Actually, both “Lost in Space” and “Swiss Family Robinson” were BOTH based on the earliest castaway story of them all: “Robinson Crusoe.” Even the family’s names came from Daniel Dafoe.
Just to stretch the samurai/actor idea a little further, the eventual leader of the samurai group in The Seven Samurai shaves his head and impersonates a monk to end a hostage situation relatively early in the film.
I agree with Doc Cathode that BBTS is worth seeking out. In addition to the reasons he gave you get to see the original film to feature space battle footage that Corman has recycled/loaned out in countless films for 20+ years. Also Robert Vaughn plays virtually the same character he played in the earlier SS remake The Magnificent Seven.
Hogan’s Heroes bore more than a slight similarity to Stalag 17.
Can someone can come up with a convincing case that Stalag 17 was based on The Seven Samurai?
And with Simpsons episodes being taped months ahead of time, you’d have thought Mel would have had time to think about this. 
I didn’t see The Patriot, so I have to ask- did Mel finish that scene by saying “Happy Birthday, Mr. President?” Was there a shifty-eyed dog?
I have a theory about why TV show episodes are so similar – it’s because everyone went to the same damned screenwriting classes or seminars. For a while in the 1960s and 1970s you had shows about “X getrs audited”. You don’t see these anymore. I think it’s because a bunch of writing students got handed this assignment in class as a way of seeing how their character would react to this stimulus. Years later, they’re writing for a real TV show, and the creative well runs dry. Wait! What was that old assignment I did? Auditing! Yeah – Mary Tyler Moore will get audited! Only some other guy already used it on anmother show, and somebody else uses it for some other show.
Years later, somebody comes up blank, but remembers that great script he did on protesting charging policies in a parking garage…
And so the great cycle continues.
There was a comic book (published by Gold Key) in the early 1960s called Space Family Robinson that came out well in advance of the TV show Lost in Space, but had very similar setups and plots (no robot, though, and no Dr. Smith). After the TV series started, the changed the title of the comic book to Space Family Robinson Lost in Space. Space Family Robinson undoubtedly was based on Swiss Family Robinson (which was, of course, based on Robinson Crusoe. Jules Verne, by the way, wrote two sequels to Swiss Family Robinson), and I strongly suspect the TV show was taken from the comic.
I’m sure you’re being tongue-in-cheek, but Stalag 17 started as a Broadway play written by a couple of guys who did hard time in a POW camp (and not an officer’s camp like Stalag Luft II, the one in “The Great Escape”). The play is worth reading or seeing, especially since it differs significantly from the film made of it (which is also excellent). Both are a lot better, grittier, and more realistic than Hogan’s Heroes.
According to the site www.fiftiesweb.com*, Hogans Heroes was “Based on “Stalag 17” as resolved by a plagiarism lawsuit brought by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzinski”.
*I have seen the same attribution in other references, this was just the first one that came up on Yahoo!.
I always thought Robocop was a blatant rip-off of the comic book character Deathlok.
(Though for all I know they could both be based on an earlier work of science fiction with which I am not familiar. Anyone know?)
An organic human brain in a mechinical robot body used to fight crime goes back at least as far as the 1942 comic book hero Robotman. (Not to be confused with the Robotman who was a member of the Doom Patrol.) And I’ll be surprised if there isn’t an earlier brain/metal body combo in the pulps.
A more obvious rip-off that the author won’t credit: K-PAX is very, very similar to the Argentinian Man Facing Southeast.
Well, in each film there is a ‘village’ that is plagued by ‘bandits’ and they go outside the village and hire someone to come back and fight for them.
The Seven Samurai and it’s US remake The Magnificent 7 are drama/action films. Three Amigos twisted that story and made the ‘fighters’ actors.
Bugs Life is very simular to that.
Galaxy Quest also has actors mistaken for fighters.
The original “Outer Limits” had an episode entitled “Fun and Games.” It was for all intents and purposes Frederic Brown’s “Arena”! You would swear that that was the basis for the story, but Brown is not credited in it. And the Gorn, who would not show up for several more years, bore a strong resemblance to the aliens in “Fun and Games”!
Also, the original “Outer Limits” two-parter “The Inheritors” had similarities to both ST:TOS pilots, the unaired “The Cage” and the “official” pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
In the “Lost in Space” two-parter “The Keeper,” Michael Rennie plays the title role, an alien who keeps a menagerie of exotic beings from all sorts of strange worlds. In the ST:TOS two-parter “The Menagerie,” “*The Keeper,” as well as the other Talosians, have a menagerie of exotic beings from all sorts of planets (although those scenes were cut when the repackaged “The Cage” into “The Menagerie”).
Birth of a Nation was clearly inspired by Seven Samurai
Watch Bambi and then watch The Lion King. The Lion King is really based on Bambi except that instead of a strong mother son relationship it is a father son relationship.
Both have two friends, one smells and the other is dim.
Both are royalty.
Both have start with the birth/presentation to the other animals.
Wise Old Owl = Rafiki
Both have the close parent murdered.
Both have the son taking the father’s place at the end.
Can you feel the love tonight = (I can’t remember the name of the song but it’s the one Bambi and Feline have sex to)
The “tongue in cheek” part I meant was the “based on Seven Samurai”. Even I can see the similarity to Stalag 17.
Well, I had gotten the impression that a derivation from The Seven Samurai was sort of obligatory for this thread… 
Oh, Cal – did you ever find out what a cathamarine tube does?
???
Has anyone asked me this before?
Does it have anything to do with Seven Samurai?
I’m waiting for someone to explain to me how “Attack of the Clones” and “Minority Report” could both feature a chase through an automated assembly line with the heroes dodging identical vortex stun-blasts and automated, fast moving equipment. The dang films must have been shot at about the same time. Didn’t anyone think about this?
Wasn’t Cal Meacham the name of the hero of the novel (and movie) This Island Earth? The one who had to construct an “interociter” from odd (and extremely advanced parts, of which the cathemarine tube was just one?