The 1970's Science Fiction Movie Poll

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)