The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The Woods refers to the use of any forest, bush or large wooded wild area as a locale in fantastic cinema (although not a jungle). Usually the woods will be some distance from civilisation. It is a borderland world where those who come from civilisation, which represents the rational everyday world, are forced to confront forces that lie outside the safety of the world of reason.
In the fantasy film, in particular the Fairytale, the woods can be enchanted where unexpected and magical things can occur. There are also frequently darker elements present in the fantasy woods such as the Big Bad Wolf and Hansel and Gretel’s witch.
In the horror film, the woods can be a place where those who innocently stray are separated from civilised amenities and forced into a brutal survivalism as they come under attack by those that live there. In these cases, the woods can be inhabited with lurking psychos and slasher maniacs, in-bred hillbillies, witches, spirits, demonic forces and those engaged in folk ritual. The cabin in the woods is also a frequent locale where those who venture are forced to hold off at siege from the dwellers of the woods.
The woods is the principal locale of the Backwoods Brutality film and a number of Slasher Films. The Bigfoot Film also takes place in the woods where it is an elusive creature than can be seen as either monster or shy and an endangered species.
The first sequel to the 1931 Boris Karloff Frankenstein, which many prefer to the original. Director James Whale comes into his element and provides a whole other level of droll humour that the first film did not have
The first full-length animated film ever made and the beginning of the Disney tradition. A superlative effort, full of an adorable anthropomorphism where Disney instinctively grasps all the elements of the formula
One of the unquestionable classics from Disney’s Golden Age of animation between 1939 and 1942. This is an absolute delight for its unalloyed innocence and tragically affecting emotions
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 classic works from Ingmar Bergman, uncreditedly remade by Wes Craven as The Last House on the Left, with Max Von Sydow as a virtuous farmer who is driven to vengeance after three youths rape and kill his daughter
The Three Stooges are transplanted into a retelling of the fairytale, although their slapstick inanity feels drowned out amid the maudlin banality and Cinemascope spectacle
Larry Buchanan is a director on a par with Edward D. Wood Jr. This, not to be confused with the 1974 killer baby film, is his best film. Buchanan creates a perverse obsessiveness that is fascinating to watch
A film about backwoods occult that comes with much H.P. Lovecraft influence. An inngenue film made by several unknowns who later became key figures at Industrial Light and Magic
The public obsession with Bigfoot grew out of a piece of amateur film shot in 1967 purporting to show a Bigfoot in the world and led to a spate of films and throughout the 1970s. This has the distinction of being the first ever Bigfoot film
Harrowing wilderness survival film from John Boorman about four men on a trip downriver that fall afoul of hillbillies. A classic that was highly influential on the formation of the Backwoods Brutality genre.
One of the numerous Bigfoot films of the 1970s. This takes a quasi-documentary approach that never makes for a particularly interesting film and where the Bigfoot of the show gets to do very little
Obscure almost interesting film where Robert Culp drops out of city life, renovates a possibly haunted house before being drawn into a surreal Free Love fantasia
This comes with a cutely amusing title – about a boy who witnesses his father becoming a werewolf but nobody will believe him – but only emerges as a cheap and shabby B movie
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
With the sensation of the Gimlin-Patterson film that supposedly depicted a Bigfoot, the 1970s gave us a spate of Bigfoot films. This was the most high-profile, a mockumentary about an expedition that sets out to find Sasquatch
A cheap 1970s Nature’s Revenge film that blatantly borrows all the essentials of The Birds in the story of a group of trampers in the High Sierras coming under attack by wildlife due to an ozone hole.
This was made as a fairly blatant mockbuster copy of Jaws. This is basically Jaws on dry land with a bear instead of a shark and an assonant soundalike title Claws instead of Jaws
One of the most raw and savage films ever made, this sits on a dividing line between true horror and exploitation as we experience Camille Keaton being raped with no detail spared before exacting a brutal revenge
The once celebrated John Frankenheimer flopped with this monster movie about a mutant bear with laughable effects and inflated pretensions to message making
Obscure horror anthology from the great era of regional drive-in cinema. The stories lose any potential due to incredibly dreary direction
One of the first copies of Alien, this essentially acts as a slasher movie but with an alien instead of a hockey-masked killer. It also manages to predict the essentials of Predator in many ways. A B-movie but the cast list makes for eye-opening reading today
Problem ridden Disney ghost story with a science-fiction rationalisation that never quite comes together on screen
A parody of the Backwoods Brutality film. One of the very first films produced by Lloyd Kaufman of Troma fame
One of the ‘don’t __’- titled entries of the 1970s/80s. This was an entry in the decade’s popular slasher cycle with a hulking manic stalking trampers in the backwoods
aka The Fantastic Adventures of Unico Japan. 1981. Crew Director – Toshio Hirata, Screenplay – Masaki Tsuji, Based on a Story by Osamu Tezuka, Producer – Shintaro Tsuji, Music – Ryo Kitayama, Art Direction – Akio Sugino. Production Company – Sanrio. Plot The gods are jealous of the young unicorn boy Unico who can bring […]
A beautifully evocative Walter Hill film where National Guard soldiers on training manoeuvres are hunted through the Louisiana swamps after accidentally shooting at Cajun locals
Ferociously paced low-budget hit that put the names of Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell on the map. What made the film a cult hit was Raimi’s full tilt pace and entertainingly over-the-top splatter effects
One of Woody Allen’s slighter films, a sexual rondeau set at the turn of the 20th Century, although mostly riffing on Allen’s familiar sexual neuroses. Contains minor fantasy elements.
Charles B. Pierce, a director who gained a cult with his films for 1970s drive-in audiences, makes a sequel to his earlier pseudo-documentary The Legend of Boggy Creek about the hunt for a Bigfoot creature
From the heyday of the slasher film, this seems to be trying to conduct a slasher version of Deliverance. Largely forgotten today and unremarkable but for an amazing cast of before-they-were-famous faces
In his first film, Neil Jordan adapts an Angela Carter story that retells Little Red Riding Hood as a werewolf film that becomes a fascinating swim of fairytale and sexual allegory
John Boorman film with Powers Boothe searching for his son who has been snatched by Indians in the Amazon. A mystical film, the first to bring issues of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest to public attention
Hugely underrated Ridley Scott film that was a box-office flop. Scott attempts to reconstruct the fairytale as something dark and primal and creates moments that are superlative cinema
A quite reasonable Backwoods Brutality item with a group who go hunting in backwoods Oklahoma but stir up the inbred poachers and end up being hunted themselves
The first film on the theme of zombies from the American Civil War. Not too badly made and with an unusual cast line-up including Nichelle Nichols as a drill sergeant
New Zealand-made variation on the Backwoods Brutality film with a group of trampers being hunted through the bush by a psychopathic farmer
Horror anthology with the novelty where all of the stories are horror versions of fairytales. Particularly amusing is the second episode, a modernised version of Little Red Riding Hood
Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell return in a sequel to their earlier low-budget cult hit. With a far better budget this time, Raimi goes completely over-the-top with a delirious silliness that will bring tears to the eyes
Unexpectedly good film with Madolyn Smith as a woman living alone in a cabin in the woods and Malcolm McDowell as a caller where the two engage in a series of cat and mouse games where nothing is what it seems
Likeable effort from Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Productions in which a Bigfoot is befriended by a family. The star of the show is Kevin Peter Hall in the amazingly expressive Bigfoot makeup from Rick Baker
Justifiably obscure 1980s video release that has been intended as a copy of The Evil Dead concerning possible Viking berserker spirits amok in backwoods Utah. Cheap and routine on almost all counts
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations that Cannon Films made during the 1980s
One of a series of cheaply produced fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films. This adapts the Brothers Grimm fairytale with tatty banality
One of the spate of H.P. Lovecraft adaptations that came out in the late 80s/early 90s. This feels like an effort by earnest amateurs but does take its Lovecraft seriously unlike most of the other films of this cycle.
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
It is some surprise that Akira Kurosawa’s only full venture into fantastic cinema was with his penultimate film here. A beautifully filmed anthology of eight tales, including several ghost stories and two anti-nuclear parables
Appealing animated film with an environmentalist theme where four young orphan animals go on a quest to save their woods
Film based on a true-life claim about a supposed alien abduction. This probably won’t convince anybody who does not already believe but it is undeniably a well-made film, at its most striking when we go aboard the UFO
Rather amusing variant on the killer android theme where Kathryn Harrold buys a love robot as companion and causes it to become unstable when she overrides its safety protocols
A modernised version of the Goldilocks fairytale, which now comes with the addition of an environmentalist subplot and where the bears are made into an endangered species
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
Monty Python’s Terry Jones conducts a live-action adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s story
An oddity that seems to start as a film about IT espionage and then becomes a survival horror with a paintball team on a corporate retreat being hunted through the woods
One of two films that came out in 1997 about the Cottingley Fairies Hoax. In comparison to the other, FairyTale: A true Story, this expands the premise out into a remarkable study of altered perception
Beautifully made and very adult version of the fairytale, which seems determined to play up the terror aspect of the title, resulting in a work that seems a long way away from Disney
One of the very first Found Footage films, predating The Blair Witch Project, although this is less people running around the woods with cameras than an investigative mockumentary
British werewolf film that wittily uses being a werewolf as a metaphor for being gay
Amid Kenneth Branagh’s dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s whimsy about fairy enchantments
An early film from Francois Ozon, this offers a modernisation of Hansel and Gretel where the two are teenage lovers on the run before the story turns into a remarkable gay coming out parable
Following the success of The Blair Witch Project, this was an excruciatingly lame softcore parody with a group of girls tramping in the woods finding almost any excuse to undress and conduct sex-related takes on Blair Witch
Backwoods horror that starts well, keeping its menace ambiguous but collapses into a mishmash of pretensions and amateurish symbolism
This shot-on-video film that became a word of mouth sensation with many people believing they were watching real video footage of a trio lost in haunted woods by a witch. Of course, what nobody knew at the time was this was creating the Found Footage film
The Bare Wench Project was an inane softcore parody of The Blair Witch Project. This is the first of four sequels in which another troupe of girls go wandering in the woods while finding almost any opportunity to take their clothes off
The second entry in a surprisingly prolific series of low-budget films – currently running to fifteen films – that homage the 1980s slasher film
An anthology made up of six short film spoofs of The Blair Witch Project with a wraparound featuring the excrutiatingly unfunny Pauly Shore
The much lambasted but not entirely uninteresting sequel to The Blair Witch Project. Documentary director Joe Berlinger adds a fascinating layer of meta-fiction that winds in the real-world reaction to the first film
The first in a surprisingly prolific series of slasher films, which has produced some fourteen sequels at current count. Made on a micro-budget, this vigorously homages the 1980s basics
Stylish French slasher film about actors being stalked as they put on a performance of Little Red Riding Hood at a country estate. The fairytale is adeptly wound in and out as metaphor.
The directorial debut of Ryuhei Kitamura. A film premised on the idea of mashing the John Woo-styled gangster film up with the gore-drenched George Romero zombie film.
Early film from Larry Fessenden about a family and a Native American spirit. Much brooding build-up but not much payoff (*)
Caroline Thompson, a regular Tim Burton scriptwriter, directs a uniquely revisionist version of the fairytale in which she digs in to explain the origins of many of the familiar aspects of the story
Film made without dialogue about haunted happenings at a cabin in the woods that attains quite a haunted atmosphere
Singaporean film about tourists experienced haunted spirits in the jungle, this owes much to The Blair Witch Project
Disney adaptation of a classic children’s novel about the discovery of a family in the woods who are immortal due to a magical spring
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
Lawrence Kasdan directs an adaptation of the Stephen King novel about a group of men on a weekend get together in the woods who find themselves in the midst of an alien invasion
Passable effort that copies that basics of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with a group of stranded teens running afoul of an in-bred family
Strange surrealist New Zealand made film that emerges as a Brothers Grimm fairytale as directed by a David Lynch or a Guy Maddin
M. Night Shyamalan creates three-quarters of a tense and eerie film about a 19th Century village under siege from mysterious creatures only for it to fall apart when he produces a damp squib of a twist ending
South Korean horror film that feels like The Sixth Sense crossed with the enigmatic games of Don’t Look Now. The film takes place in a cryptically baffling mandala of dreams, hallucinations and possible deathdream that eventually proves rather absorbing
Stephen King adaptation with Johnny Depp as a writer in a cabin in the woods harassed by mysterious stranger John Turturro. Screenwriter David Koepp directs a marvellously chill Turturro with lots of twisty surprises
Obscure Australian film about people being hunted by a mythical creature known as The Yowie
A Belgian-made venture into Backwoods Brutality territory that keeps heading into stranger and more disturbing places until it almost seems to be taking place on another planet altogether
A film filled with weird, constantly intriguing directorial effects, although you eventually have to accept that none of it makes any sense
Under the umbrella title ShakespeareRetold, Shakespeare’s tale of fairy enchantments and romantic mix-ups is reimagined in a modern day British holiday camp
Probably the least satisfying of Terry Gilliam’s films that turns the real-life fairytale authors into scam ghost hunters in an adventure. Purportedly the subject of behind the scenes troubles, the film never quite comes to life on screen
Animated film that offers a revisionist take on Little Red Riding Hood. Everything is played in a manic barrage of pop culture gags and level of inanity that is seriously mind damaging
Incomprehensible New Zealand film about a group of camp counselors being haunted by something as they run through the woods
Japanese horror film that only treads tepidly where the Ring and Ju-on/The Grudgefilms have gone before. Shot in a plain, ordinary manner that bleeds the J-horror film of atmosphere
Amiable live-action adaptation of Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s work made for the BBC with an all-star cast
One of the better video-released Disney sequels churned out during the 90s/00s, this finds some of the innocence of the original even if it never scales the same heights
Rather funny British-made parody on Backwoods Brutality cliches where a work group of a team-building exercise ending up hunted by East European locals
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
Passable animated film from Sony Pictures Animation, although the story arcs too closely resemble every other animated film for it to have much in the way of notability
Highly effective British venture into the Torture Porn fad made not long after the successes of Saw and Hostel. A brutal and harrowing tale about women kept prisoner in the woods that travels to some grim and gore-drenched extremes
Likeable DreamWorks animated film filled with much slapstick energy about a group of talking animals that venture into a housing estate in search of food
French Backwoods Brutality film heads in some admirably weird and gross directions but falls apart at the end
This has an interesting set-up about a woman pursued by a boogeyman figure from her nightmares where others cannot be sure whether she is delusional at the same time as the figure starts eliminating them – but the film’s low-budget gets in the way of adequate treatment
By the numbers Backwoods Brutality where a woman is imprisoned by crazed backwoods fundamentalists in order to bear them a child
Made by Walden Media following the success of their The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, a well-made adaptation of a Christian children’s book even if it sits uncertainly between gentle realism and the push to make it a fantasy film