The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Made not longer after the buddy cop hit of Lethal Weapon, this has a curmudgeonly human paired up with an alien partner. A fairly ordinary cop show plot is boosted by two fantastic central performances
A satiric film based on Spike Lee’s idea of the Magical Negro, an African American who exists to deliver wisdom or magical influence to white people. This gets in some deftly amusing punches at US race relations
An obscure oddity in which elderly Jewish man Zero Mostel finds Harry Belafonte in his home insisting that he is an angel sent to help
This highly charged work about race issues received a very mixed critical reception but I liked it for its clever M. Night Shyamalan-esque twistiness that messes with storytelling convention
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
This is a brutal and unnervingly effective film about Mexican illegal immigrant day labourers who are imprisoned and tortured by a wealthy entitled white couple
The most successful Marvel Comics adaptation of all-time up to that point. Enjoyable if I fall short of calling it the best Marvel film ever and its receiving a nomination for a Best Picture Academy Award
Set in an alternate version of the present where fantasy creatures – orcs, elves, fairies – live alongside humans, this comes with a cleverness, while being played as a buddy cop drama that anchors it with a realism
A Jordan Peele-written/produced revival of the Candyman series. Director Nia DaCosta lights it up with a new contemporary social relevance but fails to recapture the eerie horror element that the original held
Ralph Bakshi’s satiric animated depiction of African-American life in 1970s conceived as a parody of Song of the South was greeted with such controversy that it nearly derailed his career
Devastatingly brilliant mockumentary that depicts an alternate history where the American South won the Civil War and slavery remains legal to this day
Best TV of the year. A mini-series that offers an absolutely compulsive dive into the disturbing mind of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and an exactingly detailed charting of his crimes. Evan Peters shines in the title role
Alfonso Cuaron’s son Jonas makes a film about Mexican illegal immigrants being hunted by a white vigilante in a Most Dangerous Game scenario. The film came out just after Trump’s famous wall campaign speech
After the Blaxploitation fad gave us Blacula and Blackenstein, there came this wild variation on the Jekyll/Hyde story where a good African-American doctor takes a potion and turns into a rampaging white monster
Remake of Heaven Can Wait/Here Comes Mr Jordan as a vehicle for comedian Chris Rock where the heavenly body mix-up now becomes about a black man ending up in a white man’s body
SF film with Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr as human and alien who are enemies but are forced to cooperate to survive after crashlanding on a hostile alien planet
Harrowing and difficult to watch variation on The Last House on the Left where a trio of escaped convicts brutalise a decent black family in a series of humiliations
One of Francis Ford Coppola’s earliest films as director, a musical where Fred Astaire procures a pot of gold and makes a deal with a leprechaun
SF cinema’s first ever portrayal of nuclear war. The film is sometimes incredibly naive and mostly wants to make a parable of racial tolerance. It is often heavy-handed but also holds moments of undeniable lyricism
In this, the fifth film in The Purge series, the scenario becomes even more interestingly political, becoming a satiric take on MAGA America and the Capitol Riots
Xavier Gens delivers a French copy of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. This is largely by the numbers excepting for a gore level raised to what must be a maximum for the genre
A rehash of The Stepford Wives recast along racial lines. It is a surprise to see a mainstream horror hit that comes with a strong message about racism, not that Jordan Peele neglects the horror element either
Light fantasy oddity with Bob Hoskins as a racist slob of a cop who receives a heart transplant and suddenly gets a deceased Denzel Washington as a ghostly companion
A documentary about African-Americans in the horror genre that covers everything from the earliest depictions through the Blaxploitation film to the rise of Black filmmakers
The story of a young Nazi boy who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary companion gained much deal of awards acclaim. My mind struggled to deal with the film’s swing between slapstick Hogan’s Heroes caricatures and its wanting to be a tender story about overcoming racial prejudice
One of the most brilliant SF works conducted for television – the adaptation of an Ursula Le Guin book about a work about a man whose dreams change the world every time he wakes
Strong political What IF drama from a Rod Serling script that has James Earl Jones as the first Black President of the USA (something that did not occur in reality for another 36 years with Barack Obama)
Boris Karloff plays the super-villain Fu Manchu, giving a performance of calculating evil in a film of great pulp thrillers
You might be inclined to dismiss on the basis of its title as some of lunatic fringe YouTube conspiracy video. But what we actually have is a strong and powerfully written alternate history mini-series based around the idea of Charles Lindbergh becoming US President in 1940 and the country’s subsequent slide into fascism
A sequel to R.I.P.D. that tells an origin story of how the sheriff character played by Jeff Bridges in the original became an afterlife enforcement officer
Ryan Coogler of Black Panther fame makes a smart and intelligent vampire film set in the American South during the 1930s
Disney film that is difficult to see these days due to its controversial treatments of race issues. Controversies aside, this is undeniably likeable, in particular in its telling a series of tall tales and finding a folk vernacular
This directorial debut for rapper Boots Riley is a very funny satire on telemarketing that becomes increasingly more surreal as it goes on. Imagine something like Spike Lee around the point of Do the Right Thing mixed with the absurdist humour of Kurt Vonnegut
A Kathryn Bigelow directed Cyberpunk film scripted by James Cameron concerning an illicit technology that can replay memories. This offers a powerful vision of a socially divided L.A. on the eve of the millennium
Tales from the Hood was the novelty of an African-American made horror anthology. 23 years later the principal talents (including producer Spike Lee) reunite for a sequel
Tales from the Hood was a horror anthology made by African American filmmakers that worked familiar horror themes in around race issues. It has developed a small cult reputation. This was the second of two 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
A wonderfully paranoid film where drug dealer John Boyega discovers illicit mind control experiments are being conducted on a ghetto neighbourhood and that he is one in a series of clones
Adaptation of an old Rod Serling script about racial prejudice and lynch mobs. The original was a non-genre work that took place in a Western setting but this has transplanted the milieu to an alien planet.
Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, John Landis and George Miller came together to make this film homage to Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. The episodes are variable but the standout is Miller’s Nightmare at 20,000 Feet
A Found Footage film that gets political – in this case, featuring a group of American vigilantes torturing Mexican illegal immigrants. Not quite full on Torture Porn but holds a darkly barbed bite
From Melvin Van Peebles who made the first Blaxploitation film, a satire in which a white man wakes up to find he has turned black. This takes a savage bite out of race relations but ends up without teeth in being distracted by Godfrey Cambridge’s raucous loudmouth performance
Beautifully affecting animated film from Ari Folman in which the imaginary companion in Anne Frank’s diary comes to life in the present day
A controversial film at the time it came out where Kristy MacNichol adopts a stray dog she accidentally runs down only to find it has been trained by racists to kill African-Americans
Potent and effective take on race relations that imagines an alternate world where Blacks are a majority and white people live as a disadvantaged minority