Posted on 08/09/2014 12:34:57 PM PDT by EveningStar
In these days of seemingly weekly science fiction blockbusters (which are usually SF in name only they're actually just big gun actioners that take place in the future) and the hype that surrounds them, it's easy to forget that once such films were the low man on the totem pole. Stuff fit for kids and juveniles but not serious adult audiences. Thus, in past decades, except for a few A list films like Them and The Day the Earth Stood Still in the 1950s and Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, and Logan's Run in the '60s and '70s, many SF movies slipped under the radar or were simply shrugged off by the critics...
With the foregoing in mind, we come to our list of the 10 most underrated classic science fiction films which will be rated not strictly from least underrated to most underrated, but from good to best of the bunch. All of them, in any case, are films that never really took the screen world by storm, nor the SF community for that matter, but that offer elements that deserve the attention of any SF film fan. All are solid little films each with surprising angles that will reward the patient viewer willing to look past production values and embrace the singular worlds they bring to life...
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Ha. I was going to say Gattaca. Also, Event Horizon.
Outland - 1981. Sean Connery Frances Sternhagen - High Noon on one of Jupiter’s moons but better. Great Movie! Sternhagen was outstanding!
Odd list. “Target Earth” and “Project Moonbase” are rather boring. “The Time Travelers” is tolerable, but goofy and ultimately unsatisfying. “The Twonky” is an interesting curiosity, but hardly something I’d call good. Never cared for “Phase IV,” but haven’t seen it in decades.
“I Married a Monster...” is a sharp sci-fi outing, better than the hokey title indicates. “Rocketship X-M” is a good oldie. “Space Children” pretty decent.
“Outland” was indeed a very good film and underrated as well. I agree about Sternhagen’s performance - she was brilliant as was Peter Boyle.
The Omega Man with Charlton Heston.
Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Alien Nation
Matrix, Brave New World, The Time Machine, Free Jack
The novelization was good as well much more detail and background.
Galaxy quest?
Our parents took us all to see “Invaders From Mars” at the Bay Theater in downtown Panama City around 1953. I had the same reaction as you. I thought it was the greatest movie ever made.
I saw it again, maybe 30 years later. I was really disappointed. I had built it up too high and remembered some of the scenes a little off. A couple of years later, I saw it again and realized it actually was a pretty good movie. I had just built it up to an impossible level in my mind.
Most underrated: “Just Imagine”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021016/?ref_=fn_tt_tt_1
Very enjoyable 1930 Sci-Fi flick
Though, as one reviewer says “Think Fritz Lang’s Metropolis as a musical comedy” it fascinates as an example of (ironically) HOW people of a time imagine a future. Great remedy for “futurists” predictions.
Oh, a young Maureen O’Sullivan too.
“Earth Versus The Flying Saucers’’ “The Thing’’(1951)
Yup, Omega Man was very good, as was it predecessor: The Last Man on Earth (with Vincent Price). Both were adaptations of the Richard Matheson novel “I am Legend”. Price’s movie was the most faithful to the book. The Will Smith adaptation was crap.
— The Magnetic Monster wasn’t bad either.
It was comedy/sci-fi
The Thing From Another World,one of my favorites from the 50”s Howard Hawks was attached to the film and you can tell by the way the actors deliver their lines.Pure Hawks
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xenyj6_the-thing-from-another-world_shortfilms
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