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Rare 1950-60s scifi movies

RAMA

RAMA

Admiral
Admiral
We've had a few threads like this, but it's rare that there is a movie I haven't seen, either when I was a kid or more recently. So to my surprise someone brought up this movie on a technology website and I've never seen it!! Riders to the Star 1954. It's probably a hard movie to recommend, except to dedicated scifi fans, but if you've seen The George Pal space movies, you can understand the style of it. It's not just intended to be realistic, it's almost a documentary! The movie can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9SLTpEZOBQ It is also available on Amazon in a collection of 50 science fiction movies.

More info from TCM: http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article.html?isPreview=&id=253063|89015&name=Riders-to-the-Stars

...and Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riders_to_the_Stars
 
Oh yeah, I liked Riders to the Stars. An intriguing look at a plausible-at-the-time conjecture about the first manned spaceflight.
 
Christopher said:
Oh yeah, I liked Riders to the Stars. An intriguing look at a plausible-at-the-time conjecture about the first manned spaceflight.
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Other reasons to recommend it:

Unlike almost all scifi movies of the time, not only is the woman smart, capable and attractive, she doesn't immediatly lose any of these qualities when she falls in love with the "hero"!

My wife watched it with me (the same wife who doesn't watch anything made before 1995..partially because of male attitudes towards women in movies) and she lasted through the entire thing, and only laughed at the wobbly rockets. Well ok, it's not perfect..
 
I saw Journey to the Center of Time as a kid and loved it despite the cheese, didn't know it was a remake!
 
Klaus said:
I saw Journey to the Center of Time as a kid and loved it despite the cheese, didn't know it was a remake!
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Which one? In the 70s I grew up with the 1959 Version (And there seem to have been 3 or 4 versions since then)
 
One of my favorite low-budget (and I mean very low-budget) sci-fi movies of the '60s is Creation of the Humanoids. If you can get past the talky script, cardboard sets and obvious racial allegory (robots are disparagingly called "clickers"), it's actually an intelligent film with worthwhile ideas. It's one of the first SF films about robots and artificial intelligence to ponder the question: What does it mean to be human?

Sindatur said:
Klaus said:
I saw Journey to the Center of Time as a kid and loved it despite the cheese, didn't know it was a remake!
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Which one? In the 70s I grew up with the 1959 Version (And there seem to have been 3 or 4 versions since then)
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You're thinking of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
 
scotpens said:
One of my favorite low-budget (and I mean very low-budget) sci-fi movies of the '60s is Creation of the Humanoids. If you can get past the talky script, cardboard sets and obvious racial allegory (robots are disparagingly called "clickers"), it's actually an intelligent film with worthwhile ideas. It's one of the first SF films about robots and artificial intelligence to ponder the question: What does it mean to be human?

Sindatur said:
Klaus said:
I saw Journey to the Center of Time as a kid and loved it despite the cheese, didn't know it was a remake!
Click to expand...
Which one? In the 70s I grew up with the 1959 Version (And there seem to have been 3 or 4 versions since then)
Click to expand...
You're thinking of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
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Oh, Time :alienblush:
 
scotpens said:
Creation of the Humanoids
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I saw that at least once on TV back in the 60s. Odd little film, at least when I was in high school.

A few of the obscure sci-fi films I remember watching were the original Invaders from Mars (1953), Kronos (1957), with a huge machine from outer space stomping around on Earth; The Monolith Monsters (1957), with a meteorite that expands when exposed to water, threatening the planet; and the totally bizarre Invasion of the Saucer Men (again 1957), featuring a very young Frank Gorshin.

I think I sought all these out during the 60s (including Creation of the Humanoids) because they'd been covered in Famous Monsters of Filmland by Forrest J. Ackerman, who may have been in some of them.
 
The Monolith Monsters, Kronos and The Magnetic Monster (1953) all have a similar premise: a menace that's neither man nor beast nor alien, but a mindless thing that just keeps growing . . . and growing . . . and growing.

For sheer cheesy fun, you can't beat Richard Cunha's bargain-basement 1958 epic Missile to the Moon (a semi-remake of Cat-Women of the Moon starring Sonny Tufts). Dig those crazy rock monsters!

Melakon said:
I think I sought all these out during the 60s (including Creation of the Humanoids) because they'd been covered in Famous Monsters of Filmland by Forrest J. Ackerman, who may have been in some of them.
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Forry had a small role in The Time Travelers (1964), referenced upthread. The picture is also notable for the appearance of Delores Wells, Playboy's Miss June 1960, and the use of stage magician's illusions to portray "futuristic" technology.
 
scotpens said:
The Monolith Monsters, Kronos and The Magnetic Monster (1953) all have a similar premise: a menace that's neither man nor beast nor alien, but a mindless thing that just keeps growing . . . and growing . . . and growing.
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Yeah, Magnetic is freaky. It's not about a monster at all, just a magnetic monopole that emits lethal radiation and increases in mass to the point that it endangers the Earth -- and yet the characters constantly talk about it as though it were a living, even sentient enemy. When it's stolen at the start of the film, the characters talk about it not in terms of tracking down the thieves of a stolen substance (although that's exactly what they do) but in terms of tracking down a dangerous entity on the loose. It's completely bizarre. I figure that some producer looked at this script that was about a scientific peril and thought, "This isn't marketable enough, it needs to be more monstery," so they changed the title and tweaked a few lines to make it sound like a monster movie even though it very, very much was not.
 
Japan had some fun stuff with 'The H-Man' and 'The Human Vapor', mobsters, night clubs, and mutants, cool stuff. 'The Secret of the Telegion' is a fun police chasing a murderer film. The murderer uses a transporter to get to his victims. 'Matango' is weird mushroom fun.
 
The Crawling Eye. If you haven't seen it, you must. It's a completely excellent grade C schlock 50s sci-fi movie.
 
At a sleepover in the early 60s, I watched The Invisible Invaders and it scared the socks off me. Not being able to see the invaders (most of the time anyway) made our imaginations run wild, I guess. Now, it doesn't do much for me. Movies moved along much slower back then, sometimes.
 
Kronos is an odd little movie, it's a giant robot movie..maybe you could even speculate it's from an all AI society and they used giant robots instead of self-replicating nanobots. Yikes, now that's a society that thinks big. All it needed was a Kaiju t o fight!

Velocity said:
At a sleepover in the early 60s, I watched The Invisible Invaders and it scared the socks off me. Not being able to see the invaders (most of the time anyway) made our imaginations run wild, I guess. Now, it doesn't do much for me. Movies moved along much slower back then, sometimes.
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When I was a very young boy that movie scared me out of my wits. I recall asking if that could really happen. I just wanted to hide inside that bunker and never come out!!

I did rewatch it on Netflix recently and well..it's not scary.:vulcan:

RAMA
 
Battle beyond the Sun has an interesting story behind it. It was yet another Soviet film (which I've mentioned before I made a point of finding and watching, and are often more creative than their western counterparts of the time) hacked to bits by Hollywood, in this case by Roger Corman and Francis Ford Coppola!! Replaced was a fairly interesting exploration of the US-USSR space race entitled "Heaven's Call", where the Americans were albeit rather ugly and impatient and had to be rescued their Russian counterparts. The US version excised that, added a monster fight (designed by Coppola to resemble a vagina and penis) and called the opposing sides the North Hemis and South Hemis. The names were changed and so were the "bad guys".

Despite the changes, this is another one of the best looking, detailed movies of the time. The ending is about survival and is ambitious in it's scope!! We have a ship headed to the sun, an asteroid, space stations and lots of locales. The US version is available online for free as well as on youtube.

RAMA
 
Christopher said:
scotpens said:
The Monolith Monsters, Kronos and The Magnetic Monster (1953) all have a similar premise: a menace that's neither man nor beast nor alien, but a mindless thing that just keeps growing . . . and growing . . . and growing.
Click to expand...

Yeah, Magnetic is freaky. It's not about a monster at all, just a magnetic monopole that emits lethal radiation and increases in mass to the point that it endangers the Earth -- and yet the characters constantly talk about it as though it were a living, even sentient enemy. When it's stolen at the start of the film, the characters talk about it not in terms of tracking down the thieves of a stolen substance (although that's exactly what they do) but in terms of tracking down a dangerous entity on the loose. It's completely bizarre. I figure that some producer looked at this script that was about a scientific peril and thought, "This isn't marketable enough, it needs to be more monstery," so they changed the title and tweaked a few lines to make it sound like a monster movie even though it very, very much was not.
Click to expand...

Those were my very favorite kinds of movies--right there with Andromeda Stain in that I could almost believe them--more so than some suit.

I guess now it is strangelets, Large Hadron (not a problem) and grey goo.
 
RAMA said:
. . . Replaced was a fairly interesting exploration of the US-USSR space race entitled "Heaven's Call", where the Americans were albeit rather ugly and impatient and had to be rescued their Russian counterparts.
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Actually the title of the original Soviet film, Nebo Zovyot, translates as The Heavens Call -- IOW, "outer space is calling."

Remember, the old Soviet Union was officially atheist! ;)
 
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