The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
Victorian Gaslight Milieu concerns works set in and around the Victorian period (1837-1901), usually taking place in England and London. This was a period that produced a great many key genre works, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886), Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey (1890), and H.G. Wells’ classics like The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897) and The War of the Worlds (1898), all of which have been multiply filmed.
Not to mention this is also the period in which Sherlock Holmes operates, where the Sweeney Todd story and the works of Charles Dickens – in particular A Christmas Carol (1843) – are set and the real-life Jack the Ripper murders occurred. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) falls outside of this period but is frequently treated as belonging to the Victorian era. The works of Jules Verne take place during this period and screen depictions frequently use a gaslight setting.
Film treatments have created a fantasy realm of fog-laden London streets, aristocrats in hansom cabs, street urchins, ladies in full-length dresses and cheeky Cockney barmaids/dancehall girls, not to mention a whole period design scheme. Many of the efforts from The Anglo-Horror Cycle in particular from Hammer Films prefer this setting. This is also the realm where Steampunk, the fantastical vision of an alternate technology based on Victorian steam inventions, takes place. It is also the period where a number of Age of Exploration Adventure Films take place.
The third of Abbott and Costello’s comedic meet ups with the Famous Monsters – in this case a series of lowjinks as they encounter Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (played by Boris Karloff)
Yet another adaptation of a series of Young Adult fantasy books that failed to fly. The idea of an Indiana Jones-type adventure set in Victorian England holds promise but the film only sporadically manages to let the adventure fly
This Victorian-set children’s film has not been widely seen and has gained a small cult reputation for many years its ambitious plot involving a ghost story and time travel
Jules Verne’s classic adventure novel is turned into a comedy vehicle for Jackie Chan. One of Chan’s biggest flops, an overblown turkey packed with celebrity cameos and replacing Verne’s adventure with incredibly unfunny slapstick
Adaptation of a classic graphic novel that imagines Batman back in the late 19th Century as he fights Jack the Ripper. This works rather well – in fact, better than the graphic novel it is based on
A smart, intelligent tv mini-series that conducts a murder mystery that ranges between the 1890s and 2050s, before arriving at an ingenious and clever SF explanation
An adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that comes with the oddity of featuring no Dracula. This is quite faithful to the book and the period setting looks not to bad on a low budget
One of a series of cheap Canadian-made made Sherlock Holmes tv movies featuring a wildly overacting Matt Frewer who makes possibly the worst screen Holmes ever
Well-made and extremely faithful adaptation of Charles Dickens’s perennial Christmas story starring George C. Scott as Scrooge. This brings out story elements other versions skip over
A tv mini-series that offers a dark, adult and definitely not family friendly version of the oft-filmed Charles Dickens tale that reinvents the original in quite astonishing ways
An interesting never-quite-ran from the heyday of Anglo-horror cycle with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee as Victorian anthropologists dealing with a prehistoric skeleton that is an embodiment of evil
Guillermo Del Toro takes on the Victorian ghost story. What we get is the most gorgeously designed and costumed haunted house film ever but where the excess scenography actually distracts from producing any boo moment
Retelling of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde from cult Euro erotica director Walerian Borowczyk. Not quite the erotic retelling one expects, this nevertheless conducts some radical revisions
Classic silent version of the Jekyll and Hyde story. A reasonable if not truly standout version, dominated by John Barrymore’s highly melodramatic performance in the title roles
The definitive version of the Jekyll/Hyde story in this author’s opinion, winning a Best Actor Oscar for Fredric March. Rouben Mamoulian uses some unique directorial effects and laces the show with a strong undercurrent of repressed sexuality
Version of the Jekyll/Hyde story starring Spencer Tracy and with Ingrid Bergman as the dancehall girl he liaises with. This has been made in the vogue for Freudian psychology so the transformation is tricked out with dubious symbolism
Excellent tv movie adaptation of the Jekyll/Hyde story starring John Hannah. This is mounted with exquisite period detail and brings new depths and interpretations of an oft-told tale
Rather enjoyable latter day Hammer Film, which plays its title pun surprisingly seriously. Ralph Bates and Martine Beswick are perfectly matched as the gender-changing Dr Jekyll
This revival of the classic children’s character who can speak to animals took a critical battering but I kind of liked it. It has a completely madcap slapstick tone and more crucially returns to the stories and banishes any bad memory of Eddie Murphy
Beautifully produced version of the Oscar Wilde story about a libertine who becomes immortal by transferring his soul into a portrait. This easily stands out as one of the best film versions of the story to date
The point where the legend of Hammer Films and the careers of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing began. A vivid colour remake of the Bram Stoker book that put a stake through the heart of the staid Universal horrors and created a new English horror industry
Lushly produced, big-budget adaptation of Bram Stoker starring Frank Langella that places much more of a romantic emphasis on the story than any other version. Here is the beginning of the darkly romantic vampire film
BBC costume drama version of the Bram Stoker novel, which offers the most radical take on the story of any version made to date, substantially wrenching around many of the familiar characters
BBC mini-series retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula that deconstructs and widely expands on sections of the book to create something relentlessly modernistic, sometimes in ways that take you aback
TV movie version of Bram Stoker’s book that was released to theatres in some places. Richard Matheson’s script brings back many aspects of the book that are dropped by other productions but the film suffers the fatal miscasting of Jack Palance in the title role
Probably the worst film adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this opts for a trashy sordidness with a lunatically over-the-top Anthony Perkins in the centre of the show
Brad Anderson adapts an Edgar Allan Poe story about an asylum where the inmates are posing as the staff. This is lush period piece with an amazing cast line-up – the only surprise is that it did no box-office
Czech Jules Verne adaptation that conducts an extraordinary blend of animation and live-action. Maybe the purest evocation of Steampunk that has ever been placed on screen. A work of underappreciated genius
A modest and quite good low-budget adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man, which adheres more faithfully to the Wells novel than the recent high-profile film
An obscure tv movie version of Mary Shelley made by producer Dan Curtis. This suffers cheap production values but is the most faithful version of the book up to that point
TV mini-series that tries to conduct a rigorously faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley’s book and largely succeeds apart from some minor changes. On the other hand, none of the period setting or story much comes to life
One of the spate of Frankenstein films to emerge in the 2023-4 period, this conducts an ambitious period-set follow-up to the original Mary Shelley story on a low budget
Danny Boyle’s stage adaptation, broadcast live on movie screens, wrings up some unique changes on the classic tale. The role of Frankenstein and creation alternated between Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller
The ‘true story’ bit is contentious but this tv mini-series was the first production to take the Frankenstein story back to the way Mary Shelley told it. Lavishly produced and with a fantastic cast
One of the most delightful films produced during the 1960s-80s lean years of Disney animation. This was not a success but delivers a film of winning charms about a mouse equivalent of Sherlock Holmes
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
An incredibly good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story. Thought lost for many years, this was made at the height of German Expressionism and has a vividness that other adaptations lack
The first in a series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, who became the definitive Holmes for many years, and a reasonable adaptation of the Arthur Conan Doyle novel
Hammer Films’ one and only Sherlock Holmes adaptation. It is beautiful to see the opulence of early Hammer productions brought to bear giving the story unusually effective life
Given lavish period settings and featuring a sterling cast line-up of British talent from the day, this is probably the most faithful film adaptation of the Conan Doyle story
Another adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes quasi-supernatural mystery. This is also one of the worst ever thanks to the wildly over-acted, scenery chewing performance from Matt Frewer, badly miscast as Holmes
A new and extremely good adaptation of the Sherlock Holmes story featuring Richard Roxburgh as Holmes. This offers some radical shakeups of the story and characters
The film that launched Vincent Price as a horror icon where he plays a mad waxworks curator who covers murdered bodies in wax. A remake of Mystery of the Wax Museum shot in the original 1950s 3D fad.
The title and names are changed, otherwise this is an extremely faithful adaptation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde starring Christopher Lee. Not very successful at the time, this interestingly opens the story out with Freudian psychology
A version of the H.G. Wells novel conducted as a mini-series of six half-hour episodes from the BBC. This is the most faithful adaptation of the book so far
A French animated film where a boy with a cuckoo-clock for a heart goes on a quest for love through a surreal quasi-Steampunk world. With cameos from Georges Melies and Jack the Ripper
Dramatisation of the Jack the Ripper murders that resembles a cheap British quota quickie but musters some okay gaslit atmosphere. Alas, the film has done little research on the details of Ripper casefile
A version of the Jack the Ripper killings from cult exploitation director Jess Franco starring Klaus Kinski. Neither Franco or Kinski are up to much. The film’s resemblance to the facts of the Ripper case is close to zero
TV mini-series made for the 100th anniversary of the Jack the Ripper killings. While the show adheres more to the facts of the case of any filmed work up to that point and to have uncovered new evidence, it should be considered fiction
A girl sets out to solve the Jack the Ripper killings to free her innocently convicted brother. This is no more, no less factual than any other version but conducts a fine period recreation of Victorian England
An enterprising low-budget adaptation of the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story, which has been filmed numerous times. This offers the most radical spin on the story of any adaptation to date
The success of Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea created a spate of Jules Verne’s adaptation. Here Verne’s tale of explorers in an underground realm has been turned into an absurdly colourful adventure
This jumps aboard the 1960s fad for Jules Verne film adaptations but it has nothing to do with Verne and is instead a slapstick caper film about the building of a rocket during the Victorian era
One of a spate of recent films that adapt characters or sections from Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this concerns the doomed ship voyage aboard which Dracula travels to England
This comes with a captivating tagline “Before The Ripper, fear had another name” and misleadingly suggests it is based on another true-life Victorian serial killer. This refuses to be the police procedural you expect
One of the best and most original ghost stories in some time, a mini-series for the BBC set in the 1890s, this does remarkable things in entirely turning the genre on its head
This took a critical drubbing at the time it came out with everybody laughing at Julia Roberts’ Irish accent but is a revisionist take on the Jekyll/Hyde story, all told through the eyes of Dr Jekyll’s maid and an extremely good version of the story
Amiable knockabout stop-motion animated film from Laika Entertainment, although the title is a misnomer and the film is actually about a Bigfoot rather than a Missing Link
A lavish and ambitious production that has the fictional character of Sherlock Holmes solving the real-life Jack the Ripper murders, even if the eventual resolution opts for one of the more far-fetched theories about The Ripper’s identity
Big, no-expense-spared Disney production of the fairytale. The film is stunning to look at it in terms of design and costuming but has a simplicity that leaves little for adults to engage with
Lush tv mini-series with Charles Dance as the Phantom, this stands too much in the shadow of the then recent Lloyd Webber musical and its making The Phantom into a romantic figure as opposed to a horror icon
Adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel about an unaging libertine starring Hurd Hatfield. This is regarded as a classic but reads as fairly melodramatic and tame today
From producer Dan Curtis, creator of tv’s Dark Shadows and The Night Stalker, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s novel about a libertine who remains eternally youthful while his debaucheries are transferred to a portrait. This has to count as the best version of the story to date.
Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone conduct a revisionist take on the Frankenstein film. This ended up a critical favourite at most of the 2023 awards with Emma winning the show in an hilarious performance
Christopher Nolan directs a beautiful period piece with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman as rival Victorian stage magicians. The film is an elegantly crafted Hall of Mirrors and illusions, capped by sterling performances from all involved
Unsold tv pilot that features Sherlock Holmes cryogenically unfrozen in the present-day. While the characters have some quirky appeal, the exercise seems construed more as a copy of a tv show of the era like Moonlighting
Another take on the Jack the Ripper murders that has been conducted on a low-budget. This is not uninteresting but the ‘untold’ part of the title is an untrue claim
Guy Ritchie’s reinvention of Sherlock Holmes seemed a miscalculated disaster in the offing. It doesn’t radically reinvent the basics but emerges passably well
A mockbuster take on Sherlock Holmes from The Asylum released the same time as the Guy Ritchie-Robert Downey Jr film. Ben Syder makes for a neurotically subdued Holmes but the film takes a leap off into demented Steampunk territory to emerge as one of The Asylum’s better offerings
Largely forgotten Sherlock Holmes entry that was the first film to pit Holmes against Jack the Ripper. Both sides are treated with respect amid lush production values
Released before the Tim Burton version, this is a British tv production that offers a grimly realistic, non-musical historical portrait of Sweeney Todd with Ray Winstone in the title role
Another version of the Sweeney Todd legend. Rather than a musical, this is a straight horror version, produced on low-budget. Here we learn that Sweeney is on a mission to kill off members of the aristocracy
NOT the Tim Burton film, this is one of several earlier versions of the Sweeney Todd story. Crudely made, it is lit up by the lurid melodramatics of the forgotten British horror actor Tod Slaughter
Tim Burton takes on the film version of the Stephen Sondhiem musical about a murderous barber, featuring Johnny Depp in the title role. But disappointingly, Burton still makes the same film he always does
This adaptation of H.G. Wells’ classic novel was one of the best films from 1950s SF producer/director George Pal. The time travel is depicted with considerable wondrousness and standout effects for the era
Remake of the classic H.G. Wells novel that comes with the novelty of being directed by Wells’s great-grandson. More disappointingly it prefers to merely remake the 1960 film rather than return to the book
Hammer Films had great success with their revivals of Dracula and Frankenstein and went on to adapt other classic horror stories. Here they take on the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story as a scientist unleashes his evil personality within
An madcap new version of the Mary Shelley story where everything is turned up to an overwrought 11 on the dial. How more nutzoid can you get than a version where Igor the hunchback (a completely miscast Daniel Radcliffe) is the main character?
Released just before the Spielberg film, this was an adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel set in the Victorian period that attempts to tell the story as it was written. The film has ambition way beyond the resources at hand but you cannot help but applaud what it tries to do
BBC mini-series that sets out to restore the H.G. Wells novel to the era it was written. This it does, as well as restores many aspects that other films change. At the same time, it also introduces some radical changes that make it the most variant of the adaptations to date
Part live-action, part animated adaptation of a classic Victorian children’s story about an urchin who discovers a secret world underwater
Director Charlie Steeds creates a modest film set in 19th Century England about people at an inn as it comes under attack by werewolves
The 1941 Lon Chaney Jr The Wolf Man is given the remake treatment in a way that builds out on the creaky original with lavish sets and state of the art transformation effects
Criminally neglected Victorian children’s fantasy. Superbly designed with a beautifully dark and much more adult emotional range than a regular children’s film
The revived Hammer Films visit the classic British ghost story tradition. This is impeccably mounted but the film offers nothing more than a series of disappointingly superficial boo moments of zero impact
Steven Spielberg produced film about an adolescent Sherlock Holmes often feels like it is Holmes being pitched as an Indiana Jones adventure but comes with some beautifully made touches