures into bad taste. Despite his name in the title, Andy Warhol had nothing to do with the film
Comedy-thriller in the Old Dark House tradition with greedy relatives being bumped off in the fight for the will. A film that begins with a corpse getting married can’t be all bad.
Terrence Malick’s first film, very loosely based on the murder spree of Charles Starkweather, albeit one where Malick reinvents Starkweather and girlfriend Caril Fugate as innocents adrift in the great American landscape
Another of the films from cult exploitation director Jess Franco. This is a vampire film made with a mix of arty erotica with Lina Romay as Countess Irina Karlstein who drains men and women’s lifeforce during sex
The fifth and final of the original Planet of the Apes films. After four well worthwhile entries up to this point, a tired air infects this production as it assembles the elements in a haphazard clutter
Osama Tezuka is a cult figure in anime and manga – what is less well known is that he also made adult animation. This, about a woman’s temptation by The Devil in mediaeval France, is a mind-boggling array of psychedelia and eroticism
Blacula was a big Blaxploitation hit and was quickly followed by this Blaxploitation take on the Frankenstein film. While others that followed did great things, this only seems a quickie designed to jump aboard the fad
This comes with a cutely amusing title – about a boy who witnesses his father becoming a werewolf but nobody will believe him – but only emerges as a cheap and shabby B movie
Legendary Canucksploitation film from Ivan Reitman about a cannibal hotel. This has gained a cult reputation. Seen it seems to lack the essential trashiness that justifies its reputation
TV movie about an Ancient Egyptian cat vengeance curse. The cast was culled from 1940s genre films and the material feels just as old despite a script from Psycho author Robert Bloch
A classic animated film. A delightful film about a young pig that seeks to change his fate and gets aid from a spider that can spell. A theatrical outing for Hanna-Barbera, creator of tv’s The Flintstones et al
One of the very first films dealing with cloning. This starts off well with a man’s discovery that a double has stolen his identity but thereafter becomes a long drawn-out pursuit thriller
1970s television produced some remarkable genre works. One of the best was this – a work of eerie tension as scientists conducting experiments at a remote laboratory find something unseen is toying with them
George Romero’s most underrated film, filled with disturbing images as the population of a town are driven crazy by a bio-weapon spill The first and also the best of a number films on the theme of outbreaks of mass insanity
An interesting never-quite-ran from the heyday of Anglo-horror cycle with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Victorian anthropologists dealing with a prehistoric skeleton that is an embodiment of evil
An enjoyably twisted psycho film that heads into a fairly disturbed headspace concerning a waitress who has a habit of killing people and her former circus performer boss who feeds the bodies to his pigs
A forgotten item from the Anglo-horror cycle in which brother and sister Christopher Lee and Joan Collins conspire to fake a series of hauntings in order to obtain an inheritance hidden in a mansion
George C. Scott is a marine biologist who has taught dolphins to speak but faces the military want to take his research. A serious work that all hinges on whether one is willing to accept the idea of dolphins talking in squawky voices
Classic 1970s porn film about a spinster condemned to Hell who is sent back to the world to experience the lusts of the flesh. Made back at a time when the people involved seemed to care about making a good film as well
TV movie that copies Rosemary’s Baby as closely as copyright will allow with Belinda J. Montgomery encountering Satanists and the realisation she is the devil’s daughter
One of the numerous European erotic vampire films made during the early 70s. This came out not long after The Exorcist and so the vampire countess is accompanied by a coven of Devil worshippers
British children’s film in which a dog is made giant sized after being fed a growth formula by scientist Spike Milligan. Amiable but nothing great
A fascinatingly torrid 1970s film about a magician who seeks to perfect the secret of resurrecting the dead by transferring souls. It doesn’t take long before things start becoming quite twisted.
Nicolas Roeg’s masterwork. Ostensibly a film about grief and precognition, this is a film that exists as a series of taunting visual clues that constantly map over onto each other with a hidden geometry
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
A landmark classic of the horror genre, a film whose take on demonic possession and exorcism laid down a series of tropes that are still present over five decades later. A gruelling and intensive horror story into the bargain
The first film from French animator Rene Laloux, a trippily surreal vision and one of the few portraits of a genuinely alien world on film
An obscure tv movie version of Mary Shelley made by producer Dan Curtis. This suffers cheap production values but is the most faithful version of the book up to that point
Fascinating Blaxploitation vampire film. In contrast to the more popular and cheesier Blacula, this is arty, oblique, almost an experimental film that manages to offer a unique take on the vampire film
The first film version of the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the tales associated with the Arthurian legends. An obscure, little seen version starring singer Murray Head as Gawain
An unsold Gene Roddenberry tv pilot that is a fascinating almost-ran. Roddenberry rehashes Star Trek by way of Buck Rogers in a post-holocaust setting. This could have made for a worthwhile series
The thirteenth Godzilla film and a point that the series was no longer taking itself seriously. On the other hand, this is something that actually works in the films favour to create a sublime silliness
The second of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, an Arabian Nights adventure. Made as a vehicle for Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects, which are stunning. Everything about the film is classic
A Euro vampire film that exists under several different titles. Andrew Prine goes to an island after the death of his father only to disturb the tomb of a vampire queen
The second film from animator Ralph Bakshi, follow-up to Fritz the Cat. As opposed to Fritz‘s surreal trippiness, this is more down-to-earth and sees Bakshi conducting a loose, bawdy trip through his own childhood in Brooklyn
A Clint Eastwood directed/starring Western in which he plays a gunslinger who turns up in a town and exposes the guilty secrets of the townspeople in what is eventually revealed to be a supernatural twist
A key work in the cult of Alejandro Jodorowsky in which he plays a character called The Alchemist who guides a group on a mystical awakening. Surreal, challenging and mind-expanding
TV movie that combines the mid-air disaster film of Airport with the 1970s occult fad with a line-up of name actors dealing with druidic stones that exude evil in the midst of a plane flight
Bizarre entry from the Anglo-horror cycle with Michael Gough as a mad scientist creating zombies and driving a deadly armoured Rolls Royce
Amidst the Anglo-horror cycle of the 1970s, there was this throwback to the 1940s styled Old Dark House comedy. Made as a vehicle for comedian Frankie Howerd, this only demonstrates how creaky the genre was
Film with an interesting B movie cast line-up where a film crew inadvertently end up enacting rituals from a book that resurrect a corpse while shooting at a mansion
Spanish director Jose Larraz gained a small cult reputation for his work amidst the 1970s Anglo-horror cycle. This is a psycho film where a model is stalked after witnessing a murder
From on an early script by Star Trek director Nicholas Meyer, this is an entertainingly tongue-in-cheek effort where women use a serum to turn into deadly bee creatures
A gritty US-made adaptation of a Swedish thriller with Walter Matthau and Bruce Dern as detectives investigating a machine-gun murder spree aboard a bus
While holding many similarities to The Haunting, this is a strong, intelligent film about parapsychologists investigating a haunted house. Filled with eerie scares and a standout script from Richard Matheson
A vampire film that has gained a cult reputation. This nominally falls into the lesbian vampire fad but mostly takes place on a level of dreamy suggestiveness. Not fully successful but certainly something unique
The eighth James Bond film and Roger Moore’s debut in the role. This is one of the most variant Bond films also incorporating Blaxploitation and voodoo elements
Spanish director Amando De Ossorio gained a cult for his Blind Dead films. Here he makes a film about The Lorelei, a woman who sits on the banks of The Rhine tempting men to their deaths
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas. The film dies an ungainly death with a cast awkward in ill-fitting costumery
A standout adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether where a visitor to an asylum discovers the patients are masquerading as the doctors
Film that has developed a cult reputation set in a seaside town where the dead are returning to life. The film has an unsettling nightmare ambience where things happen without any explanation
Space exploration films from the Soviet Union about teenagers selected to go on a decades long journey to the stars, this has the same stolid drama of the other Soviet SF films but is better made than most of the others
Obscure almost interesting film where Robert Culp drops out of city life, renovates a possibly haunted house before being drawn into a surreal Free Love fantasia
Underwater adventure movie that tries to emulate 2001: A Space Odyssey, this has a bad movie reputation
Less famous sequel to the cult tv movie The Night Stalker but a far superior work. This repeats much of the first film but with Darren McGavin’s Kolchak hunting an immortal killer. Much better script and featuring a superbly eerie climactic venture down into the Seattle Underground
Called the only horror film Elizabeth Taylor ever appeared in (although one would dispute that somewhat), this feels like a Hammer psycho-thriller made with an A-list cast
The second of Lindsay Anderson and Malcolm’s McDowell’s social satires with coffee salesman McDowell passing through increasingly more surreal adventures
From producer Dan Curtis, creator of tv’s Dark Shadows and The Night Stalker, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel about a libertine who remains eternally youthful while his debaucheries are transferred to a portrait. This has to count as the best version of the story to date.
Fourth and final of the Swedish live-action films based on Astrid Lindgren’s child heroine Pippi Longstocking
The second of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s unsold Genesis II pilots. While you can see the series had some potential, the plot about the venture to a society where women keep men as slaves has a giggly silliness that feels like a throwback to 50s films like Queen of Outer Space
Hard to find Anglo-horror effort that has been long considered an item of must-see fascination for its premise of an undead biker gang, including the central image of the gang leader erupting from the grave on his motorcycle. The film unfortunately has a prosaic dullness that belies such imaginative wildness
Difficult to find 1970s Canadian-made occult film that doesn’t quite live up to expectation. Mostly it is a police procedural and the devil worship cult angle only emerges as a left field ending in the last ten minutes.; Not tight enough as a detective story to fully work
Disney animated film produced during the studio’s creative slump between the 1960s and 80s, the main conceit is recasting the story of Robin Hood with talking animals amid much slapstick
One of the better films from Santo the Mexican wrestling superhero, quite an atmospheric work where Santo and his friend Blue Demon faces Dracula and his werewolf acolyte
Another of the films featuring Santo, the Mexican masked wrestler superhero. In one of the duller entries, Santo here travels to Spain and is pitted against a mad scientist operating an artworks theft operation
The eight of Hammer’s Dracula, the second-to-last they would make and the last featuring Christopher Lee. This follows on from the previous film Dracula A.D. 1972 in featuring Dracula in the present day and at least does more with the idea than that film did
The very first film from John Landis, a rather amusing spoof of revived caveman films, As with many of Landis’s films, has a substantial level of playful in-joking and genre in-referencing. Mostly, it plays out with an appealingly nonsensical absurdity
A psycho-thriller that offers up the plot of Jane Eyre by way of Psycho. With Bette Davis rising to form as an alcoholic mother
A classic attention-grabbing title from the heyday of the exploitation film … After receiving a severed arm in the mail, a group of friends realise that a former friend has come seeking revenge for when they were trapped down a mine and agreed to cut off his arm because they had nothing to eat
An hilarious Woody Allen film in which he plays a contemporary man cryogenically unthawed in the 22nd century. This satirisises SF cliches and contains some side-slitting comedy sequences
The film mangles and fails to understand the fine Harry Harrison novel it is based on but in its own right creates an effective and worthwhile portrait of a badly overpopulated 21st Century New York
Throwback to the mad scientist film with modern makeup effects in which scientist Strother Martin injects Dirk Benedict with a serum that turns him into a snake man
Essentially a tv movie version of the Gerry Anderson film Doppelganger in which an astronaut comes around to find he is on a Counter Earth. The premise, an alternate history of sorts, is nonsensical and even then the film abandons it soon in to become a variant on The Fugitive
A thinking person’s disaster movie depicting Japan’s sinking into the ocean
Interesting portrait of a true-life serial killer that was produced under the auspices of Rainer Werner Fassbinder concerning a vampire-like gay killer who operated in Germany during the 1920s. Not without some shock value, this is more arthouse film than it is horror
Film from director Stephanie Rothman about a future where prisoners are exiled to an island whey they create their own ideal society
Creaky old film that feels like it belongs in the 1940s about a series of murders at a wax museum. It does have a great cast line-up of genre veterans
Following on from the success of the Dr Phibes films, Vincent Price is cast as a mad Shakespearean actor who employs comically grotesque deaths from Shakespeare’s plays to kill his critics
Anarchic French film entirely without dialogue as a group of people in an apartment begin to revert to pre-civilised behaviour
The second of Amicus Films’ adaptations from EC Comics, a follow-up to their earlier Tales from the Crypt and one of their weaker horror anthologies with the episodes much more variable in overall quality
One of the few films to come out after George Romero where zombies are still associated with voodoo. Spanish horror star Paul Naschy writes and plays three roles in a film that comes with a wild mix of cross-cultural ideas
One of the films from cult director Jesus Franco, one effort among Franco’s mostly cheap output where his mix of softcore erotica and pretensions towards artiness were at their most inspired. On the other hand, the film is written with a randomness that makes it impossible to understand anything that is happening
A hit for novelist Michael Crichton who made his directorial debut here. Themes of machines going amok run throughout Crichton’s work and here he comes up with the ingenious idea of a Western simulation playground using androids that proceed to turn against the humans
Very unique psycho film that takes place in split screen with the killer seen on one side of the screen and the victims and pursuing detective on the other
Classic horror film that imagines a secret world of pagan rites existing into the modern day. As much a classic for its colourful creation of a folk culture as it is for an unforgettable ending
Fascinating work from Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of the earliest depictions of Virtual Reality on screen and one that sets most of the genre’s tropes in place
A Disney live-action comedy that puts a Tarzan character on the athletics field for some inspired nonsense