The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Pharmaceuticals and Potions is a separate topic from Drugs and Addiction or Drug Hallucinations. These others refer to narcotics and recreational drug use or their effects. The entries under this theme refer to drugs that are made for medical or magical purposes.
Potions are used by Magicians and Mad Scientists to affect assorted changes. This may include for rejuvenation or to obtain Immortality, affect Animal Transformations, to aid in Magic Spells, or simply as poisons. The most famous potion is the one taken by Dr Jekyll to turn into Mr Hyde – see Jekyll and Hyde Films.
Films with more modern sensibilities deal with pharmaceuticals and their side-effects, which can do anything from create psychic powers and superpowers to cause people to become psychotic. These films often concern the use of untested drugs or drug companies conducting unethical experiments.
The third of Abbott and Costello’s comedic meet ups with the Famous Monsters – in this case a series of lowjinks as they encounter Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (played by Boris Karloff)
The second of the live-action Asterix films starring Gerard Depardieu, this is a visual delight that gets the comic-book’s nonsensical visuals down perfectly
The first of the live-action films based on the famous comic-books set during the Roman period, starring Gerard Depardieu who seems born to play the part of Obelix
A CGI animated film based on the popular comic-book character Asterix. After numerous other adaptations, this was the first of the Asterix films to be written directly for the screen
South Korean-made anime that takes a dive into horror grotesquerie in the story of a beauty product that offers to reshape flesh and a girl who becomes obsessed with it
Tatty British film that feels like an attempt to crossbreed A Nightmare on Em Street with The Silence of the Lambs. Star Elizabeth Hurley sued to prevent the film’s release.
Australian splatter film where a series of drug tests causes people to start melting down. A largely plotless film arranged around a series of gooey meltdown effects
Dead Rising was another zombie survival horror videogame from the creators of Resident Evil. Although nowhere near the popularity of the Milla Jovovich films, this was the first of two films based on the game
The revived Hammer Films takes on adapting Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with Eddie Izzard playing the role as a trans woman. This offers some amusing modernisations of the familiar, oft-filmed story
Retelling of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from cult Euro erotica director Walerian Borowczyk. Not quite the erotic retelling one expects, this nevertheless conducts some radical revisions
Softcore all-girl take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story concerning a formula that brings out repressed sexuality. The expected tumblings are handled with an arty flair that makes for an undeniably interesting watch
The fourth film version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring King Baggot in the title roles. This is very faithful to the story, even if it reads as largely unremarkable today
Classic silent version of the Jekyll and Hyde story. A reasonable if not truly standout version, dominated by John Barrymore’s highly melodramatic performance in the title roles
The definitive version of the Jekyll/Hyde story in this author’s opinion, winning a Best Actor Oscar for Fredric March. Rouben Mamoulian uses some unique directorial effects and laces the show with a strong undercurrent of repressed sexuality
Version of the Jekyll/Hyde story starring Spencer Tracy and with Ingrid Bergman as the dancehall girl he liaises with. This has been made in the vogue for Freudian psychology so the transformation is tricked out with dubious symbolism
Excellent tv movie adaptation of the Jekyll/Hyde story starring John Hannah. This is mounted with exquisite period detail and brings new depths and interpretations of an oft-told tale
Modernised version of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story starring Dougary Scott. The principal novelty here is that the bulk of the story takes place in a courtroom as Hyde is placed on trial for murder
Rather enjoyable latter day Hammer Film, which plays its title pun surprisingly seriously. Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick are perfectly matched as the gender-changing Dr Jekyll
The fifth film where cult Spanish horror actor Paul Naschy played the werewolf Waldermar Daninsky. Here Waldemar is pitted up against Dr Jekyll with Naschy playing both Waldemar and Mr Hyde
Another variation on the Dr Jekyll and Hyde becomes a woman theme. This version is played as a modern comedy wherein Tim Daly turns into Sean Young who plays to bitchy excess
Probably the worst film adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this opts for a trashy sordidness with a lunatically over-the-top Anthony Perkins in the centre of the show
Modestly creepy film about a group of subjects locked in a hospital as part of a drug trial that proceeds to go wrong as some of the group have an adverse reaction and turn crazed
The adaptation of the Stephen King novel with Drew Barrymore giving a fantastic performance as a young girl with pyrokinetic powers on the run as she is hunted by a sinister government agency
One of Stephen King’s best books is given a new film workover by Blumhouse. Keith Thomas made a standout directorial debut with The Vigil, but this is a disaster, one of the worst of all King adaptations
TV mini-series sequel to Stephen King’s Firestarter that now sees Charlie McGee in her twenties played by Marguerite Moreau. The story feels under-plotted and over-padded
This involves girls abducted into a sex trafficking operation, along with mad science and possible cloning. Quite what it is all about is a good question
Okay if never standout Danish-made attempt to copy a Disney animated film concerning the underwater adventures of three children transformed into fish
The title suggests either a comedic take on the superhero film or a teen film about a kid discovering superpowers. The least thing you expect this to be is a French police thriller about a unit investigating super-powered crimes
The title and names are changed, otherwise this is an extremely faithful adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Christopher Lee. Not very successful at the time, this interestingly opens the story out with Freudian psychology
Horror film where Jesse Metcalfe has himself committed to an asylum to rescue his sister but comes up against Peter Stormare conducting mad science experiments turning inmates into zombies
A modermised retelling of the Jekyll/Hyde story as a teen horror film where Jekyll (Bryan Fisher) is experimenting with Ecstasy to try and have success with girls
Extremely silly and at times undeniably funny spoof on Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – here Dr Jekyll becomes a coke addict who snorts his formula and turns into a swinger with a giant afro
A film spun off from the popular Canadian comedy troupe Kids in the Hall. The loose plot concerns a happiness drug but is mostly there to feature the regulars playing multiple character
Another of Sony’s films spun off from Spider-Man supporting characters. In the comics, Kraven is a Spider-Man super-villain with a big game hunter motif but here is turned into a superhero
A comedy based on the hit song starring a then unknown Sandra Bullock as a nerd scientist who synthesizes a Gypsy love potion that causes anyone she gives it to to fall in love with her
Nicolas Cage goes all Death Wish and slaughters a cult that murdered his wife. A regular revenge film is transformed by director Panos Cosmatos into something bizarrely primal
Amid Kenneth Branagh’s dynamic cinematic revival of Shakespeare in the 1990s, there was this all-star adaptation of Shakespeare’s whimsy about fairy enchantments
Under the umbrella title ShakespeareRetold, Shakespeare’s tale of fairy enchantments and romantic mix-ups is reimagined in a modern day British holiday camp
A filmed version of Julie Taymor’s staging of the Shakespeare play about fairt enchantments. Forget standard interpretations, Taymor opens the play up with an extraordinary visual flair
Adaptation of the Shakespeare play about fairy enchantments by Doctor Who showrunner Russell T. Davies. Davies goes with a standard interpretation alongside radical reinvention – Athens as a fascist dictatorship
Jerry Lewis is either a low him or hate him figure; whatever the case, one should give this, his best film, a chance … It is Lewis offering his own comedic spin on the Jekyll/Hyde story, which contains a great performance on his part as he swings between a socially inept nerd and smooth lounge singer
Remake of the Jerry Lewis film is a comedic tour-de-force for Eddie Murphy as he swings between a shy 400 lb professor and a manic, testostoronally charged health junkie
Sequel to the Eddie Murphy remake of The Nutty Professor. That film’s tour-de-force was a scene with Murphy playing all the members of his family. Here the family have been brought to the fore. Murphy’s performance and the effects are expectedly great but the plot is all over the place
Robert Rodriguez made his first film for $7000 and repeats the same here to show anyone can do it. The result is a wild, mind-bending work loosely based on his own experience as a human test subject in drug trials
Enormously entertaining David Cronenberg film about psychic powers. Cronenberg is fascinated with the conceptua possibilities and creates some sensational set-pieces
The first of a series of poorly made sequels to David Cronenberg’s Scanners. Cronenberg’s ideas have been stripped down to no more than a series of head-exploding effects
Second of the sequels to David Cronenberg’s Scanners, this features Liliana Komorowska who becomes crazed after taking a scan suppressant drug
Comedy vehicle for Marlon Wayans in which he becomes a test subject for a sense-heightening drug. Marlon’s natural comic energy far exceeds the slightness of the premise
Troma launch into their parody of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, producing what may be their bad taste masterpiece to date
Shoddy low-budget Canadian-made attempt to jump aboard the Star Wars fad, this promotes itself as a bogus sequel to the H.G. Wells classic
1950s mad scientist film where a scientist develops a regeneration serum only to turn Mari Blanchard into a man-eating femme fatale
Shrek was a fresh and original hit. The first of four insipid sequels, this seems to merely coast by on our liking of the characters while upping the fairytale parody
One of the cheap fairytale adaptations made by Cannon Films in the 1980s. A dreary impoverished run through by the numbers with Morgan Fairchild as the Wicked Stepmother and Tahnee Welch in the title role
An animated revival of The Smurfs. This was greeted with a very negative reception. With a massive celebrity voice line-up packed into almost any corner of the film the casting director can manage
Before the likes of Defendor, Kick-Ass and Super, there was this, one of the best comedies about superheroes with no powers. The film loves screwing with its audience and comes with a series of mind-bending flips between drug hallucination and subjective view of the superpowers in action
From Joseph Kosinski, then riding high as the director of Top Gun: Maverick, Chris Hemsworth is cast in an interestingly ambiguous role as a scientist conducting illicit experiments with behaviour altering drugs
George Lucas’s venture into animation was critically pilloried. It’s not bad, just no different from a formula film like Rise of the Guardians or Epic. From the man who made Star Wars, you had higher expectations
The third of Disney Dexter Reilly films in which teen inventor Kurt Russell creates a super-strength cereal
An absurdly over-the-top film where aging Demi Moore takes a serum that turns her into a youthful Margaret Qualley. A ridiculous film that for some reason did well at awards season
The Christopher Reeve Superman films started superbly but became wrecked by the producers’ insistence on the insertion of comedy element. Here they turn their attentions to Superman’s cousin Kara whose screen debut is derailed by a horrendously overacting Faye Dunaway
Film about a penis-enlarging drug that creates zombies, this goes for an outrageous bad taste vein are rarely lets up
Jean Renoir is considered one of the greatest of all film directors – this is his only venture into genre material, a version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Though Renoir seems disinterested in making a horror film, he offers up the most faithful interpretation of the story on screen to date
Melissa McCarthy, along with Octavia Spencer as her best friend, is a comic screw-up who obtain superpowers
Hammer Films had great success with their revivals of Dracula and Frankenstein and went on to adapt other classic horror stories. Here they take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story as a scientist unleashes his evil personality within
From writers of several Saw films and The Collector, a film about teens under attack in the woods where it is unclear what is going on oe who they are facing for most of the film
Noah Baumbach makes a bitingly satiric adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel about the panic caused by a toxic cloud
Robert Zemeckis’s remake of the Roald Dahl story and Nicolas Roeg film proves a head-scratching effort that misfires on almost every cue
A remake of the cult Herschell Gordon Lewis splatter film about a stage magician who creates illusions of eviscerating people on stage
A psychic powers film like Carrie having been reduced to the crass high school comedy of something like Porky’s
A sequel to the teen psychic powers comedy Zapped! that takes things even more crass and vulgar
Films about androids and artificial intelligence have taken off in the 2010s. This comes produced by Ridley Scott who made Blade Runner, the defining classic on the theme; on the other hand, it ends up in the hands of a director who specialises in relationship dramas