What are some older special effects that you liked a lot?

[Distorted Humor]

2001
Alien (might be pushing it, but the effects have aged VERY well)
Jason and the Argonauts when they fight the Skeletons

 

[Christopher]

I think Fantastic Voyage still looks pretty good, all things considered.

Oh yeah, great stuff. A classic of visual effects.

Although the greatest effect in the movie is Raquel Welch...

 

[Tulin]

When Bram Stoker's Dracula came out, there was a lot of bitching about how bad the effects were. I loved them because the effects team deliberately used techniques dating back to the late 1800s which was when the book was written. They projected images on set Or double exposed film rather than super impose. They used moveable floors and trap doors. They even hired a magician as a consultant. It's a really fun watch if you ever liked old movies.

Is that the one where Gary Oldman wears a weird wig and looks like Mom from "Futurama"?

If so, I now want to watch it even more! Although why they wanted Gary Oldman looking like a kooky old woman always kinda mde me hate the film. He just looked RIDICULOUS!

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Yes. It is. Gary Oldman's wig was an odd choice, but so was Gary Oldman for Dracula. And Keanu Reeves accent is horrendous. But I still love the movie and its effects.

 

[WillsBabe]

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet so these may already be mentioned: Space 1999's Eagles; Six Million Dollar Man has some great and believable running/jumping effects even now; Land of the Giants.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

rear-projection instead of greenscreen

Actually, they used what's called front projection. It's really impressive (there's some parts that look like they're legitimately filmed in Africa and not in England). The tell is when the Lioness (I think) looks at the camera because it makes her eyes look silvery.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

I forgot to mention The Wizard of Oz. The shots of the twister in the background while Dorothy approaches the house and her relatives are climbing into the cellar strike me as very impressive, since it appears to be an in-camera effect and yet looks very much like a real tornado.

 

[Christopher]

I forgot to mention The Wizard of Oz. The shots of the twister in the background while Dorothy approaches the house and her relatives are climbing into the cellar strike me as very impressive, since it appears to be an in-camera effect and yet looks very much like a real tornado.

The "tornado" was actually a 35-foot long muslin stocking.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090110094825AALEqrI

 

[GNDN]

King Kong and Mighty Joe Young were the first I thought of when I read the thread title. There are also some fun and impressive FX in some Abbot and Costello comedies.

Forbidden Planet and 2001 are, of course, the stand-outs as already mentioned.

 

[Warped9]

TOS' transporter f/x is still one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Pretty much all of Forbidden Planet and 2001. Some of the shots from Fantastic Voyage. Some of the Seaview shots from the original film Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea.

 

[the G-man]

everything - every fucking thing - in Forbidden Planet.

I'm the G-man and I approve this message.

 

[lurok]

Some useful films to check out here Have to agree with ones already mentioned I've seen:
2001
first two Alien films
Forbidden Planet (one of those rare films divided about whether would want remake or not)
UFO (Brit TV series; currently watching on DVD)
TMP Trek movies (of course)

Couple of curios I've caught on Brit TV (FilmFour has some good SF seasons and repeats) which I thought were quite impressive for time they were made:
Shape of Things To Come (people say like Metropolis which haven't seen, but British rather than German. Has a nice art deco/steampunky feel)
When Worlds Collide (just remember the spaceship on rail and planetary breakup)

Just watched original Tron and The Black Hole recently and thought though dated, FX must have been pretty cool for time. TBH especially thought had a lot of untapped potential (and truly wacky ending!).

 

[Christopher]

Just watched original Tron and The Black Hole recently and thought though dated, FX must have been pretty cool for time. TBH especially thought had a lot of untapped potential (and truly wacky ending!).

The Black Hole's visual effects still hold up quite well today. Tron was more of an ambitious semi-failure, where the imagination exceeded the technology to realize it. But it still looked a damn sight better than Tron: Legacy, which inexplicably forgot that the Tron world had more than two colors in it.

 

[lurok]

The Black Hole's visual effects still hold up quite well today. Tron was more of an ambitious semi-failure, where the imagination exceeded the technology to realize it. But it still looked a damn sight better than Tron: Legacy, which inexplicably forgot that the Tron world had more than two colors in it.

Yes, I was slightly taken aback at how colourful Tron was compared to Legacy (I assumed they'd followed original, but clearly not...). Many of the effects in original do look really dated next to Legacy, but personally I think light-cycle sequence in original better/more exciting. Other thing I noticed was set-up much better in original, in that you got to see Tron world but it was a good 30-40mins or more before Flynn actually arrived there. Guess it's part of what others I've seen here commenting about 'attention deficit' of modern movies...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And, since it is technically before ILM, everything in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Aside from using models instead of CGI and rear-projection instead of greenscreen (and not suffering from orange-and-teal, of course), it looks like it could have been made this year.

Agreed. 2001 has some of my favorite effects work of all time. Examples:

- The centrifuge set from the USS Discovery. That was not an illusion, it was literally built exactly as we see it, a complete set all the way around. When we see Frank Poole jogging, he's literally doing it as the set rotates around him, just like it 'really' would.

- In the lunar shuttle scene where a stewardess goes to get meals from a machine, then walks up the side of a wall and then appears to be upside down as she enters the bridge. That was accomplished by anchoring the camera to the set, all of which rotated around the actress as she walked in place.

The only problem with this film is on the Blu-Ray version, where the picture quality is so good that you can now actually see that the sky in the Dawn of Man sequence is a projection (those scenes were actually filmed in a studio). Now you can literally see the screen that they were projected against.

 

[Kegg]

I'll second the no-brainers of 2001 and Forbidden Planet.

Veering a little older, I'll give the nod to Metropolis (1927), which has many visually fantastic setpieces that are still very entertaining to watch. The Moloch Machine moment particularly comes to mind as an effect.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Tron: Legacy, which inexplicably forgot that the Tron world had more than two colors in it.

Well, technically, it's not the same world. The one from the original film existed in ENCOM's servers. The Grid from the second film is Flynn's own, existing in his own home computer system. They're totally separate worlds.

 

[Christopher]

- The centrifuge set from the USS Discovery. That was not an illusion, it was literally built exactly as we see it, a complete set all the way around. When we see Frank Poole jogging, he's literally doing it as the set rotates around him, just like it 'really' would.

Well, the centrifuge was an illusion in the sense that the in-story centrifuge had "gravity" pulling outward in all directions, so people standing in different parts of it would have the same sense of the floor being down, whereas in the rotating movie set there was only one "down" direction at any time, and if you had one actor walking/jogging around the centrifuge while another was sitting still, the sitting actor had to be strapped in.

But yes, they did build the full 360-degree set in its entirety and built it to rotate. Such rotating sets have been used in other movies, like for Fred Astaire's gravity-defying dance in Royal Wedding, and most recently in the hotel sequences of Inception.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Pity that Kubrick ordered all sets from 2001 destroyed after filming ended. I would have liked to see the centrifuge turn up in 2010 (which I also liked a lot).

Peter Hyams did, with few exceptions (such as the display screens on the Discovery turning into CRTs), a very good job of recreating that ship in the second film. I wonder what he could have done with the centrifuge set, if the film had called for it.

 

[Christopher]

Peter Hyams did, with few exceptions (such as the display screens on the Discovery turning into CRTs), a very good job of recreating that ship in the second film.

Except for having gravity in the pod bay!!!! Arrrghhh!!!