The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Mind Control is the ability to take control of the minds of other people and direct them to do one’s bidding.
The most common form of mind control is Hypnotism where a skilled adept (a hypnotist) can place a subject into a sleep-like trance and command them to do their will. Mind Control can also be a Psychic Power and is frequently the ability of some Super-Villains.
Mad Scientists and Spy Films frequently devise devices that can control the behaviour of others. Alien Invaders often seek to control individuals or sections of the populace to do their bidding, sometimes with the use of implants.
There is also the real-world fascination with Brainwashing where an individual is subject to a series of sensory deprivations and other techniques to make them pliant and programmable to suggestion. Other methods deal with the use advertising and mass media to influence minds.
The second version of the multiply filmed novel by Curt Siodmak about a malevolent brain in a tank. Its greatest distinction is featuring later to be First Lady Nancy Davis Reagan as the heroine
Dr Mabuse is one of the great villains of cinema. Fritz Lang was one of the greatest directors of the silent era and his first Mabuse film is extraordinary where Lang indulges in visual tricks that still look sensational today
Steven Spielberg makes a thoughtful return to the theme of alien contact. Rather than the rosy optimism of Close Encounters and E.T. , he seems to have embraced the dark conspiratorial view of The X Files
An early film from Jess Franco in which an exotic dancer is turned into a mind-controlled assassin who lures and kills victims with her six-inch long fingernails as part of a revenge scheme
Largely forgotten tv movie from a Robert Bloch script. Curtis Harrington creates a fascinatingly creepy atmosphere that blends film noir with mysterious happenings involving voodoo and the resurrected dead
A sometimes amateurish film about people at a B&B surrounded by zombies. This takes a horror comedy tone and gets very gory. Not to mention features an amazing cast
Adapted from a series of Young Adult books concerning a group of children with psychic powers on the run in a dystopian future, this failed to find the audience it sought
This offers the novelty of being the world’s first Ukrainian zombie film. Being made in the midst the Russian invasion, this lays into Soviet Russia and its failings with a scathing regard
The second of the theatrically released Doctor Who films intended to highlight the popularity of The Daleks, this is an improvement in that it dispenses with the first film’s buffoonish comedy elements
Vincenzo Natali’s second film, a cool and superbly disquiet thriller about corporate brainwashing and espionage that comes with a series of Philip K. Dick-ian reality bending twists
The film that inspired The Terminator! Michael Rennie plays a cyborg who travels back in time to prevent a machine-dominated future coming about, while being hunted by two killer androids sent back to stop him
This was the third of the Cube films but has nothing new to add to the mix except a focus on the technicians monitoring the operation and the addition of gore effects
Atomic became the explain-all buzzword for almost every monster movie of the 1950s.This is the novelty of the one and only atomic zombie film, although at heart is no more than a 1940s mad scientist film
Bruce Lee popularised the kung fu genre but then died. Welcome to the Brucespolitation phenomenon where for several years we had Bruce lookalikes appearing in copycat works. Several Bruce imitators appear here as his clones
After 23 years, Aardman Animation make a sequel to their first feature film. Another chicken caper film where they try to capture some of its dotty charms and largely succeed
The film adaptation of a popular radio series about a Westerner who has trained in the Eastern mystic arts and uses his powers to create illusions in the fight against crime. One of the first screen superheroes.
The fourth Captain America film, where Anthony Mackie now takes over the shield and costume. And you really need to have been following MCU continuity to make sense of much of what is going on
A low-budget film wherein a teenager falls under the influence of a mad scientist who drills open heads to implant mind control chips. This makes a beeline for gory splatter effects
Mad psychologist creates a giant brain about the size of a small car that controls minds and is hungry to devour people. A deliriously entertaining film that seems to embody the essence of the cheesy makeup effects driven 1980s horror film
An impressively large-scale SF film about a military sortie into an area of western Russian that is all that is left unaffected after aliens create a worldwide power cut
The first MCU film to emerge since the Great Pause of the pandemic, the question is whether one of the least interesting characters in The Avengers can carry a film all by herself
A remake of the work that has been cited as the first slasher film. This is less a horror film than a horror film that has been hijacked by a political agenda, delivered with a relentlessly loud and damning misandrist tone
Harry Harrison’s Bill the Galactic Hero is hands down the funniest science-fiction book of all time; it is painful watching it rendered in the hands of Alex Cox who has only the budget and resources of an amateur film
This has the interesting idea of mind-controlled people being used as shooters in a live-action videogame. However, the rest of the film is a routine low-budget action film
Godzilla director Ishiro Honda makes a colourfully entertaining space opera about Earth’s battle to fight off an alien invasion force on The Moon
A film spinoff from the animated The Batman tv series, this offers a great title match but proves a disappointment. Moreover, it has to twist comic-book canon to make the plot work
The Long Halloween Part One was one of the best DC animated films in some time, now comes the concluding chapter, which alas fails to fulfill the promise that the first film showed
Someone figured out Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin from the 1960s Batman tv series, were still around and put them in this animated film that replicates the look of the show and pays homage to its willful silliness
Animated adaptation of the classic Batman comic-book story, this places the Batman/Cat Woman relationship centre stage to give her the most substantial workout of any film
Tim Burton’s superlative duo of Batman films were wrecked after Joel Schumacher took up the director’s chair and turned the films into giant camp fests. Here he allows a madly overacting Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones loose as the villains
Film spinoff of Batman Beyond, an animated tv series set in the future as a youngster inherits a hi-tech Batsuit from an aging Bruce Wayne. The film resurrects The Joker but fails to do anything interesting with the character
Another of the DC Universe Original Animated Films. This is less a Batman film than a Batman Family film, a mixed effort that sidelines Batman for much of the show
Batman’s first screen appearance in a fifteen-chapter serial. This is a dull, impoverished adaptation, which sees Batman and Robin rewritten in the service of the US government fighting a Japanese invasion force
The culmination of one of the most ambitious cinematic exercises ever conducted, with Marvel weaving storylines through several films to finally merge here with flawless regard. The characters get far more depth than in all of their previous films
The title is misleading as the film doesn’t feature any robots but a group of mind-controlled assassins. An entry in the mid-1960s spy film fad from cult exploitation director Jess Franco
The idea of Jennifer Lopez in a transformer suit kicking robot ass has an outlandishness to it. The surprise is that this is a really good, well written SF film of planetary survival
Second in the trilogy of Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptations starring Doug McClure. This opens with the fabulous invention of the drilling mole but the arrival at the earth’s core look cheap and tatty
A real Grade Z film. A mind-boggling stew involving John Carradine conducting mad science experiments, technical gaffes aplenty, spy capers featuring Tura Satana and even M.A.S.H.‘s Wayne Rogers on script
Adaptation of the popular videogame that is lumbered with the game’s inherently uncinematic premise where people only sit around and watch what has already happened in the past
Another of the low-budget films Bruce Willis made before his retirement, this has a plot about body-hopping assassins that has surprising similarities to Possessor
Shinji Aramaki’s immediate sequel to his reboot of the Appleseed franchise. This lacks the visually stunning qualities of its predecessor and seems more conceptually muddled but Aramaki eventually gets it together
While there is little doubt that Edgar Wright would have made a much better film, this emerges with an engaging likeability. Less epic superheroics, this plays out more as a caper comedy where a good ensemble and comedic playing carry the show
A surprisingly good conceptual SF film concerning a man trying to deal with a series of increasingly more surreal jumps in which he finds his body is being hijacked
A fine film from The Blair Witch Project co-director Eduardo Sanchez about the tensions among a group of friends who hold a captured alien in their garage that then begins to affect them
Indie superhero comedy that reads a good deal funnier on paper than it ever produces laughs on screen. The production lacks the budget to produce more than a handful of cheap superheroic digital effects
A family film about a group of kids discovering alien invaders in their attic. A film that is largely construed around a series of slapstick set-pieces.
Unsold tv pilot that was clearly made as a quick cash-in on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Produced by Quinn Martin, responsible for many classic 70s tv shows, who has simply rehashed his The Invaders
Luigi Cozzi directed quickie designed to copy the success of Alien. As with many Italian films of this era, it has largely been conceived around plentiful provision of gore and little else
A sequel to the teen spy comedy. This moves the action to England but amplifies everything else into inanely loud and noisy slapstick action
B-budget director Fred Olen Ray makes a Women in Prison film set in space. Known under several different names, this is another of Olen Ray’s bimbo pictures where he plants tongue well in cheek
Cinematic revival of the old Rocky and Bullwinkle series having the two animated characters emerge into the real (live-action) world. A film that you feel should have been funnier and more energetic than is