The 1970's Science Fiction Movie Poll

even just reading the titles, back to back, is TOO MUCH

oops! WestWorld

what a decade. i can't possibly choose one. you are mad.

Such a good decade.

I loved THX-1138 but hated all 938769234 Star Wars movies, wtf.

we ought to do a '60s poll too (unless i missed it). alphaville and planet of the apes!

xpost I can't even pick only ten

And that was leaving out things I felt I couldn't get away with, like It's Alive or The Boys From Brazil

I almost left out Death Watch as it's not really SF in mood but then I'm all 'Wait a minute it's a future where disease has been eliminated & so sick people are stalked for reality shows by Harvey Keitel who has had his eye replaced by a broadcasting TV camera' and well yes it really does belong on the list

I think I have to say Logan's Run why bcause Jenny Agutter look intersting AND VERY HOTTT.

I've seen surprisingly few of these.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/173/372402940_1362c6c1cd_o.png

but I voted for COLOSSUS THE FORBIN PROJECT because it needs more love

OH JENNY BE MINE PANT PANT PANT
(I think this was the 3rd or 4th movie I saw in a theater.)

I just saw God Told Me To last night. So good.

So many great movies! But one has David Bowie, so...

http://www.utc.fr/~macret/cine/realisateurs/boorman/photos/zardoz6.jpg

Maybe not a scifi film in the Star Trek kind of sense, but a I think Woody Allen's Sleeper is a fun movie from the 70s.

I just want to know why the Scifi network can play Manisaur 3 to 9 every weekend and never play this kind of good older stuff? Is it too expensive, does no one really want to watch these movies?

haha I also used that zardoz pic for another ad-hoc album cover

I never realized how good a diaper + suspenders can look.

sci-fi doesn't have the rights to this stuff. plus showing the golden oldies would just remind everybody how much their regular programming eats dong

An online resource where you could type in a movie title and find out who has the broadcast rights to it -- that would be sweet.

I hope God Told Me To gets a few votes, but I had to rep for Invasion of Donald Sutherland's Gaping Mouth.

Damned impressive list, great post Milton. I actually gotta back Tombot up on his choice because Forbin still has some of the bluntest, creepiest stuff I've ever seen. The bit where the two guys are taken out and executed right then and there freaked the hell out of me at twelve or however old it was when I first saw it on TV.

man, these are all so good. the ones i've seen anyway (maybe three quarters?)

Top 5:
Alien
A Boy & His Dog
Beneath The Planet Of The Apes
Solaris
Close Encounters (big impression on me when i first saw it, age 8 or 9.)

god, invasion of the body snatchers is so good too. and mad max. and soylent green, and logan's run.

ones i need to see the most:
slaughterhouse five (is this perhaps the only vonnegut adaptation that people rate? the ones i've seen all blow hard.)
zardoz.
andromeda strain.

Boy & His Dog is so fucking bonkers, esp. the mime makeup country fair underground colony!

I am so scared to watch Slaughterhouse Five, for fear it will suck, or that they will really mess up the Tralfamidorians.

I just watched beneath the planet of the apes the other night. the scene where the ape city army marching through the desert encounters a field of squirming apes crucified upside-down in flames while in the background an enormous statue of the lawgiver begins bleeding from his eyes is like a halfstep from jodorowsky-level wtf.

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/beneath-the-planet-of-the-apes.jpg

and the ending is so hardcore! how the fuck did that movie get made?

and as much as this poll rocks there is no cronenberg here so I must call foul

no surprise which i voted for!

I think everything Cronenberg made in the '70s wld be 'horror,' but 'Shivers' really gets discussed considerably in parasiology books and (sometimes) journal articles!

# Shivers (1975)
# Rabid (1977)
# Fast Company (1979)
# The Brood (1979)

Fast Company is a car racing movie!

parasitology that is; I misspelled one of my truest fancies

I dunno, cronenberg's clinical fascination with biohorror... always struck me as sci-fi.

Naw, I can dig. When it comes to categorizing things by genre, I just go with where you'd find them in a video rental store. (This gets me a lot of hate-ons in Scattegories).

it's a crime that phase iv is still not on dvd

Fantastic list! Only other movies I'd add to the list would be No Blade Of Grass and The Final Programme, but both of those only marginally fit (NBOG is superseded by Mad Max, and TFP doesn't get the ridiculousness of Moorcock down)

Demon Seed gave a serious case of the bonkers. Utterly user-unfriendly movie. I would vote that for my #1 if I hadn't committed to Mad Max.

I have added like 15 things to my netflx thanks to this thread.

In terms of design and execution Alien has to be up at the top. Some of the earth-bound near-future dystopias here might be thoroughly convincing, but Alien is so much more ambitious, and pulls it off in spades.

But aside from that... Phase IV and The Man Who Fell to Earth are both firm faves. Only seen THX once, would like to give that another go.

I voted for Stalker, which is a great film, but I guess the real reason it got my vote is because I'm currently reading the Strugatsky brothers book it's loosely based on - Roadside Picnic.

I think I have to say Logan's Run why bcause Jenny Agutter look intersting AND VERY HOTTT.

-- Rock Hardy, Friday, 25 January 2008 02:37

OTM.

Great list, nearly impossible to choose only one film (I feel sad not voting for so many great films in an ilx-poll, how sad is that?), but I'm going with Stalker as well.

Seen embarrasingly few of these, so I was lame and voted for Alien (which is really more an 80s movie in terms of style).

Logan's Run is so fucking hilarious.

Yeah, that robot towards the end is so goofy.

What's the name of that film where they fake the Mars landing and try to kill the astronauts? I think OJ Simpson's in it.

Capricorn One

aside from the two Tarkovskys, I would go with the good interstellar guest / bad interstellar guest polarity of Close Encounters and
Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Slaughterhouse-5 is fine but I don't really think of its SF elements as anything but window dressing. (ian, I like the film of Breakfast of Champions with Willis, Nolte and Finney.)

Wait, where the fuck is Dark Star? Love that film.

Not sure if I understand the rationale for leaving out Star Wars. Looking at this list, I realize that I've seen a lot more '80s sci-fi than '70s.

Star Wars is space opera, ie really an Arthurian / Western / samurai film. Just like Alien is a (boring) haunted-house film set in space.

^ controversial

But isn't "Mad Max" just a Jacobean revenge play then?

xpost

Han Solo doesn't even know a parsec is a unit of space, lol

I thought Alien was pretty boring, too.

Alien is awesome, U R all mad. But it's perhaps not so awesome as hard science-fiction, if that's Morbius's point.

Most storytelling theory doesn't count sci-fi as a genre. It's a setting or framework occupied by a variety of different genres.

I think the test should be whether any major plot point hangs on a scientific concept. That determines whether the sci-fi elements are merely stage dressing or a determining factor of the tale.

like, where's Young Frankenstein?

I think the test should be whether any major plot point hangs on a scientific concept

In SF movies, though, the scientific concept is generally a McGuffin which a thriller/war movie/detective movie or whatever revolves around, structurally speaking.

Impossible to pick one, but a top 11 would read something like :

The Andromeda Strain
Solaris
THX-1138
Slaughterhouse-Five
A Boy and His Dog
Zardoz
God Told Me To
Phase IV
Demon Seed
Stalker
Invasion of the Body Snatchers

I really need to see the Planet Of The Apes sequels.

There are many exceptions to that. The question of what constitutes human identity is central to the themes of "Solaris" for instance - which is a scientific question with philosophical implications.

xpost

That's thematic rather than structural, though. I do freelance script editing, so I tend to look at issues of genre as being to do with structure (which isn't neccessarily correct, but it's how I've been trained).

In SF movies, though, the scientific concept is generally a McGuffin which a thriller/war movie/detective movie or whatever revolves around, structurally speaking.

Yeah but in a lot of these films it's the other way round I think. Invasion Of The Body Snatchers seems like a thriller but it's really about "the question of what constitutes human identity" too. I guess you could say this about a lot of films...

'Dark Star' -- horrible omission, such a great film
'Capricorn One' -- this is sort of more of a political thriller, though part of me definitely wanted to throw things like 'The Parallax View' in there which definitely belongs with these films in mood
'Young Frankenstein' -- I love this, but it doesn't completely belong, I was tracing a line with this poll

Though I decided against made-for-TV films like 'The Martian Chronicles', 'The Quatermass Conclusion' definitely belongs on the list.

I also forgot 'Laserblast'! The only one on my list I haven't seen is 'Parts: The Clonus Horror', and I'm definitely going to have to hunt down 'No Blade of Grass' & 'The Final Programme', I knew Elvis would throw in something I'd never heard of

I just watched Invasion of the Bodysnatchers this morning. I had sort of forgotten how unironically creepy it is. Solid A movie.

Voted for The Andromeda Strain, although who knows what I'd think if I watched it now.

My Top 5 (though this is impossible and I had to remove the two Tarkovsky films)

Phase IV
God Told Me To
Rollerball
Beneath the Planet of the Apes
THX-1138

5 for over the top Camp:

The Omega Man
Silent Running
Zardoz
The Stepford Wives
Demon Seed

I guess I need to see God Told Me To, it's the only one up here I'm not familiar with. I voted STALKER because it feels like a staring contest with God.

haha to go along with the debate above between Morbs and o.nate, I've begun thinking of JAWS as a sci-fi flick

Demon Seed is really a screwball comedy

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/33/Demonseed11.jpg

Proteus IV: I can't touch you, Susan. I can't touch you as a man could. But I can show you things that I alone have seen. I can't touch, but I can see. They've constructed eyes for me, to watch the show. And ears, so that I can listen in to the galactic dialogue.

(cut to: computer graphic freakout sequence representing the galactic dialogue)

http://www.scifimoviepage.com/images/beneath.jpg

Traumatic hypnosis is a weapon of peace

Maybe it's finally time for me to post this link and see how many familiar faces you guys recognize.

Colossus: The Forbin Project is pretty excellent, a movie I haven't seen in over 20 years but still remember parts of pretty vividly. All of these movies are pretty great and i saw most of them on TV at some point in the mid 80's so they're kind of cemented in my head along with the time I began getting into interesting speculative fiction.

ST:TMP deserves some props for being the outright weirdest Star Trek film; it has a grand vision, something they never again attempted, I don't think.

In its agglomerated way, it's the only one of the Trek films to embrace the whole breathless wonder idea that the original series aimed for, however inadvertantly. The fact that there were long stretches where nobody said anything got understandably slammed on a dramatic standpoint but in terms of trying to portray what a bunch of professionals at work being confronted by something indescribable would react like, seems spot on!

It's a bloated remake of the episode "The Changeling."

And in its bloat it is truly Trek at heart.

the influence of THC on 70s sci-fi movie-pacing cannot be ignored

It's a wonder they don't have Elinor Donahue on the talent agent roster.

OK, I just took my link and started a spinoff thread
How many of these actors at this sci-fi-centric talent agency do you recognize?

The theatrical release of ST:TMP trimmed down Douglas Trumbull's abstract effects for fear of losing the audience, so it ended up keeping all the ambitious pretentions with none of the psychedelic payoffs, then they retrenched to camp for the rest of the ST films. The scene in the director's cut where they take eight minutes to pilot to the center of V'GER's magnetic field is right up there with the Star Gate sequence he shot for 2001, it's just as Out

that's the sort of stuff I was talking about w/r/t that film. what I mainly like about it is that it's so drastically different in feel from any of the series, both in design (set design and costuming) and presentation/pacing.

http://thisdistractedglobe.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/Rollerball%201975%20pic%20.jpg

The game was created to demonstrate the futility of individual effort. And the game must do its work. The Energy Corporation has done all it can, and if a champion defeats the meaning for which the game was designed, then he must lose. I hope you agree with my reasoning.

I thought Alien was pretty boring, too.

-- Abbott, Friday, 25 January 2008 17:03 (5 hours ago) Link

ban Abbot

The great thing about a lot of these is that they couldn't have been made in any time except the 70's.

Especially Zardoz (which I would've voted for if Alien hadn't been on the poll).

I just watched Invasion of the Bodysnatchers this morning. I had sort of forgotten how unironically creepy it is. Solid A movie.

-- remy bean, Friday, January 25, 2008 8:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

"it's a rat turd."

that movie rules.

God Told Me To is weird

http://www.aullidos.com/imagenes/articulos/larrycohen/larrycohen-12.jpg

God Told Me To is incredible. If you haven't seen it, don't even look up a single additional word on it, it's one of the most baffling and intense films of the 70's. The genre-flips and plot turns are so bizarre that even just listing it as a science fiction film is a kind of a spoiler.

in any case, the gun is good, the penis is evil

http://www.dennishollingsworth.us/archives/images/Zardoz040205.jpg

http://pharyngula.org/images/zardoz_damnhippies.jpg

http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/4481/zardoz1api4.jpg

I voted for Solaris but I feel bad for not voting Silent Running, and if I'd seen that film since I was an adult I think I might've. It seems like the purest SF film up there to me, or at least the closest to the experience of reading SF.

I don't think "Alien" is bad, just boring. Almost the entire reason I love "Meet Joe Black" is because it is daringly boring (other part: excellent van accident scene). I think "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is boring, and it's one of my favorite movies. And my favorite books are 65% boring.

Alien wouldn't have any tension if it wasn't so goddamn boring! I mean, wouldn't it be boring to be on a spaceship?

ha, that's what DARK STAR is all about

I racked up like 35 dollars of late fees on "Dark Star" and never even watched it.

Ha. I read the novelization of that one and was disappointed when I finally saw the actual film.

I think they got the idea for some of those Zardoz costumes from Pasolini's Gospel According To St. Matthew.

I have the Playboy from when it came out that has like 8 pages of all the nudie screenshots.

I think I'll start the 1970s paranoia/conspiracy movie poll

I really need to see the Planet Of The Apes sequels.
-- Matt #2, Friday, 25 January 2008 17:13

everyone should, it's the most bonkers franchise in film history. don't even get me started on conquest of the planet of the apes.

whose plot can be summed up thusly:

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/Conquest4.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/Conquest2.jpg

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/conquest-09.jpg

Same guy directed that as the original Cape Fear, I think.

As good as "Beneath..." is, "Conquest" is my fave Apes movie, for the utter dementedness of it, the spittle-flickingness of the baddie, and the seemingly endless ape riot climax. One of a kind, for sure.

A worthy film to add to this list would be Altman's "Quintet". Beautiful and hopeless, that one.

Has A Clockwork Orange really fallen so far out of grace that no one even mentions it? Or is it just not "science fictiony" enough?

I almost voted A Clockwork Orange in the absence of Star Wars, but Invasion of the Body Snatchers caught my eye. I never really think of it as sci-fi, but really it can't be described as anything else, where a fair few of these verge on horror.

You guys, Damnation Alley! George Peppard, Jan-Michael Vincent, and a bunch of giant radioactive scorpions!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I have seen all these movies and there's no way I can choose betwixt em

friend Grux is dubbing me a VHS copy of 'The Final Programme'. my vote already went to 'Phase IV' but it's an emotional vote, there's too much quality on this list for a qualitative one

I know how certain decades go through fashionable revisits every decade or so, but man, the 70s still seems to have some of the best movies as far as ... bizarre, weird, and raw goes. Sci-fi, the occult, conspiracies, post-apocalyptic hells, viruses, dark but stylish urban hells (early 80s can also count there). all the good stuff. Why that decade over others?

Anybody else here see the TV-movie version of Sturgeon's Killdozer? I barely have a memory of it.

I saw it but I think I remember about as much as you do.

So much goodness. Tarkovsky vs. Kubrick, plus Alien, Rollerball, and Mad Max; etc. Special love for Zardoz and Logan's Run.

These, I haven't seen (below). Any recommendations? Any I shouldn't bother with?

The Terminal Man
Colossus: The Forbin Project
Silent Running
Slaughterhouse-Five
Invasion of The Body Snatchers (Is this anything like the 50's version?)
A Boy and His Dog
Soylent Green
God Told Me To
Phase IV
The Man Who Fell To Earth
Demon Seed
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Future World
Death Watch
Parts: The Clonus Horror

Why would you want to miss any of those?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

The only image I can find of the low-budget Australian 'totalitarian government and prisoners are hunted for sport' flick Turkey Shoot is of the co-ed shower scene (which Starship Troopers later riffed on). Also notable is that it features Mad Max's boss as one of the bad dudes who gets his hands chopped off with a machette.

No wait, here we go:

http://www.robbscelebs.co.uk/noops417_18/turkey_shoot0012.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/Fantastic_Planet_2.jpg

I'm honestly kinda surprised Alien won.

neither science-fiction, nor good

Worst tagline ever.

With Star Wars missing, I'll have to go for Mad Max followed by Zardoz.

phase iv

so good

giant radioactive scorpions!

whoa? really? I had wondered if Fallout had nicked the radscorpions from somewhere else or not...

Silent Running 2

lol hippies

I fell asleep during Stalker - what are you people thinking. do not get the tarkovsky love (I hated Solaris too, and am a huge Lem fan)

you just don't have Soviet rhythms.

but I like lots of other Russian stuff!

well, I think his masterpiece is The Mirror, not sf, but what is it you loathe about him?

I don't loathe him exactly I just don't get what's so great. Solaris and Stalker both look quite nice but the glacial pacing and stone-faced characters = zzzzzzzzzz

A symphony of naps!

I love glacial pacing and stone-faced characters, but I know I'm in a minority there.

just rented: Quintet by Robert Altman, 1979. internet is covered with snarky bad reviews and frequent mentions of Zardoz. Can Not Wait.

Cast:Paul Newman (Essex), Fernando Rey (Grigor), Bibi Andersson (Ambrosia), Vittorio Gassman (St Christopher)

Plot: It is the future and the world has undergone another Ice Age. The seal hunter Essex comes out of the wilderness to visit his brother, bringing with him his wife Vivia who is one of the first women to become pregnant in a long time. In the decaying city, the bored populace spend their time playing the enigmatic dice game Quintet. Essex is invited to join one round but while he is away getting wood for the fire, Vivia and the others are killed in a bomb blast. As Essex tries to stay alive, he seeks to understand the nature of Quintet in which people’s lives are forfeit when they lose.

Quintet is awful

Indeed it is not. It looks as if it was filmed through gauze. If you enjoy the light in Barry Lyndon or Carravagio's paintings, Quintet is worth watching. It is unrelentingly bleak, though.

its all shot with a soft-focus prismatic effect and there are lots of mirrors. the central plot point is so totally boring and obvious tho I dunno how anyone could maintain an interest in it. I saw it a few months back when I was home with a cold.

and its certainly not as lol-riffic as Zardoz!

what is?

Quintet is a chore, but it looks pretty fantastic.

I love tarkovsky, but apparently I have some heretical views on him.

andrei rublev - this is my favorite movie, ever, so it towers over everything else in his BoW not to mention all of filmdom. my great love is for the 185 minute cut though, which is pretty much unavailable in the US. there is no perfect version of rublev in existence, and if there is it's certainly not the criterion workprint. their labeling it a "director's cut" is one of the more grotesque instances of marketing-driven abuse of the term. however, the film in any format is a bloody brutal love letter to creative types everywhere.

when the painter apprentice rublev and his teacher theophanes engage in a spririted debate about the morality of pandering to an audience, it's soooo far from the tarkovsky cliche of characters as stoic marble-shitting oil paintings. hey I'm an atheist so I shouldn't care about the christ and all that but the screenwriting is so fucking good it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Theophanes: All right, tell me in all honesty, are our people ignorant or not... I can't hear you!

Andrei: Yes, ignorant! But who's to blame for that?

Theophanes: Their stupidity is to blame!

Andrei: Have you never sinned because you're ignorant?

Theophanes: Yes, I have, too. O God, forgive, reconcile, and curb our passions! The Day of Judgement is coming. We'll all burn like candles.

Mind my word, it will be hell! People will lump the blame for their sins on one another, justifying themselves before the Almighty.

Andrei: I don't understand how you can paint, having thoughts like that. You even accept praise. I'd have taken vows of schema long ago and settled down in a cave for good.

Theophanes: I serve God, not people. Today they praise, tomorrow they'll abuse what they praised only yesterday, and after that they'll forget both you and me. They'll forget everything! All is vanity! All is useless!

The human race has already perpetrated all stupidities and wrongs, and now it's just repeating them. Everything falls back into place again, and goes round and round... If Jesus came back to Earth again, He would be crucified once more!

Andrei: If you remember only evil, you can never be happy before God.

Theophanes: What?

Andrei: Maybe some things should be forgotten, but not everything. I don't know how to say it...

Theophanes: If you don't know, then be silent! Listen to me!

Andrei: You think that good can be done only single-handedly?

Theophanes: Good? Have you forgotten the New Testament? Jesus gathered people in the temples, too. He taught them. And then they gathered together in order to execute Him.

"Crucify him!" they shouted. And His disciples? Judas betrayed Him, Peter renounced Him. They all abandoned Him! And they were the best!

Andrei: But they repented!

Theophanes: That was much later, don't you understand? When it was too late.

Andrei: It's true, people do evil, too. And it's very sad. Judas had sold Christ out. But do you remember who bought Him? The people? No, the Pharisees and their scribes. They couldn't find any witnesses, no matter how hard they tried. Who would slander Him, the innocent?

And the Pharisees were great deceivers, literate and cunning. They even learned to read and write in order to gain power, taking advantage of His ignorance. People ought to be reminded more often that they're human beings, that all Russians are of one blood and of one land!

Evil can be found anywhere. There will always be those ready to sell you for 30 pieces of silver. And the Russian man gets more and more misfortunes. The Tatars raid him thrice a season, then comes a famine or a plague. But he keeps working and working, bearing his cross with humility. Never despairing, but enduring it silently. And only praying to God to give him enough strength to endure. Can the Almighty not forgive such men their ignorance?

You know it yourself that whenever something goes wrong, or you're exhausted and despairing, and suddenly... you meet some human eyes, and it works as if you took a Communion, and the weight is lifted from your heart.

Isn't it so?

mirror - his next best, and although it's as conventional as a candy squid, it's actually a good place to start for a newbie. free flowing and spot on, like good jazz or poetry.

solaris - occasionally tarkovsky tried a little too hard for the "epic" vibe, and this film is a casualty. would be better if the first 45 minutes were lopped off. after that it's a pretty heady + paranoid little film but by that time you might be too stupified to notice.

stalker - his most overrated film in my book. he shot a large part of the film and then had it destroyed by a careless lab, forcing him to start again from scratch. sometimes I wonder if that took some of the wind out of his sails (though he was no stranger to operating under adversity). the philosophical psychobabble of the characters gets irritating after a while. hands up, who wants to slap the writer? the ending gets me though, that understated effortless imagism, talk about sticking the landing.

ivan's childhood - arguably a sounder film than stalker, but he was still aping bergman at this point and hadn't struck his own path.

I'm saving nostalghia and the sacrifice for the day I need them.

moral: never bring up tarkovsky on a thread I'm reading.

boy, if you consider The Mirror 'conventional' by any measure...

(it's screening in nYC tonight)

That post is almost as long as Andrei Rublev itself.

lol

(and mirror is as conventional as a candy squid, i.e. not at all)

oh, I missed that! I figured it was some common treat sold in Brighton. :)

actually a candy squid is a fishing lure, so I guess it's conventional if you're a fisherman. let's pretend I said squid candy. although that's probably conventional in japan. let's just pretend I said nothing.

The Tarkovsky films are in such a league of their own, I almost left them off this list -- they're not just dystopian, they're transcendental. My vote for Phase IV was based on the wider context of what all the films on the list were collectively going for -- I can't be surprised Stalker and Solaris garnered as many votes as they did but in hindsight this shouldn't have been a poll, just a discussion thread

Quintet has a lot going for it. Most of the film is slow pans over the set design for the underground city of the last five million people -- all the technology vandalilzed and destroyed, snow and ice covering almost every surface, occasional pockets of people cooking, drinking, and killing each other and wild dogs show up within three minutes after you die to eat you. Very hypnotic and immersive and I kept pausing the image just to stare at the sets.

Casting the hallmark actors from Buñuel, Bergman & mod 60's/70's Italian films turns this into a weird European art film -- this is the first time I've ever seen Rey or Andersson speaking in English. Gassman plays a minister who preaches to a huge room full of immobilzed infirm: life is a blissful interruption of the agonizing infinity of the Void

so sure I can see how someone who doesn't have the patience for Tarkovsky wouldn't like it. It's also really schitzo Altman in that the mood throughout is sober, moody and grim, but the dramatic punctuations are so bizarre that to most people they'd come across as unintentional humor or incompetence -- but this is the guy who directed The Long Goodbye so you can't help but suspect that the corpse's frozen grimace was supposed to be funny.

(If a bored moderator wants to remove the spoiler I didn't mean to post upthread, my thanks to them)

perhaps this was flavored by the last few posts on the thread but I was wondering if this was Altman responding to Tarkovsky. there's a scene in a small hotel room where Paul Newman switches on an electric light and the loudest sound on the soundtrack for the next several minutes is dripping water as the ice that's covering the bulb slowly melts away

interminable water scenes are sure signs of a tarkovsky fixation.

my favorite tarkovsky reference is in miike's audition, when the two guys holding the fake audition ask the girls a series of ridiculous questions, one of them being "do you like tarkovsky?" it's so absurd + dickheaded.

Thanks to this thread, that Loguns Run pic is now my wallpaper

(on my pc, not my house walls. but hmmm...)

my favorite tarkovsky reference is in fassbinder's 'the third generation' where the corrupt cop is staring out a skyscraper's window, staring at the traffic, and says 'I saw this incredibly boring film last night, nothing but endless shots of traffic' and the industrialist says 'was it called solaris?'

so I was thinking about milton's comments about what does and doesn't belong on the list, and the cronenberg thing again, and star wars. I thinnk what holds this list together is the consistent dystopian bent of the films. sci-fi is usually a dystopian/utopian game - is science and technology an enabling force (or, at least, a neutral element), or does it lift the lid on pandora's box? films like star wars, battle beyond the stars, buck rogers in the 25th century, these clearly hold a less jaundiced view of the future than phase iv, soylent green, a boy and his dog.

morbs doesn't think alien should be on the list 'cause it's a horror film, abbott doesn't think cronenberg should be on the list cause he's horror, milton doesn't think tarkovsky should be on the list 'cause he's transcendental. but the majority of the films on this list *are* horrific, in that the future state they envision (a place shaped by science and technology) is an absurd and alienating world eager to drop the hammer on the unlucky bastards who inhabit it.

solaris is ripe with existential dread, in league with the other films. rather than improving our lives, science (e.g. space travel) fractures identities, perverts desires, brings us into an uneasy, suffocating relationship with the unknowable terror of death. comparing the film to 2001 is rote, and their differences are significant, but their thematic basis are very similar - whether it's a big black monolith or a swirling psychedelic maelstrom, it's still the great unknown fucking with the human race on a whole other level.

cronenberg's 70s films (shivers, rabid, the brood), although full of jolting horror scenes, all derive their narrative impetus from amoral doctors tampering with human biology and unleashing a shitstorm of bad juju. cronenberg's chilly, detached approach to the material is, well, "scientific," and serves to reinforce the sci-fi orientation of his work. not to mention, as abbott pointed out, his biological fascination with virus and the flesh.

if I had to pick films on the list that don't fit this criteria, they would be things like mad max (which technically occurs in the future, but isn't that far from the wild angels / race with the devil type exploitation hijinks), star trek, and to a lesser extant, close encounters (which follows the dystopian model for almost the entire film until its bait-and-switch ending - surprise, it's utopian).

there was an interesting analysis of alien back in the 80s, can't remember who wrote it, but it read the film as a metaphor for a sexually abusive family. the alien as the phallic, abusing father, the computer system as the cold, remote mother enabling the father's bad behavior, the astronauts as childlike -- asexual innocents, no romantic relationships between them, the film opens with them all sleeping in the same room. they wake and are slowly introduced to an adult world of deceit and penetration.

Third Generation provides lots of lols.

Alien and Star Wars are so retro to me the space stuff is just genre-drag.

now I'm thinking of ash choking ripley with a rolled-up porno mag. there's a lot more going on in alien than "boogeyman on a spaceship."

I mean, it is "boogeyman on a spaceship," but then there's the psychosexual stuff, and the antonioni/tarkovsky-like pace and aesthetics. there are something like 10 lines of dialogue in the first 15 minutes. still surprises me how popular a movie it was.

I just watched Capricorn One, not seen it for years. Apart from the sadly lacking ending I think this is just a superb movie.

The congressman guy (big lebowski) has some terrific lines and makes a great character.

I think my fave moment is when the guy is climbing the canyon cliff telling the joke to himself, only to reveal the two choppers parked eerily on top. Sends shivers.

Fucking hell, did this REALLY need to be remade? http://www.aetv.com/the-andromeda-strain/

oh no:(

Is that him from A-HA on the left ?

just watched phase iv again this week. surprised at how well it holds up. directed by saul bass! he designed all those great movie posters like vertigo and the man with the golden arm.

phase iv is super creepy & psychedelic, with some of the best acting by real ants ever filmed and a great burbling electronic score. I was talking to a friend who had vague memories of seeing it as a child, but he had perfect recall when it came to the scene where ants started crawling out of the 3 circular holes in a dead guy's hand.

DVD NOW PLZ

we did an 80's sci-fi movie poll too, right? i can't find it.

50s one is easy to find.

Saul Bass also did the opening-title sequences for most of the films he created poster images for.

was phase iv the ants film where they walked through a house filled with ants and these people were breathing through straws, or something?

that's not in Phase IV

phase iv is super creepy & psychedelic, with some of the best acting by real ants ever filmed and a great burbling electronic score.

it's by David Vorhaus, raiding some of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop sound beds used on 'Dr. Who' and the White Noise 'An Electric Storm' album. the music in all these films is one of the main sources of appeal

I just love the fact that after a long, long career directing the title sequences & storyboarding for some of the biggest directors in Hollywood, when he finally traded in all his favors to direct his own film, he decided to make a film about superintelligent ants (and I can imagine the pitch: 'but here's the twist... it stars REAL ANTS'

http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/storyboards/psycho/bass-storyboards.html

type Saul Bass into youtube and you'll see the parade, the one for 'Seconds' is my favorite - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGq_ON4aXew

ant sequences were directed by Ken Middleham, this is the only interview with him where he talks about Phase IV & The Hellstrom Chronicle: http://www.cinefex.com/backissues/issue3.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hellstrom_Chronicle

in other news I found a cheap copy of 'Parts: The Clonus Horror'. Incompetent on almost every front, but still a 70's science fiction film. It might be better to watch the MST3K version of this one, (unlike 'Phase IV')

I also bought a copy of 'The Silver Globe' on Amazon: http://www.fright.com/edge/silverglobe.html

was phase iv the ants film where they walked through a house filled with ants and these people were breathing through straws, or something?

-- Ste, Wednesday, 19 March 2008 15:09 (4 hours ago) Link

you are thinking of it happened at lakewood manor aka ants!

http://imdb.com/title/tt0076214/

http://amigareviews.classicgaming.gamespy.com/pic/itcamefromthedesert-e.png

ant sequences were directed by Ken Middleham, this is the only interview with him where he talks about Phase IV & The Hellstrom Chronicle: http://www.cinefex.com/backissues/issue3.html

agh, must pay for content. I'm not much of an fx geek but I would love to know how some of those scenes were filmed.

oh yes, just downloaded phase iv, totally remember it.

stumbled across this recently, but haven't watched it yet: peter fonda's low budget eco-terror time travel movie from 1973 called idaho transfer. looks like a real treat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_Transfer

that looks great

definitely want to recommend 'On The Silver Globe', though it could easily go in the 80's poll -- 90% of the footage was shot in the 70's, but the polish government aborted the film before the special effects were completed, so the director cut in very strange 80's footage of polish citizens & commuters wandering around while describing what the SFX space travel & alien battle scenes would have been like

if it had been completed, it'd be mentioned in company with 'Holy Mountain' and 'Sweet Movie'. the shots are beautiful, the plot is beyond ambitious. the editing is strange, the first half of the film is basically presented as an in-camera document shot by three survivors of a ship that crash lands on the moon, and who repopulate an entire incestuous colony who eventually come under attack from a horde of horrible bird creatures. for most shots, any pause of more than two seconds is edited out, so the film more disorienting than most modern reality television. many shots feature hundreds of extras swarming around beaches and caves, orgies, incomprehensible rituals, well it is the moon they're on. it's not for everyone, every line by every actor is delivered in abject histrionic wails with long monologues like 'what aren't you in what exists, nothing? the human soul justifies my deeds, delicate souls... but they are ridiculous! but the ridiculous are strong... the icy space within myself merged in hateful vision, is this the END? AAAAARRGH!' etc. etc.

in short, kind of a trial but I've already watched it twice

I just saw Andromeda Strain. First big surprise: OMG THIS IS SO FUCKING AWESOME HOW DID I NEVER HEAR OF THIS. Second big surprise: This was made in 1971?!?!?!

OMG I must see Idaho Transfer! I grew up near Craters of the Moon, it's such a terrifying and evocative place.

This was made in 1971?!?!?!
You saw the one with Arthur Hill or the remake?

Arthur Hill.

There was a remake?

I guess the "You're going to a love-in!" line should have made me think it wasn't from '77-'79 like I was guessing (based on the special effects).

I made up the remake. I don't know if there was one or not.

...teehee?

'Idaho Transfer' and 'Silver Globe' both sound fascinating. Dunno how I missed this poll, would probably have voted for 'Rollerball', which I've seen four or five times.

Strain Andromeda The

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/07/cool-life-and-cool-gear-of-gil-mell.html

the soundtrack is my favorite thing about it:
http://www.discogs.com/release/739020

Elvis linked to the Andromeda remake upthread, it looks normal

OK, I didn't make it up, I must've half remembered it from the part upthread that I no longer read.

I started watching but haven't finished idaho transfer (not from lack of interest). so far it's a bizarro piece of work which the minds on this thread should appreciate.

the only movie I've seen where the rules surrounding time travel are just a flimsy excuse to film cute hippie chicks with their pants off (no metal can be worn during travel; travellers must be under 20 years old). science fiction indeed... maybe influence on alien lol?

the guy who directed on the silver globe also did possession with isabelle adjani. possession is not "good" by any yardstick but is a corker that should be seen at least once for its alternating o_O and roffles effect on discerning viewers.

first time I saw Possession I loved it but kind of had it at arms length -- the dialog is perfectly coherent and civililzed, a transcript would be familiar to anyone who's been through a breakup, it's just that the acting is so psychotic and physically exaggerated that it can be hard to take the film seriously. but after four times through, I get it, it is a good film.

Only other movies I'd add to the list would be No Blade Of Grass and The Final Programme, but both of those only marginally fit (NBOG is superseded by Mad Max, and TFP doesn't get the ridiculousness of Moorcock down)

-- Elvis Telecom, Friday, January 25, 2008 6:24 AM (2 months ago) Bookmark Link

Saw The Final Programme last night -- jeez how'd I miss that, it's totally ridiculous. Not surprised the same guy directed a few Avengers episodes & Abominable Dr. Phibes, it's like Baker-era Dr. Who set in dystopian Swinging London. I shouldn't have been expecting too much of the ending, but it was fun, I watched with a few friends who had no expectations whatsoever and they didn't know what hit them.

where's the '60s sci fi poll?

I don't think we ever made one.

phase iv is super creepy & psychedelic, with some of the best acting by real ants ever filmed and a great burbling electronic score. I was talking to a friend who had vague memories of seeing it as a child, but he had perfect recall when it came to the scene where ants started crawling out of the 3 circular holes in a dead guy's hand.

DVD NOW PLZ

-- Edward III, Wednesday, 19 March 2008 14:35 (3 months ago) Link

DVD GODZ HAVE ANSWERED MY PRAYERS

where is it available? I saw a forum message that noted it appeared to be a best buy exclusive??? amazon doesn't have it.

yeah, oddly enough it's only available at best buy. netflix has it too.

I am curious about the Final Programme ref'd above but going by Milton's other recommendations I'm suspicious...

milton's otm more often than not

truth bomb

sorry stalker was unwatchable. I think I hate Tarkovsky.

fortunately he's dead

don't swear off tarkovsky until you've seen mirror.

the phase iv dvd was put out by legend films, who apparently licensed a bunch of obscure movies from the paramount vaults - student bodies, the sender, mandingo, some kind of hero, etc - and legend's promoting them as best buy exclusives.

it is v v weird to see phase iv on a promotional endcap display at best buy, but at $10 it's both a steal and a freakin nobrainer.

turn my back on this thread for one second and I miss the Phase IV DVD reissue! got to pick that up.

came here to say I'd seen a new one I'd never heard of, an East German production from 1976 called 'In The Dust of the Stars'. there were evidently only four science fiction (aka 'Utopian') films produced in East Germany from 1960 to 1989, and each had to pass party review. the plot concerns six bold, courageous & friendly cosmonauts answering a distress call, landing on an alien planet of decadent, hard-partying Capitalists who attempt to corrupt them with endless parties and psychedelic dancing to distract them from their secret -- they are actually colonists who have enslaved the resident population to work underground as slaves. the party scenes are hilarious, and long -- twenty minutes can't go by without one of the rulers clapping his hands & a squad of go-go dancers climbing out of the mirrors to dance to 'crazy electronic music'. the visual style is closer to Mario Bava circa 'Planet of Vampires' or a very low budget 'Barbarella' than anything contemporary, the dialog is ridiculous (one of the cosmonauts names is 'Thob'), so this doesn't fit at all with the dystopian themes of these other films, it's just interesting fun

also saw 'Silent Running' again. it's about as slow and ponderous as I remembered, but there's a lot in here I didn't get as a kid that makes me sort of astonished this was made -- Bruce Dern is not just self-righteous but terrifying, and I'd forgotten (spoiler) that he outright murders all his crew members to save the forest. After the last eight years of being inundated with Malkin & Limbaugh tropes of the wild-eyed crazy liberal tree-huggers, seeing this movie again made me think that Limbaugh couldn't have bankrolled a right-wing film with this extreme a caricature if he'd tried -- Bruce Dern really is not an inviting protagonist, he's basically the Unabomber. But the film is in earnest, it is absolutely For the Trees, so it ends up giving you a lot to think about precisely because it is so awkward, it's one of the only films that seems to want to go into the mentality of 70's domestic terrorism. the DVD's commentary is just Trumbull & Dern, mostly talking about the effects, it would have been interesting to hear from the the other screenwriters Michael Cimino & Stephen Bochco

long time since I've seen Silent Running - i have it on VHS but no player. Pretty spot on comments about Dern though, all his friends being non human and all.

me and my sister bawked our eyes out when the 'robots' bought it.

everybody's creaming over teh new godfather discs but this is what has me seriously considering getting bluray player

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001G7PX80/

wot, no ape head?

my cousin has the japanese alien set

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/alienquadrilogyhead.jpg

not even one vote for Beneath the Planet of the Apes. saw that again -- that's my favorite one by far. once you get to the underground city...

finally saw Fassbinder's one science fiction film 'World On A Wire' from 1973. Loved it. Are there any earlier virtual reality films?

http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a6/Sprad/WorldOnAWire2.jpg

the new bluray planet of the apes set has the original cut of conquest of the planet of the apes, the version that studio heads demanded be cut lest it get an R rating and/or incite actual rioting in the streets.

goddamn, they really want me to buy a bluray player, don't they?

Martian Chronicles - 1979 TV mini-series - far less kitschy than I was expecting. screenplay by Richard Matheson! the space effects are terrible, but whenever the martian cities & outfits hit the screen I was tempted to just pause and stare at them -- I wanted to live there. (tried to find a screenshot of the Martian Mask of Conflict, but blogs are sleeping). the anti-colonial themes are front and center, not glossed over at all, and the scene where the psychic empath martian gets stuck with the Missionary and is thusly forced into the shape of a wounded Jesus, and he's in agony trying to talk the priest into looking away before he bleeds to death - that is an amazing scene, especially for broadcast 70's television. I wasn't expecting this one to fit with the other US 70's science fiction films, but it absolutely does, it's as bleak and dystopian and fatalistic as the rest of them

also saw the 1972 East German 'Eolomea'. it's just as swinging & psychedelic as 'In The Dust of the Stars', but also more serious in tone. I liked it, though it doesn't click with the Western dystopias, in fact in East Germany they couldn't call them Science Fiction films, to distinguish them they would call them 'Utopian films', and that's accurate -- the two I've seen are proscripted cheerleading. http://www.dvdverdict.com/reviews/eolomea.php

Das Millionenspiel - 1970

Reality TV Show where contestants win one million deutschmark if they can evade three assassins for one week, while the world watches coverage via 20 mobile film crews

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066079/

Seems like a made for TV reiteration of The 10th Victim which I remember being good campy fun, but maybe worth checking out, and obviously still way ahead of its time, plus music by Can

http://www.britmovie.co.uk/forums/ask-film-question/16845-phase-iv-saul-bass-fish-lady.html

whoah

http://io9.com/5877874/lost-films

Hu-Man (1975)

An actor (Terence Stamp, playing himself) is placed in a series of dangerous situations, while his fear is broadcast to the television audience. Their emotional reactions will determine whether he is sent into the future, or the past. Directed by Jérôme Laperrousaz and co-starring Jeanne Moreau, Hu-Man won the Trieste Festival of Science Fiction Films in 1976, but has strangely fallen into obscurity, and apparently no prints are available.

yes! i read that too! wish it were available

posting this to watch later: Idaho Transfer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXxzzpGF7O8

liked Idaho Transfer a lot. perhaps one of the lowest budget films on this entire list, but it doesn't matter; point a camera at those volcanic plains & the Idaho landscape, set it to an acoustic guitar & analog synth soundtrack and it is easy to believe that civilization has ended everywhere

and the ending is RIDICULOUS.

we should run this poll again sometime. it's missing a bunch of important ones, and some of them are finding wider audiences.

tried to find a screenshot of the Martian Mask of Conflict, but...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_5Qcl1S1MdQQ/SPZihzUViZI/AAAAAAAAMrE/hfqfUpOb3Co/s1600/bscap0019la1.jpg

Peregrine: "2000 years we waited for your return. And now I am the one who sees you, and hears you speaking."

Martian Jesus: "You see nothing but your own dream ... your own needs. Beneath all this I am another thing."

Peregrine: "What am I to do?"

Martian Jesus: "Look away from me, and in that moment I'll be gone. Halt, or you'll kill me!"

Peregrine: "Or I'll kill you?"

Martian Jesus: "If you force me into this guise much longer, I will die. This is more than I can hold."

Father Peregrine and 'Jesus' exchange inaudible whispers.

Peregrine: "And I have made you like this with my thoughts."

Martian Jesus: "You came into the church. You looked at the crucifix. Your old dream of meeting him seized you once again. Seized me. My body still bleeds from the wounds you gave me with your secret mind."

Peregrine: "…Oh, my sweet God …. Go, before I keep you here forever."

whatever you think of the crimes of george lucas it is silly that thx placed so low

well based on your posts Martian Mask of Conflict looks amazing but unfortunately the only Google result for it is, uh, this thread

It's from The Martian Chronicles, Shakey

I mean I'm assuming you thought it was the title of some separate movie, which I did for a split second

hmmm, apparently The Martian Chronicles DVD is still in print over here but The Silver Locusts isn't, tho it's easy enough to get a used copy.

sorry, meant to say the orig Ray Bradbury book (Silver Locusts) isn't. anyway they're both well worth having iirc

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Books/Pix/pictures/2008/10/29/douglaskirklandco460.jpg

watched the martian chronicles dvd again recently. loved the rocket prop but the whole thing didn't live up to my memories or the book.

Zardoz 2

;_;

ah thx read the book, never bothered with any screen adaptations

http://coilhouse.net/2012/05/teenagers-in-space-a-soviet-sci-fi-film-from-1974/

wow

awesome

i think i'm going to watch barbarella again

is CQ any good?

not really

I kind of liked it, but I know I was in the minority

it's not a patch on Barbarella that's for sure

CQ is charming but not a must see. Soundtrack is alright.

That's a good description

haha, this is my 2nd google search result for "ken middleham ants"

Perhaps of interest as a compare/contrast

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/lists/50-best-sci-fi-movies-of-the-1970s-20150114

I can think of a whole lot of films that didn't make the list better than most of their bottom 20 -- first third of this list makes the decade look a lot more wretched than it has to (though I hadn't even heard of 'welcome to blood city')

putting phase iv in the top 10 though, all is forgiven

Saul Bass' Long-Lost Original Ending for Phase IV Unearthed in Los Angeles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beLpsWaUDNk

Whoa @ lost ending. I guess there were probably a bunch of other majorly cut parts throughout... still manages to be awesome, though.

Re-watched this today - love the sci fi update of 'Leiningen Versus the Ants.' Thanks for posting lost ending - it's great!

http://www.amc.com/video-extras/dark-star

^^ "dark star" available to watch free on line

was really disappointed when I finally got around to watching that

why?

because it's terrible? It isn't particularly funny, mostly it feels like a bad episode of Dr. Who

that 70s Tom Baker era jankiness and ambling pace

love that movie. its a perfect movie to just hang out with.

Watched The Final Programme a few days ago, I'm kind of surprised this hasn't gotten a rerelease from Drafthouse or something. Hard for me to remember a film that reached an equally high level of entertainment and incomprehensibility.

The sight gag with the freezer crammed full of McVities was amazing.

The sight gag with the freezer crammed full of McVities was amazing.

http://static.rogerebert.com/uploads/review/primary_image/reviews/dark-star-1980/hero_EB19800311REVIEWS3110301AR.jpg

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/dark-star-1980

Emerged. Haven't watched yet. Will soon if this proto-reality TV trope is in the leagues of 'Death Watch' or 'Year of the Sex Olympics' or just a slightly artier 'Das Millionenspiel' revamp.

Hu-Man, 1975, Terence Stamp, Jeanne Moreau

An actor is placed in dangerous situations and his fear will be broadcast to the television audience. The audience’s emotions will determine whether he is sent into the future or the past.

https://letterboxd.com/film/hu-man/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdvXZAPJkm0

well gosh. odd even for 1970's SF. one wonders what the shooting script could have looked like after the first third. definitely not for the impatient. definitely for people who like to wonder how films like this end up getting made. almost hilariously interminable, but ultimately that is by design. this youtube is a VHS transfer of the 87 minute TV edit, there's a version out there with another 20 minutes, can't even imagine

music credited to Eric Burdon, Tim Blake (of Gong / Hawkwind), David Horowitz, and, somehow, Patrick Vian -- not clear if they're collaborating or swapping off, the ballad at the beginning is clearly Eric Burdon but is that also him doing all the acapella screaming at the end? almost sounds like it could be but whatever it is, it's a riot. sounds like friends in Paris with a lot of gear deciding to record an all night jam session instead of going home after checking out the 1972 Taj Mahal Travellers concert

Capricorn One gets a rec as First Man "counterprogramming"

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/10/17/17985708/streaming-movie-recommendation-capricorn-one-first-man