It just needed a prettier monster:
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?
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.
Forbidden Planet was an incredible movie for its time and should be considered the origin for what became Star Trek.
The beast from 20,000 Fathoms wa writen by Ray Bradbury as was It came from outer space. many of thye first season on Twight zone was written by some of the bext sci-Fi writers of the day.
I liked those two movies. “This Island Earth’’ with Rex Reason was cool. And the picture with John Hodiak and the big spider was waay cool Mara Corday was the female lead in that one. Check her out, hubba hubba!.
It just needed a prettier monster:
Calculate, reduce error.
Pesky flying saucers.
Monsters just love babes.
Different narrative style. You can’t always make a meaningful comparison of Old Hollywood films with today’s flicks because the storytelling ways are so different.
2001 was a long time before 1977
The Crawling Eye and The Mole People
Horror are movies and TV for me too. Never got beyond HP Lovecraft and of course that’s pretty sci-fi. The little movies the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society made are really good.
With the really good TV they do now, yeah there should be some great sci-fi stuff down the line hopefully.
Freegards
I’d like to see The Mote In God’s Eye made into a movie.
Mote would be cool, Ringworld too. I think Legacy of Heorot would make a great horror/alien planet sci-fi flick.
Freegards
YES!
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the HPLHS movies, they’re but they’re trying. It’s good to see somebody not named Stuart Gordon tackling HPL, I enjoy his movies but he’s pretty solidly an exploitation splatter guy.
On the TV SF front Expanse is really carving good territory. 12 Monkeys is doing good when they aren’t tripping on their own feet. I really respected the end of Continuum, sticking to their “design” which had indicated multiple times that the main character couldn’t get a happy ending and not giving it to her was pretty impressive, as a whole the show was just pretty good, but they stuck the landing.
Them! Best 50’s sci-fi flick, when James Arness asked Edmund Gwen how they would know if all the ants were dead and Gwen replied, “We go into the nest and find out.”, they had me!
The man engaging in a lonely fight to stop the invasion is played by Kevin McCarthy, who shares the same last name as a man who at the same time in real life was engaged in a lonely fight to stop the Marxist-Leninist theoreticians from turning every human on Earth into a New Soviet Man or Woman.
The movie is based on the novel The Body Snatchers (New York: Dell, 1955), a suspenseful, fast-paced page-turner which I prefer to the movie.
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