The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Psychiatry and Psychology concerns with the practice of mental health. A psychiatrist is someone who deals with mental health medically, while a psychologist deals with such through therapy and analysis. Discussions of people with mental health issues in genre cinema are found under Disturbed Psychology. Asylums concerns facilities to house the insane and Sinister Psychiatrists deals with disturbed members of the psychiatric fraternity. This concerns the actual practice of Psychiatry and Psychology as it appears in fantastic cinema.
A number of horror films are concerned with barbaric treatments afforded to the mentally ill, particularly during the 19th Century. There are also a number of murder mysteries set around psychological practices and encounter groups.
There are a number of films about new and advanced methods for dealing with the mentally ill, including devices that allow a psychiatrist to enter the dream terrain of a patient. Some horror films concern nightmare techniques being applied or exotic treatments for fears. A number of other films concern psychiatrists trying to deal with patients that claim to be aliens or have psychic powers.
Horror film in which a group of maniacs escape from an asylum set out to track down the new psychiatrist. This starts with tongue amusingly planted in cheek and contains a great cast line-up
Psycho-thriller in which Daphne Zuniga is a woman accused of the murder of her psychiatrist and may or may not have been faking her mental illness
Story of the sole survivor of a cult mass suicide waking from a coma to be haunted by the cult leader begging her to join them. This becomes a derivative of the A Nightmare on Elm Street films before a contrived ending
Sequel to Basic Instinct made fourteen years later. Sharon Stone vamps her way across the screen but the heated sexuality of the original has been watered down to a lukewarm whimper
One of the better 80s attempts to copy A Nightmare on Elm Street from an old Charles Beaumont script in which Bill Pullman is a neurologist who becomes involved in an increasingly wilder series of reality bendings
One of David Cronenberg’s great early films. Fueled by a messy divorce Cronenberg was going through, it is set around a radical psychological institute that encourages people to manifest their repressed angers through their bodies
Classic film that was groundbreaking for its designs – all distorted and angular sets, exaggerated shadows – that became defined as German Expressionism and its tale of a sinister hypnotist
A remake of the silent German Expressionist classic that replicates the unique look and sets. Interesting, although it now emerges more like a film noir with artistic pretensions than the avant garde work the original was
The dreamscape film was given extraordinary life by Tarsem Singh in his directorial debut who transforms a fairly ordinary script with visuals and costuming that is out of this world
A blatant copy of Basic instinct with psychologist Bruce Willis getting involved with Jane March as his patients start being murdered. Much bare flesh but the film is killed by ludicrous plot twists
A variant on Edgar Allan Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether with Jennifer O’Neill as a woman wrongly committed to an asylum before discovering it has been taken over by the inmates
This is one of the rare failures from Hammer Films, a not uninteresting work set during the early era of 19th Century psychology and directed with some vivid effect
The very first dreamscape film, prefiguring many other films that have taken up the theme, most notably Inception. By contrast this is a dull affair that lets most of the possibilities slip through its hands.
This is regarded as one of the worst sequels ever made, featuring many of the actors but with John Boorman stepping in as director. It’s an incomprehensible mishmash of ideas but not without some laudable elements
Film spun out from a web series. Robert Englund as a mad psychiatrist who creates a machine that helps people confront their phobias that somehow opens a doorway to creatures from another dimension
Indie SF film where Denis Leary wakes up as patient in a psychiatric institution while he insists he has been awoken from cryogenic suspension in a future where he is awaiting execution
A film that mostly consists of amnesiac Air Force pilot James B. Sikking being questioned by psychologist Hector Elizondo. The film constantly hints at a big revelation before settling for one of the corniest twist endings
Classic effort from Hammer Films in which a psychologist discovers a troubled patient responsible for a string of murders is Jack the Ripper’s daughter. Made with much class
Wonderfully charming classic with James Stewart who has an invisible 6’3″ rabbit companion. The film proves absolutely winning with its standing up in favour of the right to be eccentric
A bizarre pseudo-documentary from the silent era that claims to recount a history of Satanism and witchcraft. Much of the film’s thesis is spurious but the results are facsinating
This starts off with an amnesiac, possibly hallucinating Adrien Brody who is accused or murder and locked in an asylum, before eventually opening up into a time travel film akin to Twelve Monkeys
Kevin Spacey is a mysterious patient in a psychiatric institution who makes possibly true claims to be an alien. An uncredited ripoff of the far superior Man Facing Southeast
An extraordinary Argentinean film about a patient in his asylum who insists that he is an alien and has genteel affect on the inmates. Later uncreditedly ripped-off as K-PAX.
This comes with a great premise – a man is woken from a coma for the first time and is forced to deal with the world with the mind of a newborn infant. A clear attempt to copy Charly, this would be a great vehicle for a modern character actor but suffers from stodgy unimaginative handling
The great John Huston, the director of The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen and other classics, directs a psychotherapy psycho-thriller. Alas the thriller essentials slip entirely through his hands
Excellent and overlooked film with Kathryn Harrold as a psychiatrist trying to deal with the fact that one of the patients in an asylum has vast psychic powers
Modestly effective film in which teens in a small town go berserk and begin killing people as a result of experiments being conducted at the university psychology department
Czech Claymation animator Jan Svankmajer embraces the Terry Gilliam cutout animation process in this wackily playful mix of dream and surrealism that emerges similar to The Science of Sleep
Smart and tightly wound psycho-thriller as psychotherapist Annabella Sciorra is wound into the murder of a patient