The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This refers to every other depiction of a ghost and/or a haunting that does not take place in a horror context. Those can be found under Hauntings and Ghost Stories. The two are differentiated for the simple reason that otherwise the theme becomes a very large one. Moreover, the tone of either – spooky vs comedic or wacky – is very different.
This listing covers works that come in a comedy vein, ranging from the Light Fantasy comedies of the 1940s that began with ‘Topper (1937) through to modern works like ‘Ghostbusters (1984). Here ghosts are variously comically inept, annoying or friendly as opposed to scary, or where scares are alleviated by a comedy element. In these ghosts can often act as Invisible Companions, even engage in romances, while there are also erotic films featuring sex with ghosts.
This also refers to ghosts that appear in a surrealistic, eccentric on gonzo context. Or else helpful ghosts that appear in fairytales and children’s fantasies all the way to Casper the Friendly Ghost. And others such as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and To Come in various versions of ‘A Christmas Carol (1843) or the appearances of Hamlet’s father.
This refers to every other depiction of a ghost and/or a haunting that does not take place in a horror context. Those can be found under Hauntings and Ghost Stories. The two are differentiated for the simple reason that otherwise the theme becomes a very large one. Moreover, the tone of either – spooky vs comedic or wacky – is very different.
This listing covers works that come in a comedy vein, ranging from the Light Fantasy comedies of the 1940s that began with Topper (1937) through to modern works like Ghostbusters (1984). Here ghosts are variously comically inept, annoying or friendly as opposed to scary, or where scares are alleviated by a comedy element. In these, ghosts can often act as Invisible Companions, even engage in romances, while there are also erotic films featuring sex with ghosts.
This also refers to ghosts that appear in a surrealistic, eccentric on gonzo context. Or else helpful ghosts that appear in fairytales and children’s fantasies all the way to Casper the Friendly Ghost. And others such as the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and To Come in various versions of A Christmas Carol (1843) or the appearances of Hamlet’s father.
One of the great tv series of the 1980s, a powerful and incisive snapshot of Thatcherite England, the backroom politics of the nuclear power industry and the environmentalist movement. A brilliantly written show featuring great performances
Tim Burton and Henry Selick combine on this stop-motion animated fantasy made in Burton’s characteristcially eccentric style, a beautifully stylised and dark fantasy in which assorted Halloween denizens invade Christmas
Ingmar Bergman’s final film, a beautifully shot and richly textured family saga that was loosely autobiographical in nature on Bergman’s part. Contains considerable fantasy content.
Beautiful fantasy where Kevin Costner hears a voice that directs him to build a baseball diamond in his cornfield where dead players to return to life. A genteel fantasy filled with nostalgia for lost Americana and the 1960s
A ghost story in which the ghost is played by someone beneath a sheet with two eyeholes. It’s an idea that seems too goofy to work outside of an episode of Scooby Doo. I do like being proved wrong and this ended up my Best Film of 2017
Stunning tv mini-series adaptation of Tony Kushner’s award-winning play about the impact of the AIDS crisis on gay culture in the 1980s, which becomes a surreal fantasy filled with appearances of angels and ghosts
Classic film from Akira Kurosawa about the subjectivity of perception in which a trial is held about a murder and all four witnesses retell an entirely different story about what happened
One of the most beautiful of all 1940s light fantasy films about the sweet and tender relationship between widow Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison as the ghost of the sea captain in the house she moves into
Dry and typically laconic trio of tales from Jim Jarmusch all set around characters at a Memphis hotel on the same night. Included here for one episode featuring the appearance of a ghost Elvis
Celebrated British horror anthology, which tells five ghost stories and tales of the supernatural. All are strong stories with The Ventriloquist’s Dummy segment in particular having become regarded as a classic
Pee-Wee Herman is someone who polarises crowds to love or extreme hate. The was the first film from Tim Burton who seems charmingly attuned to the kitsch banality of Pee-Wee’s universe
Charming work of autobiography filled with some great performances in which Martin Sheen remembers his childhood in Ireland with an irascible father. Also a ghost story.
Woody Allen film that takes the title of the best-selling sex manual and spins it out as the basis of a series of hilarious sex-themed skits. Contains the famous episode with the giant breast run amok
The welcome return of stop-motion animator Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and at his wildly imaginative and darkly menacing best in an adaptation of a book by Neil Gaiman
A popular hit in which Patrick Swayze is killed and becomes a ghost. Bruce Joel Rubin’s script has enormous fun in interpreting aspects of the ghost story from the ghost’s point-of-view.
Ken Russell’s adaptation of The Who’s hit album is filled with gloriously mad, glitter rock excess and wildly over the top acting in the ways that only Russell ever managed
Comedy based on a Woody Allen play in which Allen plays his usual hapless character who receives romantic advice from the ghost of Humphrey Bogart
For my money, the best adaptation of the multiply-filmed Charles Dickens tale. Patrick Stewart is a great Scrooge and the film respects the story, giving its milieu and central character life as a tale for adults
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
A standout adaptation of a classic work of Mexican literature in the Magical Realist tradition. This creates an incredibly haunted mood as it follows a man’s quest for his past to a town that seems to exist inside a twilight zone
A deliriously frothy screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as two socialites killed in a crash who then haunt the car’s new owner. Several sequels followed.
One of the most original variants on the deathdream film where pilots crashed in the desert come to the realisation they are dead
A very nicely made British Wartime film about an ensemble of varied characters gathered at a ghostly inn that comes to have an effect on all of them
Classic, exquisitely made weepie romantic fantasy about an artist obsessed with a woman who appears to travel through time
This broke ground in being the first animated film made using the motion-capture process. Robert Zemeckis directs with a quite magical touch
Delightful and charming Studio Ghibli film about shape-changing raccoons that blend with humanity when their forest is threatened
One of Woody Allen’s strongest films in years, a London-set work about conscience and murder over which the spirit of Dostoevsky hangs
The third film from Guy Maddin film. This feels like a parody/homage to German Expressionism all filmed on deliberately unreal sets and purple dialogue played with an hilarious deadpan
Beautiful and underrated animated fantasy film about an apprentice magician who protects the last unicorn. This has a maturity that most animated fantasy lacks
Beautifully made and written Hallmark tv mini-series directed by Steve Barron that brings to life a variety of different Native American myths and legends
The eighth film from Pixar and Brad Bird’s follow-up to the hit of The Incredibles. Telling the story of a rat that becomes a gourmet chef, this is slightly the lesser among the high standard that Pixar have set nevertheless still immensely enjoyable
Robert Rodriguez makes his return to Frank Miller’s classic film noir-styled graphic novels. You keep expecting this to hit in with the astonishing freshness the first film did. Rodriguez and Miller give us more of the same amazing visuals but there is the feeling it is no longer original and new
An anthology adapted from the stories of Sicilian writer Luigi Pirandello directed by the Taviani Brothers. The stories include a werewolf episode and a ghost story
The weakest of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films. This is the most variant from the source material and the one where Jackson allows his tendency to visual effects bloat to take over
This is usually regarded as one of the best versions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a British-made production starring Alistair Sim
Matthew Vaughn adapts a Neil Gaiman book in this undeniably appealing fantasy that comes with a story of epical sweep that vies between fantastic imagination and broad humour
Charming and delightful Mexican venture into Magical Realism concerning a daughter frustrated in finding her true love who throws herself into cooking that brings out her suppressed emotions
On the face of it, this is not the most likely of films to be included – a depiction of the ill-fated true-life expedition to cross the North Pole in a dirigible in 1928 – but is for a wraparound wherein the survivor is judged by a tribunal of ghosts. A beautifully made and epical film
Pixar’s 19th film. Set on the Mexican Day of the Dead and then venturing into the afterlife, this is a celebration of all things Mexican, which Pixar conduct without any wrong steps. A film made in vibrant colours
A fine classic cinematic adaptation of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale about the redemption of a miser, starring Reginald Owen as Scrooge
Unique venture into meta-fiction by Wai Ka Fai that creates fascinatingly wound layers of fiction and reality that eventually become so complex that one gets lost
This is a superbly written and directed work of Southern Gothic that consists of three interwoven tales that gradually expose dark family secrets
Another of the surreal films from Guy Maddin, involving incest, strange love triangles and transplanted hands, all shot of which has been shot as a silent movie
This was where the world took notice of Tim Burton in his second film. This throws the standard ghost story on its head with the dead trying to exorcise the living. The show is dominated by Burton’s wild set-pieces and Michael Keaton’s OTT title performance
An Academy Award winning film from the great iconoclast Luis Buñuel, a series of surreal vignettes as a group of friends set out to dinner but always end up being prevented in strange ways
An early David Lean film, an adaptation of a Noel Coward play, a drawing room comedy in which a medium conjures a man’s late wife amid much malarkey and mayhem
Stop-motion animated children’s film from Laika that demonstrates a willingness to be scary. The film starts to move out of the amiably likeable after around the halfway point when it begins to play a number of horror tropes against expectation to deliver a reasonable message about fear and prejudice
A children’s ghost story that is written with uncommon depth and care and directed with reasonable effect
Adapted from a classic Brazilian novel, a man narrates his life story from beyond the grave
This Victorian-set children’s film has not been widely seen and has gained a small cult reputation for many years its ambitious plot involving a ghost story and time travel
The massively underrated Perry Blackshear makes another of his kitchen sink works about a handicapped brother and his sister’s possible ghost fighting a demonic figure
A World War II comedy from Richard Lester that heads into a wild absurdism, a film that is both brilliant and numbingly noisy. Most did not get the surreal blacker-than-black tone and the film was not a success
Pedro Almodovar film in which two daughters try to deal with their mother’s seeming return from the dead
Disney animated film based on the Chinese legend of the girl who posed as a warrior. Unlike the similar historically-based Pocahontas, this emerges as well rounded and satisfying
The always interesting Michael Almereyda conducts a modernised version of the Shakespeare play where Ethan Hawke’s anguish at inheriting a corporation plays out against a barrage of modern media
Likeable animated fantasy made for young children
A Canadian film about a gay man returning home and revisiting his childhood after ten years away that ends up in a weird series of parallel realities
John Landis brings the werewolf film into the modern era with this revisionist work where a modern character is forced to confront it as real, while depicting the transformation with an arsenal of top-drawer effects.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Harry Potter series but the final chapter rounds out the boy wizard saga in rousing style, mounting an epic-sized battle and finding characters depths that hold some of the best writing of the series
The third Harry Potter film where it seems all that it took for the series to become quite good was the exit of the perpetually banal Chris Columbus and the entry of a new director in Alfonso Cuaron
A much better than usual film from Charles Band, an erotic fairytale in which Sherilyn Fenn becomes involved with a circusmaster and his twin brother who turns into a werewolf
Todd Solondz is one of the finest US indie directors. This sequel to his masterpiece Happiness lacks the original’s savage bite and is his weakest work to date
Second sequel to Topper , the screwball light fantasy comedy about a dull man who is driven crazy by ghosts only he can see. This throws everything into an Old Dark House setting but proves there is still a good deal of droll, nonsensical humour to be found in the formula
A black comedy from Alex de la Iglesia about murder and rivalry in a department store, where the killer becomes advised by the ghost of those he has killed
A hit Brazilian film with Sonia Braga as a widow who remarries only for her wayward late husband to reappear as a ghost after she finds she is missing his passion. Charming and whimsical
An experimental film where a camera wanders through an abandoned hotel over which fragments of film footage have been overlaid suggesting a hotel inhabited by ghosts of former residents
After a decade, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby returned for their sixth and final Road movie. Both they and the knockabout comedy are on great form with the show taking on the influence of the 60s spy movie fad and even sending them to The Moon
Droll British comedy where Jane Horrocks gets the advice from the ghosts of famous murders about disposing of her controlling mother
The idea of (some chapters of) the classic Chinese legend Journey to the West retold in contemporary terms. This makes for some amusing interpolations, while also acting as a social critique of modern-day Chinese society
Lively and undeniably likeable Hallmark mini-series that celebrates Irish myth. Giddily silly nonsense conducted with a boisterous energy
Larry Blamire, a director who specialises in genre parodies, takes on the Old Dark House thriller. Not quite up there with Blamire’s funniest films, nevertheless, the film conducts some amusing spoofs of the form
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
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
Imagine A Christmas Carol retold as a bromance where Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present abandon hauntings and become besties
Canadian family saga told through the eyes of a young boy growing up amid a strange extended Newfoundland family. Featuring a number of fantastical elements.
French animated film that is about as far from children’s entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded
A laidback slacker comedy where a man is befriended by the ghost of a school friend who proves annoyingly needy and won’t go away
Robert Zemeckis’s motion-capture animated adaptation of the Charles Dickens classic. The tale has gone through so many adaptations, it fee;s an uphill battle to find anything new in the story no matter the technical quality of the film
The 1939 Bob Hope comedy remake of The Cat and the Canary was a big hit; here he and Paulette Goddard are put through the same in what is all but a sequel. Hope is on top form again
TV movie version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale featuring Kelsey Grammer as a very theatrical Scrooge. This tells the story as a musical but also manages to be surprisingly faithful to the original
Well-made and extremely faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’s perennial Christmas story starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. This brings out story elements other versions skip over
Micro-budgeted early Adam Wingard film that delves into the disturbed mental spaces of a depressed man
Imagine a weird mix between the basic premise of Saw and Waiting for Godot. A South Korean film about a man inexplicably chained up in a park that is less interested in his escape than it becomes a surreal existential allegory for life
A strange Japanese film in which a suicidal lesbian receives relationship advice and from the ghost of a drag queen
Graham Skipper directs/writes/stars in a film about the last man on Earth trying to bring his wife’s ghost back from the dead while beset by an entity that has devoured the rest of humanity and just wants to be his friend
At first glance, Stephen Sommers and Dean R. Koontz seem strange bedfellows, but oddly enough it works – Koontz gives Sommers more story than he is used to working with and surprisingly it is the likeable characters and mind-boggling quirks of plot at the forefront rather than Sommers’ usual CGI bombast
A light fantasy comedy with Lucas Donat as the inheritor of a Scottish castle that is haunted by a ghost and the problems faced when the castle is sold to be shipped to America
An overrated classic that is nevertheless an undeniable fixture of 1980s pop culture. Overlong, it is largely carried through Bill Murray’s lazy sarcasm and the sterling work from the visual effects team
Here the less-than-serious Teen Titans Go! conduct an Into the Spider-Verse-type crossover with their serious counterparts from the multiverse
British quota quickie that is a likeable light fantasy comedy about a haunted Scottish castle and comes peopled with a cast of eccentrics
Another of the films from the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys, a prolific comedy act of the era. Here the boys set out to bust a fake medium racket during the course of which they are aided by a ghost
Road to Morocco was the third of the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road films and takes them on a parody of the Arabian Nights adventure
A depiction of the lives of Buddhist orphans in remote Myanmar, this also has a number of Magical Realist elements. What the film lacks in big dramatics, it makes up for with some genteel and lovely imagery
Musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol starring Albert Finney as Scrooge, this is made on a big budget, leading to an extravagant and often over-produced film
Amiable comedy adapted from an Oscar Wllde story with Charles Laughton as a ghost condemned to walks the family castle for his cowardice. Contains much Wartime comedy about the clash between British and American cultures
A directorial outing from actor/playwright Sam Shepard set in the West as Richard Harris buys an Indian daughter for his son River Phoenix
From director Penelope Spheeries, this is an almost unclassifiable oddity. As three punks set out in a search of a better life, this becomes a road movie and Western homage (with ghost cowboys)
Sequel to Ghostbusters that was far better received than the 2016 reboot, giving us a new generation of ghostbusters. This succeeds largely by playing the nostalgia card for all it can
There was a lot of hate centred on this for recasting what is considered a classic film with an all-girl cast. It emerges mostly likeably, no better, no worse on the whole, where the new ensemble make a solid showing
Strange Canadian children’s film about a boy who goes bald and is then given a peanut butter solution that causes wild uncontrolled hair growth