The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Strong and intelligent low-budget vampire film from Kevin J. Lindenmuth that plays with a fascinating ambiguity in the story of a man obsessed with a mystery woman who is making him kill
Abel Ferrara takes on the vampire film and delivers a work loaded with weighty, nihilistic philosophical meditations and creates startling reinventions of vampire imagery
Probably the best among Ron Howard’s mostly undistinguished films, a dramatisation of the real-life Apollo 13 space mission disaster. Once the film gets the capsule up into orbit, the drama is gripping
Fred Olen Ray offers up a bimbo movie take on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Where the original was an early feminist parable, Olen Ray offers up a giant woman whose only motivation is wanting a bigger set of breasts
Baffling and incomprehensible Japanese SF film about a catastrophe that is causing people to turn to stone
Olivier Gruner plays an android who goes rogue after accidentally killing his boss. A dull action film with no greater ambition than to be an SF version of Die Hard
Runaway hit produced by George Miller of Mad Max fame that conducts what in any other terms would be an animated talking animals film in live-action with CGI and animatronics. The results are utterly charming.
One of the better animated films produced by Amblin, this is based on the true story of a husky rescue in Alaska, albeit turned into a film where the dogs now talk
Tim Burton’s superlative duo of Batman films were wrecked after Joel Schumacher took up the director’s chair and turned the films into giant camp fests. Here he allows a madly overacting Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones loose as the villains
Head-scratching Australian oddity in which a middle-aged man becomes possessed and suddenly able to sing with the voice of Billie Holliday
Following Michelle Pfeiffer’s turn as Cat Woman in Batman Returns, this was a copycat from Roger Corman in which Joan Severance becomes a black vinyl clad superheroine exacting justice
Peculiar Canadian-made indie film about the interactions of a vampire and various people at a Toronto donut shop. David Cronenberg is cast as a Mafia head
John Woo’s second Hollywood film, an action film about nuclear hijacking. Woo’s unique stylistics promptly get buried under the machinery of big-budget action filmmaking
Roger Corman’s original A Bucket of Blood is a cult black comedy starring Dick Miller a nerdy wannabe who is acclaimed after passing dead bodies off as works of art. Here it was remade with Anthony Michael Hall inheriting the role of Walter Paisley
An early Michael Winterbottom film. Far superior to the over-praised Heavenly Creatures, this has Saskia Reeves being drawn in by a crazed Amanda Plummer who gives the performance of a lifetime
The one and only fiction film made by documentary-maker Michael Moore of Fahrenheit 9/11 fame, a broad farce concerning an imaginary war declared on Canada by the USA for political purposes
The first of the Candyman sequels, this goes back to add a Candyman origin story but mostly rehashes the first film. Director Bill Condon’s constant straining for effect becomes maddening
Film adaptation of the popular Casper the Friendly Ghost comic book ends up being like its title character – cute but insubstantial. Mostly this feels driven by slapstick scenes.
Stuart Gordon had a cult hit with Re-Animator and much of the rest of his career felt like his attempting to repeat that. Here he re-teams with many of the Re-Animator personnel for what is essentially a rehash of a 1960s Italian Gothic film
Colourful and frothy whimsy from Fina Torres in the Magical Realist tradition about a woman engaged in a series of romantic mishaps in Paris
The third of the films based on the Stephen King short story, this moves the locale to the city but is otherwise based around a series of completely ridiculous makeup effects every few minutes
The almost indescribable second film from Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet of Delicatessen fame, a Dicekensian street urchin fantasy that takes place in a stunningly designed almost-familiar world filled with eccentric characters
Eccentric road movie where a Japanese salaryman travels to Iceland for a funeral ceremony for his parents. Filled with ravishing landscapes and quirkily surreal encounters
Following the success of Jurassic Park, a host of other Michael Crichton books were filmed, including this not entirely successful but not uninteresting work where Crichton attempts to modernise the lost world adventure
Enigmatic Manoel de Oliveira film that may be about wife Catherine Deneuve making a pact with The Devil to dispose of the woman husband John Malkovich is attracted to. Or maybe not
Strong and effective serial killer thriller that was overlooked by the success of the same year’s much more high profile Se7en. Sigourney Weaver and Holly Hunter give excellent performances in a finely tuned script
Gripping submarine drama from Tony Scott with captain Gene Hackman and second-in-command Denzel Washington fighting over whether to obey orders and fire their nuclear missiles after receiving a possibly faulty alert
The first feature film from Christophe Gans is a live-action adaptation of a manga about an assassin. Gans turns out a film that dazzles with the flamboyance of his action sequences
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a cyberpunk action film where the cut-price nature of the exercise is elevated by a tongue-in-cheek sense of humour
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus
At face value, this seems to be no more than a Lorenzo Lamas action film for video release, but it surprises one and becomes a quite reasonable Cyberpunk film that conducts a smart airing of the tropes
In this sequel to Cyber Tracker, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson is a police officer fighting a criminal mastermind who is attempting to replace world leaders with android duplicates
A completely ridiculous action film (that features no cyborg cops) and instead concerns the attempts to create an army of cyborgs using insect DNA
An action movie inspired by tv’s The X Files involving space shuttle pilots returned to Earth possessed by aliens. The emphasis is more on action scenes than a coherent plot
The first of two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman now starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This also brings back Larry Drake as the villain Durant
The second film from Spain’s Alex de la Iglesia, a comedy poking fun at Biblical End Times prophecies. Quite a promising idea that eventually dissolves into a caper comedy
One really good killer robot film, featuring a lethal non-humanoid machine and directed with a ferociity that resembles the best of James Cameron. This has similarities to Hardware that came out earlier
Would be quirky, surrealistic indie film with lovers on the run in Las Vegas. Quentin Tarantino appears as the spirit of chance from an interdimensional swimming pool
Fairly average 90s SF/action video release about soldiers hunting an amok military android before realising the androids have also infiltrated their troupe
Another variation on the Dr Jekyll and Hyde becomes a woman theme. This version is played as a modern comedy wherein Tim Daly turns into Sean Young who plays to bitchy excess
Mel Brooks had a huge hit with Young Frankenstein, an affectionate spoof of the Universal Frankenstein films. Two decades on he returns to do the same for the Dracula film but with far more scattershot results.
Rather ridiculous action film where Jeff Speakman breaks into a prison to take revenge against a serial killer because he received too liberal a treatment from the justice system
A medical horror film concerning a disfigured surgeon killing his way through a hospital as he seeks revenge. This is notable for its degree of gore-drenched sadism
A version of the Arthurian legends that has stripped out Merlin and all of the magic and mounted it as an historical romance. With Sean Connery as King Arthur and Richard Gere as Lancelot
The live-action English-language adaptation of the Japanese manga/anime that comes off as a muddled post-holocaust action film that doesn’t know what it wants to be
A beautifully made adaptation of a non-horror James Herbert novel in which a dog realises that is a reincarnated Matthew Modine and sets out to reunite with his human son
An anthology of blackly funny tales, including episodes directed by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, all centred around Tim Roth as a long-suffering hotel bellboy
A really bad copy of The Terminator featuring an Amazonian Brigitte Nielsen as an alien come to Earth to stop an evil intergalactic warlord
Here Shusuke Kaneko revived the Gamera series of the 1960s/70s with a series of stunning effects. The result promptly set a new standard for the Japanese monster movie
Classic anime from Mamoru Oshii, a Cyberpunk work with a heroine who is a cyborg special forces officer, a work that delves deeply into the philosophical questions of what is human and what is machine
The 17th James Bond film, the first featuring Pierce Brosnan who gives a dazzlingly ruthless performance. The series is rebooted and takes the opportunity to reconstruct the mythos in terms of modern politics in ways that often take you aback
A modernised version of the Goldilocks fairytale, which now comes with the addition of an environmentalist subplot and where the bears are made into an endangered species
A really cheaply made and nauseatingly cute ripoff of Babe about a boy who discovers he can talk to a pig
Film that wants to be an expose of the lives of hackers but seems an absurd agglomeration of cliches that stumbles over its own feet trying to establish its counter-culture cool
The sixth of the Halloween films, the fifth with Michael Myers. By now John Carpenter’s original eerie suspense has been reduced to crude slasher movie payoffs. This tries to add some nonsense about druidic cults
Adaptation of a Kurt Vonnegut story about a future where everyone must be average wherein Vonnegut’s farcical satire is completely misjudged and played straight
An old fashioned Victorian ghost story based on a James Herbert novel, this suffers a very laidback pace but is redeemed by its left field twist ending. Produced by Francis Ford Coppola
Another of Albert Pyun’s cyborg films set around a kickboxing competition where Pyun seems to have cut costs by using real competition footage with dramatically dull results
A Dean R. Koontz adaptation from the director of The Lawnmower Man, this is a numbingly predictable film in which Jeff Goldblum returns from the dead to find he has a psychic link with a serial killer
SF/action film with a ludicrous premise about a future prison where criminals are turned into holograms. Joe Lara is one lone cop facing an escaped inmate in a hologram body
In one of his last really good films, John Carpenter pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft in this horror film that becomes an amazing blurring of the line between reality and fiction
A quite delightful film from former Muppeteer Frank Oz in which a boy receives the gift of a magic cabinet that brings his toy Indian and any other toy that is placed inside it
A cryptic surrealist full-length film from The Brothers Quay set at an enigmatic butler training school. Beautifully designed and photographed.
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes an invisibility comedy with impoverished effects. Olen Ray’s usual parade of bimbos and cynical one-liners is kept under restraint and this made as a children’s film
It Came from Outer Space was one of the classics of the 1950s SF film. Here it was resurrected as a cable-made sequel. Without Jack Arnold or Ray Bradbury on board, the results are dreary
The first attempt to film the works of cult Cyberpunk author William Gibson met with very mixed success, nevertheless is a modest effort that does mainline the essence of Gibson’s world
This was the first and one of the weaker of the generally quite likeable films from Charles Band about the time-travelling adventures of a juvenile hero
This was the second and weakest of the Josh Kirby juvenile time travel adventures that takes the young hero and companions to a future where they are enslaved by giants
The film adaptation of the cult comic-book looks great in terms of design but misses the comic’s satiric sense of humour and simply becomes a thudding Sylvester Stallone action vehicle
A popular Robin Williams starring hit about a boardgame that unleashes jungle-themed chaos in a small town. A cute effects-driven idea that ultimately becomes an incredibly safe fantasy
Sean Connery stars as a law professor in a courtroom thriller about a wrongly convicted man. However, this gets sidetracked into being a The Silence of the Lambs copycat
A Canadian children’s film that does a modest, amusing job of updating the Arthurian legends to the modern day as Merlin appears to a young boy and gives him Excalibur
Third of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, made for very young children
The fourth of The Land Before Time animated films about talking dinosaurs, having been made for very young children
Likeable film for children from Charles Band about an American family who inherit a property in Ireland inhabited by leprechauns
Third in the series takes Warwick Davis’s Leprechaun to Las Vegas for a series of novelty deaths that have silliness that frequently defies belief
Clive Braker’s third and final outing as a director. Barker is trying to tell an occult detective story but fails to get any of the mood that film noir operates by
Low-budget Mad Max copycat with Michael Paré as an officer from the lunar colony who comes down to Earth to take on the marauders of the post-apocalyptic wasteland
Rather trashy thriller in which Mia Sara is imprisoned by backwoods couple Burt Reynolds and Angie Dickinson
Likeable Canadian-made children’s film where Mark Harmon and kids come to rescue of a lake monster
The single worst Stephen King adaptation ever made. Director Tobe Hooper fails to approach the story of a possessed laundry press with the same drollness that King did and inflates it into something ridiculous
An anthology made up of three short films all adapted from the works of Katsihiro Otomo of Akira fame, of which Otomo also directs one of the segments
One of Woody Allen’s most warmly funny films of the 90s with a side-splitting and award-winning performance from Mira Sorvino. Throughout, Allen gently spoofs Greek tragedy.
Produced by Wes Craven and his son, this started as a third Hills Have Eyes film but ends up a generic Alien copy with a mutant monster hunting people in a desert laboratory
Tarantino associate Roger Avary comes up with a modernised take on the Frankenstein story, an interestingly ambitious effort that features Wil Wheaton as a patchwork creation coming to understand his condition
Gentle affecting film about a boy learning Buddhist life lessons as he journeys across Mongolia with an old man
Patty McCormack played a psychopathic child in The Bad Seed. This is essentially a sequel where McCormack has grown up and become a mother
This film adaptation of the videogame is a lot of fun. The plot is a rehash of Enter the Dragon but the film offers up wall-to-wall action and exotic creatures. A directorial debut for Paul W.S. Anderson
A ridiculously stupid giant bug film, albeit not unentertainingly so. This is a monster movie that has been premised solely on the provision of ridiculous creature effects every few minutes and very little else that one can take seriously beyond that
A gripping directorial debut for Anthony Waller where a mute assistant on a film set in Moscow witnesses the shooting of a snuff film and is targeted by the Russian underworld
From Jeepers Creepers director Victor Salva, a gripping road movie thriller that owes somewhat to The Hitcher with a series of psychological games between Lance Henriksen and hitcher Eric Roberts where we can never be sure what is what
The first of several sequels Albert Pyun made to Nemesis. This copies The Terminator with bodybuilder Sue Price being pursued through East Africa by killer androids
The third of Albert Pyun’s Nemesis films about time-travelling cyborgs – not much plot just action scenes and some moments of undeniable strangeness
Film that tried to jump aboard the newly arrived paradigm of the internet but is mostly a cliched thriller about Sandra Bullock trying to recover her erased identity
A tawdry erotic thriller copy of Basic Instinct where psychologist Rebecca De Mornay is drawn in to become involved with possible stalker Antonio Banderas
Low-budget action film with Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson hunting vampires. Routine as both action and vampire film.
Film concerning a warlock resurrected in the body of a scarecrow seeking revenge. This is conceived around a series of novelty makeup effects but director Jeff Burr treats the material seriously and with reasonable results
Vampire erotica that is largely premised around seeing Alyssa Milano take her clothes off and little else
Obscure, little seen but beautifully made Magical Realism film set amongst witches and romantic rivalry in Mexico
Spectacular big-budget, all-star film about a plague outbreak on US soil – one that was loosely inspired by the Ebola outbreak