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Welcome to - The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review

The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review is an attempt to provide an exhaustive online resource and an intelligent and well-reasoned review guide to fantastic cinema. It is hoped that the site will provide visitors with informed and well-reasoned criticism, as well as direct people toward less well-known genre material.

Fantastic Cinema is an umbrella label that covers material of great diversity. Here you will find coverage of films as far apart as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Bambi, of directors that range from Ingmar Bergman to Edward D. Wood Jr – all are represented here and each discussed in terms of their own merits. Fantastic Cinema is not always easy to define in terms of thematic boundaries and a deliberately broad interpretation of what constitutes genre material has been taken in the hope that it will provide interesting discussion.

This site has been set up firstly because of the author’s lifelong passion for the subject matter and a desire to expound forth and, secondly, because it fills a gap. There is a disappointing lack of online sites offering worthwhile genre criticism and an even more disappointing lack of general sites offering historical and archival material. It is hoped that the site will eventually become the most comprehensive and authoritative site on the subject.

We hope you enjoy your stay. The site is constantly being updated and expanded so please bookmark the site and return again. Please feel free to contact the author and say what you think. Differing opinions are always welcomed.

The site has been divided into several different destinations. Clearly there are some fields that will be of interest to some but not others. So one can browse the pages that list SF, Horror or Fantasy separately. There is also an alphabetical list of all titles.

Regards, Richard Scheib

 

Newest Additions - 09/03/2010


TitleRating
Alice in Wonderland (2010) Another Tim Burton disappointment ... less Lewis Carroll's nonsense adventure than his characters having been borrowed and squeezed into the modern epic fantasy formula
Battlestar Galactica: The Plan (2009) ½ Another Battlestar Galactica spinoff film that comes with the ingenuity of recapping the entire series from the point-of-view of the Cylons
The Beyond (1981) One of the films from cult Italian director Lucio Fulci ... the Fulci cult is overrated and his films poorly made, surrealistically incoherent and where the only payoff is their gory despatches
Cold Souls (2009) More of an indie film than an SF film ... the central idea is a good one but the film has an uncertainty of tone that never fully goes for the comedy it wants to be
The Countess (2009) Commendable attempt to pare away vampire movie nonsense and tell the historical Countess Bathory story ... more costume drama than horror movie and surprisingly sympathetic to the Countess
The Crazies (2010) Disappointing remake of George Romero's underrated original ... has been pumped up into a big-budget film that is now less a madness outbreak than a zombie film
Defendor (2009) ½ Welcome anathema to superhero movies, featuring Woody Harrleson as a backward man who believes he is a superhero ... Harrleson is great and the film surprisingly touching
Frankenpimp (2009) A random, plotless and totally incomprehensible mix of exploitation elements ... at three-and-a-quarter hours, approaches the near totally unwatchable
Ghostriders (1987) ½ Drearily made Western/horror hybrid about ghostly gunslingers resurrected in the present-day ... cheap, dull and slowly paced on all counts
Imagine That (2009) Despite an exceedingly lightweight premise - Eddie Murphy gets stock tips from his daughter's invisible friends - Eddie Murphy gives it his all and is the life of the party
Phantom of the Opera (1983) ½ A lush tv version of the oft-filmed story ... makes a number of changes to the familiar to variable effect but tells the basics passably well
Push (2009) ½ Underrated and quite ingenious psychic powers film ... has an enormous degree of conceptual fun pitting various psychic powers in combination or against one another
Rocketship X-M (1950) The very first SF film of the 1950s Golden Age ... a cheap quickie designed to exploit Destination Moon that manages to do so surprisingly well
Shutter Island (2010) ½ Martin Scorsese conducts a 1940s-styled psycho-thriller ... an A-list cast and much foreboding atmosphere is weakened by a hokey M. Night Shyamalan-esque shaggy dog twist ending
Slash (2002) The novelty of being South Africa's first slasher film ... in all respects a generic slasher/backwoods horror film that pretends (unconvincingly) to be set in the US
Smurfs and the Magic Flute (1976) An animated incarnation of The Smurfs made prior to the 1980s Hanna-Barbera series ... limited animation conducted with an infuriatingly insipid banality
Triangle (2009) At first glance seemed only a reiteration of Bermuda Triangle nonsense but instead emerges as an incredibly haunting timeloop story not unakin to Timecrimes
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