The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The success of Trainspotting gave birth to this anthology that adapts three Irvine Welsh stories, including episodes in which a man is transformed into a fly and a man swaps minds with a baby
The film that created the cult of anime in the West. Essentially a Cyberpunk version of The Fury, this has been construed as a series of climaxes that get progressively larger in scale until they almost reach a point of sensory overload
A work of bizarre genius from stop-motion animator Jan Svankmajer. A surrealist take on Alice in Wonderland that is more Eraserhead than Lewis Carroll, filled with Svankmajer’s bizarre Claymation creatures
Head-scratching Albert Pyun oddity made for Cannon Films with Kathy Ireland searching for Atlantis underground. This emerges as a weird mix of Valley Girl comedy and Journey to the Center of the Earth
Made not longer after the buddy cop hit of Lethal Weapon, this has a curmudgeonly human paired up with an alien partner. A fairly ordinary cop show plot is boosted by two fantastic central performances
Fine thriller about the hunt for a frogman serial killer prowling the canals of Amsterdam. The police procedural plot is not so important as the entertaining dispatches and some of the finest action sequence of the 1980s
Psychological thriller where an uptight Colin Firth gets a handsomely charming roommate in Hart Bochner who proceeds to seduce everybody in the building with sinister intent
The first anime film to be based on the manga, this is set in a future where the heroine is the head of a heavily armoured SWAT team fighting terrorists. Several different incarnations followed.
A completely ignored sequel to Arthur, the non-genre comedy hit with Dudley Moore as an alcoholic millionaire. Included here because butler John Gielgud turns up as a ghost
A very eccentric Australian film about a man wound into solving a temporal paradox by aliens who time travel in a greasy spoon diner
Story of the sole survivor of a cult mass suicide waking from a coma to be haunted by the cult leader begging her to join them. This becomes a derivative of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films before a contrived ending
Peter Jackson first appeared with this no-budget splatter comedy. A miracle of DIY filmmaking, the film plays out like a live-action Roadunner cartoon where the creativity of Jackson’s home-made gore effects is positively ingenious
This was where the world took notice of Tim Burton in his second film. This throws the standard ghost story on its head with the dead trying to exorcise the living. The show is dominated by Burton’s wild set-pieces and Michael Keaton’s OTT title performance
The most charming among the spate of bodyswap fantasies of the 80s. Tom Hanks was Academy Award nominated for his role as a boy who makes a wish to “be big” and wakes up to find himself in a man’s body
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure proved a quirky hit and so Pee-Wee was spun out in this sequel. This lacks the zany touch of Tim Burton in the director’s chair, nevertheless has its own moments
The original 1958 The Blob gets a full makeover via some sensational state-of-the-art animatronics and makeup effects with impressive results. A much superior work to the original in all ways
Mad psychologist creates a giant brain about the size of a small car that controls minds and is hungry to devour people. A deliriously entertaining film that seems to embody the essence of the cheesy makeup effects driven 1980s horror film
VHS era horror about a demon that appears out of a young boy’s closet and kills all who threaten him. Mostly this is an excuse to serve up novelty deaths
Odd effort that features Wings Hauser as a polite and charming ghostly handyman who romances the heroine while despatching the people around her. Not a great film but Hauser has never been better
An almost quite good film from Charles and Albert Band’s Empire Productions about imprisoned evil stirring beneath a monastery. The build-up is well done and the film only falters at a weak ending
The very first of the Chucky films. At the time, this seemed a very silly and at times ridiculous killer doll film and not the basis of an ongoing series of sequels that have lasted more than three decades
Before the films, this was an earlier BBC tv mini-series version of the C.S. Lewis book, one of a series of four adaptations. This is faithful to the story but suffers from impoverished effects
A dreadful sequel to the Ron Howard hit Cocoon about seniors encountering aliens. This misses all the interesting potential of a sequel and drowns in schmaltz and unfunny comedy routines
A James Ellroy-adapted crime thriller with James Woods giving a very disturbed performance as an unhinged detective on the trail of a serial killer
Critters was an entertaining ripoff of Gremlins. This sequel alas draws that appeal thin by being placed in the directorial ham fists of the perpetually awful Mick Garris
Charming work of autobiography filled with some great performances in which Martin Sheen remembers his childhood in Ireland with an irascible father. Also a ghost story.
Made not along after the success of Lethal Weapon, this offers a wacky spin on the buddy cop formula having a cop paired with a zombie. The mildly amusing notion is killed by the excruciating comedy relief of Joe Piscopo
The fifth and last of Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films, the weakest of the series. Dirty Harry comes up against a betting pool on celebrity deaths and a killer who decides to help it along
David Cronenberg’s absolute masterpiece of the perverse with Jeremy Irons giving a tour-de-force performance(s) as twin gynaecologists who descend into drug addiction, obsession and madness
A dully directed imitator of A Nightmare on Elm Street, although a series of highly contrived twists eventually reveal that there are no dream horrors after all
A 1980s VHS released horror about a series of novelty killings at a health spa. This contains some entertainingly bizarre death and a surprise number of later to be famous faces
Little seen Merchant Ivory film directed by Nicholas Meyer set during the British Raj in India with Pierce Brosnan as a British officer who goes undercover to investigate the Thuggee cults
An enterprising B-budget copy of Alien from prolific director Fred Olen Ray, this amusingly transfers the basics of Alien down to Earth and replaces the crew of the Nostromo with Charles Napier as a tough, grizzled LAPD cop
Anime from Yoshiaki Kawajiri, director of Wicked City and Ninja Scroll, concerning a suburb of Tokyo that is transformed into a borderland zone inhabited by demonic forces
A peculiarity from Cannon Films that was a flop, a comedy in which a weird teenager believes he is an alien and suddenly attracts the attention of a bunch of UFO cultists
An excruciatingly bad mad scientist film about a scientist tying to find a body to reattach his wife’s head. This treads only where Re-Animator went before. Much of this feels like it should have been played as a comedy
Christopher Coppola is worlds apart in talent from his uncle Francis. Here he directs a weak vampire film with Sylvia Kristel in the title role and transformation effects that look datedly cheesy today
Jemma Redgrave is a socialite who is plagued by nightmares that take over her life. A British attempt to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street that collapses into a muddle of symbolism and reality-blurring dreams
Australian film about an Aborigine bracelet taken from an archaeological dig exerting supernatural retribution in the present for a mass murder in the past
TV mini-series that came out hoping to ride the coattails of Star Trek: The Next Generation but looks dated barely ten years later. Somehow the idea of teenagers on a space mission didn’t get many audiences enthused
One of the spate of 1980s bodyswap comedies a la Big, Vice Versa and Like Father, Like Son in which octogenarian George Burns swaps bodies with his teenage grandson Charlie Schlatter
The film debut of the horror hostess Elvia (Cassandra Peterson), a good natured film containing more bimbo jokes, double entendres and bad puns than one thought possible
This was the second of Jim Varney’s Ernest P. Worrel comedies. It sees Santa Claus looking for a replacement and Ernest coming to the aid amid a series of comic shenanigans
A low-budget 80s film about a town where the locals are in thrall to a Satanist who has demanded the souls of 103 children
A standout tv mini-series that updates old mad scientist clichés into the era of Jane Goodall as scientist Charles Dance creates a human/gorilla hybrid child and tries to raise it as his own son
Thriller where widow Darlanne Fluegel and radio talkback host Richard Belzer team up to hunt a serial killer shooting people on the L.A. freeways
The seventh of the Friday the 13th films, this tries to add some novelty with a heroine who has psychic powers but is mostly the same thing as before
The final film of French animator Rene Laloux, a planetary adventure set on a world where Laloux delights in creating exotically trippy aliens and landscapes. Released in English as Light Years with an Isaac Asimov script
From the notorious 1980s heyday of Italian horror, this reads as The Amityville Horror remade as a Lucio Fulci film with the addition of a series of gore-drenched dispatches
The first film from Australian director John Hillcoat, a brutally tough depiction of a maximum security prison set in the future. Singer Nick Cave gives an extremely disturbing performance as an inmate
A cryptic ghost story based on a novel by Watership Down author Richard Adams, featuring Meg Tilly as a newlywed bride who is haunted by events from her past
A modest, little known horror film about two children who go to stay with their grandparents and finding that they are up to no good. Can be considered a precursor to M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit
A bizarre film involving Halloween killings and devil worship that seems to have been made without a clear script. Everything is wrecked by a astonishingly awful performance from Hy Pike
Following John Carpenter’s departure from the Halloween series, the sequels begin their progression into a series of interchangeable slasher films in which Michael Myers is inevitably released to kill anew
Excellent film based on the real-life figure of Erik Jan Hanussen, a clairvoyant and hypnotist who found fame in Nazi Germany. Featuring a magnetic performance from Klaus Maria Brandauer
Another version of the events at the Villa Diodati in 1816 with Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al. With the material in the script, this should have been a far more interesting film than the dull affair it is
Highly confused psycho-sexual thriller in which Jennifer Jason Leigh inherits a nightclub and begins to experience hallucinations after moving in. It is not at all clear what is going on
The first of the Hellraiser sequels. This lacks Clive Barker’s original dark obsessive vision but is worthwhile in its own right, expanding the scope of the story out into a magnificent vision of Hell
One of Chuck Norris’s action films made for Cannon Films during his 1980s heyday. This is a rather forgettable police procedural where Chuck is cast as a detective hunting an escaped serial killer
A 1980s slasher film that takes place in a furniture store after hours. The film has the novelty of featuring a gay killer – and the results are really quite bizarre
Neil Jordan has shown himself as an excellent director elsewhere but seems to have little aptitude for comedy when it comes to this raucous knockabout farce about a haunted castle
A pitifully cheap copy of Gremlins about alien creatures locked in a soundstage and now accidentally unleashed. One of the worst films ever made.
Construed by prolific B movie hack Fred Olen Ray around its two stars – Gunnar Hansen, the original Leatherface, and Scream Queen Linnea Quigley, this hits a perfect note between bimbos, tongue-in-cheek and cheap gore
An excruciating comedy built out of the basics of Mr Ed where Bobcat Goldthwait gives an imbecilic performance as an idiot who inherits a talking horse
The Howling was a witty and genre savvy werewolf film; this is one of several all-terrible sequels. The plot tiresomely rehashes the first film and the only point of note are the variably effective wolf transformation effects
TV movie remake of a 1960s psycho-thriller about two girls making prank calls and uttering the title phrase – only to inadvertently call a killer. The premise makes a lot more sense updated to the 80s
An enigmatic film from director Rolf de Heer where a town in the Australian Outback is haunted by strange lights and other mysterious unexplained phenomena
The very first ever team-up between Marvel Comics characters on the screen in which Bill Bixby’s Hulk meets Thor. The film has a camp reputation because of its Thor who resembles a Swedish bodybuilder
A film about the alien invasion of a movie theatre that is screening an all-night marathon of old films. This has been constructed around clips of old 1950s sf films
An inane invisibility film that plays out as no more than a crude 1980s teen makeout comedy with the addition of invisibility gags
TV mini-series made for the 100th anniversary of the Jack the Ripper killings. While the show adheres more to the facts of the case of any filmed work up to that point and to have uncovered new evidence, it should be considered fiction
This comes with a fantastic pitch – it was released on the centenary of the Jack the Ripper killings and features a Ripper copycat operating in the present. Alas, this becomes a massive wasted opportunity
Ostensibly as a teen version of the Jules Verne novel made by Cannon Films. However, this started under one director and finished under another with totally incomprehensible results
Australian horror that sets out to combine US models like A Nightmare on Elm Street and a few dashes of Poltergeist with the idea of an Aborigine curse but emerges as poorly executed
Killer clown film directed by the Chiodo Brothers best known for their makeup effects who come up with an appealing arsenal of sinister clown figures. On the other hand, the film is a one-note joke
Hilariously nonsensical horror film with Joanna Pacula as a sinister aunt. The plot throws in laughable novelty effects, including a killer cat, absurdly overwrought symbolism and some voodoo rationale
This is a beautifully made Coming of Age ghost story from the greatly underrated Frank LaLoggia wherein a bullied Lukas Haas is led by a ghost to uncover a murderer
Ken Russell adapts a Bram Stoker novel about a snake cult. In Russell’s hand, Stoker’s serious work is turned into a campy over-the-top comedy overloaded with worm and phallic symbols
Likeable but lightweight talking dinosaur film. This aims to be a prehistoric Bambi but never quite finds the depth. A large number of video-released sequels followed
A dull Quebec-made about the discovery of how a pharmaceutical company is conducting illicit experiments to create an artificial womb to breed embryos
A children’s movie that is a shameless and derivative copy of E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial, featuring one of the dopiest looking aliens ever designed for a film
The first in a series of films starring Robert Z’dar as an hulking, deformed ex-cop seeking revenge. Not as effective as the sequels but is lifted above the routine by a quirky Larry Cohen script
A comedy in which Griffin Dunne’s penis begins talking to him. Contrary to expectation, most of the film is PG-13 but some of the films attitudes and unfunny routines are fairly mind-boggling
One of a rare handful of films that can be considered the most extreme ever made, this a catalogue of the true-life atrocities and experiments inflicted on prisoners during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in WWII. An intensely uncomfortable watch not recommended for the faint-hearted
Charming, delightful venture into Magical Realism directed by Robert Redford as the angels step in to aid the impoverished residents of a New Mexico town
Quirky offbeat comedy in which Anthony Edwards picks up a ringing phone at a diner and the call warns that a nuclear strike is about to hit L.A. in 50 minutes during which he tries to find his lady love as the city descends into chaos all around from what may have been a prank call
Disappointing George Romero film about a paraplegic man’s psychic link with his monkey that then comes to enact his suppressed anger. A fine idea drowns in shrill moral characterisations.
A collection of Michael Jackson short pieces, leading up to the 25 minute Smooth Criminal segment where he transforms into a godlike being. Fascinating in its bizarreness, largely a Michael Jackson ego trip
Intended as a horror riff on the phenomenally popular Police Academy series, this sets a series of gags in as bad a taste as possible around the locale of a mortuary
Fourth in the popular hopping vampire saga that spawned six films and an uncredited copycat series, all blending a manic mix of comedy, fantastique moves and Eastern beliefs
Possibly the most perfect of all Hayao Miyazaki’s anime, a work about childhood featuring an array of charmingly eccentric creatures. It is a film of absolutely magical charms beneath which lies a swim of adult emotions that children’s films rarely touch upon
1980s icon Kim Basinger displays unexpected comedy talents in this tale where she is an alien romancing Dan Akyroyd. Throwaway fluff but it has a comedic silliness that is undeniably appealing
The hugely underrated Vincent Ward makes a film about Mediaeval pilgrims travelling through time to the present. Shot in an series of extraordinary images that show how bewildering the modern world would be to them
Ill-conceived US version of the popular children’s book character created by Astrid Lindgren. The result feels less a film as it does a kindergarten playground gone entirely out of control
Fourth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films. Under Renny Harlin’s hand, the unworldly atmosphere of Wes Craven’s original is replaced by moments of incredible silliness
An 80s Scream Queen film featuring Linnea Quigley, Brinke Stevens and Michelle Bauer as sorority girls who become possessed. From director David DeCoteau
Riding on his fame as Freddy Krueger in the Elm Street films, actor Robert Englund made his directorial debut here but the film is lumbered with the lame concept of a demonic phone line
Sequel to Nosferatu the Vampyre featuring a return performance from Klaus Kinski with the action (or lack thereof) relocated to Venice
The Roger Corman 1950s cheapie about a mystery man who proves to be an alien space vampire is remade as a vehicle for Traci Lords. The script is essentially the same but with the addition of a lot of topless women
One of the more forgettable Disney animated film of the 1970s/80s lull, this draws heavily on Lady and the Tramp for a talking animals retelling of Oliver Twist