The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
It is some surprise that Akira Kurosawa’s only full venture into fantastic cinema was with his penultimate film here. A beautifully filmed anthology of eight tales, including several ghost stories and two anti-nuclear parables
One of David Lynch’s finest films, with lovers Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern on the run in a road movie that travels through deranged places of the mind and explodes with crazy energy
David Lynch’s dive into the dark underbelly of smalltown weirdness became the cult tv series of the 1990s. This is the slightly re-edited pilot issued for theatrical release internationally, which offers an ungainly wrap-up to the proceedings
Tim Burton and Johnny Depp in one of their best collaborations. Burton creates this sweet oddball fable that is a take on Frankenstein where the monster becomes an alienated youth with scissors for hands
One will go out on a limb and argue that William Peter Blatty’s sequel is actually a far superior work to the original The Exorcist, one that substitutes a literate theological detective story for barf bag theatrics and contains at least one real out there jump
A classic Stephen King adaptation from Rob Reiner with writer James Caan imprisoned by psycho fan Kathy Bates, who gives a terrifying performance that won her an Academy Award
The first and best Tom Clancy adaptation about a hi-tech Soviet submarine whose captain goes rogue. Director John McTiernan conducts the undersea maneuverings with gripping psychological tension
Nicolas Roeg and Jim Henson collaborate on an adaptation of a Roald Dahl book. Roeg leaves the grotesquerie and gleeful malice intact making this one of the best Dahl adaptations
Peter Jackson‘s second film, what might be called The Muppet Show by way of John Waters, an inspired work of puppet depravity that makes a beeline for bad taste
Fine Curtis Hanson psycho-thriller in which dull yuppie James Spader befriends charismatic psychopath Rob Lowe and is drawn into a series of taunting psychological games
Richard Stanley film where killer robot invades and takes over a girl’s apartment. Stanley transforms the film into an astonishing vision of pure unfiltered Cyberpunk. One of the most visually dazzling directorial debuts of its day
A popular hit in which Patrick Swayze is killed and becomes a ghost. Bruce Joel Rubin’s script has enormous fun in interpreting aspects of the ghost story from the ghost’s point-of-view.
A dark Coming of Age story set in a surreal depiction of the midwest populated by what might be vampires and angels
After his extraordinary breakthrough with Tetsuo: The Iron Man, Shinya Tsukamoto went onto make this altogether lighter film about demon hunters, filled with bizarrely wacky imagery and way-out effects
Stephen King adapted mini-series and one of the best. A dark Coming of Age tale, Tim Curry makes an unsettling Pennywise (in doing so popularised the figure of the killer clown)
A Paul Schrader director psycho-sexual thriller set in a beautifully brooding Venice as a couple are befriended by menacing husband and wife Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren
Fine copy of Eyes of Laura Mars from Rockne S. O’Bannon in which clairvoyant Ally Sheedy gains the ability to see through the eyes of a serial killer
Film spinoff from the Tales from the Darkside tv series, this is an anthology of three horror tales, the result is a surprisingly slick and well made film
Amid the early 1990s spate of dark superhero films, Sam Raimi created one of the few original screen superheroes with Darkman, essentially a superhero film where The Joker (by way of The Phantom of the Opera) is the hero of the piece
Standout sequel to Maniac Cop, the best of the series, where Larry Cohen turns in a remarkable script and William Lustig delivers incredible action sequences
One of the better 80s attempts to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street from an old Charles Beaumont script in which Bill Pullman is a neurologist who becomes involved in an increasingly wilder series of reality bendings
Dolph Lundgren’s The Punisher is minus his trademark t-shirt and the film takes considerable liberties with the source material but this is a hugely entertaining action comic-book of a film with hilariously tongue-in-cheek dialogue
Third of the Back to the Future films, which takes everything back in time to the Old West. Probably the slightest of the trilogy, this nevertheless goes out with a rousing farewell
A crazy Hong Kong blend of supernatural and slapstick, featuring a detective who employs supernatural methods to fight drug dealers who use the resurrected dead as couriers
Entertaining B-budget variant on The Hidden with a woman caught between an alien aw enforcement officer and fugitive criminal both of whom offer contradictory stories
With a script co-written by Frank Miller, this sequel comes in as a leaner work that abandons the campier excesses of its predecessor while expanding on its ideas with considerable ingenuity
One of the more amusing and better made Troma films – their take on the superhero fad of the early 90s featuring a Japanese-themed superhero
A superior sequel to the modest The Gate. This borrows from H.P. Lovecraft and delves into the area of cursed wishes that turn on the wisher, all with imaginative results
Adapted from a Kingsley Amis novel, this BBC mini-series is a ghost story for arts audiences. Albert Finney is great as a philandering hotelier who must deal with the appearances of an 18th Century sorcerer
Completely demented Greek film about a mother and daughter imprisoning and torturing people in a big old house
The first in a highly enjoyable series of flying swordsman films produced by Tsui Hark. The series hit its peak with the second film but this is an enjoyably energetic and busy effort in its own
Thriller in which landlords Matthew Modine and Melanie Griffith’s lives are terrorised by psychopathic tenant Michael Keaton
George Romero produces a remake of his groundbreaking zombie film. This adheres closely to the original but manages to modernise it in interesting ways
Ambitious SF film about a space expedition to save the Sun, this bombed at the time but is not uninteresting
Fine film that deserves wider recognition with Jeff Goldblum as a man in an asylum who claims to be The Devil
The first live-action spinoff of the comic-book and animated series still holds up well two decades later. Little of the manic barrage of pop culture has dated, there are some excellent animatronics that allow the Turtles to engage in a series of high-energy fights and more importantly emerge as distinctive characters
A much better than usual film from Charles Band, an erotic fairytale in which Sherilyn Fenn becomes involved with a circusmaster and his twin brother who turns into a werewolf
Stuart Gordon, the cult director of Re-Animator, turns his hand to making a live-action Transformers film way back before anybody had ever head the name Michael Bay
An interesting, if not completely successful, attempt to revive the horror anthology – in this case with four tales that all take place in a Western setting
Sequel to the sensational A Chinese Ghost Story, this reunites the principal talents and actors but is not quite as snappy as the original, placing more of an emphasis on comedy
The second film from Guy Maddin, which comes with all of his familiar homages to German Expressionism and silent cinema, wrapped up in a surrealist plot of hilarious melodrama and side-splittingly deadpan dialogue
A horror anthology that ostensibly tells a series of children’s tales but heads for an admirable grotesquerie
A highly entertaining effort from Charles Band and Full Moon Productions directed by Albert Pyun featuring Tim Thomerson as a hard-boiled miniature alien cop come to Earth
A wildly deranged and gore-drenched ride. Imagine Rosemary’s Baby with an Alien chesburster where a woman is impregnated by a parasite that maintains a monologue as it urges her to kill and drink blood to feed it.
The last gasp of the Cold War nuclear film. A tv movie that features Martin Landau is the US President who tries to stop an accidental Russian nuclear release escalating into full-out war
Rather enjoyable action film that conducts an amusing spin on Lethal Weapon buddy cop formula with Dolph Lundgren taking on an intergalactic drug dealer
A Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle set in a prison that becomes an interestingly stylised realm in a wild plot featuring serial killers and organ harvesting schemes
Hong Kong film that blends gauzy erotica and supernatural (although no ghosts despite the title). Not as a good as the first sequel (one of several that followed) due to crude direction
Sequel to the cult splatter hit of Re-Animator, directed by the original’s producer Brian Yuzna. Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott and David Gale are back. This has some amazing effects work but lacks the first film’s outrageous black humour
The third of Jim Varney’s Ernest films where he is mistaken for a wanted criminal who is his double – only to go to the electric chair and this to cause his body to become magnetised
This was the fourth and final, as well as the best of the BBC’s tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, which works well enough despite the impoverished production values
Qurkily appealing Cyberpunk film in which a female bodyguard and a male pleasure android must make a journey across a post-apocalyptic wasteland
An adaptation of a classic 18th Century Gothic novel about a priest who faces diabolic temptations in the form of a woman disguised as a novice monk amid much tortured guilt and damnation
From regular horror director Brian Yuzna, a sequel to the Christmas slasher films series. This is quite possibly not only the weirdest Christmas film ever made but the weirdest Christmas horror film ever made
The first Child’s Play felt like an incredibly silly film. However, this first sequel takes the same elements and constructs them into a much tighter, better package
A modestly made BBC mini-series concerning a boy who discovers he has the titular gift of clairvoyant visions and how those around him try to exploit this
Frank Henenlotter takes the commercial route and makes a sequel to his no-budget cult film. A bigger budget allows the film to become a comic variant on Freaks featuring a series of way-out makeup effects
Lush tv mini-series with Charles Dance as the Phantom, this stands too much in the shadow of the then recent Lloyd Webber musical and its making The Phantom into a romantic figure as opposed to a horror icon
Heather Thomas starring film about the discovery of a laboratory that has created a vampire virus
Predator was one of the better Alien/Aliens copies of the 1980s. This sequel does little more than serve the same up all over again bar the substitution of a near-future L.A. for the jungle but manages to generate a reasonably intensive ride out of the action
Second film to follow-on from The Slumber Party Massacre. While the original was a straight-up slasher film, the second became completely ludicrous as it veered off in trying to copy the A Nightmare on Elm Street films but this returns to the slasher basics for a vigorous workout of the formula
One of the last directorial outings from cult director Larry Cohen. Comic-book artist Eric Roberts is wound up in trying to trace a mysterious ambulance that is abducting women into illicit experiments
Executive produced by Steven Spielberg, a popular revival of the 1970s bugs amok genre about a town overrun by deadly spiders, although this avoids the horror label and plays itself with much humour
Film about a group of students locked in a lab and being hunted by a crazed experimental baboon
The first of the long-running series of sequels to Full Moon’s Puppetmaster, this is essentially a rerun of the first film
Clearly an attempt to copy the success of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, this is a comedy with time travellers visiting the 1970s. Lots of 70s pop culture and faces without any of it being funny
The directorial debut from Frank Darabont who went on to make The Shawshank Redemption and The Mist. A wife and her lover plot to kill husband off by poisoning him only for him to survive and plot an elaborate revenge scheme
A 1990s video release, a variant on Carrie where a bullied teen girl enacts vengeance against tormentors with the aid of a cursed mirror
The second directorial film from Clive Barker is a hugely ambitious work concerning the discovery of a city of monsters – containing some extraordinary makeup creations – but proved a box-office flop
The third of the Prom Night films, a direct follow-on from the second in which Mary Lou becomes a campy Freddy Krueger-like villain firing off bad puns amid her dispatches
Early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
A variant on It’s a Wonderful Life where James Belushi gets to live the life he never did due to missing a key baseball homerun
The first film from E. Elias Merhige, subsequent director of Shadow of the Vampire. An unfathomably strange film in the Eraserhead vein about gods disemboweling themselves, rebirthing and being beset upon by nomads.
Cult Italian horror director Lucio Fulci plays himself, a horror director being driven to hallucinations and acts of murder by the violence he directs in his films
The second film from Kathryn Bigelow in which Jamie Lee Curtis is a rookie cop who is stalked by a creepily psychopathic Ron Silver. A beautifully stylish rendering of an increasingly improbable plot
Gritty urban drama with Christina Applegate as a teenage runaway on the mean streets of L.A. harassed by a psycho cop
One of Woody Allen’s less interesting films, a modernised version of Alice in Wonderland with Mia Farrow as a bored housewife who passes through various surreal experiences
Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Victoria Tennant kills an attacker only for him to be found alive again and return to attack her, involving her in a complex web involving Satanism, vampirism and twins
French film about true-life serial killer Marcel Petiot, a respectable doctor who operated a lifeline for Jewish refugees during WWII only to kill them
This was made not long after Wes Craven’s Shocker. Here detective Lou Diamond Phillips faces a serial killer who comes back from the dead after going to the gas chamber and can hop between bodies
A film about med students stopping their hearts so as to explore the afterlife. This aims for big ideas but befalls director Joel Schumacher who delivers pretty visuals but finds nothing any more profound than a figurative group hug
Frank Henenlotter of Basket Case fame modernises the Frankenstein film Here Frankenstein creates a body out of parts from Time Square hookers. Amusing but eventually a film where the humour is too broad
A blatant copy of Steven Spielberg’s Duel in which school bus driver Joanna Cassidy pursues a muscle car with never-seen driver who has abducted her daughter. Two-thirds of the film is taken up by an extended car chase scene where the stunt people seem to be having a field day
Oddball New Zealand-made comedy with various characters in pursuit of a statuette with rejuvenative properties
From a Stephen King short story about mill workers facing a giant rat, this has become one of the most ridiculed of all King adaptations. Everything takes place with absurdly over-the-top melodrama
The Warren Beatty directed and starring adaptation of the popular newspaper comic-strip detective proved a flop. Beatty creates a highly stylised world and peoples it with an all-star cast but fails to invest the world with any depth
A far less successful sequel to the mega-hit of Gremlins where director Joe Dante brings the gremlins to Manhattan and allows the silliness to go completely over-the-top and into orbit, even breaking the fourth wall
William Friedkin film with Jenny Seagrove as a sinister nanny who is really a baby-snatching druidic tree spirit. Friedkin and all concerned play a B movie idea in remarkably straight face
The original version of the Margaret Atwood novel made way before the tv series. This aims in the general direction but is more a film that achieves a sense of disquiet rather than the true horror of its’ heroine’s situation in this world
George Romero and Dario Argento collaborate on an anthology, each adapting an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Either director leaves you with high expectations but the results are very mixed
Adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story is killed by being turned into an Arnold Schwarzenegger action vehicle and by director Paul Verhoeven’s burying the reality bending subtleties of the story under bludgeoning ultra-violence
The singer Björk appears in the adaptation of a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm about witchcraft in mediaeval Iceland
A theatrical film version spun off from The Jetsons, the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series about a space age family. Not too much has changed since the 1960s
Adrian Lyne became one of the most visually exciting directors of the 1980s. Here he makes an afterlife film that swings between moments of greatness and a script that seems very confused about what is happening
Charles Band film that gives the impression it is a Transformers-type film. While a Transformer does appear in a few scenes, this settles down to be more of a killer android whodunit.
From Jörg Buttgereit, director of the notorious NEKRomantik, an anthology that depicts various scenes of death and suicide. Essentially the original version of The ABCs of Death
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
Light fantasy oddity with Bob Hoskins as a racist slob of a cop who receives a heart transplant and suddenly gets a deceased Denzel Washington as a ghostly companion
Erotic horror as the demon Lilith attempts to take over a fashion magazine
This has next-to-nothing to do with Edgar Allan Poe. Instead, Luigi Cozzi makes a giallo thriller that makes claims to be the unofficial third chapter of Dario Argento’s at that point unfinished Three Mothers trilogy.