# Let me know about some lesser known scifi movies! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 9, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440 "2012-11-09T02:21:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/1 "2012-11-09T02:21:07Z")
Here are some I ended up watching by chance, or found it hard to run across even being a big movie fan. Quintet- Contemplative and philosophical post apoc movie starring Paul Newman, slow but creates a great mood. Phase IV(4)- Super intelligent ants are taking over the world, strange and eerie mood. City Of Ember- People living in a city underground have forgotten there is a world outside, competent adaptation of a YA novel. Has Bill Murray playing the villain, he is a blast! Moon 44- Mediocre movie but has absolutely gorgeous sets and props, looking like Blade Runner had sex with Aliens and birthed this movie. Lots of great character actors in this one. Nemesis- Wow this is the absolute definition of so bad its incredible! Noir/cop thriller set in a future where everyone has cybernetic implants. So over the top it is a blast, some very quotable lines too. Great B movie:) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/2 "2012-11-09T03:22:25Z")
I don’t know what you consider lesser known. Do these count?: _Invaders from Mars_ (1953, U.S., dir. William Cameron Menzies) _La Jetée_ (1962, France, dir. Chris Marker) _Hardware Wars_ (1978, U.S., dir. Ernie Fosselius) _Fantastic Planet_ (1973, France/Czechoslovakia, dir. René Laloux) _Dark Star_ (1974, U.S., dir. John Carpenter) _They Live_ (1988, U.S., dir. John Carpenter) “Blink”, an episode of the TV program _Dr. Who_ (2007, U.K., dir. Hettie MacDonald), which isn’t a movie but can be appreciated as one without knowing anything about the TV program ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/3 "2012-11-09T03:29:14Z")
_Dark Star_ is great. May I also recommend _Night of the Comet_, which is a quite funny “end of the world” movie with a very young Chacotay (Robert Beltran). “Daddy would have gotten us Uzis.” ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/4 "2012-11-09T04:04:06Z")
The Quiet Earth is a very good 80s sci fi movie from New Zealand. Worth a look if you can track it down. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/5 "2012-11-09T04:43:26Z")
_[Hardware](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099740/)_ _[Cargo](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381940/)_ - a Swiss thriller that takes place aboard a large spaceship. It borrows from a lot of other movies. Reminiscent of _Sunshine_. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/6 "2012-11-09T06:40:03Z")
Damnit, I was going to say _Hardware_ [Les Maîtres du temps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Ma%C3%AEtres_du_temps) - done by the same guy who did the more well-known _Fantastic Planet_ ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/7 "2012-11-09T08:09:46Z")
_The Ice Pirates_ - A SF comedy that was pretty good _The Brother From Another Planet_ - An alien stranded on Earth _Miracle Mile_ - Good “end of the world” movie _Robinson Crusoe on Mars_ - Sixties sci-fi thriller that was a cut above the average for the genre _The Andromeda Strain_ - A little stiff but a decent movie _THX 1138_ - Early George Lucas. Unfortunately he’s “revised” it like he did his Star Wars movies. _Sleeper_ - A science fiction comedy by Woody Allen. _The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T_ - The first live-action Dr Seuss movie. _The Seven Faces of Dr Lao_ - A classic fantasy set in the old west. _Fahrenheit 451_ - Truffaut adaptation of the Bradbury classic. _Solaris_ - Soviet SF movie _Soylent Green_ - A little cheesy but good. Charlton Heston made a bunch of SF movies back in the seventies. _A Boy and His Dog_ - Strange but worth watching. _Capricorn One_ - Paranoid SF thriller. _Outland_ - Science fiction remake of _High Noon_. _Children of Men_ - Recent SF movie I feel has been overlooked. ---
**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/8 "2012-11-09T10:09:34Z")
I thought [Another Earth](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1549572/combined), which came out last year, was terrific. And, FWIW, so too, did many of the reviewers at [Metacritic](http://www.metacritic.com/movie/another-earth/critic-reviews). By the way, is [Solaris](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/combined) considered “lesser known”? Because it’s a pretty fine sci-fi flick. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 10:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/9 "2012-11-09T10:26:37Z")
> [@KarlGauss](#): > > By the way, is [Solaris](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307479/combined) considered “lesser known”? Because it’s a pretty fine sci-fi flick. Apparently some people aren’t aware of it. [Solaris](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(1972_film)) ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/10 "2012-11-09T11:37:27Z")
Depends if you like really corny stuff. The Day The Earth Stood Still is now a cult classic. If you like 50’s stuff then Monolith Monsters. Battle Beyond the Stars is very good but little known. It is very tongue in cheek. And Twelve To The Moon if you want to see one of the worst movies ever produced. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/11 "2012-11-09T12:53:10Z")
I second the love for _The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T._ That movie’s pretty damn weird, but I love it. I’m not sure I’d necessarily classify it as sci-fi, though. I love _The Last Starfighter;_ always have. It’s one of the first movies to make extensive use of computer graphics, and while they look dated by today’s standards, I like the story and a lot of the lines from it. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/12 "2012-11-09T13:31:49Z")
For starters, the Quatermass series from Britain. They appeared as serials on TV, and were re-made as movies: **The Quatermass Xperiment** (sic), realeased in the US as **The Creeping Unknown** **Quatermass 2** , released in the US as **Enemy from Space**. Noth good films about offbeat alien invasions. The only problem, is that film film versions starred American Brian Donleavy as Quatermass, who looks and sounds more like an American gangster than a British professor. **Quatermass and the Pitt** AKA **Five Million Years to Earth** – really good SF piece about finding a long-buried Martian spaceship while fixing up a London Underground station. Like 2001, released the same year, it involves an alien aretifact which was involved in human evolution, and which is still working. And this time the very British Andrew Keir plays Quatermass. Highly recommended. I don’t recommend later entries in the Quatermass series, though. Then there are Jerome Bixby’s films of the 1950s: **It! The Terror from Beyond Space** – really good film about a Monster Loose on a Space Ship. The first film using this trope, which I’;m convinced _Alien_ largely ripped off from this film. It had been done in fiction by A E Van Vogt earlier, but Bixby’s film isn’t really a rip-off of Van Vogt. Again, highly recommended. **The Lost Missile** – really rare. A missile from some undisclosed country (pretty obviously Russia) is in low earth orbit and causing havovc by somehow creating great heat and devastation. It has to be destroyed before it destroys the world. But ignore Bixby’s other 1950s film, _The Curse of the Faceless Man_, which is about a Pompeiian mummy come back to life. Bixby, by the way, was responsible for the story used in that Twlight Zone episode "It’s a _Good_ Life, where Billy Mumy can do anything with his mind, and sends people he doesn’t like Out To The Cornfield. He also rewrote the screenplay for **Fantastic Voyage**. A film version of his \*\*The Man from Earth[/B[ came out about 15 years ago, and is worth seeing. **The Last Mimzy** – too upbeat, and not entirely faithful, but we need more Henry Kuttner/Catherine L. Moore-based movies. This one is based on their “Mimsy were the Borogoves” **Timescape** – another film based on a Kuttner/Moore story, this time “Vintage Season”. Once again, the movie’s ending is more upbeat than the story’s. But worth watching. **Panic in Year Zero** – Really low budget film about father Ray Milland getting his family to safety after the Russkies (unnamed, again) nuke LA. Clever low-budget film making. **Robinson Crusoe on Mars** – so good that it’s available from Criterion Video. Despite some of its inanities (who the hell brings a gun to Mars? Well, except those guys in _It! The Terror from Beyond Space_), this is surprisingly good. It’s also (I think) pretty well known. Or it should be. **Creator** – A movie about cloning that doesn’t involve Awful Stuff happening, or rapidly-maturing clones, and with genuine wit. Peter O’Toole stars as a Nobel Lsaureate trying to clone his long-dead wife. Accused of being too soap-opera-ish, but I love it. It really does feel like life in acadmia. **Android** – very weird 1982 flick about Klaus Kinski as a scientist making illegal androids in his spaceship lab. Not great, but better than you’d expect. **Creation of the Humanoids** – the fuilm quality is rotten and the acting incredibly wooden, but this film has something to it. It’s far rem,oved from most cliche SF films of the time. **The Hidden** – not sure if this is really not well known, but it certainly isn’t as well-know as it deserves. 1982 film starring Kyle McLaughlin playing a detective very much like the one he played in Twin Peaks, chasing down an alien, and this fiolm feels as if it explains how he got that way. It’s as if they filomed Hal Clement’s _Needle_. Very highly recommended. **The Thirteenth Floor** – when The Matrix came out, it eclipsed the two other Virtual Reality movies of that year – David Cronenberg’s _XistenZ_ and this one. Both are worth watching, but I prefer this one, based on Daniel Galouye’s 1964 SF novel _Simulacron-3_, which essentially invented the VR novel. It was filmed once before as a TV film in Europe. Very higghly recommended. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/13 "2012-11-09T13:41:51Z")
Brother From Another Planet. A John Sayles film from the 80s about an alien in Harlem. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 2:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/14 "2012-11-09T14:07:15Z")
Just some random comments on other choices I really didn’t much care for **The Quiet Earth**. **The Monolith Monsters** was a definitely off-beat 1950s “monster flick”. If you liked it, you might like **Kronos!** , whose giant robot monster is wonderfully weird and amazingly photogenic. It’s done by the same team that did _Forbidden Planet_, so the visuals are _great_. But the movie is irredeemably stupid. Nevertheless, you can see how this film must’ve been a huge influence on Brad Bird. He draws from it for both _The Iron Giant_ and _The Incredibles_ (right down to “Kronos” being Syndrome’s code word). I really don’t care for either version of **Solaris** , although I like their look. Curiously, neither is fully faithful to Stanislas Lem’s novel. (And his novel has never been directly translated into English. Ahnd the only English translation isn’t even complete.) **Brother From Another Planet** is highly recommended. I heard about **Quintet** for years before I finally got to see it. I found it disappointing. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/15 "2012-11-09T14:24:38Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > The Quiet Earth is a very good 80s sci fi movie from New Zealand. Worth a look if you can track it down. Beat me to it. Excellent film, very obscure and underrated. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/16 "2012-11-09T14:46:52Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > **Quatermass and the Pitt** _Watch in terror as Professor Quatermass battles not one, but two heinous monsters - one a [70’s Sexy Starlet](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Pitt), the other a [time travelling British Prime Minister](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Pitt_the_Younger)!!_ ---
**Author:** ![FasterThanMeerkats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/278dde/32.png) [@FasterThanMeerkats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FasterThanMeerkats)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/17 "2012-11-09T17:58:10Z")
**Westworld** , Yule Brynner as a rampaging robot!! ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/18 "2012-11-09T18:33:00Z")
> [@lisiate](#): > > The Quiet Earth is a very good 80s sci fi movie from New Zealand. Worth a look if you can track it down. By the way, the book is even harder to track down. But I have a copy. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/19 "2012-11-09T18:38:43Z")
> [@FasterThanMeerkats](#): > > **Westworld** , Yule Brynner as a rampaging robot!! Eh. I loved that movie in the day, and the first time I saw it on VHS some years later… but I watched it a year or two ago and realized it’s basically dreadful. Right up there with Logan’s Run in the cheesy plastic sci-fi bits. ---
**Author:** ![Suburban\_Plankton](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suburban_plankton/32/219_2.png) [@Suburban\_Plankton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suburban_Plankton)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440/20 "2012-11-09T18:46:34Z")
I enjoyed **Silent Running** , with Bruce Dern trying to protect the last specimens of plant life from planet Earth. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/let-me-know-about-some-lesser-known-scifi-movies/640440.md?page=2)