Just finished watching Westworld. Saw it when I was a kid, forgot about it until I heard it mentioned today. Really really enjoyed it. All that CGI and related bull today is fun, but there’s just something about early special effects that I love. I like knowing that when I see a guy on fire, it’s actually a guy on fire and not some computer animations. Anyway, I need more. Any sci-fi from the 60s-early 80s. And not the obvious stuff. No Planet of the Apes, Star Wars, Star Trek. Omega Man, awesome. Enemy Mine, sweet. Last Starfighter, fantastic. Talking about the stuff that as someone born in 1982 I would not know about. Help me out please!
Westworld is completely awesome for one reason and one reason only: Yul Brynner.
Have you seen Battle Beyond the Stars?
Slaughterhouse Five?
A Boy and His Dog?
Yeah, he’s crazy creepy. Robert Patrick most have taken some cues from him. And sadly Battle Beyond the Stars is not available on Netflix. Slaughterhouse 5 and A Boy and his Dog are, so yipee. Keep them coming!
Heh. We had some lamos running the venues in my town. Battle Beyond The Stars, Galaxina, and Galaxy Of Terror came out around the same time. So a marquee had Battle Behind The Stars and Galaxina Of Terror.
yearsofstatic: I kind of liked Silent Running. A little heavy-handed, and I thought the conflict was a bit far-fetched (why destroy the biodomes instead of putting them in orbit?); but it was cool when I was a kid.
A Boy And His Dog is good one, based on Harlan Ellison’s book.
Logan’s Run is good, and Jenny Agutter gets naked briefly.
Dark Star is a hoot!
I’m pretty sure I’ve read that the entire character was based on him.
That’s weird, just a WAG but I would think it is the most popular of those 3 movies.
The Overlook Film Encyclopedia (Science Fiction) is a massive listing of SF films chronologically. There are a LOT of films in theperiod 1960-1985 or so. I will ignore all of them except the really good or significant ones, plus those you mention:
**
Angry Red Planet
Atlabtis, the Lost Continent Atomic Submarine
The Time Macine
Village of the Damned
The Doomed
Master of the World
The Mysterious Island** (Harryhausen! and Verne!)
Creation of the Humanoids
Dr. No
Panic in Year Zero
The Birds
Children of the Damned
The Day of the Triffids
Ikarie XB-1/Voyage to the End of the Universe (Stanisla Lem!)
La Jette
Lord of the Flies
X-The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
Dr. Strangelove
First Men in the Moon (Harryhausen and Wells!)
Goldfinger
Crack in the World
Robinson Crusoe on Mars (highly recommended)
The Satan Bug
the War Game
Thunderball
Fail Safe (John Campbell called this one of the 10 best SF films)
Fahrenheit 451
Fantastic Voyage
Seconds
Barbarella
The Power obscure but good offering from George pal. With Michael Rennie!)
Quatermass and the Pit/Five Million Years to Earth HIGHLY recommended!
You Only Live Twice
Charly (Recommended)
The Illustrated Man (Bradbury!)
The Monitors (offbeat – made by Second City!)
2001 (of course!)
Planet of the Apes
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
The Forbin Project
Marooned
The Mind of Mr. Soames
On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
The Andromeda Strain
No Blade of Grass
THX-1138
A Clockwork Orange
Diamonds are Forever
The Omega Man
Silent Running
Solaris
Slaughterhouse Five
Fantastic Planet
Soylent Green
Sleeper
Westworld
Zardoz
Dark Star
Flesh Gordon
The Man with the Golden Gun
The Parasite Murders/They Came from Within/Shivers
The Stepford Wives
Terminal Man
Young Frankenstein
A Boy and His Dog (Harlan Ellison!)
Rollerball
Logan’s Run
The Man Who Fell to Earth
Rabid
Capricorn One
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
The Spy Who Loved Me
Star Wars
Dawn of the Dead
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Alien
The Brood
Mad Max
Moonraker
Quintet
Stalker
Star Trek – The Motion Picture
Time After Time
Altered States
Battle Beyond the Stars
Empire Strikes Back
Escape from New York
Android
Blade Runner
ET
Firefox
Star Trek II
The Thing
The Road Warrior
Tron
Videodrome
Brainstorm
The Dead Zone
Never Say Never Again
Return of the Jedi
Strange Invaders
War Games
Brother from Another Planet (Highly Recommended)
The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
Dune
Firestarter
The Last Starfighter
NineteenEighty Four (Recommended)
Repo Man
Star Trek III
Starman
The Terminator (Of Course!)
Adventures of Mark Twain (A personal favorite)
**Back to the Future
2010
Brazil
Cocoon
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
Real Genius
**
Holy geez. That’ll do it. Thanks Cal.
I love this movie, but I would not call it sci-fi.
One day Damnation Alley will be available
And if you think Sean Connery in a diaper is a turn on, then there’s Zardoz. If the diaper offends, try Outland.
Hard to characterize, though it’s often listed with horror flicks:* Lair of the White Worm.* A VERY different viewing experience.
Neither would most people, which is pretty much the point Campbell was trying to make. Campbell was a fascinating, iconoclastic, and controversial writer and editor who did an awful lot to define science fiction. He didn’t elaborate on this movie (My cite here is a questionnaire that he responded to, as did many other SF people, for the book Focus on the Science Fiction Film. Heinlein’s responses are typically Heinleinian – extremely terse, in an “I’m busy and you’re not paying me for this” way, while most other respondents put in at least one long answer). I do believe that he was saying that most people don’t have a very good definition of science fiction, and that even as mainstream a movie as "Fail Safe’ falls easily within his definition.
Thirding Dark Star. I’ll never look at beach balls the same.
What about The Black Hole?
OH yeah, it totally sucks.
The problem with making a definition too broad is it becomes meaningless. Yes, you could make a case that The Birds and The Lord of the Flies are science fiction as animal behavior and sociology are sciences, but you pretty much render the term useless. (Sleepless in Seattle is science fiction because it involves psychology and architecture!)
If we’re including cheesy Star Wars ripoffs like Battle Beyond the Stars, why not Starcrash (the Adventures of Stella Star)?
Well, no, that’s not the reason. The book I took this list from included both of those. But if you read Lord of the Flies, the setting is a future war in which the boys have to be evacuated and the implications are that it’s a pretty big and possibly nuclear war. It’s as much a candidate as Fail-Safe.
A lot of people have included **The Birds ** as SF/Fantasy. The magazine Cinefantastique devoted an entire cover story to it, saying that it was Hitchcock’s only foray into the genre.
She also gets naked briefly in An American Werewolf in London. (If that counts as sci-fi.)
I’m at work, where I don’t have audio.
But I do have Star Crash on a VHS tape. I remember not liking it when it came out. Total dreck. I thought it would be fun in its badness. I… think I need to be in the right mood.
Or baking pans or muffin tins.