The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Supernatural Retribution concerns a sense of justice enacted by non-corporeal agencies. This may be someone that has been murdered or wrongly killed who rises from the grave or returns as a ghost to exact vengeance against those responsible. In other cases, the wronged dead can possesses another person or even an inanimate object.
In other examples, the retribution can take the form of Curses that exact justice against the children, family members, even descendants of the guilty party or entire towns, many years later. Or the form of retribution may simply be an invisible force that affects people that have disturbed a tomb or sacred cultural object.
Stories of Supernatural Retribution are common in Anthology Films, which frequently feature stories in which somebody has gotten away with a crime only for the sting in the tale to be that they have reckoned without ….
An incredibly good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. Thought lost for many years, this was made at the height of German Expressionism and has a vividness that other adaptations lack
Not to be confused with the hit tv series, this features Boris Karloff as a wrongly executed man come back from the dead to exact justice
A film from the famous poverty row studios of its era that has gained a certain cult reputation. The film transcends its cheapness to create an undeniable spooky atmosphere in its tale of a ghostly revenant, even if the cult has tended to overstate its effectiveness
Film version of a classic play about an inspector who calls to expose the sins of a wealthy family and their involvement in the death of a girl. Comes with a fantastical twist in the tale.
A bad movie classic. Plenty of hysterically funny dialogue and one of the most ridiculous looking movie monsters of all time – a possessed tree (where the film also manages to wind in the 1950s obsession with atomic monsters)
Hammer Films’ one and only Sherlock Holmes adaptation. It is beautiful to see the opulence of early Hammer productions brought to bear giving the story unusually effective life
Japanese ghost story based on a kabuki play that has been filmed numerous times. Much more character and story driven than modern kaidan eiga, this builds to a grim and spooky climax with undeniable effect
Rather drab and cheap Japanese horror film about a disfigured actress who returns to life as a hairy vampire creature to exact vengeance. Not without its schlocky appeals, the hairy vampire bride looks more funny than threatening
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s. While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects
A film from the early days of the Anglo-Horror cycle about the greedy relatives seeking a will being killed by a possibly supernatural cat
Bizarre Mexican film about a resurrected warlock who transforms into a bat creature to take retribution against the descendants of those who burned him at the stake
The fourth of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe films. This mixes it up slightly and adapts four Poe stories into three episodes, each of which stars Vincent Price
This was ostensibly another in Roger Corman’s series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations with Vincent Price possessed by his ancestor. This only borrows Poe’s title and instead adapts an H.P. Lovecraft story.
The great Mario Bava directs a horror anthology of three tales, delivering each with considerable spooky atmosphere. The standout among these is The Wurdulak with Boris Karloff as a vampire preying on his family.
With the success of the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price, this was a copycat attempt that cast Price in a trio of tales adapted from another writer of American horror stories, Nathaniel Hawthorne
The greatest of all Japanese ghost stories. This is an anthology that tells four stories. Each is made with an extraordinary visual flair and great attention to colour, lighting and design
A classic Japanese ghost story (kaidan eiga) about two women who survive by preying on passersby. This adopts the lyrical realism of the era and builds to reach an incredibly haunted conclusion
Brazil’s Ze do Caixao or Coffin Joe is one of the most evil characters ever created on film, spearheaded by director/star Jose Mojica Marins’s contempt for the weak and catalogue of brutalities and blasphemies
Entry in the Anglo-horror cycle with a resurrected witch and an imported Lon Chaney Jr presiding over deviltry in a sleepy English village
An entry in the Italian Gothic cycle featuring the great Barbara Steele, This comes with superbly eerie black-and-white mood but proves slow-paced when it comes to its supernatural retribution plot. It even manages to waste Steele in a nothing role.
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
A standout adaptation of the oft-filmed kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) Yotsuya Kaidan/The Yotsuya Ghost Story. A beautifully filmed classic version of the story
Classic work of the 1960s Italian Gothic cycle featuring Barbara Steele, shot in beautifully brooding black-and-white and with a remarkable sadomasochistic undertow
A Japanese monster movie with a difference. The second in a trilogy of films about a giant stone deity that awakens to defend villagers in trouble
One of the more unusual Japanese monster movies, one that operates just as much a samurai film, concerning the stone god of a mountain that awakens to defend downtrodden peasants
The second and more sophisticated of the Ze do Caixao/Coffin Joe films with director Jose Mojica Marins as a diabolic undertaker who delights in inflicting a catalogue of tortures on the weak-minded
An exquisitely haunted Japanese ghost story from the muchly overlooked Kaneto Shindo that conjures some moments of genuinely otherworldly atmosphere as two ghost women take vengeance against samurai
Trilogy of Edgar Allan Poe tales from three European directors. Roger Vadim’s opening episode drags but both Louis Malle and Federico Fellini deliver standout works in their respective segments
One of the better films from exploitation director Jess Franco that develops a haunted atmosphere that while crude is hard to shake
TV movie that was an early effort from celebrated producer Aaron Spelling, concerning an occult conspiracy surrounding a couple who inherit a farmhouse
Dreary film in which Vincent Price is a magistrate who is haunted by a manifestation of The Devil for his witch persecutions. The publicity falsely tried to sell this as an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation.
A routine haunted house film that was made as a tv movie,. One of the several early genre works made by celebrated tv producer Aaron Spelling.
Amicus adapts several stories from the notorious EC Comic as one of their anthology films. Missing is EC’s black humour but this is a worthwhile Amicus anthology
Fascinating vampire film from the latter days of Hammer Films, this tries to do something different to the usual
Jess Franco rips off Ken Russell’s The Devils, although surely only Franco could take a story about nuns being tortured and witches burned at the stake and turn it into a work of softcore erotica
One of the best of the horror anthologies from UK’s Amicus Films. This adapts four stories from Robert Bloch, which are all tales told by the inmates of the titular asylum and settle in with chill effectiveness
Amicus Films venture into the haunted house genre with a newlywed Stephanie Beacham haunted by a disembodied hand but atmosphere is weakened by the constant reaching for crude shock effect
The second of Amicus Films’ adaptations from EC Comics, a follow-up to their earlier Tales from the Crypt and one of their weaker horror anthologies with the episodes much more variable in overall quality
A variant on the horror anthology film that manages to let the potential in its three stories fall through its hands. Narrated by Rod Serling, creator of tv’s classic anthology series The Twilight Zone, who must’ve needed the money
A Clint Eastwood directed/starring Western in which he plays a gunslinger who turns up in a town and exposes the guilty secrets of the townspeople in what is eventually revealed to be a supernatural twist
Jose Mojica Marins, the cult Brazilian director/actor best known as the demoniac undertaker Ze do Caixao/Coffin Joe, presides over a hotel where the guests meet sinister fates
A production from Amicus founder Milton Subtosky in the style of the horror anthology that made the company’s name
A key work of British exploitation director Norman J. Warren centred a series of supernatural novelty deaths
John Carpenter’s immediate successor to Halloween is a suspenseful and scary ghost story about undead sailors descending on a small town in a fog bank, even if the narrative logic holding everything together is thin
Frank De Felitta was mostly known for writing the novel that became Audrey Rose. He directs this tv movie where intellectually handicapped Larry Drake is killed by a lynch mob only to return from the dead as a scarecrow
Big-budget studio adaptation of Peter Straub’s novel about four aging men who tell ghost stories to exorcise their past. This strips many of the book’s storylines and never seems to make any of its attempts to scare pay off
Debate will always rage as to whether this was directed by Tobe Hooper or producer Steven Spielberg. It doesn’t alter the fact that it is a superlative rollercoaster of a ghost story that pulls its effects off flawlessly
Fairly negligible film about a family who move into a house to face the vengeance of a witch
Stephen King and George Romero collaborate on a horror anthology made as homage to the EC Comics, telling five tales that replicate the blacker-than-black sense of humour (and even the visual look) of the comic-book with hilarious results
A completely deranged film from Hong Kong’s Shaw Brothers involving the resurrection of a dead wife to exact retribution. Full of ghost sex, gore and madcap creature effects
One of the most influential horror films of the 1980s, creating a series of dream horror copycats. Before the campy, makeup effects driven sequels kicked in, Wes Craven’s original creates a genuinely unearthly series of nightmare jumps
From cult director Roberta Findlay, this is a film about a haunted ouija board. What is going on doesn’t make a lot of sense but Findlay serves up a series of bizarre deaths that prove entertainingly absurd
Amiably silly haunted house film with William Katt fighting rubbery pop-up monsters. This doesn’t take itself too seriously. A minor hit that produced three sequels.
An unknown Charlie Sheen stars in a film about teens haunted an avenging ghost car. An uncredited copy of Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter
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
One of the more underrated horror anthologies featuring an aging Vincent Price as narrator. All four stories are equally strong and venture into some pleasingly dark and grisly places
Unrelated in any way to the slasher film Prom Night, this plants tongue in cheek as it tries to imitate the A Nightmare on Elm Street films in its story of a vengeful undead prom queen
Interestingly watchable 80s film where a man becomes possessed by a disembodied soul that sets out seeking revenge against its killers. With lots of entertainingly lurid despatches
An early film from Renny Harlin made for Charles Band concerning a haunted prison. Features an unknown Viggo Mortensen in one of his earliest roles
The sequel to the hit George Romero-Stephen King horror anthology. This misses the original’s black humour by a mile and instead becomes overblown and filled with shrill unlikable characters
Lucio Fulci attained a cult following for his horror films. This reads like a tatty copy of Dario Argento’s Suspiria that has been bizarrely married to the psychic coma patient premise from Patrick
A cryptic ghost story based on a novel by Watership Down author Richard Adams, featuring Meg Tilly as a newlywed bride who is haunted by events from her past
Australian horror that sets out to combine US models like A Nightmare on Elm Street and a few dashes of Poltergeist with the idea of an Aborigine curse but emerges as poorly executed
Australian film about an Aborigine bracelet taken from an archaeological dig exerting supernatural retribution in the present for a mass murder in the past
A 1980s VHS released horror about a series of novelty killings at a health spa. This contains some entertainingly bizarre death and a surprise number of later to be famous faces
Makeup effects artist Stan Winston takes the director’s chair and creates one of the truly original monsters of the 1980s. Several sequels followed
Wes Craven’s attempt to top his A Nightmare on Elm Street and the phenomenon that Freddy Krueger subsequently became was this remarkably silly film with Mitch Pileggi as a serial killer returned from the electric chair
One of a spate of killers returned from the electric chair films that came out around the time of Wes Craven’s Shocker. The film is all build-up and almost no delivery, although is enlivened by an undeniable sense of humour
Routine executed killer comes back from the electric chair film made to exploit the success of Wes Craven’s Shocker. In some places this was sold as another of the House films
An interesting, if not completely successful, attempt to revive the horror anthology – in this case with four tales that all take place in a Western setting
Film spinoff from the Tales from the Darkside tv series, this is an anthology of three horror tales, the result is a surprisingly slick and well made film
George Romero and Dario Argento collaborate on an anthology, each adapting an Edgar Allan Poe tale. Either director leaves you with high expectations but the results are very mixed
Passable but slight tv movie adaptation of a Stephen King short story about a teacher facing undead pupils
A Roger Corman produced erotic horror in which Cliff De Young inherits a castle in Spain where he is tempted by a witch who appears in his dreams
Overshadowed by the tragedy of star Brandon Lee’s death on set, this is a beautifully dark and glistening Gothic tale of a murdered youth revived from the dead to attain vengeance against his killers. Several lesser sequels followed
The Stan Winston directed Pumpkinhead was one of the genuinely original monster movies of the 1980s. This was the first of several video-released sequels
Horror anthology with a specific focus around African-American issues. This conducts a fine revival of the anthology genre and delivers a series of episodes that are all solid and well above-average horror tales
Sequel to the Stephen King adapted film about hoodlums resurrected from the dead, this descends into an incredible silliness. Featuring a teenage Hillary Swank
The first sequel to The Crow extends the look of the original into an amazingly lit Goth designer world. However, the plot (an early work from David S. Goyer) is no more than a rehash of the first film
A ridiculous supernatural action film where a madly overacting David Keith plays an executed killer returned from the dead to seek revenge against cop Martin Kove
Film about an undead military veteran from director William Lustig and a script by the great Larry Cohen that unevenly digs into patriotic sentiment with black regard
Kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story) that was a huge hit, spawning several sequels and an English-language remake, plus a horde of imitators. For all its reputation, the film is often crude, nevertheless does evince an eerie atmosphere
Another Japanese horror film that stands heavily in the shadow of Ringu. Directed without much style and often uninteresting to the point of being dull, it is hard to tell from this that you are watching a film that inspired eight sequels
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
The third of the Crow films has a more substantial story than the second but is killed by a director who has no feel for the atmosphere created by the other films
This borrows a good deal of its essentials from The Keep in the tale of German soldiers during World War II being haunted as they take refuge in a bunker
A low-budget horror anthology that is rough around the edges but shows promise
Blaxploitation homage designed as a vehicle for Snoop Dogg. Essentially a version of A Nightmare on Elm Street with Snoop as a pimp come back to haunt those who killed him
Early film from Larry Fessenden about a family and a Native American spirit. Much brooding build-up but not much payoff (*)
This is the English-language version of the Japanese horror Ring and actually a much better and far spookier film, where the new script gives the story more depth
A horror anthology featuring episodes from three Asian directors originally titled Three. The better known Three … Extremes was a sequel whereupon this was retitled and re-released as Three Extremes II
The rarity of a Bollywood horror film. This blatantly steals the plot of What Lies Beneath but spins it through the Bollywood formula with the addition of songs and much implied sensuality to create something unique
Makeup effects man John Carl Buechler directs a film about a resurrected prospector come to enact vengeance against those seeking his gold claim
South Korean jump aboard the Ringu phenomenon about a series of haunted phone calls that works well through a clever ending
Cult director Takashi Miike jumps aboard the J-horror fad of the 2000s and makes a Ringu copy that substitutes haunted videos for haunted cellphone calls. Two sequels and an English-language remake followed
Formulaic horror film about an avenging supernatural hag known as the Tooth Fairy. Much of the premise is borrowed from A Nightmare on Elm Street
Takashi Shimizu’s follow-up to the international hit of Ju-on: The Grudge. These Ju-on films become repetitive after a time but you cannot deny that Shimizu delivers the spooky goods here
Unsettlingly spooky Japanese ghost story from Takashi Shimizu that spawned a number of sequels, reboots and English-language remakes. This was the third of the films and superior to all that came after
A modestly successful Bollywood horror film that becomes a copy of The Exorcist but does generate a reasonable degree of atmosphere
A film filled with weird, constantly intriguing directorial effects, although you eventually have to accept that none of it makes any sense