Category: Cinema 31
Hallo everyone.
Along with my unhealthy interested in horror, cult cinema, exploitation and other oddities, I definitely have a thing for these old science fiction movies from the pre-Star Wars milieu. If it is low budget, has theremin or moog music, contains crusty actors long past their supposed sell-by dates or that most people wouldn't recognise, and were made between the 50s and 70s, I'll probably like it, or at least find it interesting. So I thought I'd use this space to talk about some favourites and new watches for me. Maybe others will do the same, or else find some interesting stuff to watch as a result of this thread. A lot of this stuff is in the public domain now or available really cheaply, and you might even find a good number of classics on youtube.
So last night, I got back from a barbecue, feeling a little drunk and, yes, a bit stoned ,and decided to put on a 1961 oddity called "Battle of the Worlds" in english. it was made in Italy in 1961 or so, stars 1940s Phantom of the Opera star Claude Raines, and was an influence on some later 60s films, like the infamous Japanese/American co-production "The green Slime". The movie is dubbed into english (by some convincing American voices) and is apparently missing some footage, which results in the story appearing kind of haphazard and loopy, which is maybe something only a weirdo like me could appreciate. Claude plays an irrascible, grumpy scientist with really bad social skills, who discovers that a rogue planetoid of some kind is heading for earth. it's causing all kinds of freak weather conditions and atmospheric disturbances, and will soon destroy the world if it's not dealt with! Yes, it's basically the plot of 'Armageddon" and stuff like that, but thirty-five years early. There's a sketchily sketched love triangle, and a bunch of people go up in a rocket to rendezvous with the freaky planetoid, where they discover it's actually a living organism of some kind. Sounds a bit Star Trek (again, predating that series by quite a few years), but unlike with Trek, there's little attempt to reason with or understand the weird alien life. What I found most charming about this film was the deliberate and completely unhurried (especially when compared to modern standards) pacing, the wooo-wee--wooo-weeee trippy 1960s sci-fi movie music, the somewhat stilted but very earnest dialogue, and the movie's attempt to be, if not scientifically accurate, at least rigorous and realistic in a way that the creators understood. So, you get a lot of scenes of guys talking over space radios, meticulous descriptions of every little rocket burn and trajectory, and everything is super-talky, which, admit it, is pretty cool for a blind viewer. I'm sure the budget was less than Hillary Clinton's latest jacket, but I really think that makes a film like this more admirable, because they just didn't care and wanted to make something spacy and imaginative. I watched this in a kind of warm, blissful post-party haze, and it was very entertaining and dreamy. For fans of gonzo classics like "The Angry Red Planet", "It: The Terror from Beyond Space", and of course "The Green Slime". Probably not classic material for most but an enjoyable way to pass eighty odd minutes when the hour is late and the intoxicants flow free, or you just want to be taken to a time when space was exciting and exotic and nobody really expected it to cost millions and millions of dollars.
Ok, maybe nobody else? I'm a little bit surprised! haha
My most recent watch in this genre after the weird Italian space wanderer is the US-made "Earth VS the Flying Saucers". You can tell it's US-made because it's rather patriotic about it. In fact, I noticed right away that this is basically "Independence Day", but told in 1956 instead of 1996. To be honest, I prefer the fifties version. Its' just more my style I guess. And the way they end up dealing with the aliens seems more satisfying. What else? The flying saucers themselves are designed by stop motion mastermind Ray Haryhausen and are supposedly a triumph of what would now be considered retro design and model making. This is a lost art nowadays but lots has been written and documented about Ray and the really cool things he did to bring mostly huge mythical and prehistoric creatures to life between the 1950s and the early 80s. As a blind viewer this is way more interesting to me than learning about computer effects.
The aliens in this movie are very obvious stand-ins for communists. THey even look like humans and they come in at first offering a kind of peace for mankind if we surrender. They take over the brain of a dead scientist in what is probably the film's most gruesome scene and use him to talk to the people of earth. They destroy a few cities and then the Americans decide, to hell wit hthis, we're not gonna take it! There's also a cute love story, as you'd expect in these kinds of movies, but I actually didn't find it too overdone or cheesy, keeping in mind of course that we're talking the fifties here and it'd be done quite differently today. The movie has this earnest and sincere quality that makes it hard not to like, despite it's jubilant flag-waving. What I mean is that despite the over-all message that America is the best, it's somehow not smug about it, coming off as excitable and wide-eyed and positive instead. maybe that's the distance of time providing a different perspective? It's really easy to be cynical nowadays, but I've always had this ability to place myself metaphorically in the time and place where something is made and see it in that context. SO yeah, this one's nice, and if you care about budget/want to show this to visually oriented friends, it was a fairly expensive movie by 1956 standards and according to a couple of my own friends it really does look pretty good.
Don't know if this counts, but I wanna watch Plan 9 from outerspace some time. Supposedly the worst movie ever made. Lol
It's definitely not the worst movie ever made by a long way. It might be a bit incompetent, sure, but I think that's better than smug and hateful. ON an objective level it's kind of bad but come on, you like Zombie III! Well, ok, maybe not "like" as such, but you know what I mean~! hahaha
Maybe one of us should watch it and post in this thread.
Plan 9 I mean of course, not Zombie III...
This week's sci-fi movie is a favourite of mine: "Planet of the Vampires", also known as "Terrore Nello Spazio" ('Terror in Space", a better title in fact, since there aren't really any vampires in this movie except in a kind of metaphorical sense)
SO this is a really creepy, atmospheric sf/horror movie from 1965. It's directed by Mario Bava, one of the best in European genre film at the time, and though it has a small budget, Bava was always known for making the best and really creative use of minimal resources. The story involves the crew of a spaceship, the Argus, and their sister ship, The Galleon, investigating a mysterious signal emanating from an uncharted planet. The Galleon crash on the desolate planet awash with freak gravity and weather disturbances. The Argus also falls prey to this, and also a strange form of mental attack in which the crewmembers set upon one another and try to kill each other. This soon passes, though, and they attempt to rescue the crew of the Galleon, only to find they have all apparently died in a very violent way. They bury their comrades, then discover they're not the first visitors to this strange, psychedelic planet. A large and very alien ship also rests here, and in one of the movie's coolest scenes, some of the Argus crew explores it's interior. even if you can't see this stuff, the sense of mystery and otherworldliness as they tramp down the corridors of the cylindrical spaceship is really something. At one point they accidentally activate an odd artefact, a kind of giant statue, and it begins bellowing a recording in a deep, incomprehensible voice. This seems to set off some kind of trap and the crewmembers barely escape the derelect ship with their lives ... only to find that their own crew are disappearing. And the buried crewmembers of the Galleon will not stay dead...
So I think to reveal too much more about this movie would spoil it a bit too much. I'll just say that it's pretty clear to me that the screenwriter of the famous "Alien" movie from 1979 must have seen this film, because the first half in particular, right down to the finding of a mysterious derelect vessel, is very similar. There's an increasing sense of wrongness and creeping horror, that even reminds me a little of Carpenter's "The Thing". visually, the aesthetic is supposed to be strange and unexpected, which further works to put viewers a little bit off their ease. Dialogue is not too great, but it's an Italian genre movie with an english dub, so that's sort of to be expected.
This does lead however to the admittedly pretty cool twist at the end not quite working out the way I think it was intended to, but I can't really explain that without revealing what the twist is. Let's just say it's a pretty dark ending that you might not expect from a 60s cience fiction film, and even if due to weird dubbing choices possibly made by someone who didn't quite understand the movie it doesn't 100% work, it's a valiant effort that I find totally commendable.
I have no problem saying this is actually a great movie and the best of the three I've mused about in here so far. It has everything I like in this kind of story: creepiness, brooding, a chilly early electronic score, long lost and forgotten deadly things. It's SF but also gets to the essense of what makes a strong horror story. Ideal for late night viewing.
This week's sci-fi movie is a favourite of mine: "Planet of the Vampires", also known as "Terrore Nello Spazio" ('Terror in Space", a better title in fact, since there aren't really any vampires in this movie except in a kind of metaphorical sense)
SO this is a really creepy, atmospheric sf/horror movie from 1965. It's directed by Mario Bava, one of the best in European genre film at the time, and though it has a small budget, Bava was always known for making the best and really creative use of minimal resources. The story involves the crew of a spaceship, the Argus, and their sister ship, The Galleon, investigating a mysterious signal emanating from an uncharted planet. The Galleon crash on the desolate planet awash with freak gravity and weather disturbances. The Argus also falls prey to this, and also a strange form of mental attack in which the crewmembers set upon one another and try to kill each other. This soon passes, though, and they attempt to rescue the crew of the Galleon, only to find they have all apparently died in a very violent way. They bury their comrades, then discover they're not the first visitors to this strange, psychedelic planet. A large and very alien ship also rests here, and in one of the movie's coolest scenes, some of the Argus crew explores it's interior. even if you can't see this stuff, the sense of mystery and otherworldliness as they tramp down the corridors of the cylindrical spaceship is really something. At one point they accidentally activate an odd artefact, a kind of giant statue, and it begins bellowing a recording in a deep, incomprehensible voice. This seems to set off some kind of trap and the crewmembers barely escape the derelect ship with their lives ... only to find that their own crew are disappearing. And the buried crewmembers of the Galleon will not stay dead...
So I think to reveal too much more about this movie would spoil it a bit too much. I'll just say that it's pretty clear to me that the screenwriter of the famous "Alien" movie from 1979 must have seen this film, because the first half in particular, right down to the finding of a mysterious derelect vessel, is very similar. There's an increasing sense of wrongness and creeping horror, that even reminds me a little of Carpenter's "The Thing". visually, the aesthetic is supposed to be strange and unexpected, which further works to put viewers a little bit off their ease. Dialogue is not too great, but it's an Italian genre movie with an english dub, so that's sort of to be expected.
This does lead however to the admittedly pretty cool twist at the end not quite working out the way I think it was intended to, but I can't really explain that without revealing what the twist is. Let's just say it's a pretty dark ending that you might not expect from a 60s cience fiction film, and even if due to weird dubbing choices possibly made by someone who didn't quite understand the movie it doesn't 100% work, it's a valiant effort that I find totally commendable.
I have no problem saying this is actually a great movie and the best of the three I've mused about in here so far. It has everything I like in this kind of story: creepiness, brooding, a chilly early electronic score, long lost and forgotten deadly things. It's SF but also gets to the essense of what makes a strong horror story. Ideal for late night viewing.
I like Dark Star.
I used to occasionally watch movies like these on the Sci-fi channel before it became the Syfy channel. Where do you find them besides Youtube and the blind mice vault?
I haven't seen Dark Star yet! It's definitely on my list. I like most of the Carpenter I've seen so I'm looking forward to it.
there are some pretty good movie stores around here where I can get loads of this stuff. A lot of them are on youtube too though, yeah. I should look for links and post them from now on.
And of course, there's the other way, the thing that shall not be named, but which is plentiful on the internet. I know a particular source that is a treasure trove of old cult movies.
Here are some youtube links for films I've talked about. I'll only post them if I can find the movies in full on youtube.
And, "Battle of the Worlds" is in the public domain now. So here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQXrTt7mJ-I
Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-DocTWsDTc&list=PLWqXsyM9SFUuuZyDGvbIQHElPcPtJ-DEG
And finally, Planet of the Vampires/Terror in Space:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSiSkz2OUH4