The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This concerns the portrayal of real world historical events in fantastic fiction. For fictional portrayals of historic figures see Real-Life People in Fiction. For worlds that depict what might happen if key events in history had had different outcomes see Alternate History. This concerns the actual depiction of historical events – for stories where fantastical elements are introduced into general historical settings see Historical Fantasy.
These may include everything from time travellers visiting past events or even inadvertently bringing them about or how immortals that were present at these. Others may reveal that historic events such as the Kennedy assassination had a secret history that may involve aliens or the supernatural, or that Abraham Lincoln was secretly a vampire hunter.
Other may simply offer highly fantastical tellings of historical events such as 300 (2007) or the deliberately ridiculous adventures of Asterix and Obelix in the Roman era. We have also had horror movie tellings of the stories of Rasputin and Countess Bathory.
Seth Grahame-Smith’s original book was a witty historical joke that retold the events of Lincoln’s life as a secret history involving vampires. The film somehow misses the joke and turns everything into a ridiculously over-the-top action film
A halfway decent Asylum film that emerges better than the film it is ripping off, the overblown Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. The film does the historical crossover aspect with some ingenuity
An object lesson in how to create an instant cult film – exceedingly eccentric, a commercial failure at the box-office, it instantly receiving a fan clique – all without it ever being a particularly great film
Considerable return to form for animator Don Bluth even if the story of the Russian Royals he is telling is based on a hoax and manages to entirely excise any mention of the Communist Revolution
Bizarre family film in which Russian princess Anastasia travels through time to the present day and discovers mall culture
Mel Gibson seems to love directing historical spectacles with an emphasis on bloody brutality. Here he creates a bloodthirsty adventure set among the Mayan peoples
This comes with an insane mash-ups of ideas – modern day Frankenstein monster is thrown back in time to the Civil War (in a process that also creates multiple copies) and ends up fighting on the Northern side
A faith-based film that comes with a great hook where a time-traveller seeks to go back and kill Jesus, eliminating Christianity from history
Fourth of the live-action films adapted from the Asterix comic-books with Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This replicates the absurdist historical wit of the originals while poking fun at the foibles of the British
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
The third of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix. This faithfully replicates the look and visuals of the original comic-books as the two head off to the Olympics
One of several animated films based on the popular comic-book characters Asterix and Obelix made by Dargaud Films
The best among the films made from the Asterix comics. This delivers the characters and the visual humour the way they should be, plus leaves the sly satiric wit of the originals intact with side-splitting results
One of the sillier among the animated Asterix films maintained at a high-level of slapstick and with badly dubbed voices that do not suit the characters
A real oddity among the Batman animated films – one where the basics of the Batman mythos are translated into Aztec culture at the time of the arrival of the Conquistadors
This was a huge hit at the time and has become one of the most indisputable pop culture artifacts of its era. The film takes a clever time travel plot and infuses it with an effortless energy to prove a considerable winner
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
The last of the classic Val Lewton produced horror films, a work set around the true-life 18th Century asylum lorded over by Boris Karloff where an innocent Anna Lee is committed
Made not long after the success of The Witchfinder General, a film based on the notorious historical figure of Judge Jeffreys. In the hands of exploitation director Jess Franco, the historical account is sidetracked by sado-sexual scenes
One of the classic films of producer Val Lewton, a loose adaptation the historical story of the 19th Century body snatchers Burke and Hare. Robert Wise is on fine form as director and Boris Karloff gives one of his best performances.
Narrated by Death, this story of a young girl growing up in Nazi Germany comes with the self-importance of awards consideration bait. One of the great crimes of modern history (The Holocaust) is reduced to picture postcard sentiments
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
Early Anglo-horror film that seems to be trying to push a story about a 19th century doctor (Boris Karloff)’s discovery of anaesthetic gas out of shape and make it into a horror story.
Billed as the Chinese Lord of the Rings, this is an historically-based fantasy film that tries to out-Hollywood Hollywood in terms of effects, design and costuming and looks stunningly epic in scale
TV mini-series that turns the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb into an Indiana Jones adventure. But everything is played with a constant barrage of one-liners and action sequences so silly you can’t take any of the show seriously
Ron Howard directed film version of Dan Brown’s best-selling book. This is historical nonsense woven into a fancifully absurd conspiracy theory where Howard does no more than offer an illustrated version of the book
Little seen Merchant Ivory film directed by Nicholas Meyer set during the British Raj in India with Pierce Brosnan as a British officer who goes undercover to investigate the Thuggee cults
Ken Russell makes an historical work about the Catholic Church’s persecution of a supposed outbreak of possession at a convent in 17th Century France. As to be expected of Russell, this is shocking and outrageous. Oliver Reed gives one of his best performance
One of Guillermo Del Toro earliest films – a ghost story set at an orphanage during the Spanish Civil War. Eerie supernatural scenes sit alongside a surprisingly rich swim of symbolism
Stephen King adapted mini-series in which James Franco finds a mysterious door that leads back to 1960 and sets out to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy
A Marvel Comics offering that is an adaptation of a team created by the greatest comic-book writer/artist of all time. On screen however, this emerges with strangely flat and moribund results
A big-budget film that has one of the great SF premises – what if a modern aircraft carrier were transported back in time to the eve of Pearl Harbor – only to end up blowing it.
Animated film designed for the US Thanksgiving holiday. With a completely insane plot involving turkeys travelling back in time to stop turkeys being served at the first Thanksgiving
Why we needed a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine is a big question. Essentially, Back to the Future Part II meets The Hangover, all this does is wind the original’s amiable coarseness up by a factor of ten
One of the Coen Brothers’ strangest films – imagine a homage to a 1940s Howard Hawks film conducted on giant oversized sets like something out of Brazil with a blacker-than-black sense of humour and angels in the mix
Martin Scorsese’s venture into making a children’s film is a beautiful production but must have been a studio nightmare – while they try to sell it as a magical fantasy film, Scorsese wants to pay tribute to silent filmmaker Georges Melies
One of the key films from cult director Walerian Borowczyk, a quartet of exquisitely photographed and art directed erotic tales, including one about Countess Bathory
The second film from Inuit director Zacharias Kunuk who made Atanarjuat about a Danish anthropologist charting the lives of the Inuit as they are in the process of assimilation by Westerners
A demented Jeffrey Lau comedy that seems to have no limits on how silly it is willing to be, while parodying just about every other film made around the same time
Don Bluth conducts animated remake of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein musical memorably incarnated with Yul Brynner. Now the story comes with the addition of fantasy elements
At contrast to the forgettable James Wan produced version around the same time, this Guatemalan film spins the Latin America folktale as a parable about those behind historic atrocities being haunted
Christopher Smith is an underrated genre director but his first venture into tv is disappointing cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story that reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
Another film about Countess Bathory, although this returns to the historical record rather than makes her as a vampire. Killed by being told through the eyes of two kids and a ridiculously tame account of Bathory’s activities
A not uninteresting historical epic from Dino de Laurentiis that merges the tale of the deposed last emperor of Rome into the beginnings of the Arthurian legends
A Found Footage film that has fun uniting wacky conspiracy theories into a grand unified thesis. The swim of ideas is head-spinning
Beautifully written film about an immortal. The result is an entirely captivating SF film whose whole effect emerges simply from people sitting in a living room talking
One hardly greets the attempt to generate another entry out of this franchise with any enthusiasm. This mostly consists of tired and familiar gags, where maybe the most generous compliment you can pay is that it is better than Men in Black II was
Adaptation of a Salman Rushdie novel that acts as a superhero film of sorts about a secret war between people with unique powers set against the backdrop of 20th Century Indian history
The first film appearance of one of the great super-villains of pulp fiction. This was a silent film version with Warner Oland cast in the title role, making a rolypoly Fu Mancu in contrast to some of the other great actors in the part
This takes the old conspiracy theory about the Moon Landing being faked by tv and rather hilariously is a Found Footage film being shot by two filmmakers who have been tasked with fabricating the Moon Landing
Film set around the Phoenix Lights, one of the most well-documented modern UFO sightings. Despite being co-produced by Ridley Scott and receiving a theatrical release, this does not seem too different from the standard Found Footage film that novices make for about $2000
An earlier treatment of the Phoenix Lights incidents, also a Found Footage film and with an almost identical plot to Phoenix Forgotten. The Found Footage has delved into the alien abduction theme before and this is an average treatment without any notable distinction
Stuart Gordon’s adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story gets full marks for being set during the Spanish Inquisition. On the other hand, Gordon’s unserious splatter heavy approach and a campy performance from Lance Henriksen deflates the material
Disney bases an animated film on the historical character but warps the story considerably. It feels that this is a Disney animated film made more to adhere to Political Correctness than it is a good one
One of the better among the cheap video-released sequels to their animated films Disney released during the 1990s/2000s, this actually works better than the original
Very nicely made French animated film based around the daughter of the pharaoh Akhenaton
Hammer Films turn the historical story of Rasputin and his influence over the Russian throne into a horror film. Although they treat history liberally, this is a vivid film with an intense performance from Christopher Lee
Depending on how you saw this, this is either a UK tv mini-series or three separately released films. Taking place over a decade, the three stories have a common locale and overlapping characters in the story of the hunt for a serial killer and the battle against a corrupt police department in Yorkshire
TV adaptation of the acclaimed novel by Alan Garner of the mysterious connections between three stories that take place in different historic eras
Vincent Ward is one of the directors who should be granted more opportunities to make films. This is his least satisfying work, a troubled behind-the-scenes epic set during New Zealand’s Maori Wars with some Magical Realist touches
Extraordinarily ambitious film all shot in a single take at the former St Petersburg Winter Palace where the camera drifts dream-like from room to room and in and out of periods of Russian history. More n illustrated art and history program than a dramatic film but beautiful to watch.
Laughable Irwin Allen film that conducts a tour of human history via stock footage as Vincent Price’s The Devil holds a heavenly tribunal to judge humanity for inventing the atomic bomb
A Spike Lee film, a fictional work set during the real-life Son of Sam killings, although Lee seems less interested in the true crime aspect than the various storylines of his characters
Michael Crichton was hot as a result of Jurassic Park. Although mostly seen as an historical spectacle, this is an adaptation of his novel that attempts to retell the legend of Beowulf with Vikings against Neanderthals
Zack Snyder’s adaptation of the classic Frank Miller graphic novel about the Greek battle of Thermopylae. In replicating the look of the original’s panels, Snyder pushes what would otherwise be a standard historical film into something extraordinarily stylised and fantastic
Less a 300 sequel or prequel than a parallel story, this offers much the same as before but in 3D and with naval instead of land combat. Seeing Zack Snyder’s amazing visuals repeated all over again, all the poses and hyper-masculinity now seem to bubble with an inherent risibility.
Unsold tv pilot that was a collaboration between Irwin Allen and Rod Serling where time travelers visit the Great Fire of Chicago
The third of Michael Bay’s Transformers films. While the human scenes opt for a ghastly miscalculated sense of humour, the effects houses are at the peak of their game, even if Bay allows them to drag the mass destruction out to a numbing excess
Animated film based on the popular comic-books co-directed by the comic-book’s creators René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo,. This is disappointingly weak animation that substitutes slapstick cartoon gags for the comic’s more sophisticated humour
Widely considered a bad film, this is a slapstick comedy starring Chevy Chase and Carrie Fisher set around the dwarves during the making of The Wizard of Oz
Russell Crowe turns director and, as is the case with actors turned director, feels the need to take up an epic historical subject – the aftermath of World War I (albeit with some Magical Realist elements). Crowe wields all the epic flourish and polish, even if the film never truly moves one
B-budget Syfy Channel outing that attempts to answer the true-life Unsolved Mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke. Unfortunately, the film’s answers are no more interesting than a bunch of Viking spirits, while the film generates little atmosphere or anything beyond rudimentary historical conviction
An X-Men origin story that serves as the occasion to recast the series with younger actors. This works far better than the previous two films, integrating the characters in a strong story, although is quiet at the superheroic action
After the disaster of X-Men: The Last Stand, the decision was made to give a whole film over to the series’s most popular character, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and to go with a prequel that told his origin story. Largely a film that exists as a series of superheroic action scenes