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(1) The Time Machine - 1960.
(2) First Men In The Moon - 1964.
(3) Fantastic Voyage - 1966.
(4) Colossus: The Forbin Project - 1970.
(5) The Omega Man - 1971.
(6) Demon Seed - 1977.
(7) Altered States - 1980.
(8) Scanners - 1981.
(9) Dreamscape - 1984.
(10)Nineteen Eighty-Four - 1984.
1. 2001
2. Solaris
3. The Stalker
4. Alien
5. Alien II
6. Dark Star
7. Wax: The Discovery of Television Among the Bees
8. Quiet Earth
9. Miracle Mile
10. Illustrated Man
I remember that after the Solyaris (the book), the second strongest impression I got was from the (I am not sure how it was translated into English, but you will probably know) "Invincible" (?). I don't know if a movie was ever made from this one, but it seems to me that a good director could produce an all-time great sci-fi film from that work. Do you recall that novel? It s full of technical details and uncoventional ideas, so tere is plenty of room for plastic guns too to keep the teenagers in us happy.
No I never read Solaris. I keep meaning to pick up a copy, but then I forget. I have read several Lem's and I think that Fiasco is my favorite. I think that it could be made into a great movie. It would probably be 4 hours long though.
1. 2001
2. Solaris
3. The Stalker
Boy, you ARE serious here... But careful, this kind of start is bound to produce no finish. OK, someone can certainly sit through the 2001 - enough things to look at to avoid overinternalizing. But then you go onto Solyaris - and things start getting heavy. Two great stars - Banionis and Dvorzhetski, not to mentions Jarvet and Solonitsyn (doing great work in the Mirror too, BTW), plus an incredible Russian beauty in the Soviet Union's own version of the wet t-shirt at -273K, plus about fifty minute race through the tunnels of Tokyo??? - but man, where is all the Sci-Fi stuff? It is all philosophy, plain and simple, there is no machinery to admire, no blasts from plastic weapons (Allien forte'), just pure meditation and inner thought.But wait, you really wanna push the poor fellow to the brink. You then go to the Stalker...... boy, this is so much beyond pure indulgence, it is almost dangerous. I have deepest appreciation for those who managed to see it in one setting. My wife, NOT an action lover, an introvert reader and gentle beauty cognoscenti, did it in three sessions.
I admire your choices. I would certainly add the Mirror to that list - since you are already so deep in the slow deliberate meditation and self-analysis. I would personally take the "Mirror" ("A poetic river of somnambulism", as someone put it so well) over the Stalker any day, there is just so much more human presence in that one, and a gorgeous actress to boot (Margarita Terekhova), and since you had just opened wide that door, I would put it into that strange Sci-Fi bin too.
Do you know if it had been translated?
How would you like to take a shot at it, petew?
I guess I am a sucker for these really slow moving movies. I first saw Solaris when it was re-released in Philadelphia 1991. I thought it was quite good. I think what appealed to me most was the lack of hardware in it. Don't get me wrong though I still looove the "Big Blow-em Up" type sci-fi movies. I also am a Farscape fan.
-regards,Rich S.
Sounds close to "Solarmanite". This term was expounded upon in
probably the greatest sci-fi film of alltime, "Plan 9 From Outer Space"
- 1959, written, directed and produced by Ed Wood Jr.
The expounder was spacealien, Eros, according to him "solarmanite" was a
way of exploding actual particles of sunlight (photons?), which is one
step beyond hydrogen bomb explosion, which he had said, "actually explodes
the air itself". Eros derided us idiotic humans for threatening to destroy the
entire universe through our imminent discovery of "solarmanite". He also
demonstrated via analogy to Jeff Trent (the airplane pilot) and Colonel
Edwards how this could occur. The model included envisioning the sun
as a gas can with a stream of gas extending from it to our planet, the
stream analogous to sunrays. Upon mankinds explosion of the sunrays in
our atmosphere, a chain reaction would result, the explosion following
the stream back to the sun, where the sun would then explode, destroying
all the planets in the universe. Remember "solarmanite" is not to be
confused with "solaranite", which is the way Trent and Edwards pronounced
it. - AH
"...That was too close!!!!"
"Plan 9 From Outer Space" is billed as "the worst film ever made"; however,
I don't think so; "Plan" does have redemming qualities, however unintentional - laughter is good for the soul. There are worst sci-fi
films, they are the ones that are also atrocious, but can't generate any
comic relief either. One of Woods earlier films, "Glen Or Glenda?", where he vociferously
espouses his liberal views on transvesticism, definitely qualifies for
that "total loser" category. - AH
I agree: "Plan 9" is entertaining while "Glen Or Glenda" just plain stinks and seems to never end. The latter is one of my Holy Trinity of Bad Films, the other two being "Mesa Of Lost Women" and "Manos, The Hands Of Fate". Close, but no cigar is the abysmal "Fat Guy Goes Nutzoid!!" from Troma Studios.
There's a film that Pam listed that I feel the same way about: "The Man
Who Fell To Earth" with David Bowie; Maltin rated it a whopping
***1/2 stars out of ****, citing its fresh, original script. Am I missing
something here? Was there supposed to be a dramatic story somewhere
or wasn't I looking hard enough? It seems never to end, dragging on and on and on, bored
the crap outta me, I actually became "The Man Who Fell Asleep" during
viewing.
Speaking of Troma, what did you think of "The Toxic Avenger" series?
-AH
Toxie I was better than II or III. Class of Nuke'Em High I was better than II (hey, the Smithereens RULE!). My favorite Troma film is "Tromeo and Juliet", good enough for the art house theaters and BRAVO, IMO. The one I never got into was "Troma's War", despite it being LLoyd Kaufman's favorite (enjoyed Kaufman's book on cheap filmmaking, BTW). As for "Femme Fontaine, Killer Babe for the CIA", it's like watching a rerun of Magnum, P.I. on late nite TV, except for the lesbian Nazis.I feel the same way about "Man Who Fell To Earth" that I do about "Liquid Sky". Spent a day with Bowie a few years ago and asked him about some of his film roles, but not THAT one. Figured he was still drinking his own urine at that time. "Walkabout" is a much better Roeg film.
I too enjoyd "TA-1" more than the last two; saw Kaufmann and crew in action
at the last televised Cannes Film Festival on E! Will have to see if I can
locate "Tromeo&Juliet", have not seen it, but saw it got a lot of favorable
reviews (even if by diehard fans) at the IMDb site. Your mentioning of "Femme Fountaine" brought memories of "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS" for some reason. The high review
rating for "Walkabout" on IMDb indicates it must be more in the big
league. - AH
...hire people to make the Hyperion series ( by Dan Simmons ) into a film. I'll pay you back...8^)
Pretty good choices..... here are mine:(1) The Time Machine- can't argue with this one - it's my all-time favorite film.
(2) Blade Runner - how could you overlook this one?!?
(3) Clockwork Orange - great bolshy yarblockos to ya if ya don't like it
(4) Seconds - simply superb, and the uncensored european release is even better than the American version
(5) Journey to the Far Side of the Sun - ambitious way beyond its budget
(6) Robinson Crusoe on Mars - a great rainy saturday afternoon flick
(7) Metropolis - Giorgio Moroder's 1984 re-release of the 1927 film natcherly!
(8) Robocop - okay, it was released in 1986 - I'm cheating
(9) The Prisoner (TV) - Hey, long as I'm gonna cheat.....!
(10) Nineteen Eighty-Four - double-plus great choice! I love Michael Radford's 1984, which is true to the spirit of the novel, and a fitting last role for the great Richard BurtonNow can you name 10 great sci-fi films from the 90's?
Chronological order:
(1) "Terminator 2" - 1991;
(2) "Jurassic Park" - 1993;
(3) "Twelve Monkeys" - 1995;
(4) "Independence Day" - 1996;
(5) "Mars Attacks!" - 1996;
(6) "The Fifth Element" - 1997;
(7) "Men In Black" - 1997;
(8) "Dark City" - 1998;
(9) "The Matrix" - 1999;
(10) "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace" - 1999.Honorable Mention: "Robotcop 2"; "Back To The Future 3"; "Alien Ressurection". - AH
Saw "Bladerunner" upon initial release and liked it; didn't include it
(along with certain others) because they have been mentioned or discussed
so much here in Filmland. Also viewed "Clockwork Orange" upon it's initial
run, mixed feelings about it, tendency toward negative, but realize that
others my differ. Eyeballed "Seconds" with Rock Hudson I believe, ironic
ending if I remember - vague, but pleasant memories of the film.
A 1984 release of "Metropolis", how does it compare to the silent version?
"Robocop" was enjoyable, even if the protagonist was somewhat stiff.
I too enjoyed the British produced(?) TV series "The Prisoner" with Patrick
Whats-His-Name. Neat idea about the giant security bubbles.
Let me add "Planet of the Apes" to the pile.
Will have to think a while about the top 10 of the 90's. - AH
Interesting that you chose 1984 as your cut off date - the state of sci-fi films has been pretty dismal since then, with junk like Armageddon and Starship Troopers as the norm. It's only just lately that things have barely improved with the release of films like The Matrix.IMO sci-fi films died with the release of digital technology, which focuses on production values instead of a coherent plot.
nt
The 1984 version of Metropolis is the silent version... had some missing stuff put back in an a soundtrack by Queen, Pat Benetar, Bonnie Tylor et.al.All mentioned so far were good... will add Fantastic Voyage (followed Asimov's novel quite closely), The Thing (Carpenter's version follows John Cambell's original story "Who Goes There" much more closely than the 1950's version but but the story is still spookier), THX-1138, Andromeda Strain (same plot as the rest of Chriton's stuff, but this was the first),
Atomic Cafe' (not really Sci-fi but funny and spooky... a must for anyone who remembers the 50's), First Men in the Moon, She, Silent Running, The Man who Fell to Earth, Barbarella, A Boy and his Dog, The Power, the first Alien movie, Dune, Fantastic Planet (annimated), Laserblast and Repo Man were a hoot, Life Force, Logan's Run, Flatliners, Saturn 3, Scanners, Soylent Green, Village/Children of the Damned, WestWorld, Zardoz, Heavy Metal, and campy stuff like Attack of the Killer Tomatos, Outer Limits tv, Dr Who tv etc. and I'm sure I'm forgetting scads of others and maybe getting the wrong dates on a few.The Prisoner was Patrick McGoohan who also played the spy John Drake in the series Secret Agent (when he retired they stuck him on the island and started a new series that was filmed in Whales). He also played the bad guy in the movie Silver Streak (with Richard Pryor and Gene Wilder).
Great choices..... you are a true fan of SF. You're correct that the re-release of of Metropolis was the silent version with a new rock/pop score..... and it was colorized. Did you know that *17* reels have been missing from this film since it's initial run? It's true....... !
Yes, I'd read that somewhere. Um, I suppose I am a little more into SF than yer average... maybe it had something to do with my father dragging me off to "Invasion of the Saucer People" and scaring the you know what out of me when I was 4 or so. Or that that it was a family tradition for him, my mother and I to sit up eating cheese, smoked herring and beer while watching the SF double feature every Saturday night (most were pretty bad but sometimes there'd be a good one like Day the Earth Stood Still, War of the Worlds or Forbidden Planet, Comedy of Terror, Gojira and things like that. Um, possibly why I also hated beer by the time I became a teenager?). Then there was also the fact that they could never keep me in the "kids" section of the library and I found a couple of really neat books there (one was about an underground civilization on Mars and the other was about a group of explorers on the inside of a hollow earth taking canoes down these rivers in a prehistoric world... Unlike Journey to the Center of the Earth, this was pretty much a realistic description with stuff like volcanic ash flows blocking the river and trying to get away from the rain of pumice, getting tipped over by a pleseosaur etc.) to go along with my Space Cat Visits Venus and Space Cat Meets Mars kiddie books. Later, I found books like A Canticle for Leibowitz, Purple Cloud, Fred Hoyle's Black Cloud etc. and I was hooked (^_^)
Thanks for the feedback. See the archives, dated 10-04-99, for my thoughts
concerning Campbells story, "The Thing", and the two film adaptations.
I vaguely remember "Lifeforce" as enjoyable with good effects, especially
at the end; also enjoyed "A Boy And His Dog" with the young Don Johnson,
based on the Harlan Ellison story; I grew up as a young adolescent in the
early 60's watching "Children/Village Of The Damned"; enjoyed "Westworld"
more than the later, "Futureworld"; didn't see much of "Barbarella" at
the drive-in movie because I was preoccupied in the back seat!; "Dune" an
overproduced disappointment; "Heavy Metal" good, but needed more S&M;
"Logans Run" OK; as was "Zardoz"; enjoyed the robot in "Saturn 3"; found
"THX-1138" to be interesting at first, then tediously boring; the Original
Twilight Zone Series, The Outer Limits TV Series, The Invaders TV Series,
Dr Who Tv Series, The Avengers TV Series, among others, were staples of my early youth and manhood,
these were all modestly produced series, but featured outstanding talent.
(And what about the series with Martin Landau and Barbara Bain?)
Ok, have you seen "Liquid Sky" (1983), where the UFO lands on the main character's
penthouse patio in Manhattan? I remember standing in front of the theater
at Piedmont Mall in Atlanta GA upon initial release and deciding not to view it. Curses! Now
my curiousity has been peaked after reading two favorable reviews from two
of my main review sources, the film got a solid *** rating out of ****
from Leonard Maltin, and an excellent ***1/2 out of ***** from "The Motion
Picture Guide". To worsen matters, I can't find it at my favorite video
store! But I feel confident I will eventually track it down. Lastly,
thinking of "Zardoz", didn't Connery play a cop at a space station once?
Slava Zuckerman's low budget "Liquid Sky" is about aliens extracting a drug from humans produced during sexual activity. It really wasn't all that good or impressive. Used to show on a double bill with Rinse Dream's (Steve Sayadian) porno sci-fi film "Cafe Flesh" at the art house theaters in L.A., and did not embarass the quality of the latter. A better match might be "Lifeforce" (a great looking DVD, and the spectacular Mathilda May) or "The Hunger".
I'd like to see "Liquid Sky" out of sheer curiousity, especially the quality of the
dual-role performance of Carlisle. Have you seen "The Atomic Cafe" -
(1982)? That's another one I want to see, has a good rating at the
IMDb site. - AH
Atomic Cafe is made almost entirely of clips of old army training films, historical footage, propaganda and pop newsreel clips... most is B&W but some parts are color. It's put together really well and is both amusing and biting commentary on the idea of nuclear survivability. Having grown up at ground zero (well close to SAC anyway) in the 50's I found the bits with the "duck and cover" techniques followed by clips of the destruction from military test cameras in their mock cities particularly amusing (remember I thought crawling under my desk was pretty pointless even when I was in second grade). While the thing is totally different than most movies in that there are no main characters or plot, the juxtaposition of contrasting images and campy nostalgia was so well done that I'd rate it higher than any hollywood flick I've seen in the last decade, though it is a bit like comparing apples and watermelons (all of my friends loved it too). Both it and the 1984 release of Metropolis belong on any sci-fi lover's shelf. See also the reviews at Amazon.com
I too, a child of the 50s, grew up adjacent to a large logistics base with
a B-52 SAC bomb wing. Many nights turned into nightmares as I was abruptly
awakened by piercing airraid sirens on practice drills at the base. My
sleep-clouded mind in near panic, shivers raced up and down my spine as I
envisioned incoming missiles with nukes, a big fireball over the base and
everything incinerated, including me as I lie in the bed! Yes, I need to
see "The Atomic Cafe". - AH
Yes... Connery played sherif in Outland. Didn't see Liquid Sky either (nor do I ever remember hearing of it). Bain and Landau did that series Space 1999. Then there were all those Godzilla movies (actually like the very first B&W Gojira while most of the later ones got childlessly silly... a few of the middle ones were nice mindless popcorn filks though).I like your analysis of The Thing, though the story does also lend sort of an open-ended doubt with them wondering whether the alien had come in contact with a bird, seal or some other animal that could have made it to S. America or something so they are apprehensive of what they might find when they eventually make it home. Two other great Campbell stories are "The last/final evolution" and "Night" (especially "Night"... don't know how they could ever reproduce the sense of isolation of such a cerebrial story in a film though). The old 1920's stories, The Mightiest Machine and the Planetary Agent X (don't remember if that was the title of them... think they were done in the late 30's) would make great flicks though some of the technology is a bit outdated (gotta admire the guy for being investigated by the FBI for writing stories about atomic bombs, and even getting the elements used correct, before they even started The Manhattan Project!)
See my trivial quizzes in the archives dated 11/18/99 and 12/27/99 on
"The Thing" -1951 if you're interested. Also, see British Film Panelist
Margaret Tarrats interesting psychoanalytic interpretation of that film's
structure, derived mainly from the romantic relationship of Capt Hendry
and Nikki; can be found in "Film Genre Reader", Edited by Barry Keith
Grant, University of Texas, Austin, Chapter 19: "Monster from the Id",
Margaret Tarrat. - AH
And welcome to Film Asylum. Enjoyed "She" and "The Power" on Turner Cable a year ago. Waiting to see "The Last Wave" again (not sci-fi, but supernatural). Ever see "Phase IV" with Nigel Davenport?
Think the book The Power was much better than the movie (still have an ancient falling apart copy from the days of 35 cent paperbacks), but it was a good attempt. Saw Phase IV but for some reason I can't remember what it was about.
Not much into bug flicks, intelligent or otherwise. Helstrom Chronicles (sp) was another forgetter. Do remember my father dragging me off to see Rodan with him when it first came out and I rather liked that even if I did cry when the prehistoric birds burned up in the lava. Dinosaurs 10, bugs zero! (^_^)Well, there was one bug flick that was at least half interesting... episode of the original Outer Limits called Zanzi Misfits or something like that. My favorites from that were Galaxy Being, Soldier, Demon with the Glass Hand, Cold Hands Warm Heart, 59 Days of the Dragon, The Power, Production and decay of Strange Particles, and that two parter (The Inheritors, I think)
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