The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
A documentary about Rondo Hatton, the 1940s horror actor who suffered acromegaly, and Robert Burns, the eccentric art director from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
Documentary where people offer up various crackpot theories about the hidden meanings of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Fascinating in a bizarre freakshow way, an undeniable cult film in the making
A documentary that discusses the gay subtext in A Nightmare on Elm Street Part II: Freddy’s Revenge and how lead actor Mark Patton claims it ruined his career
Documentary about the so-called Scream Queen phenomenon – a series of cheap horror films from the late 80s/early 90s made for the video market featuring a series of starlets who readily got naked and kicked ass. This interviews the principal players and covers the genre with a reasonable degree of insightful candour
The shower scene in Psycho is probably the most famous single scene in cinema history. The idea of an entire documentary devoted to analysing a single scene is a bit of a head scratcher at first but quickly the analysis of film’s context and the hidden meaning of shots proves completely fascinating
Documentary about Mary Poppins creator P.L. Travers that delves into the questions of her secretive past and often fictionalised biography, while also covering the making of the Disney film
A documentary about the shark film phenomenon, covering all the way from Jaws to the deliberately ridiculous killer shark film with illuminating insight
Based on Ray Kurzweil’s non-fiction book about the coming evolution of machine intelligence, this is an odd mix of documentary and SF, including a storyline to illustrate Kurzweil’s main theses … The vision is an extraordinarily utopian one but one has just a few plausibility problems with it
A documentary about the slasher film, which interviews various directors and actors behind the films about the genre’s origins and rules
Documentary made for HBO about director Steven Spielberg in which he reflects on his life and films. The documentary tends to focus more on his major hits and skips his minor films but does give worthwhile insight into Spielberg, his life and formative years
A documentary about William Castle, the horror director of the 1950s/60s who specialised in sensationalistic promotional gimmicks. This does an excellent job in telling Castle’s story and those behind his films
The late Stan Lee needs no introduction as the most influential figure over the comic-book in the 20th Century. This is a documentary about his life
Documentary about the life of Stanley Kubrick made by his brother-in-law that lifts the veil on the mystique that surrounded Kubrick in his later years and gives a good deal of insight into his working processes
A documentary about the career of Superman star Christopher Reeve and his dealing with life following the accident that left him a quadriplegic
Fascinating documentary portrait of a series of individuals who dress up in costume and set out to be real-life superheroes
Mind-bogglingly bizarre documentary that conducts a tour of the bizarre practices of Chinese religion
The title suggests a work about film fans facing the end of the world but this is actually a documentary about the cult film phenomenon
A documentary that charts the history of the horror anthology in considerable depth, including conducting a survey on the best anthologies and individual episodes
Documentary about Tintin creator Hergé based on audio recordings he made in the 1970s
Sequel to the Star Trek fandom documentary Trekkies that returns to take in international fandom in all its permutations
Mind-boggling and frequently hilarious documentary the charts the eccentricities of Star Trek fandom
The William Shatner documentary is a fascinatingly bizarre beast. This involves Shatner talking to a bunch of scientists and celebrities, before meeting with Stephen Hawking but peculiarly enough seems to have no central thesis or idea about what it is setting out to prove
A documentary about Hugo Gernsback, the man who coined the term science-fiction and shaped the genre in its infancy
Documentary charting the rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles phenomenon from independent comic-book to the animated series, toys and live-action films
Fascinating quasi-documentary from the early days of the UFO phenomenon, made before all the nonsense about Greys, abductions, alien impregnation etc came in, which gives it a sober groundedness than many more polished productions lack
Documentary about the Golden Age of Horror at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 40s (although it does touch on works from other studios too). The topic is covered with an impressive degree of detail
Val Lewton produced a body of works beginning with Cat People that are the finest horror films of the 1940s. This is a documentary that looks at Lewton’s life and films in detail, produced and narrated by no less than Martin Scorsese
Documentary about the phenomenon of the tv horror host
Absolutely fascinating documentary that speculates what the likely reactions would be if aliens were to arrive on Earth where we get input from various scientists and UN spokespeople. The answers are compelling and completely different from anything that you usually get in SF cinema
A fascinating documentary devoted to a largely forgotten B-budget sf/horror director and his body of films
One of the most in-depth film documentaries ever made where Kier-La Janisse exhaustively excavates every example of Folk Horror
Alexandre O. Philippe has made a host of documentaries about film and fandom. Here he sits down with a 91-year-old William Shatner who talks candidly as he reflects on his life