The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
In scientific terminology, mutation is a change in the DNA of an individual or organism. It is one of the principal factors responsible for the Evolution of a species – where genetic changes are carried through multiple generations and those changes that are best adapted to survival come to predominate. Ever since the concept of DNA was understood, genre fiction has latched onto the possibilities of mutation with great enthusiasm.
1950s SF was filled with numerous examples of mutants, usually of the three-eyed and scaly-skinned variety, that would appear in the aftermath of a Nuclear Holocaust. Mutation also has the ability to create superhumans, frequently those with Psychic Powers. Equally it can have hideous side effects and turn humans into all manner of monsters, hybrids or deformed oddities.
Mutation is frequently the given cause when it comes to Monster Movies where atomic energy or genetic experiments have the ability to turn regular-sized creatures into Giant Animals – this is particularly so in the fad for Atomic Monster Movies.
Mutation is also often the cause of a superhero gaining their powers in a Superhero Film – indeed, almost the entire Marvel pantheon of superheroes owes their powers to mutagenics – where it can create a great range of abilities. Just as equally it can also serve as the origin for a Super-Villain.
Silent Hill was one of the best videogame film adaptations and created a genuinely uncanny atmosphere. That film’s director returns to the franchise here with more of the same but misses the mark
Film spinoff from the long-running animated tv series. The familiar gags are there but show feels awkward extruded out to a full-length plot. You keep feeling the film should have been more than it is.
A team of house movers find they are working for infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele who has an attic full of deformed mutations
Charles Band returns to H.P. Lovecraft and conducts a low-budget remake of From Beyond, which he had memorably overseen back in the 80s with Stuart Gordon
A reboot of the Resident Evil film series under a new director with Johannes Roberts who abandons the previous action poses for a far darker and more visceral survival horror approach
The most expensive film ever made at the time, a Kevin Costner epic in which he is a lone mariner in a drowned world where survivors cling to shantytowns floating on the surface. Essentially a Mad Max film located on water.
Shinya Tsukamoto’s third Tetsuo film is a disappointingly commercial concession that waters down all of the surrealism and wild sexual fetishism that made the first film so amazing
Another unnecessary entry in a creativity-handicapped series, the continuing popularity of which is baffles. This shuffles through the familiar moves, brings back several familiar characters but only leaves me asking why I have invested some nine hours of time following this series
Roger Corman produces a blatant copy of Alien with a group of people being pursued around a desert laboratory by a rubbery mutant creature
Family-friendly superhero film that places more focus on slapstick than superheroics and contains an embarrassing return to the screen for Chevy Chase
The second film version of I Am Legend, this rewrites the book’s vampires as mutants and abandons its mood of paranoia for a fantasy of hippie utopia and Charlton Heston in square-jawed action hero mode
Charlie Steeds is a low-budget British director who has shown reasonable promise. Here he makes an H.P. Lovecraft homage about a submarine expedition that awakens Cthulhu on the ocean floor
B budget film from Edgar G. Ulmer that was made quickly to exploit the success of George Pal’s The Time Machine concerning an Air Force pilot who is thrown through time into a mutant ruled future
British-made SF film that is undeniably influenced by The Quatermass Xperiment about a test pilot turned into a mutated monster after flying above the upper atmosphere
The Bird Flu Epidemic was a brief panic over an influenza outbreak that infected humans; this seems to little concern the film that blows it up into a horde of large mutant birds that attack humans
Sequel to the David Cronenberg remake of The Fly directed by that film’s effects creator Chris Walas. This reduces Cronenberg’s obsessive bodily transformation film into just another monster on the loose tale
One of the numerous copies of Alien. This was produced by Roger Corman, which means more of an exploitation emphasis – the alien is three times the size, there is more of a T&A emphasis and the effects are cannibalised from his other films
After the cult success of Re-Animator, Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs and most of the principals returned with a further H.P. Lovecraft adaptation. More outrageously over-the-top splatter effects but this is somewhat the lesser
One of the early films from Anglo-horror director John Gilling, this takes place in a fictional Soviet republic and features experiments to create a race of super-children
An unsold Gene Roddenberry tv pilot that is a fascinating almost-ran. Roddenberry rehashes Star Trek by way of Buck Rogers in a post-holocaust setting. This could have made for a worthwhile series
The first film from Jackie Kong, who made the hilarious Blood Diner, concerning a cheesily ridiculous atomic mutant monster loose in a small town
The film version of the comic-book that was made by Roger Corman intended to never be released. This has a reputation as a bad movie and is extremely impoverished adaptation but is more authentic to the comic-book than other big-budget films
The fifth and final of the original Planet of the Apes films. After four well worthwhile entries up to this point, a tired air infects this production as it assembles the elements in a haphazard clutter
Another low-budget film that appropriates H.P. Lovecraft’s name above its title. From low-budget director Chad Ferrin who previously ventured into Lovecraft with The Deep Ones
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
This big-budget film came out the same year as The Descent and is a very similar work about a cast of name explorers in a vast network of underground caves being hunted by monsters
1950s B movie, one of several inspired by The Quatermass Xperiment on the theme of mutating astronauts/scientists. Nothing hugely standout from the average, although the creature certainly lives up to the hideous description
A Backwoods Brutality film that becomes quite gore-drenched. Written by its leading man Paul Logan who casts himself as a perfect action hero wading in to kick hillbilly ass
A Z movie classic that combines some of the most absurd looking mutant monsters ever created with the era’s fad for beach party movies, including appearances from a wannabe Beach Boys band
One of several cheap Italian copies that were made after the success of Star Wars starring Richard Kiel as a peaceful intergalactic police inspector who is mutated into a killer humanoid
The third film version of Richard Matheson’s book is only a remake of the previous version The Omega Man. Crucially, this throws out the essence of the book for a far less interesting piece about Will Smith fighting mutants in the ruins
The 2005 Fantastic Four was an amiable entry among the Marvel Comics adaptations of the 2000s. This sequel substitutes lowbrow comedy and renders the great character of the Silver Surfer as a CGI cartoon
After several other film incarnations that went nowhere, The Fantastic Four make their first appearance in The MCU. The film creates a wonderful retro world of 1960s futurism based on their original comic-books for them to inhabit
Sequel to the Ang Lee Hulk with Edward Norton inheriting the roles of Bruce Banner. Ang Lee gave the first film a visual brio but this often seems by the numbers
This has the clever idea of updating the Cyclops from The Odyssey to the era of the atomic monster movie. Director Bert I. Gordon is otherwise back at his usual tricks of serving up optically enlarged insects and animals
The sequel to Village of the Damned, this makes the mistake of humanising the cold alienness of the children and taking their side against humanity, losing much of the stark effect of the original
An adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story set in an environmentally collapsed future as scientists at a research station debate over what to do when one of their colleagues transforms into a chrysalis
The first sequel to the Troma hit and with all of the usual bad taste and moron humour you associate with a Troma film, but also better produced then most their films
A Russian SF film about humans who have been selected to participate in an intergalactic sports tournament. This feels that it has been construed as an anti-Alita: Battle Angel and has some stunning design work
An adult film that gained a critical respectability when it came out, an avant garde work set in a future where the populace has become impotent and the handful unaffected perform sex in clubs for paying audiences
A sequel entirely unrelated to The Curse only worth seeing for a series of entertaining entertainingly ridiculous effects where a man’s arm transforms into a mutant snake
The second sequel to the original The Fly, which does feature more teleporter accidents and mutations but for some reason no fly hybrids this time
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
Austrian-made film about people being attacked by mutant creatures on a mountainside. This has the cheesily absurd feel of a 1980s B movie and has some fun producing creature effects
Giant spider film that seems to be aiming for the same gonzo territory the killer shark film has of recent. Instead we get an average B movie with some good effects and a line of comic banter that falls flat in the delivery
French-Belgian adult animated film in the gonzo trippy vein of Ralph Bakshi and Bill Plympton – a visually madcap satire of science-fiction tropes and 1980s East-West tensions, full of wackily surreal visuals
One of the early efforts among the surge of Marvel Comics adaptations on the big screen in the early 2000s. A disappointing adaptation that feels more like a series of posed comic-book panels than it ever does a movie
A routine SF film about an space expedition through a wormhole to investigate a habitable planet where the mission is endangered by warring factions among the crew
Adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space, directed by Roger Corman’s production designer Daniel Haller that draws on the look and mood of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films
The Dyatlov Pass Incident has gained a fascination as an unexplained mystery. Here Renny Harlin makes a Found Footage film that heads for full on conspiracy theory explanations
One of a spate of remakes of old AIP titles conducted in 2001, this spins the original giant spider amok film out into a superhero-gone-wrong take on Spider-Man
Cryptic and baffling French art science-fiction film involving strange happenings at a laboratory where we never get any explanations about what is going on
Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin turn their attentions to revamping the 1950s giant insect film. They bring top-drawer effects to bear but everything else plays to standard formula
Joe D’Amato directs one of the numerous 80s Italian Mad Max 2 copies. One of the very first films to depict televised human bloodsports later popularised by the likes of The Running Man and The Hunger Games
An animated crossover where you cannot help but think that the two styles of either – a grim loner who lives in a dark milieu vs a team of manic teenagers spouting surfer speak – are only going to end up clashing
A film from Duffer Brothers creators of tv’s Stranger Things. This is a fallout shelter drama where the Duffers create a strong paranoid mood but kill the film with a ridiculous twist ending
The very first ever team-up between Marvel Comics characters on the screen in which Bill Bixby’s Hulk meets Thor. The film has a camp reputation because of its Thor who resembles a Swedish bodybuilder
One of three films produced by Fangoria magazine, this takes place in a post-holocaust wasteland of crazies and is certainly gore-drenched but unfortunately only churns cliches
Kate Mara plays an astronaut returned from a space mission strangely changed. Before you can say The Quatermass Xperiment, ‘something’ mysteriously appears to be entering the house at night
Low-budget adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth about a town where the locals have become mutant fish people, which has been weirdly mashed up with a girls boarding school story
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
B-movie in which a chemical spill at a lab causes a mass murderer to turn into a giant mosquito hybrid. An efficient cobbling of cliches that comes out as a B budget variation n The Fly.
A sequel to Meatball Machine, the film that started the gonzo Japanese splatter genre, filled with wild mutations, over-the-top splatter, a surreal sense of humour and an obsession with schoolgirls in panties
Disney live-action comedy where Dean Jones accidentally creates a duck that lays golden eggs
Produced by Wes Craven and his son, this started as a third Hills Have Eyes film but ends up a generic Alien copy with a mutant monster hunting people in a desert laboratory
This comes with an insane mash-ups of ideas – modern day Frankenstein monster is thrown back in time to the Civil War (in a process that also creates multiple copies) and ends up fighting on the Northern side
Bigfoot film made by two brothers using a non-professional cast and crew, which emerges better than you might expect and generates passable tension
A ridiculously stupid giant bug film, albeit not unentertainingly so. This is a monster movie that has been premised solely on the provision of ridiculous creature effects every few minutes and very little else that one can take seriously beyond that
Long-planned project that creates an interesting future scenario, epic action, an array of Dirty Dozen characters but emerges as surprisingly trivial
B movie with Beverly Garland venturing into the swamps in search of her missing husband to find a scientist has transformed him into an alligator hybrid
A very different to the current SF boom in Chinese cinema at the moment, this is a Cyberpunk film about the construction of mutant fighters
Low-budget superhero film. With a plot that strips the superheroes of their powers and them facing a villain’s deathtraps, we end up with little more than a Saw copy in funny costumes
Very typical 1980s horror film steeped in an enthusiasm for the genre that makes a beeline for cheesy mutant monster effects
What will be the very last of 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films, this is more like a superheroic version of The Breakfast Club than any of the other X-Men films
A nerdy guy sets out across a post-apocalyptic wasteland filled with giant animals to be with the girl of his dreams. This sound promising in description but suffers an identity crisis on screen
Charles and Albert Band had a success with the H.P. Lovecraft adapted Re-Animator; their attempt to replicate that with another Lovecraft story is lacking Stuart Gordon’s splattery black humour
Night of the Living Dead-influenced cheapie about zombified children wearing black nailpolish who blow their parents up with deadly hugs. This has no ambition beyond providing entertainingly preposterous meltdown effects every few minutes
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
Jack Frost, not to be confused with the Michael Keaton film of the same name, was an amusing horror comedy about a killer mutant snowman. This is a sequel that takes Jack to a beach resort in Hawaii
This leads to you expect a horror comedy but spends half its running time in build-up with no comedy or monster slaying, although does deliver on this with an entertaining effects-heavy climax
A relative disappointment among the mostly excellent animated DC superhero films, this pits each member of the Justice League with a matching super-villain only who seemingly kills them off
1980s makeup effects vehicle with students uncovering mad science experiments in an old house. The effects get the better of the cast, most notedly a horrendously over-acting Rod Steiger
Despite the possibilities set up by the title, this features no vampires nor atomic monsters but is an Italian film influenced by Eyes Without a Face about a mad surgeon trying to restore a woman’s disfigured face
Sequel the demented Attack of Titan with its wild images of humanity under attack from mindless giants that bite their heads off, which was shot back-to-back and released a few months later
This feels like a remake of the Roger Corman post-holocaust cavemen cheapie Teenage Caveman. It cannot escape that at heart it is never more than a B movie about caveman fighting mutants
Film about giant crabs amok that feels like a throwback to a certain kind of 1950s monster movie. This plays itself remarkably seriously for the most part only to fall apart right at the end
A low-budget post-apocalyptic action film featuring the almost completely forgotten martial arts and (non)-actor Ron Marchini who must venture out into the ruined city to rescue three girls
Melissa McCarthy, along with Octavia Spencer as her best friend, is a comic screw-up who obtain superpowers
Wes Craven makes a film based on the DC Comics character but reduces the mood of the original to something cartoonish. One of Craven’s worst films
Larry Cohen’s 1974 cult classic about a killer mutant baby gets the remake treatment. Even though Cohen co-writes the script here, the remake manages to wring anything interesting out of the original
This has a cute title pun but otherwise is a feeble SF comedy
Ridiculous, splatter-heavy Australian-made film about a prison camp where prisoners are offered their freedom in a run while pursued by armed hunters
The 1980 Alligator was amusing but this hardly one of the sequels the world was burning to see. An utterly formulaic copy that is killed by impoverished giant alligator effects
The second film from Fred Olen Ray who has become a prolific B-budget director since. This is a zombie film, a copy of the original Dawn of the Dead, slapped with a SF title to popularise on the then recent success of Alien
The first big screen incarnation of the Marvel Comics character, the theatrically released pilot for a dreary tv series starring Nicholas Hammond that stripped Spider-Man down to being no more than a superpowered detective in a tv cop show
Dull and unimaginative Silent Hill sequel that only revisits what went before. The first film had an uncanny otherworldly atmosphere but the sequel reduces everything to no more than pop-up Clive Barker
One of the essential Troma films, this seems to have been conceived as Rock’n’Roll High School with Evil Dead-styled makeup effects and lots of moronic bad taste humour
Another of the horror versions of children’s stories, this has a in-name-only connection to Winnie-the-Pooh’s Piglet and is otherwise a variant on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre about a growth-hormone enhanced killer
A rather dull 1950s atomic monster movie about a series of bodies that are found on a seashore that lead to a scientist who has created a radioactive mutant monster
Not as you might assume an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine but another cheap and tatty Syfy Channel production that grafts Wells’ Morlocks onto the formula for their typical monster movie