The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An amazingly bad movie from the VHS era where a woman is exorcised by a televangelist and coughs up a tumor, which crawls out of the trash and possesses her son, driving him to kill and bring bodies home to feed the tumor
Fourth in a series of energetic Hong Kong slapstick action capers. The film has no pretence to anything more than providing a new action sequence every five minutes, although by now the level is juvenile
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a Women in Prison film set in space. Known under several different names, this is another of Olen Ray’s bimbo pictures where he plants tongue well in cheek
James Cameron’s follow-up to Alien is one of the few sequels that matches its predecessor. Adding a troupe of Marines, Cameron creates a powerhouse of a film that sustains itself with seat-edge tension throughout
This is a sequel to Cannon Films’ excruciating camp version of King Solomon’s Mines. Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone are back. This is a marginal improvement but far from a good film
Head-scratching oddity from Cannon Films, a gonzo post-holocaust film set in a satiric women-ruled world with a culture based on half-remembered fragments of the present
The second animated film from Don Bluth made under the aegis of Steven Spielberg’s Amblin. This tells the American immigrant story, albeit casts it with cartoon mice
This is one slasher film that chooses a title date where the date in question requires it taking a more comedic approach. Despite which this is a standard effort in all ways
One of several animated films based on the popular comic-book characters Asterix and Obelix made by Dargaud Films
Action film from Cannon Films with Michael Dudikoff forced to undergo a Most Dangerous Game scenario and be hunted through the bayous by white supremacists
John Carpenter film that was marketed as a Raiders of the Lost Ark copy but is more Carpenter trying to emulate Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cinema, which was largely unknown in the West at the time. All with highly enjoyable conic results.
Biggles, Captain W.E. Johns’ famous flying ace, appeared in a long-running series of boys books. In his big screen film outing. he has the ignominy of playing second fiddle to a young American hero in a Back to the Future copy
Made from an old John Carpenter script, this is a reasonable action film starring Tommy Lee Jones as a professional thief who is tasked with stealing a hi-tech car
One of the key David Lynch films in which cleancut college kid Kyle MacLachlan finds a severed human ear and is drawn into a dark underworld of S&M lorded over by a maniacally deranged Dennis Hopper
The director of the notorious Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato, takes on making a slasher film. This seems full of possibilities but the results treads familiar ground
The world’s first Islamic horror film? A film filled with a constant profusion of weird imagery but otherwise baffllingly incomprehensible
A beautifully sweet and tender film where teenager Lucy Deakins moves to a new home and befriends Jay Underwood, the autistic boy next door who dreams of being able to fly
All over New York City, virgins are being molested by aliens that lurk in the subway tunnels and seek them for breeding purposes. One of the worst genre films of the 1980s
New Zealand-made variation on the Backwoods Brutality film with a group of trampers being hunted through the bush by a psychopathic farmer
The second of the Care Bears films, light, insubstantial and rather sweet as pre-adolescent creatures of indeterminate gender romp around in their cloud kingdom banishing bad feelings
An oddly unconvincing adaptation of the first of Jean M Auel’s best-selling prehistoric books featuring Darryl Hannah as a more advanced Cro-Magnon cavewoman Ayla living among a Neanderthal tribe
One of the essential Troma films, this seems to have been conceived as Rock’n’Roll High School with Evil Dead-styled makeup effects and lots of moronic bad taste humour
From Cannon Films, a Sylvester Stallone action vehicle with a near-fascistic view of law enforcement that proves to be an absurd comic-book of a film that is preposterously entertaining
Film about a Vietnam Veteran snapping and going over the edge that gained acclaim when it came out. More a work of grim social realism than horror, it is frequently amateurish but contains an undeniably bleak charge
A surprisingly likeable Gremlins copycat concerning an invasion by a horde of malicious alien creatures. An enjoyable popcorn muncher that has produced four sequels.
One of Walter Hill’s finest films that sets out in search of the soul of blues music, featuring a superlative performance from Joe Seneca as an aging bluesman who wants back the soul he traded to The Devil for success
A remarkable little film from Australian director Brian Trenchard-Smith set in a satiric future where teens find they are trapped in a drive-theatre used as a prison for troubled youth
Wes Craven was hot as a result of A Nightmare on Elm Street but badly lucked out with this ridiculous film in which a teenager raises his girlfriend from the dead by planting a computer chip from a robot in her brain
Horror anthology with the novelty where all of the stories are horror versions of fairytales. Particularly amusing is the second episode, a modernised version of Little Red Riding Hood
Cult Italian director Lucio Fulci makes an erotic thriller but fails to leave his horror background behind with deranged results quite unlike any other erotic film
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band’s Empire Productions, a comic-book of a film that assembles an action team of various abilities on an adventure up against a mad scientist
Welcome to the bizarre and decidedly politically incorrect world of the Japanese pinku film. Words fail me on this one, which concerns a demonic rapist that attacks a porn film shoot
Follow-up to The Ewok Adventure, a tv movie released to theatres internationally. This is a better film than its predecessor that even captures something of the Star Wars spirit on occasions
Robin Hardy, director of The Wicker Man, makes an Irish-set thriller in which a country girl moved to the city is stalked by a serial killer who sends his victims poetry
Smart and intelligent Disney film where Joey Cramer play a kid who goes missing and reappears some years later unaged, only to realise he has been abducted by aliens and can control a spaceship
David Cronenberg remakes the 1958 film, transforming its improbable scenario into a fascinating study of biological transformation with Jeff Goldblum genetically mutating into a fly hybrid. Kafka’s Metamorphosis with a lot more slime.
Modest Australian-made children’s film that imports Henry Thomas riding on the success of E.T. as a teen inventor finding a lake purported to contain a creature from Aborigine legend
After the cult success of Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs and most of the principals returned with a further H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. More outrageously over-the-top splatter effects but this is somewhat the lesser
Undeniably entertaining Filipino action film that tries to throw in everything including time travel, post-holocaust action, adventure quests, magical artifacts, lost worlds, Nazis and dwarves
An ultra low-budget film about a man on a space journey returning to Earth to find it invaded by aliens. This tries to do Mad Max and Star Wars on the budget of about $1.99
Hong Kong supernatural film about a new tower block that is haunted because its feng shui is out. This goes well beyond the initial fantasy it starts out as being into moments of out-and-out dementia
One of Hollywood’s misguided attempts to appropriate the Wu Xia film. This is turned into an Eddie Murphy comedy vehicle where neither his live wire presence nor the fantasy elements gel together
There is a good idea here, exploring what happened in the meeting between Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al at the Villa Diodati in 1816. However this is hijacked by Ken Russell in lunatically over-the-top-mode
One of the most delightful films produced during the 1960s-80s lean years of Disney animation. This was not a success but delivers a film of winning charms about a mouse equivalent of Sherlock Holmes
Both directing and starring here, Gene Wilder attempts to revive the Old Dark House comedy. By the 1980s, this was datedly creaky, while Wilder’s comedy mugging histrionics are excruciating to sit through
An immensely disturbing film loosely based on serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. John McNaughton directs with a chillingly understated ordinariness and Michael Rooker has never been better in a role.
Before this was spun out into a series of sequels and tv series, the first film had an original and captivating idea about immortals warring across the ages, Everything is propelled into high gear by Russell Mulcahy’s visually dazzling direction
One of the best horror films of the 1980s, a grippingly suspenseful work where C. Thomas Howell is caught in a series of taunting psychological games across the interstate after offering psychopathic hitcher Rutger Hauer a ride
Amiably silly haunted house film with William Katt fighting rubbery pop-up monsters. This doesn’t take itself too seriously. A minor hit that produced three sequels.
This adaptation of the cult Marvel comic-book from Lucasfilm should have been a classic but went tail-feathers up in a big way such that it became the term used for a film that bombs for years afterwards
A quite reasonable Backwoods Brutality item with a group who go hunting in backwoods Oklahoma but stir up the inbred poachers and end up being hunted themselves
This is a derivative and dull copy of E.T. about two alien kids and pet who run away from their family on The Moon and found by a teenage cowboy on a ranch in rural Wyoming
The original Apt Pupil, an extraordinary study in cruelty about a Nazi war criminal confined to an iron lung and the way his past cruelties influence a teenage boy reading his journals
Tobe Hooper’s remake of the 1950s alien invaders classic for Cannon Films has much better effects and more technical proficient than the original but misses any of its paranoid, alienated mood
A low-budget Italian sword-and-sorcery film, one of a host of such films that came out following the success of Conan the Barbarian. This was the third entry in the Ator series starring Miles O’Keeffe
The sixth and one of the better Friday the 13th films. This time the usual formula of the series is conducted with an undeniable sense of humour
An early film written/produced by Luc Besson concerning a scientist driven crazy by tv announcers who invents a device that can kill people as they appear live on tv
Canadian entry from the classic era of slasher films that hits some occasionally effective notes that sit between horror and prank. The last 10 minutes take an abrupt dogleg turn to become an Evil Dead copy
1980s makeup effects vehicle with students uncovering mad science experiments in an old house. The effects get the better of the cast, most notedly a horrendously over-acting Rod Steiger
Everybody hated the 1976 remake of King Kong but Dino de Laurentiis has the chutzpah to produce a sequel and the results are absolutely awful, full of scenes guaranteed to have an audience rolling in the aisle
Stunning Jim Henson directed fantasy film set in a world of visual illusions where the Henson team’s puppetry effects are at the peak of their game to provide the creature effects
Visually stunning Hayao Miyazaki film about the search for a lost city of the clouds Soaring adventure in an alternate world of airship fantasies, rendered in a series of breathtaking vistas
Film from Ray Dennis Steckler, the cult director of The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies concerning a maniac on a killing spree in Las Vegas
Christopher Lloyd and Dee Wallace star in one of the tattiest of 1980s fantasy films about a magic horse that is really a dragon. This is killed by some abysmal effects.
Amid, the 1980s body of nuclear war films, all others are English-language made but this is one made by the Russians. The results are incredibly bleak but also have a haunting poetry
An acclaimed mini-series about a frumpy woman taking gleeful revenge on the husband who abandoned her. Essentially Fatal Attraction rewritten with a feminist manifesto with hilariously barbed results
Australian director Richard Franklin makes a film with Elisabeth Shue trapped in a house with a hyper-intelligent killer chimpanzee. The film has structural problems but Franklin does generates fine tension
Roger Corman’s no-budget comedy about a killer plant is remade as a multi-million dollar musical with top-drawer effects. Missing is the original’s black comedy but this has many appealingly eccentric delights of its own
An entry in the slasher film made by several alumni from the original Night of the Living Dead. Someone is killing the girls of the high school’s cheerleading squad
Roland Emmerich’s second film, a confused oddity that seems to be trying to model itself as a Spielberg film about a kid who gains psychic powers and whose toys come to life
An extraordinary Argentinean film about a patient in his asylum who insists that he is an alien and has genteel affect on the inmates. Later uncreditedly ripped-off as K-PAX.
Teen thriller where Christopher Collett decides to build an atomic bomb for the school science prize
The very first Hannibal Lecter film. Under Michael Mann, this comes with a stylistic flourish very different to what the films became when Anthony Hopkins took the role
Cheerfully outrageous early Pedro Almodovar black comedy where virginal Antonio Banderas confesses to a series of murders conducted by his death obsessed lawyer
The second film from Leos Carax, a near-future set romance that bursts with freshness and originality
Monster movie parody that spoofs a number of classic films, including King Kong where it takes the title literally and the monster makes off with the hero giving the film a certain LGBT community relevance in its day. Contains quite an impressive cast list, including featuring both Paul Walker and singer Fergie as kids
The first of several sequels to the hopping vampire hit. While the original was an adept and clever blend of fantasy and comedy, this promptly heads for loud and noisy slapstick
Laughably badly made ripoff of Blade Runner and The Terminator with a mercenary hunting amok androids
Very typical 1980s horror film steeped in an enthusiasm for the genre that makes a beeline for cheesy mutant monster effects
Completely insane 1980s spy film – a madcap mahsup of elements including James Bond gadgetry, mad scientists, action and splatter served up with not a shred of realism. The crowning glory is a completely OTT Gene Simmons as a cross-dressing super-villain
Alien body snatchers comedy that feels less like a film than an extended fanboy in-joke
Martial arts film about a bullied teenager who gets aid from the ghost of Bruce Lee. A shabby effort lifted by the dynamic presence of a then unknown Jean-Claude Van Damme
John McTiernan directs Pierce Brosnan is a film about phantom street gangs that creates an incredibly haunted mood
This is Francis Ford Coppola’s version of Back to the Future wherein housewife Kathleen Turner wakes up back as her high school self and gets the opportunity to remake her life’s choices
Sequel to Poltergeist that without Tobe Hopper in the director’s seat is an unimaginative by-the-numbers effort
Well worthwhile Psycho sequel directed by Anthony Perkins himself who makes an assured, even at times dazzling debut. The film has a playfulness and outrageousness that quite takes you aback
The debut of Canadian director Gerard Ciccoritti who should have become more well known, this goes for broke and becomes splendidly deranged
Sondra Locke directs an odd little fable about a boy with rat-like features but the result never quite comes off
Early Clive Barker adaptation made just prior to his gaining fame with Hellraiser about a the revival of a monstrous pagan pagan that suffers from shabby treatment and a rubbery monster
Excruciating and painfully unfunny attempt to make a deliberately bad SF film with alien vixens attempting to take over a high school
The rare example of a sociological horror film concerning a teenager who kills his girlfriend and how his peers seem unconcerned. Filled with great performances, this is a film with a chilling nihilism that puts its finger on a 1980s youth generation with no seeming future ahead
Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film, a slow and weighty meditation upon questions of faith as one man prays to turn back a nuclear holocaust
Very obscure independently-made ghost story – and justly so … It seems more interested in being a vague, incredibly pretentious woman’s psychodrama than it ever is in the usual ghost story stuff of spooking and scaring an audience
Cute robot film that essentially plays out as E.T. with diodes. It gets some laughs and has a some virtuoso effects but as SF this is a film that can only be enjoyed as mindless entertainment
One of the most extraordinary works ever made for tv. From the pen of Dennis Potter, a mini-series that blends film noir, meta-fiction and autobiography
Embarrassingly bad Mel Brooks produced film that seems to have been conceived in terms of conducting a juvenile Mad Max film on rollerskates and throwing SF cliches about without any coherent script
A Roger Corman produced slasher film, which spawned two sequels. The plot draws heavily on Halloween and comes with all the usual scenes of co-eds being stalked by a maniac escaped from an asylum
This comes with the unappealing concept of ‘Teenagers Trapped in Orbit in the Space Shuttle’ and vies between cliche and passable treatment
The first film on the theme of zombies from the American Civil War. Not too badly made and with an unusual cast line-up including Nichelle Nichols as a drill sergeant
One of the films from Charles Band’s Empire productions about a family facing an alien manifested out of their tv set