The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
An enigmatic film set in a future where aliens have invaded the Earth as a lone soldier is sent to crew a remote post and imagines he is seeing things
Uwe Boll gained a reputation as the world’s worst director on the basis of his videogame adaptations. Prize exhibit was Alone in the Dark, which abandons the game and is a series of action scenes without explanatory rationale
A classic German Expressionist film where Metropolis‘s Brigitte Helm gives a sizzlingly seductive performance as a woman born via artificial insemination who grows up as an emotionless man-eater
Extremely satisfying German medical thriller about a secret society that conducts illicit experiments. The film comes with a torturous suspense and goes way out on a limb in the gore department
A far less effective sequel to the hit German medical thriller that neglects both the tortuous suspense and grisly horror that made the first film into a stand out
German serial killer thriller that owes more than a small debt of inspiration to The Silence of the Lambs. That said, it also does its own interesting and original thing
Powerful film from Christopher Smith set during the Middle Ages about a group on a journey to a village where a priestess can purportedly raise the dead. The film’s skewering of faith in an unforgettable ending is stunning
An interesting attempt to do something different with the werewolf film set in the tribal world of werewolves where Agnes Bruckner decides to defy tradition to liaise with a human
Blood Feast was the world’s first splatter film. This is a remake with a better budget but suffers a tameness that fails to come anywhere near the go-for-broke rawness of the original
Train to Busan had zombies unleashed on a train, this German film is the same but with vampires loose on a plane. This comes with entertainingly full-tilt ferocity
Another Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptation, this feels slung together from vampire film and sword and sorcery cliches. Among the badly mismatched casting, the most eyebrow raising is Ben Kingsley as the vampire villain
The third of Uwe Boll’s Bloodrayne trilogy and one of his better films. The action scenes are slickly choreographed and the film is largely made by Michael Paré and Clint Howard who play to the gallery with entertaining regard
Jess Franco is a cult director, having mostly specialised in exploitation and horror. Here he turns his hand to the early 80s slasher film. The result was listed as a Video Nasty in the UK
Uwe Boll sets out to offend everybody in a film founded on making constant insults about its’ plus-size heroine’s weight and bad jokes about the Holocaust, including the Boll playing a comic Hitler
A revival of the Nazi zombie fad, which essentially becomes a First Person Shooter film as someone wearing a GoPro camera runs through a bunker dispatching zombies
Classic film that was groundbreaking for its designs – all distorted and angular sets, exaggerated shadows – that became defined as German Expressionism and its tale of a sinister hypnotist
A cheaply made Arabian Nights fantasy adventure that came out seeking to copy ride the coattails of the success of Ray Harryhausen’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
Documentary based on the book by Erich von Daniken and his much ridiculed theories that aliens visited Earth in the past and evidence of this can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions and monuments
One among the series of German krimi films adapted from Edgar Wallace about a series of murders at a girls college. Shot with wonderfully lurid and colourful schemes
A Roland Emmerich-produced film about a space expedition returned to a post-apocalyptic Earth to find a very changed world
Actress Julie Delpy directs/stars in an adaptation of the Countess Bathory story. In trying to pitch itself as a work of historical feminism and having sympathy for Bathory, this downplays the considerable horror element of the story
A tense and well sustained horror with Franka Potente trapped in the London Underground after hours and menaced by a deformed creature that lurks in the tunnels
Gripping German forensic psychology thriller that starts with one of the most memorable hooks in recent years where a pathologist autopsies a body only to find his daughter’s name and cellphone number embedded in its head
One of the German krimi films of the 1960s, regular police procedurals piled with so many weird elements they become works of the bizarre. Adapted from an Edgar Wallace novel about murders managed from an institute for the blind
An early Fritz Lang film clearly influenced by D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance in which Death offers a woman visions of her and her lover reincarnated throughout different eras of history
Dr Mabuse is one of the great villains of cinema. Fritz Lang was one of the greatest directors of the silent era and his first Mabuse film is extraordinary where Lang indulges in visual tricks that still look sensational today
A model maker is hired to build a miniature of a famous actress’s house but then finds the model is capable of influencing reality. An ingenious premise that plays out with near-perfection
Long and baffling German surrealist film that makes much reference to German silent cinema. Lots of avant garde set ups without any real point
Claude Chabrol updates Fritz Lang super-villain Dr Mabuse to a millennial West Berlin where Alan Bates is a tv mogul who masterminds a mass suicide cult via messages hidden inside advertising
Excruciating West German-made vampire sex comedy (that doesn’t feature Count Dracula despite the title). Painful and agonisingly unfunny comedy routines directed by someone who has no idea how to set them up
German mini-series about the hunt for an escaped killer that consists of three films, each telling the stories of different characters that weave into the main narrative
While Kurt Wimmer’s film with Christian Bale as an enforcer in a dystopian future attained some acclaim when it came out, it feels like it is comprised of a collage of cliches borrowed from every other dystopian film
This gave the impression that is was going to venture deep inside Cronenbergian territory but instead, we have a darkly fascinating work set in the world of scientific research
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
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations. This consists of action sequences slung together with random indifference and badly mismatched casting
Wim Wenders returns to angels in this sequel to Wings of Desire, along with most of the cast. Again Wenders delivers a work of haunting beauty about the angels invisibly looking in on humanity
F.W. Murnau’s version of the classic tale of an aging scholar selling his soul to the Devil for youth and love is one of the most fabulous pieces of pure cinema to come out of the German Expressionist era
Fine and underrated Sf film set in a future where memory recording devices are commonplace with Robin Williams as a man whose job is to edit these for funeral services
Uwe Boll seems to be improving. Here he has abandoned action for a character-driven drama about the appearance of an ambiguous stranger heralding the Biblical end of the world
A Soviet space exploration film from East Germany concerning an expedition to Venus. This was the first film to depict an international space mission but proves stolid dramatically
Another in the spate of social media horror films, this is a blatant copy of Unfriended, albeit mashed up with Ring to create the idea of a cursed newsfeed. This is also the lamest of the bunch
One of the lesser films made by the director of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene. Wiene employs the same stark angular sets and exaggerated shadows in the tale of a predatory femme fatale
Amid the 2010s spate of multi-director horror anthologies a la The ABCs of Death, V/H/S etc, this is a trio of tales from all German directors, the most well known of which is Jörg Buttgereit of Nekromantik infamy
A work from the great era of German Expressionism. This concerns an engineering process that can turn lead to gold and contains some amazing effects, as well as Brigitte Helm from Metropolis as a seductress
Classic silent film from the German Expressionist period in which a rabbi brings to life a creature made of clay (played by Paul Wegener), which then proceeds to go amok
One of the bizarrely colourful German krimi thrillers of the 1960s based on the works of Edgar Wallace involving a series of killings conducted by someone dressed in a gorilla suit
A X-rated, West German-made film that blends together several fairytales in a very adult adaptation. The result should be seen for its sheer bizarreness
A new film based on the epic legend of Siegfried, which gives it a grounded historical realism and tells it in terms of the mud, moral ambiguity and backstabbing in-politicking of tv’s Game of Thrones
Classic German silent film about a pianist who receives hand transplants and believes they are possessed. Superbly stylised direction from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari director Robert Wiene and with Conrad Veidt putting his all into the contorted mime work
Adaptation of the Strugatski Brothers’ book about human observers becoming involved in the affairs of a barbarous alien society. Essentially a Star Trek Prime Directive story, the Strugatskis didn’t much like this version
One thing you don’t associate with Uwe Boll is a concern for social issues. Made in the aftermath of Columbine, this is an early Boll film that is a surprisingly solid attempt to address the scourge of US school shootings
A Roland Emmerich produced film that takes place in a future that has been catastrophically affected by a ten-degree rise in temperatures worldwide
Roland Emmerich produced comedy about a group of crusaders abducted by aliens where their bumbling ends up accidentally winning a space war. A promising idea rendered as idiotic knockabout farce.
Fascinating silent German serial undeniably influenced by the Frankenstein story about an artificial being who proves soulless, swears vengeance against his creator and becomes a dictator
An incredibly good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. Thought lost for many years, this was made at the height of German Expressionism and has a vividness that other adaptations lack
The first of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and the beginning of his bad director reputation. This is a zombie film by the numbers but it was at the forefront of zombie film revival of the 2000s
Low-budget director Ulli Lommel makes a film about a teen who befriends an artificially intelligent rogue military helicopter in what becomes E.T. by way of Blue Thunder
Uwe Boll strikes again! Sequel to his passable earlier epic fantasy, which is dragged down by a lack of action and the need to provide star Dolph Lundgren with a series of excrutiating witticims
A Uwe Boll film that feels as though he didn’t cared about what he was making. You’d have to go back to the Italian sword-and-sorcery films of the 1980s to find a more shoddy work of epic fantasy
Another of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations and one of his better. Boll is seeking to emulate the 00s epic fantasy fad and succeeds with some great action choreography from Ching Siu-Tung
A modest German-made film not dissimilar to Cube in which a man wakes up inside a labyrinth of locked rooms and must find a means of escape
A version of the Jack the Ripper killings from cult exploitation director Jess Franco starring Klaus Kinski. Neither Franco or Kinski are up to much. The film’s resemblance to the facts of the Ripper case is close to zero
A girl sets out to solve the Jack the Ripper killings to free her innocently convicted brother. This is no more, no less factual than any other version but conducts a fine period recreation of Victorian England
A detective thriller set in a near-future Germany. Arthouse director Rainer Werner Fassbinder plays the detective. This came out three weeks before Blade Runner prefigures what was later called Cyberpunk
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.
The second part of Die Niebelungen, Fritz Lang’s silent film about the Germanic hero Siegfried in which Siegfried’s widow Kriemhild takes an epic revenge for the murder of her husband
Whether we asked for it or not, director Bruce LaBruce gives us the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film in which a zombie finds it can revive the dead by having sex with them
The film version of a popular series of German children’s books about a buy who befriends a young vampire kid. The proves lightweight and likeable enough
Animated film based on the popular series of children’s stories about a kid who befriends a vampire boy. The same stories had previously appeared as a live-action fllm
A unique film about a woman who is pursued by a demon that loves her. The film is made in a challenging style that requires considerable adeptness to follow but proves rewarding
Fritz Lang was an extraordinary director of the silent era and this was his first sound film. Peter Lorre gives an amazingly craven performance as a child murderer who becomes hunted by the criminal underworld
Roland Emmerich’s second film, a confused oddity that seems to be trying to model itself as a Spielberg film about a kid who gains psychic powers and whose toys come to life
Another depiction of the Middle Ages witch persecutions that becomes a catalogue of the cruelties enacted – Torture Porn way back before anybody ever invented the term
A comedy in which Griffin Dunne’s penis begins talking to him. Contrary to expectation, most of the film is PG-13 but some of the films attitudes and unfunny routines are fairly mind-boggling
Fritz Lang’s visionary work was something way ahead of it time and is one of the few silent films still screened today. The film’s politics are naive but Lang’s visions of the city of the future and the first screen robot are vivid.
Wim Wenders film from a story idea by U2’s Bono set around the down-and-outs at a fleapit hotel slightly into the future. The film circles around a cast of eccentrics without ever really coming together
Film adapted from the popular German-language Perry Rhodan space operas that is cheap and quickly heads into bad movie stakes
TV mini-series based on Marion Zimmer Bradley’s book that offers a revisionist take on the Arthurian legends, telling the story through the eyes of the women of the saga
Early Roland Emmerich film with Michael Paré investigating pirates targeting a mining moon. As usual with Emmerich, the focus is on action while neglecting the plausibility of the scenario
Beautifully made children’s film that is a refreshing change from most of the formulaic product released in the US mainstream. Comes with a sweet simplicity and an enormous freshness, while the animation is rendered with a considerable beauty that makes it just as much a film for adults
Fascinating, epically sized versions of the adventures of Baron Münchausen produced by the Nazis
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
A William Shatner-hosted documentary based on the works of pseudo-science author Erich von Daniken and his claims that various archaeological mysteries were created by alien visitors
This creates an intriguingly uncanny atmosphere in the story of a teenage girl who keeps seeing a strange goblin creature but nobody will believe her. The last half far less interestingly turns into a variant on E.T. with her racing to protect the creature
German low-budget film about a resurrected sorcerer, this goes out on a wild edge, winds everything up to 15 on the dial and positively wades in blood, gore and torture scenes
Jörg Buttgereit’s sequel to his shocking necrophilia film
From German director Jörg Buttgereit, a shocking and full-on film about necrophilia that defies all taboos and holds little back. This has a raw, in our face shock value that hits direct to the gut
A popular fantasy film of the 80s that sits just between the imaginative, particularly when it comes to some its creature effects and design work, and the mawkish. It also comes with an intriguing level of meta-fiction that delivers some odd messages
Abysmal third entry in the series. The creatures lack any conviction and everything is wrecked by taking the story out of Fantasia back to Earth amid hip contemporary jokes
Sequel to The Neverending Story made with a better budget. This delivers some amazing sets and creature designs but is killed with a script that discards the metaphors and complex level of meta-fiction of the original
Roland Emmerich’s first film, made while he was still a student, involving intrigue aboard a weather control station
The first screen adaptation of Dracula and one of the most amazing of all vampire films, a German Expressionist fairytale that exists in haunted netherworld through which stalks the crepuscular figure of Max Schreck
Werner Herzog conducts a remake of the silent German classic with Klaus Kinski as Dracula. A very different film to the original but quite unique in Herzog’s individualistic way
Biopic of the so-called prophet Nostradamus, although this seems more interested in depicting him as a progressive thinker of his era than as a prophet. Directed by Roger Christian who next went on to make Battlefield Earth
German film in which the elderly abruptly turn and begin attacking the young en masse
A West German-made film where a space mission to Jupiter returns only for the crew to find the Earth deserted. This captures something of the original Planet of the Apes in its better moments
Bruce LaBruce made the world’s first gay pornographic zombie film with L.A. Zombie. This was an earlier trial run, less a porn film and more down around the level of a student art film
Rare cinematic treatment of the generation ship story that conducts it with a modest degree of affectiveness. Produced by Paul W.S. Anderson.
Epic filmed version of the Richard Wagner opera set around the Arthurian legends and the quest for the Holy Grail
Oddball German comedy in which a toy table footballer magically comes to life and becomes a star soccer player