The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The island is a self-contained land mass. There are plenty of these in the real world. In fiction, islands have specific applications where their self-containment and isolation holds unique potential for stories. Ever since Robinson Crusoe (1719), there has been the popular fantasy of the desert island survival story wherein an individual constructs most of the basics of life with their own hands.
In genre cinema, islands have also been places where mad scientist conduct experiments in isolation; where super-villains build their bases; and where monsters roam and pockets of prehistoric life remain alive. There have also been a variety of magical islands.
Yet another adaptation of a series of Young Adult fantasy books that failed to fly. The idea of an Indiana Jones-type adventure set in Victorian England holds promise but the film only sporadically manages to let the adventure fly
In his second to last film, Italian B-budget director Antonio Margheriti makes a cheap and not very good Alien copy that feels like a throwback to the 1950s monster movie
A French-Spanish film in which a group of troubled youths escaped from a reform centre only to discover that all the adults around them have become zombies
It may say how doomed the Western world is that people have paid to watch three films so far all centred around these annoyingly cutsie helium-voiced chipmunks. This is marginally less annoying that the preceding two
Horror film about a heroine imprisoned by a family who insist on absurdly outmoded traditional values. Mostly an opportunity for the cast, led by Rod Steiger as the family patriarch, to go completely over-the-top
Lush, beautifully produced version of the Agatha Christie murder mystery from the BBC to celebrate Christie’s 125th anniversary. The story is a chamber mystery with guests in an isolated house being bumped off – sort of Big Brother with dead bodies
Agatha Christie created the slasher film (sort of). This murder mystery (usually known by several less politically correct names) with a series of murders on an isolated island holds the kernel of what became the slasher template. This was the first film adaptation.
A film based on a mobile app surely counts as a world first. Mostly this is the equivalent of switching one’s brain off and spending an hour-and-a-half watching cartoons for the single digit age group
From the director of Tron, an animated film produced to commemorate the 1980 Olympics, a series of skits with various talking animals participating in different Olympic sports
From the notorious 1970s/80s period of Italian cinema, this was listed as one of the notorious Video Nasties. This features a lone cannibal killer amok on a Greek island amid plentiful gore
Another of the last films that Bruce Willis made before his mental deterioration forced him to retire. A variation on The Most Dangerous Game where Bruce plays a bad-ass facing hunters with his bare hands
Gareth Evans, the director of The Raid films, makes a film about the search for a missing sister among a cult. The film borrows from The Wicker Man, before a climactic dive into full-on gore and sadism
This is one slasher film that chooses a title date where the date in question requires it taking a more comedic approach. Despite which this is a standard effort in all ways
This tries hard to be another The Thief of Bagdad but is never too much more than a run through the cliches of the Arabian Nights adventure rewritten for the post-Star Wars era
A forgotten curiosity from the 1980s VHS era where shipwreck survivors wash up on an island where they are attacked by malevolent dolls. A film deservous of a no star rating if there ever was one
One of the essential items in the cult of B-movie director Roger Corman. A cheerfully absurd atomic monster movie that comes with clear corners cut but played by Corman and cast with more seriousness than it deserves
Another of the animated Barbie films, this casts her as a desert island castaway accompanied by a retinue of talking animals. Visually colourful but slight
An entertainingly violent Japanese comic-book of a movie in which a classroom of school pupils is abandoned on an island with weapons to eliminate one another. Frequently cited as the inspiration for The Hunger Games
This was the sequel to Battle Royale and ups the scale of the conflict but somewhere loses the gleeful fun of the original and strays off to become a war film
Third of the Filipino-shot Blood Island films. This has a slow first half before getting to what we expect of a Filipino monster movie – an overacting mad scientist, a cheesy monster, schlocky gore and gratuitous toplessness
Obvious but likeable attempt by Disney to replicate the success of Mary Poppins with Angela Lansbury as a good witch taking a group of children on a series of nonsense adventures
A team of mercenaries arrive on an island on a retrieval mission only to find everybody has been turned to dust and a mysterious piercing noise that causes them to hallucinate
Wilderness survival horror in the same vein as Deliverance but with a Chick Flick spin. This starts promisingly but director/star Katie Aselton fails to push the survival scenes for anything dramatic
An enigmatic and undeniably effective film about mysterious happenings where those who journey out into a bay return having been affected in disturbing ways
A Quebecois (French Canadian) zombie film about the residents of an island being turned into zombies by a fertiliser used on the golf course
Another of Guy Maddin’s silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers
The first of the Blood Island films, a classic of Filipino exploitation cinema. Although not as polished as later efforts, this serves up all the requisite cheesy monsters, mad scientists and gratuitous toplessness you expect
Eli Roth’s Cabin Fever had a surefire premise – a series of gory meltdowns with tongue planted in cheek. It is a puzzle then why two sequels, despite reasonable directors at the wheel, have managed to completely miss these basics
This was the third of the four BBC tv adaptations of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. The tv versions treats the books with quite reasonable faithfulness but suffer from extremely cheap looking effects
Another lacklustre entry in the banal Lord of the Rings Lite franchise from C.S. Lewis’s books, a plodding run of the mill fantasy adventure for the most part. The mediocre reception killed off interest in the series
Bizarre Japanese copy of Battle Royale by way of American Idol where a group of schoolgirls from a singing competition are trapped on an island where they must play a deadly card game
The original film was a good deal of fun; this sequel feels like it is simply a repeat of the same but slightly different. Still there is a good deal of creativity to the visual puns and living food creatures
While The Shape of Water took attention, there was 2017’s other film about sex between human and fish people. From Xavier Gens, a a Lovecraftian tale about men in a lighthouse engaged in a fierce battle against amphibians
An action movie where the toughest criminals are forced into a barehanded survivalism competition against one another while this is livestreamed. As the hero, wrestler Steve Austin has zero charisma
A low-budget action copy of RoboCop starring David Bradley as a DEA agent up against drug lord John Rhys-Davies who has transformed his brother into a cyborg
This feels like a mockbuster thrown together to exploit the popularity of the tv series Lost concerning an island haunted by a sinister cloud of smoke. The scenario quickly collapses into absurdity.
An Amicus film directed by Freddie Francis and with a script by Robert Bloch that proves the dictum that there is no such thing as a good killer bee movie
Another action movie variant on The Most Dangerous Game with Chuck Norris’s son Mike facing hunters on a remote island. Featuring a cast made up of the relatives of more famous actors
The first horror film from New Zealand, a gore drenched effort about a mad scientist creating zombies. Directed by much energy even if it suffers a complete lack of plot
The 20th Toho monster movie where the studio decided to gather Godzilla and all the other monsters under their roof together for a massive tag team brawl. Disappointingly, the monsters are upstaged by space opera elements for long sections
New Zealand-made WWII horror film with a set-up – Nazis encountered occult forces in a bunker – that draws heavily on The Keep. Modestly effective and gore-drenched
The third of the new series of films based on the cult Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief. This entry goes back to offer us a Diabolik origin story
A collaboration between B-budget hacks Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski. Made not long after Jurassic Park, the two have simply made one of their usual softcore T&A films and slapped the word dinosaur on it
A low-budget effort but amiable effort about dinosaurs and a caveman that are revived on an island. The cheap effects, culminating in a battle between a dinosaur and a crane, have some imagination
Videogame adaptation that emerges as a conceptual combination of Charlie’s Angels (2000) – a trio of girls, in kickass poses and jaw-droppingly scanty costumery – and Mortal Kombat
The first of the James Bond films. While the formula of the series is not quite established yet, this is a slick exciting work that did a number of groundbreaking things and created some iconic images
This revival of the classic children’s character who can speak to animals took a critical battering but I kind of liked it. It has a completely madcap slapstick tone and more crucially returns to the stories and banishes any bad memory of Eddie Murphy
Spanish film that prefigures the subsequent A Quiet Place concerning an island where anybody who makes a noise is killed. This fails to use its premise in any interesting way.
The film spinoff of a 1970s British tv series about a group who investigate scientific and ecological abuses. The film depicts an outbreak of aromegaly on an island near where growth stimulants have been dumped.
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
Adaptation of a story fragment that Edgar Allan Poe left unfinished upon his death. The original (only two pages long) gives little more than a setting but this builds out into an okay period ghost story
Fascinating film about a woman isolated on an island off the Cornish coast who is haunted by cryptic mystery figures, who are possibly all in her imagination, possibly not. A film that creates a fascinating enigma
The big screen remake of the popular 70s/80s tv series about an island that makes guests fantasies come true. In the hands of Blumhouse, this has now been turned into a horror film
One of the worst of Uwe Boll’s videogame adaptations. This consists of action sequences slung together with random indifference and badly mismatched casting
A true-bred exploitation film with castaways arriving on an island where they encounter a Nazi mad scientist breeding flesh eating slugs. This has been cited as the first gore film
One of the worst among the 2000s fad for remakes of 70s/80s horror films. John Carpenter’s 1980 original has been transformed into a teen horror film where the spookiness collapses into frequently ridiculous shock effects
A Russian SF film where a plane is forced to put down on an island where people find themselves caught up in a series of time travel experiments and thrown between different eras
What is there that a new version of Frankenstein can offer? This low-budget effort strips everything down to simply a monster movie about the creature pursuing Frankenstein on his wedding night
Jerry Warren was surely a rival of Edward D. Wood Jr as a bad filmmaker although less well-known. This, which was his last film, is possibly the worst Frankenstein film ever made
A bad movie classic. Plenty of hysterically funny dialogue and one of the most ridiculous looking movie monsters of all time – a possessed tree (where the film also manages to wind in the 1950s obsession with atomic monsters)
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
The thirteenth Godzilla film and a point that the series was no longer taking itself seriously. On the other hand, this is something that actually works in the films favour to create a sublime silliness
The sixth Godzilla film and the point where the series started to become silly and juvenile in its focus. A weak entry featuring some of the shabbiest effects of this era.
The tenth Godzilla film and a low point of the series with the focus now going on the slapstick pratfalls of Godzilla’s son. Many special effects scenes are recycled from previous entries.
The second of Ray Harryhausen’s Sinbad films, an Arabian Nights adventure. Made as a vehicle for Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects, which are stunning. Everything about the film is classic
The world’s first Irish alien invasion film – and a sideplittingly funny one too. Imagine a conceptual crosshatch between Tremors and the characters from Father Ted
A belated Italian-made attempt to jump aboard the bandwagon and copy Jaws with a giant alligator hunting people on an island
A surprisingly good little film about a group of friends being infected by parasites escaped from a laboratory. Confidant assured horror filmmaking with some way out effects.
A live-action Japanese-made mecha/transformer film that creates a dark industrial world as setting and fills it with some stunning effects
Dan O’Bannon scripted film that is uncreditedly based on an H.P. Lovecraft story about family horrors and creatures lurking beneath the graveyard. Aka Bleeders
One doesn’t have high expectations of a Syfy Channel film. On the other hand, director Sheldon Wilson surprises and creates a highly original monster and moments of considerable tension
One of the works of the celebrated Ingmar Bergman with Max Von Sydow as an artist tormented by insomnia who starts to slip into disturbing hallucinations where he (and we) can not be certain what is being seen is real
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
Popular animated adaptation of a children’s book. This hits all the right story arcs and in sufficiently likeable measure to work amiably. Two sequels and a live-action remake followed.
With Disney having remade most of their animated catalogue in live-action, other studios are now getting in on the act with this live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon
Canadian-made slasher film from the director of the original Prom Night. This mixes slasher standard with a variant on the Mad/Deformed Relative in the Attic plot but mostly seems terminally dull
A variation on The Most Dangerous Game that comes with a nasty feminist agenda where women are hunted by men who feel a disappearing sense of entitlement
The greatest distinction this has is that it was released on a double-bill with I Drink Your Blood. While I Drink‘s vision of rabid hippies was highly entertaining, this is a dreary and uninteresting voodoo film
One of the key films from the legendary Val Lewton, this exploits a topical interest in voodoo. As with Lewton’s films, this sits in an ambiguous place that leaves the actuality of the supernatural uncertain
Big hit for Pixar and director Brad Bird, a witty spoof of the superhero film that shows a superhero family trying to deal with everyday life. Enormously good-natured fun all around
An underrated and quite magnificent lost world adventure from Disney with an airship crew in search of a lost Viking world in the Arctic. Contains some absolutely stunning effects work for the era.
The second film adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel following The Island of Lost Souls. This has remade with a decent budget but the story’s primal charge has been cleaned up
A legendary cinematic train wreck filled with behind the scenes stories of fired directors and star egos. Despite all of this, this remake of the H.G. Wells novel emerges as a well made and watchable film
The first and best screen adaptation of H.G. Wells’ novel The Island of Dr Moreau. Wells was not happy but Charles Laughton is a great Moreau and the film develops a remarkable sexual undertow
Director Terence Fisher made his name at Hammer Films but in the 1960s broke away to make a trilogy of SF films. This features the novelty of a giant virus creature but Fisher fails to generate much suspense
Wes Anderson is at his best when he does stop-motion animation as in Fantastic Mr. Fox and here. Essentially a Disney talking animals animated film where the animals talk like real people, this comes with considerable charm
One of the classic psychological horror films from producer Val Lewton. This is a slightly less effective Lewton work featuring Boris Karloff on a plague-ridden island unsure if a vampire creature is responsible
A zombie film produced by The Asylum that appropriates the name of the Val Lewton classic (and Arnold Bocklin’s painting) but is actually a low-budget copy of Resident Evil
The third of Larry Cohen’s killer mutant baby films that began with the cult It’s Alive. Cohen’s humour is again present but the film feels like a hodgepodge of ideas left over from the other films
Stop-motion animator Ray Harruhausen takes on Greek Myth and creates one of his finest works. Harryhausen’s effects are at the absolute peak of their game and he delivers some astonishing creations
A Hallmark tv mini-series remake of the Greek myths that fails to stand up to the classic 1963 version. Here Ray Harryhausen’s amazing stop-motion animated effects are replaced by cut-price CGI
Sequel to Journey to the Center of the Earth, a supposed adaptation of Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island and a consistently silly, nonsensical film that operates at the level of a children’s cartoon
Steven Spielberg handed the directorial reins of the series over to Joe Johnston and this emerges as a better film than The Lost World was, even if it is only ever arranged around a series of effects set-pieces
An enormous hit for Steven Spielberg who took new emergent CGI technologies and wowed audiences with dinosaurs brought to life in dazzlingly realistic detail. It doesn’t hurt that he delivers a relentlessly suspenseful film too
Fifth of the Jurassic Park films. Industrial Light and Magic do their usual excellent job but this time the film is just recycling the same thing as before with minimal change
The seventh of the Jurassic Park/World films, this receives a creative shot in the arm from Gareth Edwards, director of Monsters and The Creator
After two ho-hum sequels, this finally delivers a solid follow-up to Jurassic Park. Rather than more scenes with dinosaurs chasing people, this comes with some fascinating ideas about seeing the park in operation
Animated Justice League film, which adapts a comic-book storyline that reconceived the various DC superheroes as they were back in the era of their original creation
This tv movie’s premise – “a killer bulldozer” – has had it slotted into bad movie stakes. It was clearly intended as a copy of Duel and its killer truck premise but lacks Steven Spielberg as director
Perhaps the greatest of all monster movies, one that has attained iconic status. A masterpiece of stop-motion animation, it imbues Kong with character and attains a delicate fairytale-like atmosphere