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 ...
I had the same reaction as you when I saw again on TV in the ‘70s. Then I watched it again on DVD a few years ago, I realized that it was quite well made for a SciFi flick made in the early ‘50s.
I remember catching “Invaders From Mars” as a little kid (I was about six or seven at the time) in the 70s on TV - yep....scared the bejeebers out of me too.
Well-done little film, and quite effective.
In my opinion, the two most under-rated Scifi films are
“City Beneath the Sea”, with Stuart Whitman. Set in the future, it used some of the props from “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, including the Flying Sub.
Doppleganger, called “Journey to the Far Side of the Sun” in the US.
Parents took us to the drive in in Denver back around 1953 or 54.
Double feature.
INVADERS FROM MARS
BEAST FROM 20,000 FATHOMS.
Scared the U-no-watt out of me! Especially when the creature ate the policeman!
I believe I spent most of that evening hiding in the back seat floorboards.
My favorite Si-fi movie..20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH.
I usually watch it once a year in winter,now that it’s on my mind may while away a Saturday afternoon watching again.
The Hammer film “Five Million Years to Earth” (”Quatermass and the Pit”) (1967), written by Nigel Kneale.
there was one where they found a parallel earth on an opposite side of the sun, and sent someone to investigate. he crashed because the electricy was backwards...all i remember was the opening scene where this guy scans a secret plans with a false eye
I love boxing movies.
; )
No kidding! My parents took me along to see it in the theater at night because of the AC. I was only five at the time and it scared the dickens out of me. The sand pit scene with the cops and the kid discovering the mark on the backs of the necks of those taken. Didn't know which grown-ups to trust, but when I first heard quicksand spoken I knew what it meant, space monsters down there. Never saw it again, but in my late sixties I can still recall the effect it had on me..
I liked Surrogates too. It didn’t quite gel into a good movie, but there was certainly a lot of potential, and bits and pieces were good. It did try to be about ideas rather than explosions.
I saw the previews (trailer) back in 1954 or 55. Never got to see the movie.
Once it came on TV and I got to see the first few minutes where a man is frozen and his body shattered. Then I had to leave to go to work.
Still haven't seen it.
Want to see this. I saw the previews in 1954 and remember the man with crutches fighting off Lon Chaney.
There are lots of films I remember from the early 1960s on TV that I can't remember the names.
In one, a scientist develops a sludge in a cave that devours everything and every one. The only thing that will kill it is air. When they break the window separating them from the sludge they find it now has an immunity to air.
Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.
I liked the sfx models more than the story, but it is a good selection.
My brother and I, both now in our 60s, were out camping way back in the boondocks three years ago when we spotted a strange glowing green ball shoot up into the sky from a remote canyon and then go back down into it again. For both of us, our first thoughts were “Invaders from Mars.”
Something hooked me in it that I don’t quite remember, I think it struck me as subtly pro-life, or something.
One rather obscure and rarely-cited sci-fi effort I’ve always found surprisingly satisfying is the 1934 serial, “The Vanishing Shadow.” Invisibility belts, rampaging robot, and a mad-doctor who’s actually one of the ‘good guys.’ Total hokum, but rather nifty 1930s atmosphere and early sci-fi touches.
Similarly from the 1930s is the well-known “Things to Come” (1936). Enjoyed it when I was a kid, because of its far-flung nature and unpredictable narrative. Now, I see it and note its rather condescending, elitist and semi-marxist subtext which is quite obnoxious... yet, I still somehow enjoy it. Raymond Massey adds to the watchability. Always get a kick from his performances.
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