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.
The infamous miscalculated Dino de Laurentiis remake of King Kong where the stop-motion is replaced by Rick Baker in an ape suit, while the fairytale romance is replaced by Jessica Lange as a flower child who cracks jokes
Peter Jackson’s dream project, a remake of the 1933 film, and his finest work as a filmmaker. Jackson builds the original out considerably and his command of the effects gives us something quite dazzling
Toho Films obtained the rights to King Kong to pit him against Godzilla in King Kong Vs Godzilla and then made this entertainingly silly sequel where Kong fights a robot copy of himself
The third of the Godzilla films wherein Toho managed to obtain a coup in leasing copyright to pit Godzilla against a rather tatty-looking King Kong for one of the great title bouts of the century
Christopher Lambert and Diane Lane star in a thriller about a serial killer who treats his victims like a chess game and has turned an entire isolated island into a chessboard
A CGI monster movie directed by a former Industrial Light and Magic visual effects supervisor that features a family under attacks by over-sized komodo lizards
The most ridiculous work to bear Kong’s name – an animated film with songs where Kong has two buddies who says “dude” and “bro” a lot and Kong fights the lizard people from Atlantis
A reboot where King Kong is now part of a shared universe. This is less a tragic love story about Kong falling for a girl and being brought down by civilisation than Kong as a heroic defender fighting off other monsters
The first ever film made in Fiji, the story of a young girl growing up on the island of Rotuma. This also comes with elements of cultural Magical Realism
A low-budget modernised version of the Edgar Rice Burroughs book about a group ending up on a lost island where dinosaurs still roam. Slightly better than usual for The Asylum
The Italian cannibal film is the most extreme genre ever seen. An earlier effort from the director of Cannibal Holocaust, this delivers the gut-munching goods
The eighth James Bond film and Roger Moore’s debut in the role. This is one of the most variant Bond films also incorporating Blaxploitation and voodoo elements
A starkly effective film adaptation of William Golding’s classic novel about a group of British schoolboys stranded on a desert island in a plane crash and their descent into barbarism
Remake of William Golding’s classic work about boys stranded on a desert island descending into barbarism where the book is disastrously Americanised in a clodding adaptation that misses the original’s rich swim of symbolism
A tv mini-series remake of William Golding’s classic novel about schoolboys stranded on a desert island and their descent into barbarism. This gets the essence of the book with a raw primality that makes for exciting viewing
Low-budget film with scientists in search of a downed rocket who encounter a prehistoric lost world of dinosaurs on an island plateau
The first film from low-budget hack Jim Wynorski. How can you resist the absurd B-budget mix of a trio of very well-endowed women kicking ass, martial arts action, women’s prison scenes and mad scientist super-villains
Enigmatic New Zealand-made film that takes place in an incredibly haunted landscape about the disappearance of an anthropologist searching for a lost tribe
The first sequel to the massive success of Jurassic Park where Steven Spielberg returns to direct with a script that seems a mishmash of loose ends that only weakly rehashes the original
The original Filipino exploitation classic, this pumps the 1940s mad scientist film up with gore, toplessness and tropical locations. A reasonable hit but surprisingly dull and sedate despite
Complex and often baffling film in which Michael Caine is on a Greek island where he placed at the centre of a series of enigmatic reality charades by Anthony Quinn
A bizarrely ridiculous erotic film with pretensions to being a relationship drama that features appearances from angels and smartass talking seagulls. An aging Mickey Rooney is the heavenly supervisor
One of the earliest 1950s alien visitor films, although here the alien is peaceful and humanity the aggressor. A moodily effective entry from cult director Edgar G. Ulmer.
Ninth and weakest of the James Bond films. Ian Fleming created a great nemesis in the assassin Scaramanga and the film casts it with Christopher Lee – only to fail to write the role interesting enough for Lee to fill
A fifteen chapter serial about a villain who uses an atomic device to transform into a dead pirate captain. Filled with some wonderfully exciting action set-pieces and cliffhangers
The third film from former Studio Ghibli employee Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Yonebayashi is seen as the carrier of Hayao Miyazaki’s mantle, so much do his films look like lost Miyazaki works. This is sweet and amiable, even if it never hits the emotional heights Miyazaki does
A Danish black comedy where the humour is delivered in perfect pitch deadpan. Imagine a version of The Island of Dr Moreau as directed by Giorgos Lanthimos of Dogtooth and The Lobster fame
Hilariously black horror comedy that works as a sublime satire of fine dining – with a nasty sting underneath
Mike Flanagan returns with his best work to date. Effectively a Catholic version of Salem’s Lot, this comes with some flat out great pieces of writing
Serial killer thriller from the perpetually terrible Renny Harlin. A variant on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, it promptly collapses into ludicrous plotting and an even more ridiculous string of deaths
Tim Burton used to be the great hope of fantastic cinema but his efforts since 2000 have been greeted with general disappointment. This Young Adult adaptation plays out like a fantasy version of the X-Men
Supposedly an adaptation of Jules Verns’s Mysterious Island from low-budget Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon, one that gives the impression nobody actually read the book
This film adaptation of the videogame is a lot of fun. The plot is a rehash of Enter the Dragon but the film offers up wall-to-wall action and exotic creatures. A directorial debut for Paul W.S. Anderson
The first and best version of the oft-told story in which shipwreck survivors are forced to survive with their bare hands while being hunted by a mad Russian aristocrat
Remake of the oft-filmed story wherein a couple are forced to survive with their bare hands while hunted by a sportsman. This has been updated where hero John Hennigan is now a reality tv star
A new version about the classic human bloodsports film where a group of shipwreckees are hunted across an island by a mad aristocrat
The most successful of the original monster movies Toho made after the success of Godzilla, the only one to spawn its own sequels, and one of the best kaiju eiga of the era
Another of the desultory 90s Muppet films, which fits them into a retelling of Treasure Island. Missing is the humour and creativity from back when Jim Henson was alive.
A serial adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic survival story about escapees aboard a hot-air balloon who wash up on a desert island. To the regular story, this sees fit to add hostile natives, pirates and invading aliens from Mercury
Hallmark tv mini-series adaptation of Jules Verne’s desert island drama featuring no less than Patrick Stewart as Captain Nemo. This sinks badly amid incredibly shoddy giant animal digital effects
About the ninth film version of Jules Verne’s desert island survival story. This doesn’t add the giant animals/insects other versions do, although we still get a number of wild sf elements the original book never had. Problem though is that the film never adds enough to make proceedings very interesting
One of a trilogy of SF films made by Hammer director Terence Fisher during the mid-1960s, none of which have a very good reputation. This is an alien invasion film but Fisher fails to create the paranoid atmosphere of the better US counterparts of this period
Big-budget action film that essentially rewrites Papillon in SF terms. Martin Campbell has a good eye for widescreen action but the film is only drawn in cliches.
The one and only film produced by Christopher Lee’s production company, this sets up an interesting premise about a mysterious orphanage but fails to quite make it work
Supposedly an adventure based on an untold story from The Odyssey, an entry among the fantasy adventure films made for cable filler in the 2000s
British quota quickie, a comedy about a man who discovers an oracle in a well that gives him tips on horse races
One of the more amusing of the numerous James Bond copies of the 1960s featuring James Coburn as agent Derek Flint, this plants tongue in cheek and cheerfully spoofs the whole spy fad
Solid and effective entry in the 1970s Animals Attack genre with a group on an island under attack by killer dogs
Very strange New Zealand-made film that starts out seeming to be an abduction thriller and then turns into an even stranger ghost story that we cannot be sure is happening or all in the heroine’s imagination
Big screen adaptation of the popular comic-strip superhero. This aims for the tone of an old fashioned serial adventure and is nicely mounted but crucially never comes to life.
Australian animation about a boy’s adventure on an island amid pirates, inventors and magic creatures that in its better moments suggests a collision between Peter Pan and Pufnstuf. Unfortunately, the film is made with a budget that must have been well within four figures
A mini-series based on the classic comic-book masked hero but the attempts to modernise The Phantom for the post-Dark Knight era seem bizarrely awkward
The second feature film from the Quay Brothers, a bafflingly incomprehensible work of surrealism, strange designs and non-sequitir dialogue
The first of two Pinocchio adaptations of 2022, Here Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis delivers a live-action remake of the Disney animated film
One of the great Disney animated classics from the still unsurpassed era between 1937-42. The studio were at the peak of their game artistically and the film embodies a near-perfect sense of childlike innocence
The first film spun off from the popular Pokemon phenomenon and animated series, this is largely incomprehensible to anyone who is not familiar with the series
From cult director Joe D’Amato, this throws together hardcore erotica and gory zombie film in a conceptually bizarre mix that leaves you scratching your head
Franck Khalfoun, a former Alexandre Aja associate, who has made the quite reasonable likes of P2 and the remake of Maniac, directs a desert island survival story where the jungle lurks with horrors
Peter Greenaway gets loose on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, indulging his obsessions with lists and multimedia visuals while the costume department goes completely over-the-top
Mind-spinning film spinoff of the tv series H.R. Pufnstuf, this plays out like The Wizard of Oz on hallucinogens
A spectacularly terrible film. Designed to exploit the 1976 remake, this offers up a sex-reversed parody of King Kong – only the Kong producers didn’t see that way and sued to stop the film being released. Robin Askwith, the star of the softcore Confessions films, engages in a romance with a female Kong amid excruciating puns
Anthology of tales adapted from Japanese horror writer Edogawa Rampo. The various directors push the stories into an admirably perverse and disturbed space
Unknown, no-name film that proves an unexpected surprise. Three friends go camping on an island are are stalked by cloned doppelgangers of themselves. Economically constructed, full of twists and undercurrents and a fine set of double performances
Studio Ghibli’s first ever international co-production. A desert island castaway fantasy, this makes interesting comparison to the recent Robinson Crusoe/The Wild Life, even if both films are poles apart in style. This is dialogueless, spare and contained with a minimalism of plot and drama
This has the interesting idea of “what if we did Jurassic Park but with zombies instead of dinosaurs?” – a game resort where people can hunt zombies only for the security grids to go down. The result is a halfway reasonable effort.
Robinson Crusoe is a classic adventure story about a man shipwrecked on a desert island. It has no fantastic content but this is a bizarre animated version where Crusoe is aided by the talking animals that inhabits the island amid much slapstick shenanigans
This comes with much promise – rune-covered bodies found on a remote island, ritual murders and a secret society that believe they are the descendants of Celtic supermen – that you wonder what caused the filmmakers to let it slip through their hands
Remake of the earlier Bob Hope Old Dark House comedy The Ghost Breakers now made as a vehicle for the duo of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin. Probably overly long and takes forever to arrive at the haunted house but has some occasionally amiable comedic moments
The live-action film version of the popular Hanna-Barbera animated tv series. Despite James Gunn on script, this is not very good, a one-dimensional, no-brain film trying to look like a one-dimensional, no-brain cartoon
Sam Raimi returns with a desert island drama but things soon get twisted. Think Cast Away by way of Misery – but where Annie Wilkes gets to be the sympathetic heroine
Not to be confused with the Joss Whedon film, this starts out seeming like a weepy romantic drama before pulling one of the most absurd M. Night Shyamaalan-esque conceptual twists ever put on screen on us
Cheap mockbuster from The Asylum that was designed to exploit the success of the flop Prince of Persia. While ostensibly a Sinbad film, this confusingly abandons the Arabian Nights milieu and is set contemporary where Sinbad is not sailor but a corporate CEO stranded on a desert island
One of the classic films from cult stop motion animator Ray Harryhausen, an Arabian Nights fantasy adventure where Harryhausen’s creations prove to be quite wondrous
A Canadian entry made soon into the zombie movie revival of the mid-00s and before the copycats started to become tediously familiar and the genre turned to self-parody. This delivers a solid rehash of the essentials – IMHO a better job that Zack Snyder did in Dawn of the Dead
Spookily effective Japanese ghost story about a mother’s pilgrimage around a series of shrines to raise her daughter’s spirit from the dead
The very first Nazi zombie film, a genre that proven surprisingly prolific since. A modestly effective film filled with great images of dead stormtroopers rising from the surf
Martin Scorsese and an impressive A-list cast make a 1940s-styled psycho-thriller about a sinister asylum that soon starts into a series of major reality bending turns
New Zealand made film about a deafmute boy in a Cook Islands tribe and his mystic communion with a sea turtle
Superlative film that recreates an imagined world of 1930s retro sf filled with flyer heroes, giant robots and stunning Art Deco designs.
The eighth Godzilla film featuring the introduction of his son Minya in a shameless pitch for juvenile audiences. The series is no longer taking itself seriously, although ends up more likeable than some of the other entries of this period
The 1933 King Kong is a landmark classic Yhis sequel was quickly produced soon after its success,. While the original created a monster movie fairytale, this plays everything for maximum cuteness – it is essentially King Kong mounted as a children’s film
The second of Robert Rodriguez’s Spy Kids films is slightly the lesser of its predecessor – it makes the mistake of stripping out the gadgets – but is still fun and has the wacky surrealism Rodriguez gave the first film
Another of the delightful Steampunk adventures from Karel Zeman that blend animation and live-action in unique ways
One of the best Stephen King tv mini-series with Colm Feore as a mysterious stranger who manipulates and turns an entire town against themselves
South African-shot film that pretends to be set in The Philippines. Utterly generic on every level, the film seems to be about Filipino vampire monsters but everything is vaguely sketched
Blumhouse production from J.D. Dillard who made a modest splash with the street magician film Sleight, this features Kiersey Clemons as a survivor stranded on a desert island facing a monster that comes out at night
A ridiculously off the wall and heartwarming film. Imagine a crosshatch between Weekend at Bernie’s and Cast Away – where Wilson the beachball is replaced by Daniel Radcliffe as a farting talking corpse
Very difficult to find, this is film that has existed in legend – an erotic film with Vanity as a model on a desert island who becomes involved with an ape. Beautifully filmed and Vanity (who spends much of the show nude) is jaw-dropping
Derek Jarman’s take on Shakespeare’s play filled with weird imagery and staged like a journey through a haunted house where all the players are verging on madness
Paul Mazursky conducts a contemporary version of the Shakespeare play set in the Greek islands, which serves to give the original a potent resonance
A retelling of the Shakespeare play, which had been updated to the midst of the American Civil War with some interesting results
Version of the Shakespeare play that gives us a female Prospero (Helen Mirren) but is otherwise surprisingly faithful. Director Julie Taymor opens the play up with considerable visual extravagance
Film from director Stephanie Rothman about a future where prisoners are exiled to an island whey they create their own ideal society
This has the distinction of being the film that started off the Filipino exploitation industry. A fairly blatant copy of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr Moreau, it is mostly routine
A serial based on Chandu the Magician, a popular radio superhero who wielded magical and mystical powers. Featuring Bela Lugosi in the title role
Hordes of killer roaches overrun an island. A reasonable and not too bad run through of the formula of the bugs on the attack film that comes with the benefit of some convincing effects
A UK TV mini-series that borrow much from The Wicker Man in a complex and fascinating story about the discovery of folk religion on a small island and becoming caught up in pending rituals
Theatrical film spinoff from the Thomas the Tank Engine tv series using several imported American actors
This live-action film version of the cult Gerry Anderson puppet series is a disaster. Great effort is made to replicate the look of the original but the film is killed by the choice to rewrite everything as a modern formula kid’s movie
The first of the films spun off from Gerry Anderson’s cult puppet tv series. Not a completely successful transition but it is, as always with an Anderson production, worth watching for what the Andersons do best – making amazing models and blowing them up