Were the 1950s the Golden Age of Science Fiction Cinema?

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[wjcsux]

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.

[Zionist Conspirator]

Anything ray Harryhausen did in the 1950s was Great!

Amen.

Has anyone mentioned Twenty Million Miles to Earth?

[RandallFlagg]

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

[Zionist Conspirator]

Looks like someone did mention it.

Great fun film!

[Zionist Conspirator]

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

[Viking2002]

Looks like my first wife getting out of the bathtub........

[mware]

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.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

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.

[Jack Hammer]

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

[PLMerite]

” “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.

[stylin19a]

anything by Ed Wood

[SoCal Pubbie]

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

[Swordmaker]

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:

• "Earth v. The Flying Saucers"— This movies has the best of era stop-action animation special effects. It was remade as a hilarious homage film by Tim Burton in 1996 as "Mars Attacks" in which the sound weapon of the original movie was replaced by the signature yodeling of Slim Whitman which caused the Martians' heads to explode!

• "Forbidden Planet"— With the great Krell power grid backdrop paintings and special effects, with the Monsters from the ID. . . and, of course, Ann Francis and Robby the Robot still one of the best.

• "Destination Moon"— Robert Heinlein was technical advisor and also writer on this SF movie keeping it fairly well on the tech side. Great special effects and a good story line about lightening up the ship for take off.

• "War of the Worlds"— Another often remade SF movie, George Pal's effort is still hard to beat for special effects and story line.

• "The Day the Earth Stood Still"— A cerebral SF in an era (1951) when Gee Whiz was the rule. Far better than that abhorrent Keanu Reeves 2008 eco-panic, anti-humanity remake.

• "When Worlds Collide"— The apocalypse to end all end of the world movies. Great disaster movies before disaster movies were popular.

• "This Island Earth"— The Interociter puzzle which leads to Exeter, and a race that needs help, but fails to get it. Great movie and sets.

• "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"— Captain Nemo, the Nautilus, Disney, Kirk Douglas, James Mason, still the best version in my opinion.

• "Invaders from Mars"— The ultimate is a dream movie that evokes the fears of a child about losing his parents in a nightmare. . . chases are great. Plotting is fantastic and great special effects.

• "From the Earth to the Moon"— The Jules Verne story of a giant cannon shooting men to the moon. Joseph Cotton using Gun Cotton.

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.

[Swordmaker]

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

[Swordmaker]

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!

[DJ Frisat]

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...

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

THE CREEPING TERROR was awful bad!

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

[Swordmaker]

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.

[MV=PY]

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

How about "The Crawling Eye"...

[AmericanMermaid]

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