Inspired bythis, post your memorable moments/scenes from the genre.
Kevin McCarthy screaming “You’re next! You’re next!” Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
“Gort. Klaatu, barada, niktu.”
Robbie the Robot introduces himself. Forbidden Planet.
Barbara Billingsley in Invaders from Mars. She didn’t have a big or pivotal part, but you can’t watch it without saying “Holy sh*t! That’s June Cleaver!”
What else?
“Ready?” the Captain asks. The men nod. He pulls open the door and the Thing is RIGHT THERE. :eek:
The men walking up to the Martian eyestalk device in War of the Worlds waving a white flag and getting fried. The war machines hovering and dealing out technicolor death. And the scene where the humans nuke the war machines and they come out of the cloud unscratched.
Oh, and from Forbidden Planet.
The tour of the Krell machine. <points up> “Twenty miles.” <points down> “Twenty miles.”
All the men blasting away at the bellowing invisible monster as it tried to breach the force field fence.
“Monsters, Jon! Monsters from the Id!”
The Thing from Another World: the men spreading out over the ice to mark out the size and shape of the object trapped underneath and ending up in a circle. Doesn’t sound like much when I describe it but very effective on screen.
This was a great one too. I saw this movie when I was a kid and I remember being awestruck.
For me, the big moment in War of the Worlds is when the woman is groping through a dark house. She feels a tap on her shoulder. She turns around, and it is a Martian.
“Invaders from Mars”, when you actually see the freaky martians for the first time…
I was up in my Father’s lap during that scene. 
The scene from “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” when our hero kisses his lady friend, and realizes…she’s one of them!
And kind of cheating, since this is not a scene from the actual movie but this poster is certainly an icon of 50s sci-fi. (More so than any actual scene from the movie.)
Watched a good bit of Forbidden Planet the other day - I liked the name of the Krell Metal “Adamantium”
Not sure if thats a prelude to Wolverine or a rarely referenced 80’s rocker.
Killing the spider with the sewing needle.
James Whitmore getting caught in the mandibles of a giant ant.
Last minute revelations: “It’s a COOKBOOK!”
Or, “It’s ALIVE!”
Lady heroine: “John, there’s something WRONG with him!”
The Rhedosaurus attacking the lighthouse, all in silhouette, from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the first 1950s Giant Creature flick
The Giant Space Arc taking off down its ridiculous (but oh-so-photogenic) ramp in ** When Worlds Collide**
Faith Domergue being attacked by the Metalunan Mutant in This Island Earth
The equally big-brained aliens in Invasion of the Saucermen
Yahoo Image Search…+MPB-3+This+Island+Earth+TIE-44+Invasion+Of+The+Saucermen+IOSM-2&p=invasion+of+saucermen&oid=ed6fb65f156bf4d84377beffb283658e&fr2=&fr=yfp-t-701&rw=invasion+of+saucer+men&tt=…+MPB-3+This+Island+Earth+TIE-44+Invasion+Of+The+Saucermen+IOSM-2&b=31&ni=30&no=44&tab=organic&sigr=11ee9u3re&sigb=13j19mc3k&sigi=125k1ogam&.crumb=.cVAJm9jvbC
And, of course, white-eyed Tor Johnson and Vampira in her creep Morticia-Addams costume as zombies in Plan Nine fromm Outer Space (they don’t all have to be gems)
This is the one. An unbelievably horrifying moment. No special effects, either; just a good story being told with style.
.
I always turn it off at that point. Same for the Beast from 20,000 - and I have both movies on dvd now. I won’t watch the last few minutes of either of them. It bothers me too much.
Chalk it up to too much fondness for Ben (the Whitmore character) - and double-damn Ray Harryhausen’s ability to make inanimate clay objects too real for me, but I just don’t like watching the beast die. :dubious:
My all time favorite sci fi flick has a scene in it that even today makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up: The Quatermass Xperiment. Ironically, this is the only one of my favorites I don’t have on dvd.
For those unfamiliar with the movie, it was released here in the states as ‘The Creeping Unknown,’ back in the early 50s. It starred second-tier American actor Brian Donlevy as the titular character, rocket scientist Bernard Quatermass – a staple in British sci fi (I even have the John Mills Quatermass tv mini-series now). Okay, so Donlevy hailed from the Thomas Gibson school of acting and by all accounts he was an ass to work with during the production. AND it baffles me even now as to why they brought in an American to play what should have been a Brit, but never mind. This was umpteen zillions of years ago. It’s still an awesome, well-done, freaky movie. The scariest scene in sci-fi filmdom occurs about three quarters of the way through.
Exterior, night, London Zoo. You hear a ‘funny sorta rustling noise’… The camera suddenly pans left, and as it does you get a tiny glimpse of something dragging along the ground to the right (goosebumps already if you’ve been watching this movie from the beginning because you KNOW what’s coming…). Then the camera pans up a moment later and focuses on an ordinary copse of bushes.
The camera starts to dolly in, slowly. Very, very slowly. As the focus changes and the picture tightens in on something, after a second your brain translates what it’s seeing: HOLY HAIRBALL, BATMAN!!! :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek: What is that THING looking back at you!!! aughhhhhhhh!
Whatever else, you know in your bones that whatever it is, it sure ain’t human any more. I know it’s just a guy in makeup but something about those eyes and the way that shot was photographed… Creepy creepy creepy creepy. Jebus Pete but it raises goosebumps and hackles every time!
My second all-time sci-fi movie favorite ‘Thing from Another World,’ not only is a nostalgic scarefest of the best kind, it’s also chock full of great lines as well as great scenes:
[referring to McPherson’s gun]
Ned “Scotty” Scott: You sure you know how to use that thing?
Lt. Ken McPherson: I saw Gary Cooper in "Sergeant York.
Lt. Ken McPherson: What if he can read our minds?
Eddie: He’ll be real mad when he gets to me.
Dr. Chapman: Find anything, Captain?
Hendry: Not a sign. We poked into every snowbank within miles.
Bob, Crew Chief: Barnes flushed a polar bear.
Cpl. Barnes: Sure did.
Dr. Chapman: Scare you?
Cpl. Barnes: Not after I saw it was only a bear.
Ned “Scotty” Scott: So few people can boast that they’ve lost a flying saucer and a man from Mars -all in the same day! Wonder what they’d have done to Columbus if he’d discovered America, and then mislaid it.
[after a quick encounter with the Thing]
Hendry: Did you get your picture?
Ned “Scotty” Scott: No, you were in the way and the door wasn’t open long enough.
Hendry: You want us to open it again?
Ned “Scotty” Scott: NO!
Ned “Scotty” Scott: Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!
Ned “Scotty” Scott: An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles.
Dr. Arthur Carrington: There are no enemies in science, only phenomena to be studied.
Ned “Scotty” Scott: Please doctor, I’ve got to ask this. It sounds like, well, just as though you’re describing some form of super carrot.
Ned “Scotty” Scott: Dr. Carrington, you’re a man who won the Nobel Prize. You’ve received every kind of international kudos a scientist can attain. If you were for sale I could get a million bucks for you from any foreign government. I’m not, therefore, gonna stick my neck out and say you’re stuffed absolutely clean full of wild blueberry muffins, but I promise my readers are gonna think so.
They don’t make 'em like that any more… 
Agreed – the film is incredibly well-wreitten.
Did you know that the newsman “Scotty” also played the Head Metalunan in This Island Earth a couple of years later (without glasses, of course)?
He’s all purple (or maybe it’s just that he’s in a purple room), and with his bald head with tufts he kinda looks like an oversized Evil Oompa-Loompa.
“This Island Earth is a 1955 American science fiction film directed by Joseph M. Newman. …The film stars …Rex Reason as Dr. Cal Meacham.”
ahem
For me, it is when the Rhedosaurus (yea, I’m kind of a snob regarding foreign name, they should be in italic)… I’ll let you watch it instead (it’s only 47 seconds)
“it burns…it burns!”-from some British horror flick, forget the title
Amazing special effects for such an old movie. I was always impressed by “Forbidden Planet”. To this day I love the little touches like the 3 axis lock to the laboratory.
