The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Any story that has a hero or heroine usually has a villain of some type. There are many memorable examples of these but not all villains are Super-Villains. Super-Villains are regular villains turned up to 15 on the dial.
Super-Villains are not just criminal masterminds but are criminal geniuses. They will frequently run empires of crime, plan world domination plots, harness Advanced Weaponry and secrets of super-science or even are Mad Scientists. They can have Hypnotism and Mind Control abilities and in Superhero Films they almost invariably have superpowers. They will often wear a costume or hide their identity behind a mask and in comic-book are often known by some motif or take a title. They are sometimes disfigured or mutated and driven by a desire for Revenge.
The first Super-Villain was Professor Moriarty in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Pulp fiction was alive with evil masterminds like the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu or silent cinema’s Dr Mabuse. More exotic super-villains featuring some costuming quirk or facial deformity appeared in the Dick Tracy comic-books and this idea was taken up soon after by the Batman comic-book to memorable effect. The comic-book has taken to the super-villain like no other and created a lengthy line of super-powered villains
Super-villains sporadically appeared in the Serials of the 1930s and 40s and in the superhero tv series of the 1950s, although most of these were just mundane criminals. The first major screen super-villains were the nemeses fought by James Bond in the Spy Films of the 1960s and the colourful pantheon of over-acting guest stars on tv’s Batman (1966-8).
The comic-book super-villain gained strength with the maturation of the superhero film in the 1970s and 80s and have regularly appeared on screen since. By the 2000s and 10s, we had even seen a number of films devoted to the villains alone with The Joker, Cat Woman, Harley Quinn and Venom all getting standalone works. There have even been works about super-villain teams like Suicide Squad, not to mention spoof efforts like the Despicable Me films.
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
The first film appearance of one of the great super-villains of pulp fiction. This was a silent film version with Warner Oland cast in the title role, making a rolypoly Fu Mancu in contrast to some of the other great actors in the part
The second of the films made about the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu, the first made in sound. This is where the film series started to find itself, turning in some superlative thrills and a wonderful battle of wits between hero and villain. Pulp thrills at their best
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.
Boris Karloff plays the super-villain Fu Manchu, giving a performance of calculating evil in a film of great pulp thrillers
The second of Fritz Lang;s films about the criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse, which was banned under the Nazi regime and forced Lang to flee the country. Not quite the equal of its predecessor, Lang is still on fine form and makes an exciting crime melodrama
The original and greatest of all SF serial adventures and a huge influence on George Lucas. Despite the primitive effects, this still has a marvellously rousing imagination that stands up today. Two serial sequels followed
This is a standout serial based on the famous comic-book detective, featuring some of the best of all serial cliffhangers and action set-pieces, not to mention wonderfully creative super-science inventions
The second of the Flash Gordon serials, which relocates action to Mars following the popularity of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds broadcast. The film has a wonderful imagination that far outshines the tattiness of usual serial production values
The first screen appearance of the famous newspaper comic-strip stage magician superhero in a serial adaptation that strips out all his illusion-casting abilities and reduces him to a mundane crimefighter
The third of the Flash Gordon serials, not quite at the heights of the previous two but with a colour and exoticism that was head and shoulders above the other serials of the era
A serial adaptation of the popular radio superhero, which gets the look of the character perfect but drops all his mystical powers
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
Captain America’s first screen appearance was this 15 chapter serial, although about the only common element with the comic is the costume. On the plus side, the action and cliffhangers are good, while Lionel Atwill chews scenery in grand style as the villain
A fifteen chapter serial about a villain who uses an atomic device to transform into a dead pirate captain. Filled with some wonderfully exciting action set-pieces and cliffhangers
A rather dull twelve-chapter serial in which a criminologist tries to stop the titular criminal mastermind tries to steal a device that can block electrical transmissions
A rather dull fifteen-chapter serial about the efforts a detective who sets out to stop Sombra, an Asian spy intent on stealing US atomic rocket secrets
A 15 chapter serial that marks the very first live-action screen appearance of Superman. The superheroics and effects are painfully primitive today (where Superman flying is represented by animation) but the serial gets many aspects of the comic-book down right
Not to be confused with the Joel Schumacher atrocity, this was the second Batman film ever made, a 15-chapter serial. This is mostly worth watching as a novelty in its laughable attempts to approximate the superheroics of the comic-book in comparison to modern counterparts
An obscure and little-seen but fascinating Japanese copy of The Invisible Man films wherein a scientist becomes an invisible man after taking his formula. Let down by weak effects.
This fifteen chapter serial was the second ever Superman film. It is a vigorously entertaining run through the comic’s basics and features the first screen appearance of Lex Luthor
A twelve chapter serial about the hunt for The Phantom, a criminal who operates with the use of a ray that can render him invisible
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 second of the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy films. The film has cheap, dreary set-ups and the running time is padded by footage from the first film. This does have the novelty of being one of the first Mexican films to feature a masked wrestler hero
Czech Jules Verne adaptation that conducts an extraordinary blend of animation and live-action. Maybe the purest evocation of Steampunk that has ever been placed on screen. A work of underappreciated genius
A bad movie classic. As the title explains, we get a revived mummy pitted against an actor in a ridiculously clunky tin man suit. Third in the Mexican-made Aztec Mummy series, the biggest ripoff is that 3/4 of the film consist of footage recycled from the preceding films
The third film about the title criminal mastermind from Fritz Lang. Here Lang returns to a radically different Germany to the one he fled in the 1930s, the West Germany of the Cold War, to deliver a creepily paranoid work about the surveillance society
Toho Films of the 1960s are best known for the Godzilla films and assorted monster bashes. This is one of their non-monster films, part of a spate of mutant supervillain films concerning a villain who has invented a teleportation machine and is using it to exact revenge
The last really good animated film made during Walt Disney’s lifetime and for the next couple of decades. Filled with cuddly anthropomorphism and charmed delights
The first of five West German-made sequels featuring Fritz Lang’s great criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse, who this time is masterminding a plot to create mind controlled zombies
One amid the spate of Jules Verne adaptations of in the 50s/60s with Vincent Price as Robur, the inventor of an amazing airship
The first of the James Bond films. While the formula of the series is not quite established yet, this is a slick exciting work that did a number of groundbreaking things and created some iconic images
Third of the German thrillers of the 1960s featuring the criminal mastermind Dr Mabuse, a remake of the 1933 film where Mabuse continues his criminal schemes via mind control despite being confined to an asylum
This was the eighth of the Carry On films. The popular British comedy series turn their bawdy sights to conducting a spoof the James Bond film during the height of the spy movie fad
Godzilla creator Ishiro Honda makes a film about a meek man who gains the ability to transform into a mist and promptly becomes a bank-robbing super-villain
This is surely one of the great exploitation titles of all time. Another Mexican wrestling superhero film where a duo of woman wrestlers take on the Aztec Mummy from another Mexican horror series
The third of the James Bond films and the point where everything that has been defined as the formula of the series – the gadgets, the villains, the henchmen, the cars, the world domination plots – falls into place perfectly
The first and best of the series of films featuring Christopher Lee at his ice cold best as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. This was made at the height of the Anglo-horror cycle and employs the production values to superlative regard.
The fourth James Bond film and crippled by the misfortune of coming just after Goldfinger, which defined the formula and became the peak of the series. By contrast, this is stuck with having to make everything bigger and more spectacular
Very silly AIP comedy that parodies the massively popular James Bond films of the era, as well as features Vincent Price as the villain spoofing his appearances in the studio’s Edgar Allan Poe films
The second film with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu. Not quite up with its predecessor The Face of Fu Manchu but still an exciting blend of pulp melodrama, super-science and Yellow Peril
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. tv series was construed as lighter take on the James Bond films. This, the third theatrical film recut from tv episodes, is one of the most entertaining, creating a memorable super-villain and almost entirely consisting of over-the-top death traps and action set-pieces
Italian-made sequel to the campy Vincent Price starring Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine. Directed by the usually great Mario Bava and overrun by the buffoonish clowning of Italian comics Franco and Ciccio
The first of the films spun off from Gerry Anderson’s cult puppet tv series. Not a completely successful transition but it is, as always with an Anderson production, worth watching for what the Andersons do best – making amazing models and blowing them up
A film spinoff from the popular 1960s Batman tv show starring Adam West. At half-an-hour twice a week, the series was an enjoyable piece of surrealistic zaniness but its appeals seem stretched at feature-length
Sax Rohmer created the super-villain Fu Manchu, less well-known was his character of the female super-villain Sumuru who leads an all-woman army in a world domination plot. This was one of two Sumuru films
One of the numerous spy films of the 1960s, featuring Patrick O’Neal who goes into action with a magic invisibility ring
Mario Bava directs a sublimely stylish and tongue-in-cheek adaptation of an Italian comic-book about a masked super-thief who delights in outwitting and taunting the bumbling authorities
The third of the fifilms with Christopher Lee as the Chinese super-villain Fu Manchu and generally the point the series started to go downhill
The fifth James Bond film takes the series to Japan. New director Lewis Gilbert is determined to outdo what has come before in terms of the spectacular, especially WITH the construction of the massive volcano set
The second of the films spun off from the Gerry Anderson puppet tv series and a much better dramatically sustained film than its predecessor
The fourth of the Christopher Lee-starring Fu Manchu films and the point the series was handed over to exploitation director Jess Franco and started to go badly downhill
The sixth James Bond film where Sean Connery was replaced by Australian model George Lazenby who had never acted before. Lazenby is a disliked Bond but that tends does stand in the way of the fact that this is a fine character-driven Bond film with some of the best action sequences of the series
The fifth and final of the Fu Manchu films with Christopher Lee as the super-villain Fu Manchu. The last two were made by exploitation director Jess Franco and only worth watching for Lee’s icily autocratic presence
Bulldog Drummond was a gentleman adventurer hero popular in books and films of the 1930s/40s. Here he is reincarnated as a playboy spy amid the spate of James Bond inspired spy films of the 1960s, battling a super-villain outfitted with an army of women with robot brains
Droll, elegant camp masterpiece with Vincent Price giving the best performance of his life as a deformed madman employing the Biblical Plagues of Egypt as a motif to take revenge against the surgeons who killed his wife
The seventh James Bond film where Sean Connery was inveigled back to the role with a heft salary increase. However, the result is the worst of all the Connery Bonds with an incoherent plot and uneven action scenes
Sequel to The Abominable Dr Phibes that brings back Vincent Price and seeks to replicate the same droll campy humour as before but with more mixed results this time
This offers the amusing idea of a softcore parody of the old Flash Gordon serials. A surprisingly well-made film in terms of effects but the jokes often seems belaboured amid the witless mugging
The eighth James Bond film and Roger Moore’s debut in the role. This is one of the most variant Bond films also incorporating Blaxploitation and voodoo elements
Another of the films featuring Santo, the Mexican masked wrestler superhero. In one of the duller entries, Santo here travels to Spain and is pitted against a mad scientist operating an artworks theft operation
Ninth and weakest of the James Bond films. Ian Fleming created a great nemesis in the assassin Scaramanga and the film casts it with Christopher Lee – only to fail to write the role interesting enough for Lee to fill
Animated parody of the Tarzan films made with a very adult sense of humour that was banned in several countries as a result
Fourth of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films, this lets all restraints go and becomes completely madcap
The single most influential science-fiction film of all time, one that created a massive industry of sequels and spinoffs, not to mention copycats, and changed the way that people thought of science-fiction
The tenth of the James Bond films, the third for Roger Moore. This determines to be spectacular in terms of international locales, effects and sets. It was also the point where the Moore Bond films started to become giant cartoon spectacles of the absurd
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
This is where the modern comic-book superhero began on screen. A film that is almost completely successful in banishing campy silliness and taking itself seriously, allowing Superman to fly with magnificent effects. Christopher Reeve shines as the ultimate boy scout
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
Another of the mostly disastrous Marvel tv adaptations of the 1970s. Captain America is sidelined for much of the show. This does conduct the coup of casting Christopher Lee as the villain but criminally gives him nothing to do
The eleventh James Bond film and one that sees that series trying to compete with the success of Star Wars and taking Roger Moore into orbit. One of the most spectacular productions of the series, it is also killed by a cartoonish unserious tone
A cheap Spanish-made copy of the first Christopher Reeve Superman film
Peter Sellers’ last film and usually lambasted by his fans. Spoofing the great villain, Sellers indulges his penchant for playing multiple roles and the result is some likeable silliness
Dino de Laurentiis climbed aboard the Star Wars fad with this remake of the classic serial. Against expectation, the film’s campy tone and eye-popping sets and costumes work and it has become an audience favourite
Shot back-to-back with the first Christopher Reeve film, this then became a mess behind the scenes. The end result emerges fairly well with the show dominated by the magnificent Phantom Zones villains and giving depth to the Superman-Lois relationship
George Lucas’s first sequel to Star Wars and a work that holds up every bit as well as its predecessor, in many places betters it. The story darkens the mythos and introduces new characters, while the special effects sequences are the peak of the series
From they heyday of the 1970s martial arts film, karate champion James Ryan must reunite the old gang to take on a super-villain who wants to enslave the world with a mind control drug derived from potatoes
Second of the Star Trek films, usually regarded as the fan favourite because of its often moving character focus on themes of life, death and aging. Ricardo Montalban makes a grandly theatrical villain and the film gets some great suspense out of space war sequences
A strong contender for Worst Film Ever. Rather than create any effects, it has simply uplifted footage from Star Wars, while the score is a mismash taken from popular films of the era. The dialogue is so bizarrely surreal it makes the brain hurt trying to understand it
A disappointing end to George Lucas’s original Star Wars trilogy. The script lazily wraps up loose ends while sidelining the new characters introduced the last time, and the climax rehashes the climaxes of the two other films
Witty and overlooked parody of the superhero with Alan Arkin as a retired superhero trying to get back into the game. Made before superhero films became big and has a number of charms that were ahead of its time
The thirteenth James Bond film. the fifth for Roger Moore. While the preceding entry had tried to trim back the cartoonish excesses of the Moore era, it is back to business as usual here. The film frequently feels divorced from the remotest shred of realism
Rogue James Bond film made outside the regular series due to a complicated copyright battle. Sean Connery was inveigled back the role and this has some standout casting that is a welcome relief from the unserious Roger Moore films
The first film from low-budget hack Jim Wynorski. How can you resist the absurd B-budget mix of a trio of very well-endowed women kicking ass, martial arts action, women’s prison scenes and mad scientist super-villains
A version of the H.G. Wells novel conducted as a mini-series of six half-hour episodes from the BBC. This is the most faithful adaptation of the book so far
Michael Crichton’s books and films are always run through with a fear of technology run amok. Here Crichton makes an enjoyably straightforward directorial outing about a police squad set up to stop runaway robots,
The final outing as James Bond for a visibly aging Roger Moore, the fourteenth Bond film all told. One of the more anonymous among the giant unserious cartoon shows the Moore Bond films became
Strange Canadian children’s film about a boy who goes bald and is then given a peanut butter solution that causes wild uncontrolled hair growth
The second of the Care Bears films, light, insubstantial and rather sweet as pre-adolescent creatures of indeterminate gender romp around in their cloud kingdom banishing bad feelings
Completely insane 1980s spy film – a madcap mahsup of elements including James Bond gadgetry, mad scientists, action and splatter served up with not a shred of realism. The crowning glory is a completely OTT Gene Simmons as a cross-dressing super-villain
Mel Brooks parodies the Star Wars films. As with most Brooks films, the humour is broad and scattershot but occasionally amusing
A Bollywood film about an invisible superhero, this is sparing on effects but should be seen for the lunatic entertainment value it offers, including several surreal song and dance numbers and much frenetic slapstick
Live-action film based on the Mattel toy line and popular animated tv series. Given a Cannon Films budget, it emerges as a cheesily absurd Flash Gordon/Conan the Barbarian knockoff
The last of the Christopher Reeve Superman films after the series was taken over by Cannon Films. Usually regarded as the series low point due to the cheapness of the effects, this to its credits abandons the comedy focus of the preceding two films and has some not uninteresting aspects
The third of the Care Bears film conducts a crossover with Alice in Wonderland, although it is an adaptation that is liberal in its treatment of Lewis Carroll to say the least
Tim Burton borrows from the dark brooding graphic novels of the era and gives us a beautiful, stunningly designed film that digs deep into the psychological recesses of the masks and funny faces
The Warren Beatty directed and starring adaptation of the popular newspaper comic-strip detective proved a flop. Beatty creates a highly stylised world and peoples it with an all-star cast but fails to invest the world with any depth
Claude Chabrol updates Fritz Lang super-villain Dr Mabuse to a millennial West Berlin where Alan Bates is a tv mogul who masterminds a mass suicide cult via messages hidden inside advertising
The first live-action spinoff of the comic-book and animated series still holds up well two decades later. Little of the manic barrage of pop culture has dated, there are some excellent animatronics that allow the Turtles to engage in a series of high-energy fights and more importantly emerge as distinctive characters
Cheap and fairly terrible adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero from low-budget director Albert Pyun. The superheroics look impoverished and Matt Salinger makes a dopey-looking Steve Rogers