The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
This concerns films that depict hallucinations that are brought on by the use of narcotics or pharmaceuticals. For films concerning narcotics and their addictive effects see Films About Drugs and Addiction.
There have been a number of films that dive right off into psychedelics and attempt to visually portray the experience of someone under the influence of a drug trip. There was even a fad for LSD films during the 1960s.
Other films depict such drugs as having an ability bend or open up reality in different ways. A familiar trope in a genre film is a twist ending that reveals everything to be the result of a drug hallucination.
Ken Russell’s big studio-backed film about drug trips, the meaning of life and William Hurt reverting to a caveman is a glorious madcap and visually stunning work that reaches for the same cosmological grandeur that 2001: A Space Odyssey does
Story of the sole survivor of a cult mass suicide waking from a coma to be haunted by the cult leader begging her to join them. This becomes a derivative of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films before a contrived ending
A genre-melding oddity that starts as an earnest recreation of a 1950s rock‘n’roll movie, before introducing a series of bizarre mutations and some fascinating mid-film twists. Most audiences didn’t get this but it is unusually different
This starts out seeming just another drug trip film where artist Dora Madison takes a new drug in search of inspiration. Then things get really deranged. A film where director and lead actress lets all stops out and go for broke with impressive results.
The best film from the great and underrated Frank Henenlotter about the relationship between a man and a parasite in his brain that feeds him drugs to make him go and kill
Waltz With Bashir director Ari Folman adapts a work by Stanislaw Lem into a conceptually challenging part-animated film concerning a virtual actress and a future where the populace lives inside a drug-induced mass hallucination
In attempting to capture the surreal, paranoiac drug haze of Hunter S. Thompson’s counter-culture classic, Terry Gilliam’s adaptation becomes a rambling, self-indulgent mess of tripped-out visions that go on and on
There is a good idea here, exploring what happened in the meeting between Lord Byron, Mary Shelley et al at the Villa Diodati in 1816. However this is hijacked by Ken Russell in lunatically over-the-top-mode
Ben Wheatley has become a cult director in recent years with films like Kill List and High Rise. Here he conducts his own unique take on Folk Horror. A film shot during the Covid lockdown
Adrian Lyne became one of the most visually exciting directors of the 1980s. Here he makes an afterlife film that swings between moments of greatness and a script that seems very confused about what is happening
Another remake that nobody asked for. The 1990 deathdream film is reworked in a script that ditches almost all of the afterlife themes and instead seems to want to make a drama about veterans addicted to reality-blurring drugs
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli returns with this mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Marvel Comics’ Dr Strange. Maybe the best mind-tripping fun it is possible to have without the use of illegal substances
Considered a lost classic of silent cinema for many years, this is a film loosely based on occultist Alesiter Crowley and was considered a daring work that delved into taboo areas
1960s LSD film where a stripper kills men under the influence. Mostly a series of nudie scenes without any plot
British-made homage to H.P. Lovecraft that has some of the most stunning black-and-white photography seen in some time but I am still trying to puzzle out what the film was actually about
At first glance, this film about a teenager meeting her future self seems too cute and lightweight, but emerges as something extraordinary
Micro-budgeted early Adam Wingard film that delves into the disturbed mental spaces of a depressed man
The first film from the acclaimed Alan Rudolph, a hippie era nightmare where smoking marijuana causes people to have disturbing visions of sinister figures
Silent movie based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe. Today we’d call it a biopic, although it readily departs into fantasy with Poe having drunken visions of the raven, ghosts and the afterlife
Robert Rodriguez made his first film for $7000 and repeats the same here to show anyone can do it in a wild, mind-bending work based on his own experience as a human test subject in drug trials
A low-budget film about a journalist’s modern-day investigation into a secret village located near Salem, Massachusetts that results in paranoia and suspicious treatment by the locals
A group of friends travel to Ireland and go on a tour searching for magic mushrooms. In between assorted drug hallucinations, someone or thing begins slaughtering the group
Quite a good film about a space expedition where the crew members on a mission to Saturn fall into an increasing paranoia and inability to tell what is real due to the drugs used in the hypersleep process
A thoroughly demented low-budget exploitation homage about demonic rapists that only falls down when it comes to a cliched twist end
Herschell Gordon Lewis film with a totally demented plot involving a playboy with psychic powers, witches and LSD trips
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
Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have become one of the most underrated indie genre voices. Here they make a film where Anthony Mackie discovers a drug that causes people to travel through time
The finest moment from gimmick master William Castle with Vincent Price as a coroner searching for a parasite that feeds on fear. Full of Castle’s luridly sensationalistic effects and containing the first portrayal of an LSD trip on screen.
Indie film that seems a mix of A Field in England and The Picnic at Hanging Rock. The first half contains some very realistic scenes of people getting wasted on drugs but the second as characters set out along a path in the woods that leads to Hell proves frustratingly elusive
Ken Russell’s adaptation of The Who’s hit album is filled with gloriously mad, glitter rock excess and wildly over the top acting in the ways that only Russell ever managed
LSD film from Roger Corman featuring Peter Fonda, Bruce Dern and Dennis Hopper and full of hilariously surreal and trippily psychedelic moments
Justin Long goes on a bender and takes some drugs that bend reality and leave him moving through time. Sort of like a version of Scorsese’s After Hours that dives into drug culture, this wants to be edgy but ends up in surprisingly traditional places.
Steven Spielberg produced film about an adolescent Sherlock Holmes often feels like it is Holmes being pitched as an Indiana Jones adventure but comes with some beautifully made touches