Best Fantasy Movies of 1972

Cathryn is suffering from schizophrenia and is haunted by hallucinations of apparitions. Her husband has his mind on other things, while her mental state is deteriorating. She is unable to define whether the people around her, like visitors to their house, are real or imaginary.

Mysterious old solicitor Mr. Blunden visits Mrs. Allen and her young children in their squalid, tiny Camden Town flat and makes her an offer she cannot refuse. The family become the housekeepers to a derelict country mansion in the charge of the solicitors. One day the children meet the spirits of two other children who died in the mansion nearly a hundred years prior. The children prepare a magic potion that allows them to travel backwards in time to the era of the ghost children. Will the children be able to help their new friends and what will happen to them if they do?

An 18th century African prince is turned into a vampire while visiting Transylvania. Two centuries later, he rises from his coffin attacking various residents of Los Angeles and meets Tina, a woman who he believes is the reincarnation of his deceased wife.

Elwood P. Dowd's constant companion is Harvey, a six-foot tall invisible rabbit. To his sister, his obsession with Harvey has been a thorn in her plans to marry off her daughter. However, when she decides to put Elwood in a mental institution, a mix-up occurs, and she finds herself committed instead. It's now up to Elwood and "Harvey" to straighten out the mess.

Just before the Salem Witch Trials, an embittered old woman, who has learned witchcraft, teams up with the Devil, and brings a scarecrow to life as part of her diabolical revenge on the judge who was once her lover.

A construction worker steals an accident victim's purse and finds an invitation to a mysterious club called Bijou. There he enters a strange erotic world where dark fantasies become reality.

After receiving word about a mysterious carcass/skeleton unearthed in the Arizona desert, a father and his daughter decide to remove it from the burial grounds for further study. Once they do so, they, as well as the town, are besieged by a colony of gargoyles living in some nearby caverns.

A tragic celestial-western that explores Adam and Eve's paradise from a surreal point of view.

An all-star cast highlights this vibrant musical adaptation of Lewis Carroll's immortal tale. One day, plucky young Alice follows a white rabbit down a hole and discovers a world of bizarre characters.

Casey Donovan stars in this dream-like sex fantasy set in New York's notorious Fire Island. First, he crosses paths in the woods with Peter Fisk, then has poolside sex with Danny DiCioccio, before hooking up with Tommy Moore around the house.

A Tijuana Bible was the original jack-off material of choice long before XXX magazines and stag films. Usually 8 pages in length and small enough to be hidden in a trouser pocket, these underground comics contained some great art. Sex in the Comics recreates these infamous dirty little secrets in live-action format.

Oscar nominated short film from 1972

A coven of witches gather in Vermont in a feminist collective’s transporting short that shakes off patriarchal scrutiny during the women’s ceremony, where they’re free to remake reality before our eyes. TRANSFORMATIONS creates an intoxicating alchemy from the witches’ interactions with nature: an attempt, as Hirschfeld remembers, to “use the act of filmmaking to heighten experience.”

Greed, corruption, ignorance, and disease. Midsummer, 1349: the Black Death reaches northern Germany. Minstrels go to Hamelin for the Mayor's daughter's wedding to the Baron's son. He wants her dowry to pay his army while his father taxes the people to build a cathedral he thinks will save his soul. A local apothecary who's a Jew seeks a treatment for the plague; the priests charge him with witchcraft. One of the minstrels, who has soothed the Mayor's daughter with his music, promises to rid the town of rats for the fee. The Mayor agrees, then renigs. In the morning, the plague, the Jew's trial, and the Piper's revenge come at once.

A silent avant-garde experience created by Derek Jarman, filled with superimposed images forming a whole picture. His palette consists mostly of reddish random images of Egypt and the pyramids; a strange garden destroyed from time to time by a man with a whip; a young peaceful man relaxing on the floor; other smoking and eating insects. This is Jarman's view of the Garden of Luxor and its mysteries. (IMDb)

An American scientist prevents an attempt against an oil Sheik, who, in return, opens the gates of his harem to his saviour. There, nude girls invite him to explore their bodies. Has anyone escaped from the street of a thousand pleasures?

This movie takes place on the Isle of Jersey where a troubled wife has come to sort out the tumult of her life. She encounters a lighthouse-keeper there and they quickly become lovers. Together they flee to Scotland. One day they are making love on a beach when the lighthouse keeper dies. But that's only the beginning of the story.

Dreamwood narrates the oniric quest of a modern argonaut in a mysterious island located somewhere on the borders of the unconscious.

A tribe of primitive "mudpeople" encounter a croquet ball, rolling through their forest. Following it, they find themselves on a vast, deserted Long Island estate. Entering, they begin to become civilized and assume the stereotypical roles and dress of people at a weekend party. There follows an allegory of upper-class behavior. At last, they begin to devolve toward their original status, and after a battle at croquet, they disappear into the woods.

Patty, a young woman caught up in living for the present with little concern for the future, awakens one day to find her husband missing and the radio reporting that millions of people around the globe have mysteriously vanished. As dramatic, earth-shaking events begin to unfold around her, Patty realizes she is living in the end times spoken of in biblical prophecy.

Strange things start to happen when Mr Dark's Pandemonium Carnival arrives in Greentown.

A young man named David unknowingly ventures into a land controlled by the powerful witch queen, Alotta, and her coven. Every year the local villagers must offer a child to the queen in order to maintain a pact of peace. But David has fallen in love with a river nymph named Yyala and he cannot have a relationship with her as long as he has a soul. So, he offers his soul to Alotta in exchange for the life of a sacrificial child. Now David and Yyala can be together, but if Yyala ever abandons him, his life belongs to the witch...

Jamaa Fanaka’s first project plays off the Blaxploitation’s genre conventions, an adaption of Goethe’s “Faust” presented with a non-synchronous soundtrack and superimposed over a remake of Super Fly (1972). Often out of focus with an overactive camera, the film immediately exudes nervous energy, but unlike Priest’s elegant cocaine consumption in Super Fly, Willie’s arm gushes blood as he injects heroin. A morality tale in two reels. —Jan-Christopher Horak

Eccentric Professor Leviticus Wirtsus is obsessed with crossbreeding animals of different species. His research leads Wirtsus to discover a LSD-type substance called Fongaluli

Hapless researcher Homer travels through time, jumping through the erotic history of civilization.

The Bee, a female superhero, tries to thwart the plans of the diabolical arch-villain the Bat.

Santa Claus finds his sleigh stuck in the sand on a Florida beach only days before Christmas Eve.

This animated feature casts the Red Baron as a hero, in a world of heroic anthropomorphic dogs and villainous anthropomorphic cats.

A visually beautiful burlesque fantasy about a fountain-of-youth pill and its effects on Getz, a down-and-out Tel Aviv night-club singer.

Melodrama centering on a man who has found the secret of leaving his body. A man uses his own mental powers to control one of the largest fortunes known to man.

French experimental film by Alain Fleischer.

This is the story of Ted, a dreamer whose secret desires come to life as he encounters a variety of men and escapes into elaborate sexual fantasies.