The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The best animated film Disney ever made, created as a work of art with animation set to classical music. The segments vary between abstraction, comic eccentricity and evocations of nightmare. The results are magical.
Steven Spielberg’s film about alien contact was every bit as big as Star Wars in 1977. The whole film is the equivalent of sitting gazing up at a starry sky wondering if we are alone and built up to the wondrous climactic appearance of the UFOs
The first and still the best version of the story. Made when The Phantom was a horror story rather than a weepie romance, everything from Lon Chaney’s performance to the amazing Gothic design and directorial set-pieces is classic
Predating The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Brian De Palma conducts a very funny parody of The Phantom of the Opera (and several other horror films) as a glitter rock musical
Mind-spinning film spinoff of the tv series H.R. Pufnstuf, this plays out like The Wizard of Oz on hallucinogens
One of Walter Hill’s finest films that sets out in search of the soul of blues music, featuring a superlative performance from Joe Seneca as an aging bluesman who wants back the soul he traded to The Devil for success
George Miller of Mad Max fame makes a motion-capture animated film about a young penguin who sets out to fulfill his dream of tap-dancing. This ends up being a film of unexpectedly winning charms
Film version of Pink Floyd’s best-selling album, an extraordinary surreal audiovisual dive into the fraying mind of a rock star
A Korean retelling of the fairytale The Pied Piper of Hamelin that in mid-film suddenly morphs from a standard telling into an incredibly grim horror film. The results are really quite striking, not to mention pulled off with considerable assurance
The Coen Brothers hilariously adapt The Odyssey into the Depression Era with George Clooney leading a trio of escaped convicts as he tries to return to his wife
Peter Watkins is the most underrated director of the 1960s – his films are fiercely anti-establishment attacks that come with an extraordinary incendiary charge. This mockumentary depiction of a near future where the government uses a rock star to manipulate the public rings even more true today
An Italian-made homage to/parody of Fantasia offering an anthology of animated tales. This is witty and more adult in tone, yet perfectly charming and delightful in its own way
Ryan Coogler of Black Panther fame makes a smart and intelligent vampire film set in the American South during the 1930s. This was a considerable awards, audience and critical hit.
Live-action film from a Dr Seuss script about children imprisoned by a mad piano teacher. As to be expected from Seuss, this is gloriously madcap with extravagantly surreal set designs and nonsense choreogrphy
The third of The Beatles films, in this case an animated work that features likenesses of The Fab Four as they trip through some amazing nonsensical psychedelic visuals
This comes with a head-scratching premise – a biopic of pop star Robbie Williams but where Robbie is portrayed as a CGI ape. Essentially, the rock star biopic by way of one of the Planet of the Apes reboot films
A beautiful anime from Momoru Hosoda that retells Beauty and the Beast and spins it in SF terms as tale about a girl who finds fame as a singer in Virtual Reality
A quirky hit that jumped aboard the 1980s popularity of time travel themes and laid into them with an appealingly offbeat eccentricity. The film that propelled Keanu Reeves onto become a star
The first dark adult fairytale. Before this, fairytales on film had been in the realm of Disney. This roots the familiar tale in an historical reality surrounded by the Black Death, The Inquisition and Anti-Semitism
An animated film produced by Guillermo Del Toro that draws on his Mexican heritage and Day of the Dead mythology. An amazingly colourful and happy film with one of the most unique design schemes ever
Beautiful stop-motion animated feature from Laika. This takes a big bite and tells an epic adventure. The only flaw is that the stop-motion is so flawless that audiences cannot tell the difference between regular animation
Pixar’s 19th film. Set on the Mexican Day of the Dead and then venturing into the afterlife, this is a celebration of all things Mexican, which Pixar conduct without any wrong steps. A film made in vibrant colours
A screwball comedy with Jack Benny as a trumpeter send down from Heaven to Earth to blow the Last Trumpet who ends up getting distracted by a series of comic mishaps
A completely insane film that reads as a disco version of The Karate Kid via the 1970s Blaxploitation fad with the addition of mystical martial arts and played so over-the-top it defies belief
An appealingly charming anime about the friendship between a lonely boy and a mermaid. She gains legs whenever music is playing and they form a pop band together
Tim Burton makes a film based on the old Topps bubblegum card series about Martian invaders, which becomes an affectionately goofy tribute to 1950s alien invasion cinema
TV mini-series that adapts eight Stephen King short stories. As with any anthology, the stories vary in quality but are generally quite reasonable
A unique and original Irish variant on the Folk Horror genre about a couple who become wound up into the obsessive quest for a cursed folk song and the effect it has
The best of the Welcome to Blumhouse films set among the rivalry of two sisters at a highly competitive music school where one gets an occult text allowing her an advantage
Quite the most insane film I have seen in recent memory. The rivalry between two classical music students reminds of Black Swan albeit wound up to the histrionic level of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, all added to the most pleasingly twisty mess-with-your assumptions script
On the back of popularity of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical and the Elm Street films, Robert Englund was cast in this version where the emphasis is on the slasher element, which works far better than you might think
Dario Argento takes on The Phantom and welcomely rescues it from musical romance and returns it to being a horror film. Despite a beautifully mounted production, Julian Sands’ Phantom is too weak and wimpy
Another entry in the burgeoning Folk Horror genre, a moody work about a couple of musicians living in the Welsh countryside in the 1970s who befriend a very mysterious boy who shows them the secrets of the landscape
Wacky offbeat film about a group that set out across post-apocalyptic terrain in search of a pirate radio signal
The best budgeted of Guy Maddin’s films, a renaissance of his familiar kitsch surrealism and silent movie homages
Four guys on a stag night encounter a mysterious nightclub that features a woman with a mesmerising and unearthly song. The feature length expansion of the V/H/S segment Amateur Night, this is a film that is rather pleasingly driven by a series of wild and outlandish images
A film where a violinist is drawn in to the mystery of a piece of classical music with occult properties, this is a classy and well-made production above the mill of the average horror film
The first film from the inimitable Bill Plympton, a work of bizarre surrealist animation and strange satiric transformations as a man sets out on a journey to find the final line for a tune
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a multi-media phenomenon that has developed a cult. The tv series with a less-than-stellar BBC budget was not the most effective incarnation of these but still hits the wittily absurd nerve of Douglas Adams’ humour
Feelgood Danny Boyle film that most audiences missed was also an alternate history film set in a world where The Beatles never existed and one sideslipped singer is able to claim their songs as his own
Big man Laird Cregar gained a sudden fame as the killer in The Lodger and was quickly repackaged as another psychopathic killer in this vehicle where he plays a mentally disturbed composer
One of the original genre parodies, a very silly and amateurish film that also manages to be occasionally quite funny. Three sequels and an animated tv series followed
An anthology of short anime pieces from five different directors. Episodes range from traditional anime and Cyberpunk to mind-expanding surrealism
Essentially a classical music version of Phone Booth with Elijah Wood trapped at a grand piano in front of a concert audience by a sniper. The results prove quite gripping
Outrageous New Zealand-made effort that fondly recalls the 1980s splatter comedies of Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson et al. This often feels like former teen metalheads looking back and puncturing the pretensions of their youth
Sweet and tender anime about a young girl who has a curse placed on her that causes her to lose her voice and how this actually allows everyone around her to voice things they don’t say.
Promisingly ambitious animated SF film that tries to catch some of the trippy qualities of Heavy Metal where the impressive quality of animation is let down by a juvenile story about a rock band in a post-holocaust future
Gonzo comedy set in alternate world where a samurai-sword wielding Buddy Holly wanders through a post-apocalyptic present
One of the first of Mainframe’s animated Barbie films, this creates a fairytale where reasonable effort gone into the animation and characters
A black comedy that comes in a very broad tone concerning an ordinary man trying to record an album who accidentally kills people around him only for them to refuse to stay dead
A horror comedy starring the Foo Fighters where the band’s antics sit alongside some entertainingly outrageous gore
One of the last films made by Julian Sands before his death, this concerns a cursed musical score that ties back to the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Sands plays an autocratic orchestra conductor
George Miller had a charming and delightful hit with his dancing penguin film Happy Feet. He returns to make a sequel here that merely tries to repeat the same
Fan parody/homage of H.P. Lovecraft that comes waist-deep in references and jokes. The film is an amateur effort made with a painful cheapness in some areas; nevertheless it is clear that the team are really into making it and their enthusiasm carries the film
Lush tv mini-series with Charles Dance as the Phantom, this stands too much in the shadow of the then recent Lloyd Webber musical and its making The Phantom into a romantic figure as opposed to a horror icon
TV mini-series remake of The Phantom of the Opera starring Jane Seymour that rewrites and rearranges much of the story to negligible effect
Luc Besson produced film set among drum and bass dance culture in New York that follows an aspiring mute dancer (Mia Frye) who is asked to test a new technology that translates dance to music
Fifth film in the series starring Warwick Davis as a malevolent leprechaun dispatching bizarre novelty deaths. In a bizarre novelty twist, this sets the leprechaun loose in the world of rap
Modest horror film of the 1980s where kids inadvertently open a demonic gateway. Like a juvenile version of Poltergeist, this comes with the bonus of some fairly good effects
A minor British ghost story about a composer who looks in and sees the lives of the inhabitants of a haunted house replayed. This comes with some modest effect
The Spice Girls conduct their own version of The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night, a largely plotless film with them clowning around. Including appearances from aliens.
The sequel to Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure where the first film’s humour gets lost amid repetition and blown up by a big-budget. William Sadler’s Death however proves a scene-stealer
The two time-travelling slackers are back after nearly thirty years and the film amusingly sees them having reached uneasy middle-age. But was the wait worth it?
Disney’s sequel to Fantasia comes weighted with a sense of its own self-importance – the first theatrical release of the new millennium. However, it fails to produce much that has the stature of the original
Aliens come to Earth and form a bluegrass band! The basic idea holds an undeniable appeal but the film seems caught between wanting to be a B-movie parody and an indie film that takes itself seriously
A reasonable arthouse hit, this tells the story of a cursed violin through five different periods of history
A variant on the Pact with the Devil story as a rock group conduct a Faustian deal with Malcolm McDowell’s Devil, leading to their meteoric rise to fame and debauchery
Rapper Snoog Dogg fails badly at branding himself as a horror anthology host, while the stories prove nothing to write home about either
Deranged entry in the 80s fad for heavy metal horror films where a band are resurrected from the dead to play an all-important concert, while fighting off conservative townspeople and a very much alive Adolf Hitler
Promising film about an ingénue singer under the control of a Svengali-esque record producer who is struggling against giving in to her true werewolf nature
Film spinoff of the rock parody act headed by Jack Black. This emerges like i>The Blues Brothers recast with Cheech and Chong and delivers some occasionally surreal and amusing gags
Film that feels construed to blend 60s rock films post The Beatles and an intergalactic trippiness post 2001: A Space Odyssey where alien try to abduct a rock band. From the producer of the James Bond films and the man who created The Monkees
Following the success of Dr Terror’s House of Horrors, this was the second of Amicus’s trademark horror anthologies with Burgess Meredith as a carnival barker showing people their fates
M. Night Shyamalan film with Josh Hartnett as a serial killer caught up in a police sting being held at a rock concert
Film about a heavy metal star resurrected from the dead. This sets out spoofing fundamentalist paranoias about backwards masking but soon ends up all over the place and fails to take itself serously
Animated film based on a book by Charlotte’s Web author E.B. White about a trumpet-playing swan
Animated film about a talking and singing monkey from Cuba that travels to the US on a quest
Another South Korean copy of Ring with haunted pop songs instead of tv broadcasts. This offers interesting insight into the K-pop phenomenon but nothing particularly standout in the way of scares
Head-scratching Australian oddity in which a middle-aged man becomes possessed and suddenly able to sing with the voice of Billie Holliday
A documentary that explores the intersection between heavy metal music and horror and the frequently intertwined relationship of the two
The long-planned film adaptation of The Phantom musical emerges as disaster under Joel Schumacher. The Phantom’s presence has all been watered down and the film exists as no more than a series of scenographic poses
Lightweight, rather silly effort where Lenny Von Dohlen’s home computer becomes sentient and the two compete for the love of neighbour Virginia Madsen
This has a winning concept – live-action roleplayers are forced to face a demon they accidentally conjure. Only it becomes a one-joke film with characters delivering mock mediaeval dialogue in falsettos
The first of Amicus’s horror anthologies. The stories are rehashes of five popular horror tropes, all united by Peter Cushing as the title doctor telling the fortunes of five passengers on a train carriage
Fifth in a popular series of satiric Hong Kong animated films. Kicks in with an amusingly sarcastic bite that resembles a Beavis and Butt-Head in its story of a talking animal children’s choir but alas by about the halfway point takes itself seriously and starts to get mawkish and sentimental
A live-action film based on the animated tv series about a girl rock band who originally appeared in Archie comics, this gets buried under its own efforts to be cutely ironic
Another film spun off from a Disneyland attraction, this hardly inspiring effort features a Country and Western band made up of talking bears and follows them as they set out on a reunion tour.
This was a semi-sequel to Here Comes Mr Jordan featuring Rita Hayworth as the goddess Terpsichore descended to Earth to inspire a Broadway producer
Hammer Films’ attempt to update the classic story went astray – the Paris opera becomes a dreary English repertory house and Terence Fisher misses the tale’s grandeur
One among the series of cheap video-released sequels to their classic animated films made during the 1990s/2000s, this is a prequel that offers up a Little Mermaid origin story
Made to exploit leftover sets from the 1943 Phantom of the Opera, this is a magnificent colour production that has Boris Karloff as an obsessive surgeon who fixates on a beautiful young opera singer
An adaptation of the fairytale from Martin Gates, a largely unknown British animator. This embellishes the traditional telling of the story considerably
Dance music duo Daft Punk collaborate with anime directors to create an animated space opera based on their album Discovery about an intergalactic rock band and their fight to save the galaxy
Full-length film made by the French electronic music duo Daft Punk based around the robot guises the band adopts. Resembles an extended student film and feels exactly like an SF version of The Brown Bunny
After the success of The Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night, The Fab Four were quickly packaged in this follow-up. The free-wheeling amiability of that film has become a surreal plotless absurdity where nothing seems too silly
An impressively designed Quebecois sf film where it is it is sad to see so much artistry lavished on something completely nonsensical and utterly woolly-headed in terms of its ideas
A collection of Michael Jackson short pieces, leading up to the 25 minute Smooth Criminal segment where he transforms into a godlike being. Fascinating in its bizarreness, largely a Michael Jackson ego trip
The end of Western civilisation is surely upon us that studios have devoted multi-million dollar resources to making four of these films and that audiences flock to them despite universally terribly reviews. Ok so maybe I hated this one marginally less than the preceding three
Animated film based on the original Belgian Smurfs comics made prior to the hit of the Hanna-Barbera series.
Musician Neil Young directs a science-fiction film! I was hoping this would be another Repo Man, instead we get an incoherent mess that throws in a jumble of sf concepts and feels like it was made without a script