An Apollo-style mission to Mars stalls because Americans lack the brains to build a decent spacecraft. To ensure continued NASA funds, Hal Holbrook arranges a phony Martian landing for TV cameras in a remote desert sound-stage. Astronauts James Brolin, O.J. Simpson, and Sam Waterston learn the scheme calls for their “heroic” demise to ensure silence, and they try to escape. Remarkabl…
Marvel Comic character steps into feature film and flounders.
The Marvel Comics superhero got his own movie in time for his 50th anniversary, but this doesn't make the grade despite the wide-ranging plot. In 1941 a secret Axis serum turns polio-stricken Steve Rogers (Matt Salinger, actor son of author J.D. Salinger) into a super-strong superhero, but he's matched by the Nazis’ own superfascist, the Red Skull. Their battle l…
Terrorists hit America where it hurts, threatening to use age accelerating drug.
Bargain basement f/x and really atrocious acting hold audience captive in routine Earth-on-the-verge-of-obliteration yarn.
Straight from the Corman film factory, this exploitative quickie about dinosaurs harkens back to ‘50s-style monster epics. The title sequence – some really disgusting stuff apparently filmed in a real chicken processing plant – sets the tone for your basic mad-scientist plot with several environmental twists. Dr. Jane Tiptree (Diane Ladd), the mad scientist in qu…
The real inspiration for this entertaining schlock sequel isn't Jurassic Park but James Cameron's Aliens.
Smalltown Sleepy Rock is ideal family-raising turf until a plague mysteriously blights inhabitants, and townspeople are out to exterminate all potential carriers.
An “elseworld” vision of 1948 Los Angeles where everyone, from bums on the street to master criminals, uses magic for just about everything, from mixing drinks to cutting someone to pieces in a tornado of stolen loot. Everyone, that is, except for gumshoe Harry P. Lovecraft (Fred Ward), although he does use a lucky talisman. Streetsmarts vs. magic. Good vs. evil. Amos H…
The Hound doesn't want to flatly declare that the supposedly genuine UFO occupant dissected in Alien Autopsy was a fake. Just that he can name plenty of makeup effects specialists who could have done a better job. Some of them were even active in Hollywood back in 1947. Here are some Golden-Age studio craftsmen who concocted never-before-seen examples of the uncanny and unearthly for the ca…
The final film in a series starring Christopher Lee as the ultra-evil Dr. Fu Manchu, directed by the always prolific sleaze-monger Jess Franco. This time, the Doc's plans for world domination involve a gadget which will put the earth into a deep freeze. To fine tune this contraption, he enlists the help of a gifted scientist by abducting him. However, the helper/hostage has a bad tic…
An extraterrestrial cat named Jake crashes his spaceship on Earth and leads a group of people on endless escapades.
A team of scientists led by Sonny Tufts land on the moon and encounter a telepathic race of skimpily attired female chauvinists and a giant spider. An aggressively silly picture with romance, excitement, and plenty of unintentional laughs. The “Hollywood Cover Girls” played various cat women. Tufts got his show biz start as an opera singer, then moved on to Broadway musicals (…
In his Oscar-winning performance, Cliff Robertson stars as the original Gump. Charly Gordon is a mentally disabled man who works in a Boston bakery where he is the butt of cruel practical jokes. Experimental brain surgery transforms him into a genius. He turns the tables on his co-workers, lectures to scientists, and has an affair with his therapist (Claire Bloom). But his triumph is…
It's 2017. Sam Treadwell has a quick bang on the wet kitchen floor and short-circuits his Cherry 2000, a perfect, always-in-the-mood, man-made woman sex-toy robot. Wishing to avoid the ol’ blue balls, Sam enlists the aid of female tracker E. Johnson (Melanie Griffith) and sets off for the treacherous “lawless zone” where replacement parts can still be foun…
Six children, living previews of what man will evolve into in a million years, are born all around the world with genius IQs, ray-gun eyes, and murderous dispositions.
Jack Lemmon, in an Oscar-nominated role, is supervisor at a nuclear plant who uncovers evidence of an engineering flaw that could cause a devastating meltdown. When his bosses react with a ruthless coverup, he takes drastic steps to get the proof to sympathetic TV journalists Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas. Wire-taut thriller (done without ambient music) was considered sf when it ope…
This is one of the more famous and certainly among the best of the many fantasy films to come out of Hong Kong in the ‘80s.
Spiderman adventure in which Spidey becomes entwined in international intrigue and corrupt officials.
A freak electric storm unleashes killer security robots on a coed band of teens holding an after-hours slumber party inside the mall (where they can test out the mattresses, wink wink).
Stop-motion animated feature film (a five-year solo effort by Piotr Kamler in his home studio) about the placid, immortal citizens of Chronopolis – no relation to the namesake J.G.
Movie history is littered with rumors and wistful assertions of Masterpieces That Never Were. In sf and fantasy genres especially, technical problems, cost overruns, and artistic challenges leave many intriguing projects abandoned on the launch pad. Some might have been immortal classics. Others, well…. CHILDHOOD'S END. Despite the artistic and financial success of 2001: A Space Odys…
Soft-core musical version of the classic fairy tale.
In a stylishly bleak post-apocalyptic future that borrows freely from Blade Runner, Mad Max, and Max Headroom, people have been driven underground by pollution.
Director Aaron Lipstadt's first film, Android, is a precious sleeper. This, his second film, has developed a less welcome cult reputation after being given the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. In the not-so-distant future, a plague will have wiped out most of the adults, leaving the adolescents to form motorcycle-riding gangs to roam the landscape looking for food, gasoline, and comi…
Weird not-for-the-kiddies fairytale finds crazed inventor Krank (Daniel Emilfork) getting his evil one-eyed minions, the appropriately named ‘Cyclops,’ to kidnap local children so that he can steal their dreams (because Krank himself is incapable of dreaming). The latest victim is young Denree (Joseph Lucien), the adopted brother of sideshow …
With a cast that includes Laurence Olivier (Zeus), Claire Bloom (Hera), and Maggie Smith (the sea goddess Thetis), it seems outrageous to suggest that Harry Hamlin (Perseus) does the best job, but it sure looks like the “real” actors took the job just for the bucks. As with any Ray Harryhausen opus (and this was his last&…
Actually set in 1997, this loose follow up to Mark L.
High school in 1999 is filled with violent gangs who murder at random.
Following its success in dealing with serious ecological issues in the Toxic Avenger series, Team Troma once again experiments with the chemicals, with violent results.
“There was nothing I hated more than to see a filthy old drunkie, a-howling away at the sons of his father and going blurp blurp in between as if it were a filthy old orchestra in his stinking rotten guts.
Why are the students at Nuke ‘Em High acting so strangely? Where did the Godzilla-sized squirrel come from? What does Professor Holt (Lisa Gaye) have hidden in her Marge Simpson hairdo? What's wrong with Victoria's (Leesa Rowland) navel? Why can't handsome but dumb-as-a-post Roger (Brick Bronsky) get a date? Troma devotees will be delighted; all others will be disgusted.
Arguably the best of the Nuke ‘Em High series, this irreverent, freewheeling Troma schlock comedy targets environmentalism, political satire, potty jokes, and sex, all in wonderfully poor taste.
Droogs don't run and neither does Stanley Kubrick with his head-on punch-you-in-the-face direction of this incredible adaptation of the controversial Anthony Burgess novel. In Britain's near future, a sadistic punk (Malcolm McDowell, fiercely funny and over-the-top throughout), who loves music almost as much as he loves his violence, leads his gang on a nightly spree of…
A doctor discovers a government experiment engineered to murder him with a perfect clone.
A scientist discovers a government plot to clone the population by freezing bodies alive and using their parts in surgery.
Strangers from all over the world become involved in the attempts of benevolent aliens to contact Earthlings. Despite the (intentionally) mundane nature of the characters, this Spielberg epic is a stirring achievement. Studded with classic sequences; the ending is an exhilarating experience of special effects and peace-on-Earth feelings. Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon excel as f…
Claude Chabrol, French filmmaker best known for thrillers in a Hitchcockian vein, pays tribute to vintage German movie ubergangster Dr.
Humanist sci-fi fantasy in which Florida senior citizens discover a watery nest of dormant aliens (from Atlantis, natch) that serves effectively as a Fountain of Youth, restoring their health and vigor. Complications ensue when the cocoons’ space cohorts return to check up on them. Warm-hearted and winning, even if the f/x-crammed finale rips off Close Encounters of the…
“Cocoon: the Rerun,” as old timers who left with aliens last time revisit Earth and basically go through the same stuff all over again.
A massive computer designed to manage U.S. defense systems instead merges with its Soviet equal and proceeds to accomplish its prime purpose: to achieve world peace.
A serious adaptation of the purportedly non-fiction bestseller by Whitley Strieber, about his 1985 abduction by dwarf drones under the control of spindly, huge-eyed beings (a breed sometimes referred to by UFO hipsters as “Schwa"). Even skeptics who've met Strieber declare he's sincere, so either the “visitors” are real or he's nuts. Christop…
A 21st-century romance novelist rents remote mountain cabin to write and get over a broken love affair.
Families will want to boot up this post-Walt live-action Disney comedy starring Kurt Russell as Dexter Riley, an underachieving college student who suddenly becomes a genius after the campus computer's memory bank is accidentally downloaded into his brain. Innocuous and dated, but the expert cast keeps this online. Cesar Romero is the local crime boss and the computer's original owne…
The Hyborean age has never been so brutally portrayed as in writer/director John Milius’ sword and sorcery epic. Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones) leads a savage raid on young Conan's home village, both killing Conan's father and stealing the sword bequeathed to him. Doom also kills mom in an eerily beautiful, nearly surrealistic, almost tasteful manner �…
Not as violent or as mythical (although maybe more mythological) as the superior Conan the Barbarian, Academy Award-winning director Richard Fleischer's Conan is still good campy fun. This time evil queen Tamaris challenges Conan (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to accompany a beautiful princess in a quest for a magic treasure. If the treasure and the princess's ho…
Saturday Night Live skit inflated to feature-length is strangely likable. It can also boast the presence of dozens of SNL regulars on both sides of the camera. Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin reprise their roles as Beldar and Prymaat, the couple from the planet Remulak who are just trying to fit in on Earth. Laraine Newman, who created the role of teen-aged daughter Connie, appears as Beldar's …
Would you like a moon crater named after you? That honor was given to the late Chesley Bonestell for being this century's finest astronomical artist. His designs and constructions permeate this film – which is the only conceivable reason to see it. A space commander designs an orbital platform and helps build a moon rocket. When told the craft is to transport him, his son, and select…
This fourth Apes film picks up where the third left off. After a disease brought from outer space kills all Earth's cats and dogs (the Hound found this aspect particularly frightening), humans begin to keep apes as house pets. Because of their intelligence and adaptability, these pets turn into ill-treated slaves governed by the Gestapo-like Ape Control. Caeser (Roddy M…
Eduard “Billy” Meier at first comes off as sort of an semi-crazy commune-living hippie.
An alien arrives on Earth with a message of peace and restraint.
Scientist Forrest Tucker accidentally pops a hole in the ionosphere during a magnetism experiment.
Disappointing anthology done for HBO as sort of a multicultural Twilight Zone. The three-eyed floating head of George Clinton emcees three tales, and only the first gives this sf cred: In “Space Traders” (based on a story by Derrick Bell), alien visitors take the form of Ronald Reagan (same diff), offering America wealth and prosperity in exchange for all …
Science fiction by definition requires a certain willing suspension of disbelief. You have to allow for such things as aliens, artificial intelligence, psi, time travel, faster-than-light propulsion, and Slime People; otherwise why bother? Still, there should be at least some pretense of scientific accuracy; otherwise, why bother? But, even as Mr. Scott in Engineering says you cannot deny the laws…
The ultimate battle for survival is fought in outer space, though not very well and on a small budget.
Sputtering futurism from Charles Band, wherein the repressive corporate state crushes dissent by banning home computers (an accurate prediction of the Communications Decency Act?).
Quatermass-like sci-fi with Forrest Tucker as a UN science investigator visiting the Swiss town of Trollenberg, where a strange radioactive cloud hovers on a mountaintop. As the cloud descends and encloses the village, several climbers are discovered decapitated. Tucker teams up with two sisters, one of them a telepath (Janet Munro) who can communicate with aliens, which is very luck…
An astronaut's hand takes off without him on an unearthly spree of stranglings.
When a small Pennsylvania town's water supply is contaminated with an experimental virus, the residents go on a chaotic, murderous rampage.
Set in the familiar post-holocaust future, this is a tale of humans outnumbered by androids and the resulting struggle for survival.
Originally titled Titan Find, this low-budget Alien rip-off has at least one good thing going for it…Klaus Kinski.
An anthropological expedition in the Amazon stumbles upon the Gill-Man, a prehistoric humanoid fish monster who supposedly represents a “missing link” between humans and…well, fish. The scaled nasty takes a fancy to the fetching Julie Adams, a coed majoring in “science” (she has brains as well as beauty!), but the menfolk get all riled up (an…
The sequel to Revenge of the Creature has the much put-upon Gill-Man captured once more by scientists bent on “studying” him. During an accidental lab fire, the creature's gills are burned off and the science-boys undertake to save his life with surgery designed to turn him into an air-breather. Sadly, the (ex)Gill-Man remains a fish out of water, lurching around…
A British-made yawn-fest about two tribes of cavemen warring over power and a cave-woman.
In the near future, army deserters hiding out at an abandoned science complex are stalked by a slimy monster.
In a totalitarian, repressive, future society, two young lovers try to beat the system and make it on their own.
One of the better Gremlins imitations.
First followup to the hit sci-fi-horror comedy, wherein the voracious alien furballs return in full force to Grovers Bend, Kansas, hatching on Easter Sunday from eggs planted two years before.
Every year, the World Science Fiction Convention (informally known as “Worldcon”) confers the “Hugo” award to novels, short stories, and films judged to be of unusual merit. Named after pioneer science-fiction editor Hugo Gernsback, the Hugo is the most prestigious award that can be bestowed on a work of science fiction – it's the “Osc…
A family on a picnic return to their seedy city tenement with yet more Krite eggs, which hatch and allow the mini-monsters to spread chaos and terror in an urban environment (translation: they wreck a laundry room).
Direct continuation of Critters 3 (bet you could hardly wait) is an obvious steal from Alien, as the last surviving Krites and their would-be slayer Don Opper arrive on an abandoned space station.
It's 1957 and England's Hammer Studios decides to take the classic Mary Shelley mad-scientist-makes-a-monster-and-boy-does-it-cause-trouble novel Frankenstein and give it some new Technicolor blood, and suddenly gothic horror is in again. Pairing up Peter Cushing (as Baron Frankenstein) and Christopher Lee (as the monster) for the first time, they created …
A mad scientist in the Everglades with some weird ideas about evolution attempts to create half-human/half-reptilian monsters.
In Japanese they're called kaiju eiga – literally, “monster movies.” By now virtually everyone has been exposed to these gems at some point in their development and had the basic plot implanted in their brains: a giant, rubbery monster is somehow unleashed on Japan and destroys Tokyo simply by walking through it and roaring. At the last minute, a handsome young scientis…
Written by comic book author James Robinson, this low-budget cyber-noir film holds it own against its bigger brothers. Jack Morris (Spandau Ballet's Martin Kemp) has just sailed a wealthy Morgan Wells’ hi-tech expensive-as-hell yacht into the island city of Pacifica. The millionaire (Robert Hays) has developed a deadly virtual-reality weapon capable of sen…
Action-oriented mix of samurais and science fiction should please most fans.
Eric Phillips (Don Wilson) is on Senator Dilly's security team.
Sequel finds that Don “The Dragon” Wilson is now a cop in near-future L.A. where the police are aided by virtually indestructible armed robot “trackers.” The bad guys have created their own outlaw trackers that can assume any identity. (Shades of T2.) Villainous versions of our hero and heroine (Stacie Foster) are committing dastardly acts, and something blows up or crashes or is shot about every five minutes.
Plague reduces Earth to a deathly, dirty, urban ruin patrolled by pumped-up punks.
In the year 2074, a devious company that manufactures cyborgs plans to off the competition by sending them an advanced female creation (Angelina Jolie, daughter of actor Jon Voigt) filled with explosives.
DEA agent Phillip (Todd Jensen) is captured during a foreign drug raid and is turned into a half-man, half-machine by mad scientist Kessel (John Rhys-Davies), who wants to sell his cyborgs as unstoppable hitmen.
Loose cannon cop Jack Ryan (David Bradley) is up against psycho killer Starkraven (Morgan Hunter), who gets turned into a new-model cyborg by your basic suspicious government agency.