The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An Albert Pyun action film with police officers Christopher Lambert and Natasha Henstridge pursuing an infected man through the sewers of a future quarantine zone
This was a live-action version of the popular story given a reasonable budget and where Pinocchio is brought to life with a blend of CGI and animatronics
The second of two video-released sequels to Disney’s Aladdin that brings back Robin Williams as the genie and goes madcap with the pop culture jokes
The first film from South Park‘s creator Trey Parker, a willfully absurd musical based on the story of a true-life cannibal. Amateurish but worth seeing by completists
The first of the Kevin J. Lindenmuth’s compilation films that bring together several short films under the umbrella of an alien invasion. Lindenmuth’s Worm segment in particular is standout
This seems to be intended as a parody of a 1960s beach party film but with the addition of comic aliens. Well and truly a black star film, this is excruciating on every level
This is a video-released sequel to the Don Bluth animated film with dogs again returning from the afterlife. This is churned out with passable effort
An alien invasion and takeover film that was clearly inspired by the success of tv’s The X Files. This is a smart effort that emerges as something unworldly in David Twohy’s hands
Eric Red directed film with Michael Paré as a werewolf fighting a territorial dispute with his sister’s dog. Slight effort that suffers from crappy morphing werewolf transformation effects
Enjoyably silly comic-book adaptation with a pneumatically-inflated Pamela Anderson playing the titular bounty hunter in an anarchic future. You cannot complain that this is a film that delivers exactly what it promises
An obnoxious comedy that has the view that it is fun to watch Pauly Shore and Stephen Baldwin wreck a bio-dome because the scientists are a bunch of tight-asses
A Jet Li vehicle that falls into the masked superhero genre where the show has taken a few leaves from the tv series The Green Hornet. Enjoyable fun with some exhilarating action sequences
The second of the low-budget Roger Corman produced films made for cable featuring Joan Severance as a black vinyl-clad masked superheroine
Sweetly likeable Norman Jewison film in which Whoopi Goldberg receives guardianship of young Haley Joel Osment only to find he has an invisible companion in Gerard Depardieu
Stunning, emotionally raw work from Lars von Trier with Emily Watson as a wife in a small religious community who is driven to extremes of masochistic self-sacrifice in the belief she is saving her husband’s life
Ben Stiller directed comedy with Jim Carrey playing a stalkerish cable installer who makes Matthew Broderick’s life a misery. Carrey’s fans didn’t seem to want to see him play psycho and this was his only flop of this period
A solid revival of the horror anthology, this tells three stories that all work well. The film also features several before-they-were-known faces
Baffling and pretentious Canadian-made surrealist film with Scheherazade (from Arabian Nights) in a psychiatric asylum making up stories all derived from tabloid headlines
Thriller with Keanu Reeves wrongfully accused and on the run from authorities in the quest for a process that creates cheap energy from water. A rehash of director Andrew Davis’s The Fugitive mostly construed around its set-pieces
The popularity of the Children of the Corn franchise – eleven films spun out of a sixteen page Stephen King story – baffles one. This is the fourth film, its greatest distinction being that it stars a then unknown Naomi Watts
Film adaptation of a classic SF short story about a pilot having to make tough choices about a stowaway on a space mission. The story gets mangled in the need to expand it to feature length
Cult Czech stop-motion animator, Jan Svankmajer makes an eccentrically surreal live-action film that focuses on a variety of different people who have strange fetishes
A smart and well cast film about a quartet of modern teen high school girls who form a coven of witches. This starts well but loses it in an overblown second act
David Cronenberg tackles J.G. Ballard’s controversial novel, creating a fascinatingly perverse work that ventures into a world where people become sexually aroused by car crashes
Modest and clever venture on the alternate worlds theme where an average student is dragged into a war for the multiverse after meeting a strange woman at a party
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
A Quentin Tarantino produced black comedy about a forensic cleaner that is charmed by a serial killer who has returned to the crime scene. An indie film that not many people saw at the time.
A formulaic evil child psycho-thriller where young Gabrielle Boni kills to protect her perfect adopted family. At least young Boni conjures an effective nastiness on screen
This makes an interesting attempt to rewrite the basics of The Omen as an erotic film. The usual occult happenings but with an emphasis on bodies coupling
A routine SF film about an space expedition through a wormhole to investigate a habitable planet where the mission is endangered by warring factions among the crew
This was the second and better of the two video-released sequels to Sam Raimi’s Darkman starring Arnold Vosloo in the title role. This adds a much more interestingly complex plot to the mix
An Australian variant on the bodyswap comedy in which couple Guy Pearce and Claudia Karvan end up in each other’s bodies resulting in some likeable if predictable comic mishaps
Action film set aboard a space station that houses cryogenically frozen survivors of a devastated Earth as C. Thomas Howell tries to stop a mad Matt Frewer
Nicole Eggert stars in this cheap and rather laughable copy of RoboCop, where she is a police officer killed in the line of duty who is resurrected as an avenging cyborg vigilante
Brian Yuzna plays on everybody’s fear of the dentist in this outrageously nasty film top-lining Corbin Bernsen in wildly over-the-top mode as a psychopathic dentist amid a series of imaginatively sadistic dental-themed dispatches
Les Diaboliques is one of the great all-time thrillers. This remake, designed to highlight a post-Basic Instinct Sharon Stone, is an abortion that rewrites the classic twist ending for something upbeat
Modest and conceptually packed B-budget action film in which a motley team are sent to break into a bunker that has been hijacked by a scientist who is threatening to fire nuclear missiles
This places an amusing spin on the standard dragon fantasy, having the dragon and its would-be slayer team up to fool the peasantry out of money. The Sean Connery-voiced dragon looks like a big CGI cartoon
The publicity machine made a big effort to convince us we were a more serious Arnold Schwarzenegger film but it is business as usual. The spectacular action scenes are frequently undercut by their absurd improbability
John Carpenter’s sequel to Escape from New York falls too much in the shadow of its predecessor, nevertheless has some effective moments of its own, with Carpenter in particular creating a satiric fundamentalist future
Woody Allen makes a musical. It is Allen in a much lighter mood than he was in the early 1990s and the film comes with some appealingly eccentric and often downright surreal touches
Solid and effective thriller in the vein of Coma where ER doctor Hugh Grant finds himself in the midst of a conspiracy involving illicit medical experiments at the hospital where he works
A dense, visually afire film from the great Tony Scott starring Robert De Niro as a sports fan who snaps from the pressures of ordinary life and then stalks baseball star Wesley Snipes
Psycho-thriller with William Petersen trying to protect daughter Reese Witherspoonan from being ensnared by a charming, psychopathic boyfriend played by an unknown Mark Wahlberg
Work of softcore erotica about an alien woman who comes to Earth to catalogue human sexual experience. Consists of lots of tasteful glossily photographed tumblings with only the slimmest of plots connecting
Hilarious Stephen Chow directed/starring film where he plays an agent of the emperor in a series of gonzo exploits that go crazily over-the-top, including breaking the fourth wall
Near laughable film in which Chuck Norris is cast as the guardian spirit of a forest preaching eco-friendly attitudes to kids and inspiring them to stand up against loggers
A charming Coming of Age story about kids who think they have discovered the Frankenstein monster. Comes packed with numerous genre homages and quotes
Matthew Bright’s extraordinary modernisation/trashing of Little Red Riding Hood who becomes Reese Witherspoon’s juvenile delinquent who goes hitchhiking and is targeted by serial killer Kiefer Sutherland
Before The Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson flopped badly with this ghost comedy. Jackson allows his obsession with the effects technology to take over at the expense of much else and provides little that is funny
Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino combine forces on a film that begins as a getaway thriller and then abruptly morphs into a vampire film. This has a smart edginess to it but the vampire scenes have not dated well
Passable children’s fantasy film where the young deposed prince of a kingdom gains the aid of a magical creature that grows bigger each time it eats metal
Shusuke Kaneko did extraordinary things in revitalising the Japanese monster movie in the 1990s with his trilogy of Gamera films. This was the second of them, usually seen as the weakest of the trilogy
Kenneth Branagh emerged as an director with his dynamic cinematic Shakespeare adaptations. In this lavish production, he attempts no less than a definitive version of what is regarded as Shakespeare’s greatest play
Fourth of the Hellraiser films. This attempts to tell a story set in three different eras but was subject to much studio interference that waters the vision down to something forgettable
A sequel to Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer that lacks the raw and disturbing quality of its predecessor both in its direction and in the recasting of anonymous Neil Giuntoli as Henry
A Disney animated film that turns Victor Hugo’s classic oft-filmed novel about Quasimodo, a misshapen figure of pity, into a slightly ugly teenager who now comes accompanied by talking gargoyles
The film that made Roland Emmerich’s name as a specialist in mass destruction spectacle. At heart, this rehashes a 1950s alien invasion film on a big-budget and adds blatantly sentimentalised American flag-waving
A legendary cinematic train wreck filled with behind the scenes stories of fired directors and star egos. Despite all of this, this remake of the H.G. Wells novel emerges as a well made and watchable film
Henry Selick’s follow-up to The Nightmare Before Christmas, a Roald Dahl adaptation filled with enormous visual creativity as a boy and several talking insects set forth on a sea journey in a giant peach
A bizarrely off-the-wall film in which Jerry O’Connell obtains a cheap apartment in New York City only to then find that he is sharing it with singing cockroaches
The fourth of the Josh Kirby juveniles and the point the series started to become quite well made. This takes a visit to Azabeth’s homeworld of warrior people.
The fifth of the Josh Kirby juvenile adventures where the young time-travelling hero sets out on a quest to the Magic Cavern to find the Shroom People
The sixth and last of the Josh Kirby time-travelling juvenile adventures produced by Charles Band and the best of the series, which takes a trip into Josh’s past
This was the third of the Josh Kirby juvenile time travelling adventures from Charles Band that takes Josh and his companions to a planet of living toys
A ridiculous supernatural action film where a madly overacting David Keith plays an executed killer returned from the dead to seek revenge against cop Martin Kove
A fairly blatant copy of Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book stories – even more so of the then recent 1994 live-action Disney remake – all having been conducted on a B-budget
A children’s film starring NBA star Shaquille O’Neil as a genie who emerges from a ghetto blaster. Shaquille is not an actor and this has gained a wide reputation as a bad movie
A film spun off from the popular Canadian comedy troupe Kids in the Hall. The loose plot concerns a happiness drug but is mostly there to feature the regulars playing multiple character
Beyond the wilfully ridiculous title, this is a surprisingly entertaining and funny film that lampoons monster movies in general concerning a monstrous condom on the attack.
A giddy madcap, frequently over-the-top and entirely ridiculous Spanish film in which Melinda Clarke’s tongue is possessed by an alien whereupon the tongue starts killing people
Controversially charged Canadian film in which Molly Parker plays a mortuary assistant who develops an obsession with having sex with corpses. Played with more taste than synopsis would lead you to think
The Lawnmower Man was far from a classic but this sequel has an absurdity that pushes it into extremely bad movie stakes with Matt Frewer as a messiah trying to move everybody into cyberspace
Sequel to the Charles Band produced children’s film Leapin’ Leprechauns!, this is a much superior film that gets quite darker and ventures into the underworld
Chris Marker, the director of La Jetee, returns to SF. Though this is set around a Virtual Reality game, it is in fact a documentary essay about the Battle of Okinawa
A black comedy that feels like a wannabe Coen Brothers film. Set among various Hollywood hangers-on, this starts with a surreal bizarreness that collapses into raucous farce
Big-budget film with a CGI creature made not long after Jurassic Park with Ted Danson as a zoologist investigating the existence of the Loch Ness Monster film. This only resorts to simplistic cliches
One of the best children’s films from Charles Band, an utterly bizarre effort about a world through a magic mirror ruled by talking ducks
Sequel to the delightfully madcap Magic in the Mirror set in a world of talking ducks
A biopic of the Marquis de Sade that is not uninteresting but suffers from being produced by Roger Corman on one of his usual B-budgets
Action film with police officer Olivier Gruner investigating a murder on Mars. For a film that claims such a definitive title – that it is about the planet Mars – this lets all opportunities slip through its hands
Tim Burton makes a film based on the old Topps bubblegum card series about Martian invaders, which becomes an affectionately goofy tribute to 1950s alien invasion cinema
This took a critical drubbing at the time it came out with everybody laughing at Julia Roberts’ Irish accent but is a revisionist take on the Jekyll/Hyde story, all told through the eyes of Dr Jekyll’s maid and an extremely good version of the story
Danny DeVito directs an adaptation of the Roald Dahl novel with Mara Wilson as a mentally gifted child. In DeVito’s hands, Roald Dahl’s black bite overbalances into broad farce
Nora Ephron romantic comedy with John Travolta cast as angel who is a slob. A rather aimless shapeless comedy that thinks it is funnier than it is
Ken Russell’s worst film, a ridiculously bad biopic of the psychic Uri Geller
Sequel to Mommy, which featured Patty McCormack as a psychopathic mother
Harold Ramis followed up the hit of Groundhog Day with this amiable comedy in which Michael Keaton is an overworked husband who creates several clones of himself to help with the workload
Another of the desultory 90s Muppet films, which fits them into a retelling of Treasure Island. Missing is the humour and creativity from back when Jim Henson was alive.
Film spinoff from tv’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its deplorable habit of inserting jokes into old films. Here it is the turn of This Island Earth, which is a far better film than the attempt to send it up here
Another of the string of cyborg action films that low-budget director Albert Pyun made in the 1990s. This has a head-scratching fascination, featuring very weird cyborg sex scenes, the unearthly bodybuilder heroine Sue Price and a series of strange philosophical ruminations
The novelty of a dance film about the end of the world in a giant flood
Remake of the Jerry Lewis film is a comedic tour-de-force for Eddie Murphy as he swings between a shy 400 lb professor and a manic, testostoronally charged health junkie
Albert Pyun cheapie in which the plot of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo is relocated to a post-apocalyptic setting and cast with androids
This live-action remake of the classic Disney animated film benefits from Glenn Close chewing scenery in grand style as Cruella De Ville but the latter half essentially degenerates into no more than a series of Home Alone-styled slapstick violence scenes
Low-budget film that steals the premise of Westworld in the story of an amusement park that recreates the world of 1940s film noir with androids, which proceed to go amok
Low-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a softcore variation on Fatal Attraction with a vengeful Shauna O’Brien obtaining a job as the babysitter with the married man who jilted her
SF action film with Eric Roberts as a future cop travelling through time trying to stop kids before they become criminals
Big screen adaptation of the popular comic-strip superhero. This aims for the tone of an old fashioned serial adventure and is nicely mounted but crucially never comes to life.
Positive upbeat film in which John Travolta gains a supermind after seeing a light in the sky. For all its featuring a man with superior intellectual abilities, this is ironically a film that deals in simplistic black-and-whites