The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Genre Homage refers to films where directors and writers make constant in-jokes and in-references to other genre works.
This can include everything from naming characters after genre directors, actors, places, organisations or characters; including cameo appearances from regular genre actors and directors; placing posters or having clips from films playing on tv in the background; scenes that affectionately recreate or spoof ones from other films; and quoting or parodying lines of dialogue. Many of the films listed as Remakes or Parody are or contain extensive homages, with remakes frequently including cameos from actors from the original.
The first genre homage was probably the opening number Science Fiction Double Feature in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Some directors fill their films with homages – the most recurrent being Joe Dante, Brian De Palma, Adam Green, Fred Olen Ray and Rob Zombie, while the works of Quentin Tarantino contain or are constructed as elaborate homages to bygone eras of filmmaking. The most elaborate of genre homages are the Scream films and their take on the slasher film.
Third entry in the madcap Aces Go Places series of caper comedies, the action scenes go through the roof, while there are a lot of cameos of actors from and parodies of the James Bond films. Directed by the legendary Tsui Hark
Homage to 1950s SF films, in particular It Came from Outer Space and The Blob, made not as a parody but as an affectionate tribute to the era with everything played seriously
An exquisitely directed homage to giallo cinema – a fascinating work that has been stripped of almost all dialogue that takes place on a purely visual level of sensation and body movement
Fred Olen Ray offers his take on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Where the original was a feminist parable, Olen Ray has a giant woman whose only motivation is wanting a bigger set of breasts
Riding at a peak during the mid-2000s, cult director Michel Gondry made this head-scratcher where he eccentrically devotes an entire film to homemade amateur fan filmmaking – all with appealingly wacky results
What starts out as a seeming mockumentary about a serial killer turns into an hilarious deconstruction of the tropes and cliches of the slasher film. Imagine a film like Man Bites Dog crossbred with Scream
Ryan Nicholson makes a slasher film that takes place on a horror movie set where the set driver is a fan of the scream queen star and decides to start eliminating people to start making the film go his way
Luigi Cozzi’s return to screens after 26 years, a head-scratchingly bizarre effort overloaded with ideas about parallel worlds, cosmic journeys and homage to the early cinema of Georges Melies and others
Joe Dante makes a zombie comedy. Dante is in his element and the film overspills with classic horror references but Dante feels like he is playing slow catch up with what the zombie genre has become
The first film from Eli Roth, which proved a solid hit, one that gets back to gore-drenched horror basics. Not quite the classic it was acclaimed but delivers the goods and with a strong dose of wryly sarcastic humour
Joss Whedon scripted work that is less a horror film than a meta-horror film that is constantly deconstructing the genre and subverting its cliches. A rare genre entry less about visceral impact than it has brains to spare
A remake of the silent German Expressionist classic that replicates the unique look and sets. Interesting, although it now emerges more like a film noir with artistic pretensions than the avant garde work the original was
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film
This pays much homage to the 1980s summer camp slasher film and does a competent re-run of the basics if nothing that turns the genre on its head. On the other hand, it is less interesting when it tries to tap into the reality tv horror fad
In the same vein as Grindhouse, four filmmakers have come together to make an anthology of spoof horror films that homage the drive-in tradition. Good taste is left behind and the results are outrageously funny
Jim Wynorski is a B-budget hack who makes a lot of films obsessed with large-breasted women. His second film here was an enjoyable low-budget one about the security robots in a mall going amok
Italian horror film that comes with many homages to classic horror films, wound together in a Folk Horror plot that satisfyingly delivers the goods
The seventh of the Child’s Play films with the killer doll Chucky. I never much cared for the original series but the modern films – those with Chucky’s name in the title – have become a lot wittier and playful, constantly making jokes back to the rest of the series
Sixth entry in the Child’s Play series, made to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the original. Contains lots of fanservice and some surprise cameos. This makes an effort to cut back the black humour and go back to being scary
This is an enjoyable low-budget homage to the Indiana Jones film that comes with a number of knowing references to the genre and the addition of a clever time travel plot
The Nazi zombies from Norway are back in a better film than the first that is far more polished, the black humour more outrageous and the splatter effects are at the top of their game
A revival of the Nazi zombie film that comes from Norway! A hugely gore-drenched effort from Tommy Wirkola that soon plants tongue very much in cheek.
This comes with the winning idea of being conceived as a horror version of The Expendables bringing back an amazing line-up of horror actors from principally the 80s. Alas, the film itself as an incoherent mess
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
Quentin Tarantino’s less interesting half of the Grindhouse double-bill. Tarantino makes a film about a psycho stuntman but gets sidetracked by referencing 1970s car chase movies
A film with insane creativity and spilling over with snide pop culture wit. Like a mash-up of Bad Kids Go to Hell, John Dies at the End and Back to the Future written by a love child of Kevin Williamson and Diablo Cody
Rob Zombie’s sequel to House of 1000 Corpses and a more polished film, probably Zombie’s best. On the other hand, Zombie’s nihilistic worldview and sympathy for the psychopaths does take one aback.
Pierce Brosnan’s final outing as James Bond lacks the sharpness of the preceding entries and is hampered by Halle Berry who is given great presence but nothing to do. Despite which this has some of the best action scenes of any Bond film
This gets the award for the ballsiest title of any horror film of recent While the slasher film of the 00s has become much more chaste, this doesn’t let down on the plentiful nudity. At the same time, it is also a smartly self-aware horror film
Brian De Palma’s homage to Psycho. With De Palma at absolute peak form, this is dazzlingly stylish in its directorial set-pieces and comes with an often outrageous sexual pathology
Wackily funny SF musical with Jeff Goldblum, Damon Wayans and Jim Carrey as aliens who land in the San Fernando Valley. Directed by Julien Temple with a giddily effervescent silliness
Found Footage film that nostalgically homages, if not outrightly borrows, from E.T.. It does build a sense of wonder well but then dissolves into far too much near-identical running around
The film debut of the horror hostess Elvia (Cassandra Peterson), a good natured film containing more bimbo jokes, double entendres and bad puns than one thought possible
The second film outing of US horror hostess Elvira, which is construed as a parody/homage to the Roger Corman-Vincent Price Edgar Allan Poe films. Everything is overrun with Elvira’s cheesy puns and double entendres
Joshua John Miller, the son of The Exorcist’s star Jason Miller, makes a film where an actor cast as the priest in a remake of The Exorcist becomes possessed. A witty and clever blend of meta reference and autobiography
A possession film set on an airplane. This sets out to parody exorcism movie cliches but makes a beeline for outrageous bad taste humour. It does include a great cast of genre regulars
Joe Dante’s successor to Gremlins and a box-office flop. This nevertheless evokes a genteel sense of wonder in its story with Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix as teen inventors who build a backyard spaceship
Cult exploitation director Jesus Franco pays homage to the mad surgeon films of his heyday. Essentially one of Franco’s Dr Orloff films by way of the sadistic despatches of the giallo film
Robert Rodriguez directs from a script by Scream writer Kevin Williamson. This wittily deconstructs the 1950s alien body snatchers film by way of The Breakfast Club
A clever little psycho film concerning a killer who is obsessed with classic movies. This was doing the movie-inspired psychos thing way before Scream and with quite a degree of ingenuity
An underrated mini-series – sort of the anti-Supernatural. This creates a highly original afterlife mythology and some great characters arcs, while overspilling with wry nerdish in-humour
Aardman Animation return with a sequel to Shaun the Sheep Movie. More of the same absurdly nonsensical capers and gags, this comes with much in the way of homage and in-jokes to classic SF films
Affectionately made road trip film about four Star Wars fans on a journey to break into Skywalker Ranch. Packed with lots of witty fannish in-jokes and cameos, this comes out as enjoyable if broad at times
A variant on The Game where Michael Douglas had his life turned into a nightmare series of rubber reality games that were being staged for his amusement. This spins the same idea through a witty series of horror movie homages
The Soska Sisters made a splash on the genre scene a few years ago. Here they make a tribute/follow-up to Night of the Living Dead but produce an utterly safe work that is the antithesis of the edginess that gained them a name
This spins the old plot about a clairvoyant dream of an airline disaster out as a teen horror film based around a series of bizarre novelty deaths. This became the first in a franchise of popular horror films.
The fourth in the series of films about a series of deaths for survivors after premonition of disaster at a speedway. This is shot in 3D but the novelty death set-pieces have become preposterous
The first of the sequels, this has a group receiving bizarre deaths after receiving a premonition that prevents a deadly pile-up on the highway. It reveals the problems of creating a sequel to a film that was never intended to be a series
The original creative team behind the Final Destination series, James Wong and Glen Morgan, return for this sequel but only provide a routine series of bizarre novelty deaths following the premonition of a rollercoaster disaster
The series drags another entry out set around the premonition of a bridge collapse. This one is played with such an enthusiasm for the bizarrely improbable deaths that it is one of the best of the sequels
This offers the amusing idea of a softcore parody of the old Flash Gordon serials. A surprisingly well-made film in terms of effects but the jokes often seems belaboured amid the witless mugging
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
Westernised homage to Wu Xia and the Shaw Brothers film with an American teen transported back to Ancient China, this has all the thrill of junior-grade martial arts tournament
A charming Coming of Age story about kids who think they have discovered the Frankenstein monster. Comes packed with numerous genre homages and quotes
Tim Burton’s stop-motion animated expansion of his 1982 short film has a winning concept – a parody of the Universal Frankenstein films with a teenage boy resurrecting his dog
Two SF fans encounter real-life idol William Shatner. A film that writes about fandom knowingly and comes with an hilarious series of in-jokes and asides. Not to mention features Shatner parodying his own image
Science-fiction fans go time travelling in this British film that offers a good many wry fannish in-jokes mixed with a modestly clever time travel scenario
A slasher movie that takes place on the set of a slasher movie. Director Israel Luna has an idea that you feel could have been far cleverer than the way it ends up being presented on screen
An extremely funny parody of Star Trek that sends up both the show, the actors and the fandom. A very witty and knowing script that has definitely been written by fans
Eli Roth pays homage to the Italian cannibal films of the 70/80s, the most extreme genre ever put on film. While not uninteresting, rendered on a studio budget and passed uncut by the MPAA, this never touches the raw savagery of the originals
The film about malicious creatures that was the box-office hit of 1984. Director Joe Dante runs amok and gleefully trashes the wholesome innocence of producer Steven Spielberg’s E.T. – The Extra-Terrestrial
A 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
John Carpenter’s all-time classic, the film that created the slasher film and has been much imitated, not to mention multiply sequelised and remade. None of these however come anywhere near recapturing Carpenter’s eerie spookiness
Another inferior entry in the mid-00s fad remake of 70s/80s horror films. Whereas John Carpenter gave us Michael Myers as evil incarnate, Rob Zombie gives us Michael Myers as a misunderstood and unloved kid
Rob Zombie’s follow-up to his Halloween remake is a better film and closer to what the previous film should have been but his approach is still based on callous brutality than John Carpenter’s eerie suspense
David Gordon Green and Jamie Lee Curtis return to round out their highly underwhelming Halloween reboot trilogy. By now, this feels like a Halloween film in name only
Sequel to the 2018 reboot/sequel to Halloween from David Gordon Greene, this is more scrupulous about paying homage to the original and recapturing something of John Carpenter’s original stylism
This was Adam Green’s homage to the Friday the 13th series that comes with the virtue of a high level of gore and a sense of humour. This was subsequently spun out to several sequels
Hatchet was a homage to the 1980s slasher film that had a mild amusement. In the sequels, Adam Green upped the number of genre cameos and in-jokes, while pushing the gore effects to an extreme
Third in the series of slasher homage films where Adam Green steps back from the director’s chair. This ups the gore content and number of genre cameos, otherwise is fairly much the same as before
Animated film directed by Rob Zombie that feels like an episode of Ren & Stimpy made by someone with an unhealthy obsession with horror and exploitation movies and stripper bars
An appealingly witty comedy where two losers set out to become vampire hunters with fumblingly inept results. Written and played with a snappy, sarcastic appeal
A Pakistani copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Backwoods Brutality film, all served up with reasonable vigour. It is fascinating seeing the genre tropes translated between different cultures
A variant on the much more charming Mad Monster Party?, an animated film featuring cute cuddly versions of the Famous Monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, wolfman etc) with Adam Sandler voicing Dracula
I had little enthusiasm for this, I tend to like my classic monsters serious rather than defanged – these Hotel Transylvania films are so watered down, Dracula doesn’t even get to drink blood
I’m not a fan of the Hotel Transylvania films and their reduction of the Famous Monsters to slapstick yocks. This is exactly the same as the preceding films, no better, no worse and with only minute plotting difference
Minus Adam Sandler this time, the Hotel Transylvania series trots out a fourth entry. Here, in some search for novelty on what has gone before, the monsters are turned back into humans
Rob Zombie’s debut film was propelled into an infamy it didn’t deserve it was banned by its distributor. Zombie only slavishly rehashes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a constant posturing for shock effect that becomes tiresome
The film that gained attention for Ti West as a director, a slow burn work where Jocelin Donahue is hired for a babysitting job only to find sinister things going on when she arrives at the house
Cannon Films make an Old Dark House film that brings together an aging Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price and John Carradine. This denoted the end of the Anglo-horror era but is not nearly as worthy as you feel it should have been
After his assorted teenage monster films, producer Herman Cohen made this about a resentful studio makeup effects artist who takes revenge by using his makeups to turn teens into mind-controlled monsters
The film that made the name of Joe Dante who fills it with a barrage of werewolf movie in-references. The film’s reputation rests on an amazing effects sequence where a man transforms into a wolf
Joe Dante pays homage to Fantastic Voyage, the classic film about a submarine journey through the human body. Here Dante plays it as a screwball comedy but his in-jokey style failed to catch on with audiences
A film about the alien invasion of a movie theatre that is screening an all-night marathon of old films. This has been constructed around clips of old 1950s sf films
An excellent remake of the Cold War classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The original has now been smartly retooled for the 1970s and slots right into the Me Generation era with paranoia perfectly intact
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
A woman discovers she is related to an aristocratic family but sinister secrets lurk. The film hangs on a big twist that is extremely obvious to anyone who has seen enough horror films
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.
In the same vein as Grindhouse, an anthology that consists of two longer stories set around the gimmick of a tv horror host playing a double-bill, along with several mocked-up parody trailers
Sequel to The Lego Movie. This time the idea of the Lego universe, the crossovers and fourth-wall breaking gags are not as fresh but this still gets good mileage out of them
A modernised comedy take on the Frankenstein film that comes with a script from Diablo Cody where Kathryn Newton turns a resurrected man into the ideal boyfriend
This is intended as a deliberately bad parody of a 1950s SF film. It is a fairly silly effort that almost ends up being too well made for its own good to mimic the originals that weren’t even trying
Joe Dante makes a toon film winding in dozens of cameos from Warner Brothers cartoon characters. The results prove enormously playful. Infinitely more fun that the Space Jam films
In this homage to the 1970s occult film, Rob Zombie tones back the posturing shock effect of his earlier films and creates atmosphere. Eventually though, Zombie creates a film that feels coiled to unleash something bad but falters
An overlooked homage to the slasher film. This doesn’t set out to parody, deconstruct or subvert the tropes, rather is just a well-made and affectionate tribute to the genre’s 1980s heyday
Robert Rodriguez turns his earlier action film into an insanely creative comic-book overflowing with SF devices (and homages). The casting alone is side-splitting and Rodriguez’s visual absurdism wins the day
Absolutely delightful stop-motion animated homage to the Universal Famous Monsters, which places tongue perfectly in cheek
RZA of rap group Wu-Tang Clan fame (with the aid of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino) makes a dual acting/directing appearance with this homage to Shaw Brothers martial arts films … not quite the genuine article but a solid effort where RZA certainly doesn’t embarrass himself
A miracle of no-budget filmmaking made on a budget of $1000. A homage/parody of 80s/90s cyborg action films with some extremely accomplished effects posing and a sidesplitting ear for the era’s dialogue
A Joe Dante film set during the Cuban Missile Crisis about a childhood in B movie fandom. John Goodman is on great form in a role that pays homage to filmmaker William Castle