By Ann Clarke
I’ll be honest; I’m not that crazy about most science-fiction films. If I like them at all, it’s when they have an underlying theme about some sort of society based in the future, but with a skewed slant that isn’t even typical of a sci-fi film! I’m not into Star Wars, if that gives you any idea of what you wont be seeing in my list.
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By Less Lee Moore
Back in the ’80s, USA’s Night Flight, a late-night “variety” show, played a mix of weird videos and cult movies on weekends, essential viewing for kids who thrived on that kind of stuff. It was Night Flight that first introduced me to the wonders of Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage), Smithereens, Ladies and Gentlemen . . . The Fabulous Stains, Urgh! A Music War, and Rock & Rule, an animated, epic sci-fi musical.
I’ve been watching it for more than 20 years now and Rock & Rule is still one of my all-time favorite movies. Here are ten reasons why.
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By Less Lee Moore
Like Rock & Rule , Fantastic Planet was an outstanding animated film introduced to me by USA’s Night Flight. For those who do not recognize this film by its English or French name (La Planète Sauvage), certainly you have seen images from it over the years; they aren’t ones you can easily forget.
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By Emily Carney
“Before this decade is out . . . we will make a boring movie called Space Travelers.”
—Crow T. Robot, Mystery Science Theater 3000
You know you’re in for something special as soon as the NBC Nightly News circa-1980s opening credits run, boasting music which sounds like it was stolen from the time Les Oraliens degenerated into wholly panoramic 1970s porn.
By Ann Clarke
Midnight Legacy films, for some fucked-up reason only known to them, felt the need to re-release the Italian film known as Alien 2 Sulla Terra. That translates to Alien 2: On Earth. After wasting 84.25 minutes of my life watching this . . . I have to wonder why they even went through the trouble.
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By Eric Weber
“Gremloids?”
“No, Mom. Gremlins. It’s about these creatures that take over a town. It’s really good.”
“Gremlins?”
“Yes. There should be this sort of . . . lizard monster on the front of the box.”
“Ok. Well, I’ll see if they have it.”
It was my thirteenth birthday and I was planning on having some friends over to watch one of my favorite movies. However, when Mom came back from the store and dropped the craggy, sun-bleached box on the dining room table, I thought I was going to cry.
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By Less Lee Moore
This article originally appeared in The So Bad It’s Good Movies Fanzine, Issue #2.
Godzilla (1954) is perhaps the first horror movie to depict the dire consequences of tinkering around with nature, and it inspired decades of thematic impersonators. Although it warned of the dangers inherent in the H-bomb, as environmental and sociopolitical concerns transformed, so did the types of movies which addressed these issues.
American films from the 1950s, such as Them! (giant killer ants), Beginning of the End (giant killer grasshoppers), and The Creature From The Black Lagoon (killer fish/man/beast) all point out how “tampering in God’s domain” (to paraphrase MST3K) can really screw things up.
But what about the womenfolk? How do they fit into this? From Tarantula to Piranha to Inseminoid, let’s look at what happens when we try to fool Mother Nature.
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By Less Lee Moore
“The gun is good but the penis is evil.”
Whenever John Boorman’s bizarre, rambling, dystopian epic Zardoz is discussed, this is the line that is always mentioned. This line and the image of Sean Connery sporting mutton chops, a braided ponytail, red bandoliers, thigh high pirate boots, and red, diaper-like underpants.
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By Lisa Anderson
One of the best movies of the year has already arrived, without much fanfare. If you’ve gone to see a movie rated PG-13 or higher in the past few months, then you’ve seen the trailer for Hanna, where the thrumming score by the Chemical Brothers provides the background for a teenage girl’s acts of derring-do. What you can’t tell from the trailer is that Hanna is one of the most innovative science fiction movies to come along in a while.
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By Less Lee Moore
Although technophobia has been around since the Industrial Revolution, the advent of computers in the 1960s and ’70s introduced a new level of fear into citizens of industrialized nations. Those under the age of 40 may scoff that anyone could possibly be afraid of a computer, but when they talk? That’s a different story.
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