The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This topic refers to different type of policing in fantastical scenarios. Covered here are depictions of police forces in different worlds – be they future settings or dystopian scenarios, outer space, alternate realities or temporal police forces.
The other major treatment in fantastic cinema is police officers with uniquely different abilities such as those with cyborg replacement parts or where individual officers are afflicted with conditions such as vampirism or lycanthropy. A popular variant is the Buddy Cop film where a regular, usually curmudgeonly, human is partnered with a non-human that can range all the way from aliens and androids to gnomes and orcs.
For more detail and an overview of the genre see the Theme Essay Law Enforcement in Fantastic Cinema.
Mini-series that was a popular hit in its day, which largely steals its premise of a human and alien cop hunting a body-hopping alien from The Hidden. What makes the show work past its rather ordinary story, is the two leads and their wittily sparring Lethal Weapon-type relationship
The film mangles and fails to understand the fine Harry Harrison novel it is based on but in its own right creates an effective and worthwhile portrait of a badly overpopulated 21st Century New York
Comedy about a cop from the future who joins the present-day force where he is partnered with a cop thawed out from the 1960s. This is a premise that should have been funny but emerges as something like Sledge Hammer cast with the characters from Dumb and Dumber
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
Disastrous flop that tries to do a Lethal Weapon buddy cop film by way of Jurassic Park and gives us a film about a cop with a dinosaur partner!
This comes with the undeniable influence of the then recent Minority Report in its story about a telepath recruited by law enforcement
George Lucas’s first film and always a puzzle to those who come to it after the Star Wars series where its antiseptic, dehumanised aesthetic and dystopian future seems almost the polar opposite of the Star Wars universe
Film featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme as a temporal police officer. While you expect another time travel action film, this has quite a deal more sophistication in the scripting department than you expect
Sequel to Timecop with more of an action emphasis as Jason Scott Lee replacing Jean-Claude Van Damme trying to stop a criminal who is erasing agents from the timeline.
One among the 00s spate of gonzo Japanese splatter films. The film exists as a series of outlandishly over-the-top and absurdly entertaining splatter and bizarrely cartoonish bio-mechanoid transformation
One of the more enjoyable films from Charles Band with Tim Thomerson giving a highly entertaining performance as a hard-boiled detective travelled back from the future
Psycho-thriller where husband and wife Kurt Russell and Madeleine Stowe are terrorised by psycho cop Ray Liotta
The most bizarre variant on the buddy cop film where Anthony Michael Hall is partnered with a gnome. Directed by makeup effects man Stan Winston and an embarrassment to all involved
Clearly influenced by the original Westworld, this is an interesting film about people waking up inside a computer-simulated Western town. Without realising it, this was the very first film to depict Virtual Reality
Deliberately made to look like a lost 1980s/early 90s film, this has a winning concept and sets in with an appealingly sarcastic amusement. On the other hand, the film is never quite as amusing as it gives the impression it is going to be and starts to lose it in the third act
A very low-budget film from regular genre director J.R. Bookwalter about a police officer who is resurrected from the dead by a voodoo priest