The Ugly Little Boy – short film made on a tiny budget, but arguably the best adatation of an Asimov srory*. Made for TV and hard to find. Starring Barry Morse! Here’s a clip:
*aside perhaps from Bicentennial Man, which I liked.
Also from Jeunet & Caro, and also probably only debatably sci-fi, there’s Delicatessen. Post-apocalyptic, so I think it qualifies.
This is an awesome movie, but it’s only fair to tell people that it’s a Japanese film, so it’s subtitles.
Atlantis, The Lost Continent a George Pal film, is actually a lot of fun.
Fair enough. That’s Joe Dante for you.
I grew up on this film, and didn’t realize what a disappointment it was until I was older. It was made during a writer’s strike, which explains some shortcomings. It cannibalized scenes from *The Last Days of Pompeii, Quo Vadis, * and The Naked Jungle, not to mention a plot device from The Island of Lost Souls. It re-used props and costumes from Forbidden Planet (Lots of 'em) and The Prodigal (that Giant Idol, not decomposing by the side of the road in New Jersey).
John Dall, who played one of the murderers in Hitchcock’s Rope and Marcus Publius Glabrus in Spartacus returns to play the equally smarmy Zaren (this guy had a career as people you want to slap in the face). Edward Platt (“The Chief!”) plays the holier-than-thou Higbh Priest, the one guy you really like in Atlantis. Paul Frees, The Voice of Pop Culture 1950s, does the narration.
George Pal re-used the footage of the fall of Atlantis in his other flicks. He re-used some of his Morlock Blue makeup from The Time Machine for the Dream of Poseidon at the beginning of Atlantis.
The problem with the film is that, although it tries (I really liked the gladiatorial combat scene), it just doesn’t make a lick of sense. What the hell were the prisoners doing with their nocturnal drilling? Sal Ponti/Anthony Hall’s treating the slaves well seems cut straight from Charlton Heston’s Moses in The Ten Commandments, and it lets us feel good, but what does it gain him? How the hell does a Greek Sailor know geography better than Claudius Ptolemy , centuries later? Why does Sal Ponti want a Princess who thinks he smells like a fish (and what did she think of going back to his fishy nhut when her home gets blown up?) Even that gladiator scene makes precious little senswe when you think about it. Most of it takes place in a triangular hole in the arena that most people wouldn’t be able to see, especially when there’s so much smoke Sal can hide from his opponent. They sure as hell couldn’t see anything when it flooded with water.
I put it on my list of films for my Bad Film Festival. It’s a fun film when you’re five, or if you turn your brain off, but otherwise, it’s just dumb.
I caught a film called “MirrorMask” on cable last night. Very much fantasy, not SF, but some very arresting imagery. Worth checking out for the eyeball candy, but not something you’ll want to bring your brain to.
Not sure how “lesser known” it is, but the anime Memories comes to mind. Neat stories, fantastic animation and music.
Unless you can stand dubbing, I suppose. That it’s Japanese shouldn’t make a difference; I still think Lupin III and the Castle of Cagliostro is the best animated movie ever made.
Heh… just this week, I moved the DVD of this trilogy from my desk to the media cabinet. What a coincidence! “Cannon Fodder”, I think, is my favourite, although, in another weird coincidence, the only Italian opera I’ve ever seen performed live is Tosca.
Which figures heavily into “Magnetic Rose”, for those who’ve not seen Memories.
I was going to mention this one. Stars a very young Molly Ringwald, as well as Ernie Hudson and Michael Ironside. I think it was originally in 3-D. Some of the vehicles used in the movie were also used in Iron Maiden’s Somewhere In Time inner sleve band pictures.
Space Battleship Yamato - Live Action movie of the anime series of the same name (aka Star Blazers in US)
Stranded-
Capital H hard scifi, the first manned mission to Mars crashes on landing and the survivors attempt to survive on Mars until a rescue can be mounted from Earth.
Android-
This one may have been mentioned already but I’ll put in a good word, a really enjoyable little low budget affair. A space station doing illegal research into human androids gets a visit from three escaped criminals, which also bring the authorities after them and everyone from the scientist to the androids and criminals is struggling to survive. Features Klaus Kinski and some emjoyable but unknown actors.
Prototype-
I know this one was mentioned already, has the feel of a TV pilot. A professor has created a human android, now he tries to keep it out of the hands of the military.
Lifeforce, in the 1980s, the UK sends a space shuttle into… space and it comes back with three pretty hot vampires, a nerdy looking Patrick Stewart has his first on screen kiss with some dude and there’s some nudity and the boss from Spooks impales someone.
I thought it was a great movie, and this scene was both poignant and exciting at the same time.
IIRC, the end narration says the different peoples of the world resulted from all the slaves going to different locations, but they were from those locations originally.
Huh I just watched this movie tonight, sure its not fine art but it was a fine B movie.
Besides those I’ve given above, a few other fifties treats (not necessarily good, but lesser-known):
The Black Scorpion – one of Willis O’Brien’s later films. Somehow I missed seeing it until I got a copy on videotape. Giant Scorpions (more than one!) swarm up out of an underground world through a crevasse in Mexico. It’s up to a couple of American mining engineers to set things right. (Why Americans? I don’t know. O’Brien loved Mexico and the Soutwest, but he lived in an America-centric world, I guess). They go down into the underground world and find more scorpions and giant worms. God knows what they were eating. They blow up the entrance. Really good stop-motion animation.
The Beast of Hollow Mountain – A tyrannosaurus terorizes a town in the Southwest. Notable because, unlike most cheap productions, this one is stop-motion animated, and it’s not bad. I still don’t have the full story on this, but Willis O’Brien wrote the script and was supposed to do the animation (One of his very first films was The Ghost of Slumber Mountain, which featured a stop-motion T. Rex), but that didn’t happen. Worth a look.
** The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas** – Script by Nigel Kneale ! (The Quatermass Series, First Men in the Moon) Staring role for Forrest Tucker, the Briton’s 1950s favorite American tough-guy hero. The film is based, like the Quatermass films, on a TV production by Kneale, and it echoes a real-life hunt for the yeti. In the end, the Yeti, not fully seen, are seen to be morally superior, so it’s kind of a boring orality play, after all that.
Beyond the Time Barrier – Test pilot in a suborbital flight lsands to find he’s on the Earh of 2024 (only 11 years from now!), to find humanity devastated by a sapce plague that hit in 1971. Interestingly, he finds other time trsavelers there, as well as the ubiquitous band mutants. He flies back to his present of 1960, but finds himself horribly aged. A low-budget flick.
World Without End – similar plot to the previous film, but a bigger budget, and more guys on the ship that ends up in the future. This one always seemed to be on TV when I was a kid. It was apparently filmed in wide-screen and in color, but I only saw it in black and white and fit to a TV, so I haven’t really seen it properly. Again, all those evil mutants are oppressing the wimpy Good Guy survivors underground. Our intrepid heroes bring peace, not by reconciling the two groups, but by building a bazooka to blast the mutants (yay!) At least in this one they stay to help the survivors build a new life (with the mutants joining in)
The Giant Behemoth – Ed Lourie (director of the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, the UR-1950s Creature Film) teams up with King Kong creator Willis O’Brien to essentially remake TBf20KF, only setting it in London, this time. Plus the creature is radioactive. Good effects, and some laughable effects when you see the silhouette of the Behemoth swimming underwater.
It Came from Outer Space – In 3D! With a script by Ray Bradbury! Pretty decent overall, but they cut too much Bradbury out of it. I owned an 8 mm copy of this and watched it vendlessly as a kid, but it was treat to finally see it in 3D, which is used pretty effectively. Featuring Russel Johnson as someone who isn’t a scientist, technician, or professor, for once.
Didn’t anybody mention Final, yet? Oh the humanity! All character/dialogue driven, Hope Davis and Denis Leary.
One of us isn’t understanding the other, because this seems to be a non-sequitur. Even if you’re saying it in response to my asking how a Greek fisherman knows the map better than Ptolremy, it doesn’t follow.
If by that you mean incomprehensible nonsense…
It is the only time I have ever asked for our money back at a movie. The manager said “Yeah, I know”, and handed us our money.
I was surprised by how much I liked the George Clooney remake. I haven’t seen the original although having seen other Tarkovsky films I can see the style in the story.