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Were the 1950s the Golden Age of Science Fiction Cinema?
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Posted on 05/24/2016 12:33:44 PM PDT by EveningStar

Were the 1950s the Golden Age of Science Fiction Cinema? I think so. What do you think?

From Wikipedia:
List of science fiction films of the 1950s

A list of science fiction films released in the 1950s. These films include core elements of science fiction, but can cross into other genres. They have been released to a cinema audience by the commercial film industry and are widely distributed with reviews by reputable critics.

This period is sometimes described as the 'classic' era of science fiction theater. Much of the production was in a low-budget form targeted at a teenage audience. Many were formulaic, gimmicky, comic-book style films. They drew upon political themes or public concerns of the day, including depersonalization, infiltration, or fear of nuclear weapons. Invasion was a common theme, as were various threats to humanity.

Two of the films from this decade, The War of the Worlds (1953) and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) won Academy Awards, while Destination Moon (1950) and The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) won Hugo Awards.

View the list at Wikipedia.


TOPICS: TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: cinema; film; movies; sciencefiction; scifi
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To: EveningStar

Saturday night was the night we watched horror movies when I was growing up. KGUN TV channel 9 in Tucson had a show called “Chiller” on at 10:30 Saturday night.


81 posted on 05/24/2016 3:11:04 PM PDT by wjcsux ("In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
Anything ray Harryhausen did in the 1950s was Great!

Amen.

Has anyone mentioned Twenty Million Miles to Earth?

82 posted on 05/24/2016 3:17:46 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (The "end of history" will be worldwide Judaic Theocracy.)
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To: wjcsux

Saturday nights for my Brother and I was filled with Bob Wilkins on cable TV.


83 posted on 05/24/2016 3:18:18 PM PDT by RandallFlagg (Vote for your guns!)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar
Looks like someone did mention it.

Great fun film!

84 posted on 05/24/2016 3:19:28 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (The "end of history" will be worldwide Judaic Theocracy.)
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To: PLMerite

That looks like the bird villain voiced by Paul Frees in “Rudolph’s Shiny New Year!”


85 posted on 05/24/2016 3:21:49 PM PDT by Zionist Conspirator (The "end of history" will be worldwide Judaic Theocracy.)
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To: Donglalinger
Looks like my first wife getting out of the bathtub........


86 posted on 05/24/2016 3:29:16 PM PDT by Viking2002 (The Avatar is back by popular request.)
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To: Forward the Light Brigade

One of the teachers where I also taught, gave her students an assignment to write a letter to their favorite author. One of the kids wrote a letter to Bradbury. Several weeks later they got a response to their letter. It was a scathing letter directed towards the teacher for forcing her students to write a letter to their favorite author.


87 posted on 05/24/2016 3:36:33 PM PDT by mware
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To: Lee Enfield

They might have been able to salvage that film if after the monster “dies”, they found it was a robot, then cut to dozens of more flying toward the earth.


88 posted on 05/24/2016 3:38:45 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: EveningStar

The special effects weren’t anything to brag about, but the flicks were great, great, great!


89 posted on 05/24/2016 3:57:42 PM PDT by Jack Hammer
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To: Lee Enfield

” “The Giant Claw” described in the “Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film” as “Woodenus Puppetus” “

Yeah, I hear you. But I’ve often thought that if someone could CGI in better special effects (aircraft, big bird, etc.,) it would be a passable flick.


90 posted on 05/24/2016 4:11:54 PM PDT by PLMerite (Compromise is Surrender: The Revolution...will not be kind.)
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To: EveningStar

anything by Ed Wood


91 posted on 05/24/2016 4:47:36 PM PDT by stylin19a
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To: mware

That doesn’t sound like something Bradbury would do. Why was he so upset?


92 posted on 05/24/2016 5:30:20 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
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To: Seaplaner
I would rate Invasion of the Body Snatchers as the best, with Forbidden Planet as #2.

It is up there with the best, but not in my top five. It is probably the most remade modern movie in SF history, though. The 1956 "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", based on a short story by Jack Finney, has been remade at least five times, the latest a movie called "The Invasion" in which Dr. Bunnell has been rewritten as a female psychiatrist who starts noticing changes in her patients and their families after the deliberate crash of a space shuttle. It has no pods, no exchange of human bodies for artificial replacements, but the basics are all there and it has a lot of reference scenes to the original movie.

It was, however, the only movie from that age that instilled a continuing scare into me for months following after I saw it at age seven in a theater, causing me to check under the bed, in closets, in drawers, for any strange, large pods. LOL!

My list of SF movies:

As you might tell, I was not into the monster of the month SF type, although I did have a soft place in my heart for"The Blob" and "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" but the don't make my top ten, much less my top five.

93 posted on 05/24/2016 5:34:57 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue..)
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To: BenLurkin

The top of my list movie: "Earth v. the Flying Saucers".

94 posted on 05/24/2016 5:37:11 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue..)
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To: Peter W. Kessler
Robot Monster!!!

So bad, it elevates Plan 9 from Outer Space to Academy Award status.

So bad, it’s good!

Uh... no.

It’s still bad.

What's funny is that the movie was supposed to be about a Gorilla running amok. However the costume company could not find the gorilla costume's head mask, so they producer said use the space helmet instead and changed a few lines in the script and the name of the film to make it fit! Violá! Hit movie. . . er, well, at least a movie they could get filmed in two weeks and hit budget. Well, like any proper movie they went over budget. LOL!

95 posted on 05/24/2016 5:44:46 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue..)
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

I saw GOG on TV as a kid in the late 50s, and it spooked me for years, thinking that the overhead light in my room was going to turn into a Death Ray, and I could almost hear GOG and MAGOG coming down the hall to my bedroom in the middle of the night.

Pretty scary stuff back then, but these days we have Hillary causing even worse nightmares...


96 posted on 05/24/2016 6:09:14 PM PDT by DJ Frisat (Hey, what happened to my clever tag line?!)
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To: Swordmaker

THE CREEPING TERROR was awful bad!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creeping_Terror


97 posted on 05/24/2016 6:18:06 PM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: cgbg
If you click on my name you can see some commentary on sf books—it is also a bit dated. I believe none of the great books I reviewed have been made into movies—yet.

Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" was made into a movie in 2013. You can apparently watch it online for free:

Ender's Game

Not too sure on the copyright status of the above link, but there are several more such links.

98 posted on 05/24/2016 6:43:38 PM PDT by Swordmaker (This tag line is a Microsoft insult free zone... but if the insults to Mac users continue..)
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To: EveningStar

"Invaders From Mars" scared the ever living cr@p out of me when I was a kid.

How about "The Crawling Eye"...

99 posted on 05/24/2016 7:59:40 PM PDT by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
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To: Donglalinger

And of course, the monster always got to carry the girl! 50s were fun for sci-fi!


100 posted on 05/24/2016 8:06:19 PM PDT by AmericanMermaid
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