The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
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
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
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
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
The singer Björk appears in the adaptation of a fairytale by the Brothers Grimm about witchcraft in mediaeval Iceland
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
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
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)
Low-budget invisible man film that makes a beeline for the squalid – the invisible man is a nerd scientist and invisibility becomes an opportunity for him to wander into girl’s locker rooms, kill bullies and the like
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
A modernised retelling of the Cinderella story that is set in the Paris fashion world starring with Jennifer Grey as a lowly seamstress falling for self-important fashion designer Rob Lowe
A British venture into the gonzo splatter film about a motorcycle that develops vampiric tendencies after blood is spilled in its tank in a Satanist ceremony. Beyond an amusing title, this is crude and heavy-handed
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
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
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
An adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story produced by Roger Corman. Alas giving it to exploitation director Jim Wynorski, who likes to add really well stacked women to everything does, kills all of Poe’s atmosphere
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Roger Corman disappointed with his return to the director’s chair after twenty years. He adapts a Brian Aldiss novel about a time-traveller meeting both Mary Shelley and Dr Frankenstein
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
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.
Riding high on the success of The Cosby Show, Bill Cosby flopped on cinema screens with this comedy where he appears as a father who returns as a ghost to sort out his children’s lives
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
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
A sequel to the teen psychic powers comedy Zapped! that takes things even more crass and vulgar