The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Immortality concerns people who lead much longer than usual lifespans, do not age or die and/or have found methods to extend a regular lifespan. For methods where people find the ability to restore youth see Rejuvenation.
The quest for immortality is something that preoccupies a number of screen Mad Scientists and occultists – frequent plots in films concern quests for treatments, formulas and magical items that offer immortality (or the means to sustain it). Immortality is possessed by Vampires and some alien species. It is occasionally bestowed on individuals by some type of Curse.
There is also a body of films dealing with the lives of immortals. One of the problems is seen as the immortal having become bored with life, having experienced every passion and seen every sight, or of seeing the mortals they love age and die, and that they are seeking an end to such existence. Frequently such immortals have also experienced much of history and met many famous persons or even been those persons.
There is also a body of films about immortals engaged in wars with one another across the ages, most notedly the Highlander films and tv series. There are also a variety of immortal superheroes and super-villains and others that have been left as guardians for some purpose.
Abbott and Costello take time out from comic hijinks with the Famous Monsters to go to Venus (despite the title) and engage in various datedly sexist gags with a planetful of women
Aimed at the same audiences as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Blake Lively is a woman who hasn’t aged since the 1930s. This comes with the nostalgic weepiness and solemn self-importance of a work pitched to Academy Awards voters
One of the earliest films from Charles Band. In the years following, Band went onto produce and occasionally direct a great many often enterprisingly cheap low-budget genre films – this is not one of them
Another of the unofficial sequels that bear slim to no resemblance to the Amityville Horror hoax. This is a cheaply made and not terribly scary British effort set in a asylum supposedly built on the site of the Amityville house
A sequel to the Jennifer Lopez-starring Anaconda that manages to be even more ridiculous and cliche ridden than its predecessor to the point you frequently laugh it off the screen
An action film that takes place in a single room. A samurai is invited to dine by a mysterious host who reveals he is an immortal monster and believes they have been destined to fight
A very underrated and almost completely ignored film from the great Anglo-horror cycle in which Victorian scientists are on a quest to capture the spirit of death
The first and best film version of a classic story about an expedition finding the city ruled by an immortal queen in the desert. This was shot in the real locations and comes with a stunning sense of expansiveness
The sixth film version of a classic lost world story about explorers finding Atlantis and its immortal queen in the desert. This is a more mundane version that waters down the fantastic elements
Another shabby Disney video-released sequel, in this case to Atlantis the Lost Empire. The result looks like three episodes of an unsold tv series slapped together to sell as a film
DC Universe Animated film that is adapted from an Elseworlds story that offers up an alternate 1920s version of Batman who is fighting up against H.P. Lovecraft entities
One of the films from the heyday of the Filipino exploitation cinema fad. John Ashley makes a pact with the Devil,up in another man’s body and periodically turns into what is a werewolf in all but name
John Carpenter film that was marketed as a Raiders of the Lost Ark copy but is more Carpenter trying to emulate Hong Kong’s Wu Xia cinema, which was largely unknown in the West at the time. All with highly enjoyable conic results.
Classic tv movie that is one of the earliest horror/Westerns hybrids where Roy Thinnes plays a preacher who ends up in town only to find he cannot leave amid mysterious goings-on
Takashi Miike’s 100th film, the adaptation of a manga about an immortal samurai. Miike bookends the film with awesome sequences with his hero battling hundreds of opponents but the film in between drags
Parody of the horror genre designed to highlight British comedian Kenny Everett. Some quite funny spoofs, some that aren’t. Vincent Price appears as the leader of a coven.
Another of Guy Maddin’s silent movie pastiches, all shot in a deadpan style throwing together a hilariously convoluted madcap plot involving child detectives, mad scientists and spy capers
Painfully derivative US-made attempt to jump aboard the popularity of Wu Xia following The Matrix and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. There are talented people involved who should have known better
Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades in Greek myth, is appropriated to become the focus of a standard md-00s CGI monster movie
Adaptation of a book by NZ author Margaret Mahy. Mahy has a sublimely poetic turn of phrase in the writing but the film strips the book down to the point we get no more than a by-the-numbers Young Adult work
The title of Edgar Allan Poe’s poem is appropriated in an effort to appeal to the 1960s fad for Poe film adaptations, otherwise this is an unrelated work about a lost underwater city ruled by Vincent Price.
A copy of The Expendables (albeit with the addition of fantasy elements) that brings together a line-up of B-action movie actors as a team. While some of the actors shine, the feel is of a cheaper effort earnestly trying to copy its betters
Cross was a low-budget attempt to copy The Expendables, featuring a C-list team of action stars (plus some fantasy elements). This is a sequel you doubt many people were burning to see
The original The Crow is a cult classic. This long-planned remake from the perpetually terrible Rupert Sanders was an ill-advised move from every angle that gets just about everything from the mood to the conception of its character wrong
The second mummy film from Hammer Films, this is a rather dull variant on the genre. Their usual flair and production values emerge here under a director who makes this turn out plodding
Robert Zemeckis film about an immortality treatment that digs a knife into Hollywood beauty treatments with a blackly funny knife. Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn have huge fun playing to the gallery and upstaging one another
Quietly understated French SF film set in a future where all illness has been abolished and a woman becomes a media sensation when she is diagnosed with a terminal condition
A confused and incomprehensible film in which Michael Biehn is drawn in to the hunt for a girl whose blood contains an immortality virus
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
Disappointingly, this is not about the famous pioneer expedition that turned to cannibalism but a modern slasher film that takes place near where the incident occurred. Okay on its own terms.
Another of the ‘don’t __’- titled entries of the 1970s. This is a bizarre bad movie about teenage runaways in L.A.’s Griffith Park who fall prey to flesh-eating immortals
A modernised version of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray where a male model transfers his image to a photograph that ages while he remains immortal
Beautifully produced version of the Oscar Wilde story about a libertine who becomes immortal by transferring his soul into a portrait. This easily stands out as one of the best film versions of the story to date
Pakistani film that is a blatant copy of Hammer’s The Horror of Dracula, often directly ripping off scenes. Not without some modest effect and it is fascinating to see the familiar story translated into different cultural terms
This TV mini-series adaptation of the Ursula Le Guin books is an insult. This was quickly mounted on the back of the success of The Lord of the Rings films but feels like tv filler that has zero affinity for Le Guin’s richly cultured world
A film about Elizabeth Bathory living in the present day, this comes with the suggestion of erotic allure but disappointingly proves to be a pose without much substance
A Marvel Comics offering that is an adaptation of a team created by the greatest comic-book writer/artist of all time. On screen however, this emerges with strangely flat and moribund results
Controversial Japanese film about a virus that causes members of a family to engage in gay incest. This is perhaps the dullest taboo-breaking film I have ever sat through
F.W. Murnau’s version of the classic tale of an aging scholar selling his soul to the Devil for youth and love is one of the most fabulous pieces of pure cinema to come out of the German Expressionist era
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
Westernised homage to Wu Xia and the Shaw Brothers film with an American teen transported back to Ancient China, this has all the thrill of junior-grade martial arts tournament
Darren Aronofsky’s version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A cryptic and baffling story that takes place in three different eras, all featuring the same actors. Aronofsky engages in much symbolic interplay but what is happening is a scratch of the head
Guy Ritchie makes an adventure film that pays homage to Indiana Jones and a host of other works concerning the quest for the Fountain of Youth. A superficial film killed by its constantly distracting flip banter
A Christmas film with Vince Vaughn as Santa’s younger brother, a petty street hustler. A promising sarcastic tone falls into easy predictable routines and characters arcs
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
This received a lot of bad flak, including from star Ryan Reynolds, but I’m not one of the haters. There is the terrible CGI suit and a miscast Reynolds but it does get a good deal of the comic-book mythos right
Animated film that tells different stories of various members of the Green Lantern Corps (including two stories from Alan Moore). Another of the worthwhile animated DC adaptations
The DC Universe Original Animated Movies conduct a solid and worthwhile animated retelling of the Green Lantern origin story, which delves into all the aspects of the mythos
Frank Darabont had a hit with the Stephen King adaptation The Shawshank Redemption. This, another King adaptation about a Death Row inmate with healing powers, tries to repeat that
A tomb raiding adventure about the venture into a tomb filled with deadly spiders in search of an immortality serum. A Chinese-Australian-co-production.
A new film based on the epic legend of Siegfried, which gives it a grounded historical realism and tells it in terms of the mud, moral ambiguity and backstabbing in-politicking of tv’s Game of Thrones
This offers the appealing idea of Will Smith as a cynical burned out superhero. The film tells a comic tale of his redemption before suddenly losing the plot altogether in its second half
Henry Rollins is a man who may be immortal. Sort of like a dark version of The Man from Earth, this is made by the wittily phlegmatic indifference of Rollins’s performance and fascinatingly littered clues about who he might be
Sequel to the animated Heavy Metal that failed to attract the same cult audience that its predecessor did. Telling only one story instead of several, it only offers a routine space opera adventure
Before this was spun out into a series of sequels and tv series, the first film had an original and captivating idea about immortals warring across the ages, Everything is propelled into high gear by Russell Mulcahy’s visually dazzling direction
The fourth Highlander film sets out to merge the film and tv series, bringing together Christopher Lambert and Adrian Paul. This only produces a continuity nightmare that is a headache trying to follow
Probably THE worst sequel ever made. The script’s treatment of continuity to the first film is utterly incoherent, while director Russell Mulcahy and most of the cast go at it with unrestrained OTT excess
The third Highlander film is better than the abysmal second one was. It comes with slick visuals but an often absurd plot that strains to spin the concept out any further
The Highlander series conducts an anime variant on the franchise set in a post-apocalyptic future. Co-directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri of Ninja Scroll fame who adds some highly stylised moves
The fifth of the Highlander films. It is hard to believe people could actually make a film worse than Highlander II but this is akin to Edward D. Wood Jr on a multi-million dollar budget
A key work in the cult of Alejandro Jodorowsky in which he plays a character called The Alchemist who guides a group on a mystical awakening. Surreal, challenging and mind-expanding
The first sequel to House, this is largely unrelated to its predecessor and plays itself with a sense of humour to emerge as the superior film. Now a skull opens doorways in the house into different eras
This wouldn’t be a Terry Gilliam if it wasn’t cursed by bad luck being affected by the death of star Heath Ledger. It’s the most Gilliam-esque film in some years where Gilliam and his designers leap off into deliriously madcap surrealism
Former Pixar director Andrew Stanton, known for Finding Nemo, Wall-E and the flop of John Carter, makes a cross-historical in the vein of Cloud Atlas that takes place between prehistory, the present and the future
Director-writer Andrew Niccol has a smartness that makes him a must-watch director. Considerable conceptual dexterity has gone into this variant on Logan’s Run, which manages to sneak a blatantly Marxist call for revolution and wealth redistribution out past Rupert Murdoch
Third of the Indiana Jones films. This comes with all the breakneck action sequences and Sean Connery doing a fine comic turn as Indiana’s irascible father but also plays to a much greater slapstick emphasis that eventually becomes far too broad
TV mini-series co-produced between Hallmark Entertainment and The Jim Henson Company that offers an intriguing deconstruction of the fairytale although eventually proves to be a modernised replaying that reverses the sympathies
The long delayed film of the Disney theme park ride is an assemblage of cliches from various adventure films and far more enjoyable than it has any right to be
Former Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller plays himself in a routine jungle adventure that uncreditedly steals the plot from H. Rider Haggard’s She
The Wachowskis set out to make a rollicking space opera adventure in the Star Wars vein. As always, the elevate every genre they take on with a creativity light years of any competitor – the film is packed with astonishing action sequences and wild, mind-expanding ideas
We are familiar with the Justice League but this gives us an alternate League whose members have supernatural abilities or are versed in dealing with the occult.
A relative disappointment among the mostly excellent animated DC superhero films, this offers up far too diagrammatic and dramatically underdeveloped a pitting of each Justice League member with a matching super-villain only to seemingly kill them off
Adaptation from a best-selling horror novel about Nazis battling an ancient evil. Michael Mann lavishes amazing visuals on the film but almost entirely sidelines the horror element
An Osgood Perkins film where Tatiana Maslany joins her boyfriend at his cabin in the woods for the weekend and becomes aware strange things are happening as she starts to experience visions and see creatures
You would not be mistaken for passing this over as a regular mountaineering drama – and indeed, that’s how half of the film transpires. Then however it starts to get weird and introduces everything from monsters to Shangri-La and Ancient Astronauts on the mountainside
Christopher (Creep, Triangle, Black Death) Smith has become one of the most underrated genre directors so I was anticipating his first venture into tv but this disappointingly feels like only a commercial project. The cross-historical quest for the Holy Grail story reads like warmed over Da Vinci Code
A gender-flipped adaptation of the Edgar Allan Poe story, this is surely the equivalent of The Room among Poe adaptations and may be the worst Poe film adaptation ever
This had a lot of promise – it seems written with the rich, resonant mythology of tv’s late lamented Constantine or the first Warlock. Instead what we end up with has been turned into a ponderous effects vehicle that dies an indifferent death on the screen
The much hated adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novels. It is undeniable fun watching the crossover between various fictional Victorian characters, while the production design is amazing
A Quebec-made about the attempts to create an artificial womb to breed embryos
Spanish director Amando De Ossorio gained a cult for his Blind Dead films. Here he makes a film about The Lorelei, a woman who sits on the banks of The Rhine tempting men to their deaths
Hugely successful and probably overrated classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas that offers the secret of immortality. Under Frank Capra, the film has grandeur but also a sentimentality.(*)
Stodgy, bloated musical remake of the 1937 Frank Capra classic about the discovery of a lost valley in the Himalayas. The film dies an ungainly death on the screen amid ill-fitting costumery and a name cast that seem awkward in their roles.
Low-budget but not uninteresting action film about a group of immortal mercenaries
Modest and interesting Cyberpunk film that works as a melancholy future-set romance
Found Footage film that has fun uniting UFOs and wacky conspiracy theories into a grand unified thesis. The swim of ideas is head-spinning but the film commits the mistake of delivering them to us quasi-documentary style rather than dramatically
Indonesian copy of the basics of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre that emerges as one of the most enthusiastically gore-drenched bloodbaths in ages
Beautifully written film about an immortal. The result is an entirely captivating SF film whose whole effect emerges simply from people sitting in a living room talking
The Man from Earth built up a reasonable reputation with a simple concept – a 14,000 year old man tells his life story that comes with a killer of a twist. This sequel far less interestingly becomes a detective story about a group of students trying to find if their professor is the same character
Effort from the heyday of mad science cinema about a scientist who has perfected an immortality treatment. Better budgeted than most of the other cheapies of the era and better written, although suffers from a slow talkiness
Flop Jackie Chan film that tries to recapture some of his Hong Kong heyday with Jackie in a quest for a boy and medallion with magical powers
3D restoration of a classic Chinese adaptation of Journey to the West and the best film version of the story to date … an incredible film filled with psychedelically eye-popping animation and amazing action scenes, while gleefully celebrating a defiance of all authority
Family film with Dustin Hoffman as the eccentric owner of a magical toyshop
Jaco Van Dormael film that reaches for epic ideas in a story about multiple life pathways and a babble of ideas taken from physics but fails to assemble them in a way that makes much sense
Third of the Brendan Fraser Mummy films feels like it has no point other than to steal $10 from your hand and give you a bucket of content free mental popcorn in return
Fascinating, epically sized versions of the adventures of Baron Münchausen produced by the Nazis
Anthology of three H.P. Lovecraft tales from directors Christophe Gans, Brian Yuzna and Shusuke Kaneko. For claiming such a quintessentially Lovecraftian title as this, you feel that it should have been more than it is
A Syfy Channel film about the present-day discovery of a lost, still extant 19th Century village that has conducted a deal to preserve themselves by annually sacrificing someone to an ogre
The Old Guard about a team of immortal mercenaries was a hit when it was released a few years ago. Now most of the principals reunite for a sequel
Huge Netflix hit adapted from a comic-book about a team of immortal mercenaries