I’m looking for interesting movie or still reference for science-fiction-y vats or containers that hold people in stasis or hibernation. A few examples of are the spherical liquid vats that held Alice in the third Resident Evil movie or the room full of glowy dream-stasis chambers they held prisoners in from Minority Report (not the pool the precogs were in).
What’s your favorite vat?
The Alien movies have pretty damn cool examples of this.
Demolition Man, where you could learn new skills while in the vat.
The first Austin Powers (the only one I saw) had Austin in one.
The Jupiter 2 in Lost in Space had the stasis tubes, used for long-term travel and emergency crash landings.
Of course, the classic would be 2001.
I just want to say that human stasis chambers should be upright, preserving the person in a basically standing or floating while standing position.
Vertical stasis chambers are not as cool.
I love these sorts of threads. “Which movie had the coolest stasis chambers?” “Which sci-fi automatic doors make the coolest noise?”
The carbon-freezing chamber from The Empire Strikes Back, though not especially cool in and of itself, should be awarded bonus points for the coolness of its end product.
The space-crystals from Lifeforce were pretty cool as I recall, although that may have had something to do with the fact that one contained a nude woman.
Perhaps technically not a “stasis chamber” by the strict definition of the term, but the zombie canisters from Return of the Living Dead were pretty cool. “Leak?! Hell, these things were made by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers!” I always wondered if the little glass window on the end was there so you could tell if the zombie was still inert, or so you could check whether you were opening it from the head end or the butt end.
Speaking of undead stasis chambers, the movie Underworld wasn’t good for much, but it did feature a spiffy floor-mounted technocasket for king vampire Bill Nighy.
You mean the horizontal ones are not as cool, correct? Vertical is upright.
Just remember, vertical stasis chambers cause the cryogenic fluids to pool up in the lower extremities. You could wake up in the 25th century with ankles swollen to the size of basketballs, and then how would you outrun the apes?
:smack:
No it wouldn’t. The contents are either circulated by a pump or kept under pressure. Visually it is just more appealing, especially with the floating suspended in liquid ones.
Horizontal ones would still have the pooling effect except your ass cheeks would be the size of basketballs.
You’re saying that it’d slim me down?
Dave Lester’s stasis chamber in Red Dwarf. He walks in and a moment later he walks out and it’s three million years later.
I’m not sure it meets your criteria for time duration but that in Altered States was pretty cool.
For best simple Cinematographic effect on a low budget, I’d have to go with the “stasis” casks, or processing casks that the Tall Man used in Phantasm to store his interdimensional, stolen soul, dwarf slaves.
The Necromonger slaving and conversion stasis was visually beautiful but a bit disturbing. Specifically, the Psychic Quasi-Deads…
No mention of The Matrix?
I like the cryochamber from Futurama. When you get out, a scientist greets you with a “WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TOMORROW!!!”
It’s better when a bending robot disguised as an ape greets you.
Only if you have a strong heart, though.
The Hall of Crystal Skeletons in Indy IV was a pretty unique paleo-techno stasis chamber. Almost steampunk… cool idea, bad execution, bad artistic vision- it wasn’t that great.
The leaking Vial of Satan in Carpenter’s P.O.D. I thought it was appropriately medieval and ancient. Creepy in its simplicity and mundaneness. The devil is trapped in a Lava Lamp 
Freezing Han Solo in carbonite and hanging the slab with him in it on the wall was pretty cool.
The vertical statis chambers in This Island Earth were pretty cool – complete with handholds. The horizontal chambers in 2001 were also kinda cool. And what about the stasis chambers in the “Space Seed” episode of Star Trek TOS? Did they ever show them?
Yes; shelves with windows basically.
Just thought of a really obscure one, in the SF women in prison flick Caged Heat 3000 they had stasis chambers where prisoners could be tortured while in stasis.