Fantastic Cinema

Fantastic Cinema, the book, chronicles the excitement from the beginnings of cinema to the present day: science fiction, fantasy, magic, the supernatural, the surreal, horror, monsters, animation, prehistoric pasts and brightly coloured futures.

Fantastic Cinema reviews all the great fantasy movies from Metropolis to Return of the Jedi, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Poltergeist, from The Wizard of Oz to Superman III. This superbly illustrated study surveys the directors, the stars, the special effects and the imagery that have made this genre the most fascinating and vigorous form of contemporary world cinema.

The years from 1968 to the present are, without doubt, the high point of fantastic cinema, with the best commercial talents of the day, such as Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Roeg and Carpenter, creating box-office and critical successes on a huge scale. In-depth analysis of key films from these years is supplemented by chapters on great directors, producers and special effects men.


Over 350 films are discussed in the main text with a further 400 detailed in in a comprehensive filmography section which will be a delight to all cinema goers. Throughout, the book is heavily illustrated with stills in colour and black and white, graphically evoking the world of the fantastic in all its strangeness and excitement.