I’ve always been a big fan of Peter Hyams’ 1981 science fiction thriller Outland, though I’m aware that I’m in something of a minority. All I can imagine is that in the wake of Alien (1980) a lot of sci-fi … Continue reading High Moon: Outland Revisited
The name of Hammer Films is now inseparably attached to classic horror, but this occurred more by financial necessity than artistic choice. Throughout their 60s heyday, the studio were trying to get all manner of projects off the ground, their … Continue reading Return to the Lost Continent!
The first Twilight Zone I ever saw was Twilight Zone – The Movie. Okay, don’t judge; I was born in 1970, before the age of even the domestic video recorder and the three TV channels that existed in Britain at … Continue reading Wanna See Something Really Scary? Revisiting Twilight Zone – The Movie
This is a revised edition of a review of Mad Max: Fury Road originally published in Strange Skins Digital issue two (2017). The star of the Mad Max films was never Mel Gibson; it was always, from the very beginning, … Continue reading Mad Max: Fury Road Retrospective
Warning: Contains Spoilers! Patty Jenkins’ 2017 Wonder Woman trashed all the DC Comics movies of recent years at the box office, exceeding the earnings of its nearest rival Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice by almost a quarter. This might … Continue reading Wonder Woman 1984: Review
When Warner Brothers, owners of DC Comics, decided to create an extended superhero universe to rival that of Marvel Studios, they brought in Zack Snyder, who brought with him the same dark ethic he had employed on 2009’s Watchmen. Unfortunately, … Continue reading Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Review
Growing up in the 1970s, I was far too young to have experienced Nigel Kneale’s seminal trilogy of sci-fi serials, The Quatermass Experiment, Quatermass II and Quatermass and the Pit during their original broadcast on the BBC in the 1950s. … Continue reading Quatermass – The Hammer Years
I never realised it at the time, but looking back, it seems to me that there was a lot in 1980s cinema that was new. From the ground-breaking motion-controlled models of Return of the Jedi to the far-ahead-of-its-time computer generated … Continue reading The Dark Crystal: Now and Ages Past
In late 1984, BBC2 screened a short season of science fiction films under the umbrella title Future Tense that made a strong impact on my teenage self. As a child of the Star Wars generation and with the original trilogy … Continue reading Robots on the Rampage and Other Stories: Future Tense Revisited
This is another chapter from my book ‘The Space Between: Sci-Fi Cinema 1968 – 1973’, as yet unpublished. Well, I might as well do something with it! This contains spoilers, by the way – but if you don’t know how … Continue reading Damn Dirty Apes: Planet of the Apes (1968)
