The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Incredibly bad and frequently laughable variation on The Hidden and in turn The Terminator with Jesse Ventura as an intergalactic law enforcement officer hunting a criminal on Earth
The big screen version of the 1960s tv series and Charles Addams’ cartoons is a highly enjoyable Hollywood Halloween Party, a chance for name actors to put on costume and ape life with a ghoulish, mildly perverse, moderately subversive spin
Feeble and shabbily made kid’s film in which children are transported inside the world of their favourite dinosaur tv show. Featuring some terrible dinosaur effects
Quiet a remarkable film – on one level ostensibly a psycho-thriller about a killer targeting blind women before conducting a unique reversal of perception to reveal something else altogether
The 1980 Alligator was amusing but this hardly one of the sequels the world was burning to see. An utterly formulaic copy that is killed by impoverished giant alligator effects
Thriller with Lou Diamond Phillips as a writer who manipulates a paroled killer with the intention of driving him to kill again and writing a book about it
Amblin make a sequel to An American Tail minus the involvement of Don Bluth this time. The story now becomes an amiable animated parody of a Western
Children manage to incarnate the soul of their late father inside a robot body. A children’s film where the title is the most imaginative thing about the show.
This is a weird little film about an alien vampire that is slowly rejuvenating. This has an interesting swim of strange ideas but in reality isn’t very good
Actor Wings Hauser directs and stars in a film in which he plays a detective pursuing a killer who is luring teenage runaways into making snuff films
Hollywood noir from the Coen Brothers, this takes us inside the crumbling mental state of a screenwriter in the 1930s. Like a David Lynch remake of Day of the Locust, this comes rich in the Coens’ black uncomfortable humour
The third of Frank Henenlotter’s Basket Case films but by this point the perverse wit of the original has become replaced by a cartoonish absurdity
Excruciating sequel to The Beastmaster that transports Marc Singer’s Dar to contemporary L.A. The whole film is wrecked by an attitude that seems unable to take the proceedings seriously.
The start of the 90s renaissance of Disney animation, a beautifully made adaptation of the fairytale that hearkens back to the Disney Golden Age. The only animated film nominated for an Academy Award Best Picture
The sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the first film’s humour gets lost amid repetition and blown up by a big-budget. William Sadler’s Death however proves a scene-stealer
Essentially Fatal Attraction with voodoo in which Mark Hamill engages in an affair with Apollonia and breaks it off only to find a voodoo curse has been placed on him
One of the great deliberately ridiculous horror comedy titles of all time. The film itself telescopes down to an ordinary police procedural with no pharaohs, just an Egyptian serial killer
Screenwriter Eric Red directs a film where Jeff Fahey receives an arm transplant only to find it gaining a life of its own as he is hunted by a the donor, a killer wanting to recollect his body parts
Part of the 80s/90s fad for makeup effects driven popcorn horror – in this case, actually directed by an effects artist. The film moves slow as molasses but the giant zombie poodle and zombie Phyllis Diller do compensate
The film that Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer director John McNaughton chose to make next – about an an alien criminal sentenced to Earth who is forced to ‘borrow’ people’s heads to replace its own
Amiable romantic comedy with Demi Moore as a clairvoyant who dispenses prophetic advice to everybody while caught in her own romantic entanglements
Martin Scorsese remakes the classic thriller with Robert De Niro playing the ex-con seeking revenge against his lawyer. Scorsese makes the morality more ambiguous and bring out tensions within the family
One of a trio of films produced by Fangoria magazine, this concerns a town overrun by vampires but swings uncertainly between moments of effectiveness and a campy silliness
The third and probably the least regarded of the Chucky films. This for some reason takes place in a military academy. The outrageous black humour of the later entries is absent and in its place a mean-spirited sadism
The second sequel to A Chinese Ghost Story, a slighter effort too reliant on the plot beats of the original. Where it does work is in the enormous degree of slapstick energy with which proceedings are conducted
That rarity of rarities – a quite good Troma film. The zombies are not up to much but the titular girl motorcycle gang are surprisingly well rounded characters
The first sequel to the Troma hit and with all of the usual bad taste and moron humour you associate with a Troma film, but also better produced then most their films
Nicolas Roeg was one of the great directors of the 1970s, making works like Performance and Don’t Look Now. This was one of Roeg’s last films where Mark Harmon is killed in an accident but makes a miraculous resurrection
A variant on Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether with Jennifer O’Neill as a woman wrongly committed to an asylum before discovering it has been taken over by the inmates
The third of the Critters films and in my minority opinion the best of the series generating some reasonable suspense. Featuring the film debut of a teenage Leonardo DiCaprio
A really strange comedy with Judd Nelson as a socially inept man who tries to make it as a stand-up comedy act after growing a third arm out of his back. Audiences scratched their heads and the film bombed
Kenneth Branagh breathes life into the creaky reincarnation thriller with a plot that crackles with tension, while he directs with a virtuoso showmanship that shouts style from every frame
Albert Brooks directed/starring comedy in which he plays a man in the afterlife on trial, required to defend the dull and ordinary life he led, at the same time as he begins a romance with Meryl Streep
In their debut, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro make an hilariously eccentric and unclassifiable film about the inhabitants of a strange apartment building
Comedy in which John Candy wakes up inside the world of the tv soap opera he writes. This feels like it misses most of the possibilities inherent in its idea
A copycat possessed doll film that came out in the aftermath of the Child’s Play films. A routine effort about an evil spirit uncovered in a Mexican mine that inhabits a child’s doll.
Sort of Harvey remade by way of Beetlejuice wherein Phoebe Cates’s childhood imaginary companion returns to wreak havoc. A film that makes a beeline for mud-pie throwing and general anarchy
The fourth of Jim Varney’s Ernest P. Worrel comedies. This pits Ernest in a series of knockabouts routines against a troll that is resurrected on Halloween
The second and best in the series of Hong Kong films filled with wonderfully tongue-in-cheek erotica and a series of entertainingly over-the-top fantastical set-pieces
Blatant copy of The Terminator lacking in basic plausibility featuring Renee Soutendijk as an android with an atomic bomb in her chest that goes rogue while on downtown military maneuvers
A film that mostly consists of amnesiac Air Force pilot James B. Sikking being questioned by psychologist Hector Elizondo. The film constantly hints at a big revelation before settling for one of the corniest twist endings
Terry Gilliam’s finest moment, a modernised knightly quest where radio dj Jeff Bridges is dragged into helping homeless man Robin Williams find the Holy Grail. A film made by its performances and warm and eventually soaring characterisations
This sequel to Flesh Gordon, the R-rated parody of the Flash Gordon serials, feels like a joke that is belaboured in the retelling. The film does have a crass level of nonsensical absurdity that proves amusing
The sixth of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films, sold with the gimmick of a 3D release. New director Rachel Talaly refuses to take the material seriously and turns the show into an absurd cartoon
Cheap Cyberpunk action film that borrows the basics of Cyborg with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson as android bounty hunter engaged in stopping corporate skulduggery
The eighteenth Godzilla film and one of the best of the modern era. This has the most conceptually audacious plot of any Godzilla film and overflows with wild ideas involving time travel and changing the timeline
Black comedy in which Rod Steiger sets up a private prison to execute the guilty that get away. Halfway between a vigilante film and a gonzo comedy, this never settles on what it wants to be and only comes out a frenetic farce
US-made live-action adaptation of a popular manga/anime about a power-suit superhero. Directed by two makeup effects artists mostly as a vehicle for their creature creations
The novelty of a Cyberpunk biker film, this is an efficient actioner and assemblage of paper-thin cliches and poses with almost nothing of substance beneath them
Probably THE worst sequel ever made. The script’s treatment of continuity to the first film is utterly incoherent, while director Russell Mulcahy and most of the cast go at it with unrestrained OTT excess
Director Bruce McDonald and writer/star Don McKellar make an hilariously eccentric road movie as McKellar takes a trip down the title route with a dead body while pursued by The Devil
A witty afterlife comedy, a modernised retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice where Chad Lowe drives down the highway to hell to rescue his girlfriend
Hong Kong horror/fantasy that appropriates the Evil Dead name for a wild plot about the manifestation of an ancient deity
Steven Spielberg’s long-planned live-action version of Peter Pan emerges as a sequel that asks the question “What would happen if Peter Pan grew up?” Unfortunately, the results are not one of Spielberg’s better films
Madcap slapstick caper comedy with Bruce Willis as a cat burglar. This was a massive box-office flop at the time but remains a lunatically out-of-control mess that is frequently hilarious
Way back before Austin Powers, the James Bond/spy movie parody began here with this silly effort in which teenager Richard Grieco is propelled into an international spy caper
Steven Soderbergh’s second film was this flop pseudo-biopic that places Franz Kafka (Jeremy Irons) alongside mad scientist elements and German Expressionist homages but fails to find much of Kafka’s paranoid mood
This gained a minor cult in which an abused nerd snaps as a result of constant humiliations and goes on a killing rampage. Tony Radloff gives an extraordinary performance
This was the third of the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes films. This hits an appealingly silly and wilfully ridiculous note that makes it the best of the sequels.
VHS era martial arts film with Loren Avedon as a US detective who is sent undercover to infiltrate the kickboxing tournaments held in Thailand by snuff movie-makers
A comedy where the Royal Family is wiped out and vulgar American nightclub singer John Goodman inherits the crown. Much comedic play between American vulgarity and British ceremony ensues.
A thoughtful and well-written Cryogenic Sleepers Awake film that charts the culture shock experienced by two men frozen in the 1960s and thawed out in the present day
An offbeat science-fiction film sold as a work of erotica but one that actually subverts the genre in interesting ways concerning a futuristic apartment block performers where strippers are being fed a drug
A head scractchingly strange Sam Raimi produced film in which Raimi’s brother Ted plays a man suffering from hallucinations who tries to come to the aid of the girl of his dreams
A sequel to the Mannequin, the inane comedy about a romance with a storefront dummy come to life. Here Kristy Swanson plays a princess who is turned into a statue before being awoken in the present
Rather funny satiric comedy about a family of insects who set up house in suburbia posing as humans
Jörg Buttgereit’s sequel to his shocking necrophilia film
A sequel to 976-Evil, Robert Englund’s directorial debut about a demonic phone line. This is an almost entirely unrelated work that is now about a killer with astral projection powers
The only film ever directed by Dan Aykroyd, a bizarre oddity that was a huge flop on its initial release. The film is a strange comedy set in an American Gothic junkyard town where even the smallest legal infractions are punished by death. Aykroyd can’t seem to decide it the tone is comedy or horror
This holds the distinction of being the world’s first gonzo zombie film – oh and the first zombie musical too. Not many zombies (or nude bodies), the song lyrics are occasionally amusing but the film’s humour is schoolboyish, and the effort amateurish on the whole
Wes Craven in which a young thief breaks into a home where a crazed couple imprison children and have turned the house into a series of deathtraps
Stuart Gordon’s adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story gets full marks for being set during the Spanish Inquisition. On the other hand, Gordon’s unserious splatter heavy approach and a campy performance from Lance Henriksen deflates the material
Todd Haynes’ first film, three stories, two of which are fantastic … Being Haynes’ first film, this is less polished than his later work but circles through familiar themes of social outsiders, gay identity and recreations of previous cinematic styles, including one segment that is a mocked-up 1940s mad scientist film
Surprisingly good modern slasher film set in a movie theatre during a festival of old horror films. The films come with surprisingly affectionate and well done recreations of old gimmick films, and the slasher sequences a more than reasonable style
One of a popular spate of 80s/90s Hong Kong ghost comedies where a man gets the aid of an annoying ghost girl as he pursues the woman of his dreams
Peter Greenaway gets loose on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, indulging his obsessions with lists and multimedia visuals while the costume department goes completely over-the-top
The third of Full Moon’s Puppet Master films, this is a prequel that explores Andre Toulon’s origins in Nazi Germany
Comedy where real-life husband and wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick play a couple who are so passionate they start fires whenever they have sex
Remarkable film with Mimi Rogers as a grieving widow who is drawn into the certainty that the Biblical Rapture is about to occur
A film about a possessed refrigerator!
A New Zealand-made ghost story that hardly seems to have been seen by anybody. The film shuffles around cliches from 1970s ghost story tv movies but only dissembles them into an embarrassingly silly film where very little of substance is directed with a ludicrously overwrought intensity
This rehashes Cape Fear, remade by Martin Scorsese the same year, with Denzel Washington as an upstanding lawyer whose life is torn apart by vengeful ex-con John Lithgow. A frequently ludicrous script is made worse by Russell Mulcahy’s overwrought direction
Hong Kong-made copy of RoboCop where Amy Yip has her mind transferred into a cyborg body to track a mad scientist
The worst of Don Bluth’s animated films in which a young boy is sent on a quest to find a rooster that does Elvis impersonations
Katsuhiro Otomo written anime that functions as a parody of the school of Transformer robots as the artificially intelligent hospital bed of a geriatric becomes a giant ramshackle colossus rampaging through the city
Comedian Rodney Dangerfield writes, produces and voices the role of a dog in this surprisingly charming and likeable animated film, the best and lest recognised film Dangerfield ever made
Monster movie where a runestone uncovered in the present day unleashes the Norse god Fenrir
Another wackily improbable entry in Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cycle featuring all the wildly fantastical and way over-the-top moves that the genre is renowned for
The first of a series of poorly made sequels to David Cronenberg’s Scanners. Cronenberg’s ideas have been stripped down to no more than a series of head-exploding effects
A trio of Japanese tv movies that retell supposedly true life ghost stories
Impressive psycho-thriller from Frank De Felitta that plays out with the silent logic of a nightmare as a young unknown Sharon Stone finds herself a prisoner in an apartment
A film written/produced by Dario Argento, an occult giallo in the vein of his Three Mothers films in which a teacher is surrounded by a series of occult happenings and deaths
Dean R. Koontz adaptation with Bruce Greenwood as a private detective drawn into helping a woman protect her child from crazed cultists that believe he is the Antichrist
Charming and delightful Hong Kong erotic comedy about a scholar who sets out on a journey of sexual freedom
One of the not-quite-rans in Woody Allen’s oeuvre, a homage to Franz Kafka and German Expressionism with Allen as a mousy clerk caught up in the hunt for a strangler
This caught on in a big way with the public, created a fascination with serial killers and forensic psychology and was nominated for a host of awards. Personally, one finds it one of the more overrated films of modern vintage
Julia Roberts plays a wife fleeing from an abusive and psychopathic husband (a darkly urbane Patrick Bergin in a quite demoniac performance) in this psycho-thriller that was a considerable hit in its day. Slick and beautifully photographed, this sustains a commendable head of tension
Passable but slight tv movie adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a teacher facing undead pupils
To Die For was a forgettable effort, most notably as one of the first films to feature the darkly romantic vampire. This sequel recasts the part with the impossibly handsome Michael Praed and is a far more successful assemblage of the elements
The last of the classic Star Trek films. Nicholas Meyer, who made the last good Trek film The Wrath of Khan, returns to give the characters a moving send off, while the plot that reenacts the fall of the Berlin Wall with the Klingons gives the films a political immediacy that was missing since the tv series