| So by now
anyone still following this round-up of the Best Ever…!
Science Fiction films of the past glorious decades since the
inception of the BSFA should have built up quite a tidy little
DVD collection.
Back at the beginning of this time-traveling trip to the collective
memory bank it was my intention to gather together and chart
the progress of science fiction media (and here I really think
we can still call it sci-fi and get away guilt free) from
the 1950s to the present day. While it was beyond the remit
of these pieces to insure the inclusion of every film out
there, and after all any real fan is sure to have their own
definitive list of best-ofs anyway, the idea was rather to
provide an emergency pit-stop guide to the genre for those
in need of a quick answer to prove the validity, seriousness
and spoofiness, of our favourite genre in those all-important
pub debates.
And so with no further ado, here for your reading pleasure
is our round-up of the Best SF Movies Ever! – 1950s
style!
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 1959,
is the reverse of such stellar years as 1982 and 1968,
and is nowadays perhaps most memorable for being the
year that Plan 9 from Outer Space inflicted
itself on an unsuspecting cinema audience.
Entirely inconsequential at the time of its initial
release, this film has become a valuable edition to
the canon thanks to its director Ed Wood being lauded
as the single worst film director of all time. Today
it is both a camp classic and an unintentional guide
to how not to make science fiction films.
However it is also a warning to science fiction fans
of how open our favourite genre is to easy parody and,
thanks to people like Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, also
now a testament to creative will triumphing over studio
by-the-book filmmaking.
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1958 was
a classic year for movie monsters with no less
than three iconic horrors being unleashed on the
world. While Cronenberg’s re-imagining of
The Fly is perhaps the superior film, the
original remains a highly successful merging of
science fiction and horror, and benefits (as all
films do) from the screen presence of Vincent
Price.
The Blob was another science fictional
horror icon of its day but perhaps the most iconic
of all was the Attack of the 50ft Woman,
a film that continues to resonate today largely
on the basis of its amazingly successful marketing
rather than the quality of its central premise.
Proof indeed that science fiction is never better
than when dealing with BIG ideas.
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1957
also proves that science fiction is well at home on the
smaller scale, with the equally iconic The Incredible
Shrinking Man. Based on Richard ‘I Am Legend’
Matheson’s original novel, we can only hope that
when Hollywood finally gets around to remaking this one
too that they don’t choose to cast Will Smith in
it (update: since first typing this I’ve heard that
this may now be a vehicle for Eddie Murphy’s shrinking
screen presence – come back Will Smith we were just
kidding!).
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1956 transported
Shakespeare into space with the still visually stunning
Forbidden Planet. This film is an enduring
testament to the fact that space exploration and
adventure will always be a central pillar of the
genre, and that when coupled with a truly imaginative
story it can still retain the power to resonate
with fans over half a century after its original
release. |
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| Closer
to home and our fear of the unknown was given a
chillingly human face in Invasion of the Body
Snatchers, the classic parable of paranoia
and the enemy within. While much modern critical
attention rightly focuses on the subtextual fear
of the other and the allegorical threat of communism,
it’s also worth pointing out that this a well
crafted and suspenseful film in its own right and
one well worth revisiting even while it continues
to rack up its own pod of remakes. |
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1955 was the
year of The Quatermass Experiment, Hammer studio’s
first full venture into the horror genre and unquestionably
one of the best British science fiction films of the
decade.
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1954 was another classic monster year, especially
if you liked your beasties big and radioactive.Them!
reminded us that we share this planet with the insects,
and that they were here a long, long time before we ever
invented the kettle and started taking the offensive.
Gojira on the other hand made it abundantly clear
that there are some monsters who aren’t happy to
share with anyone and they’d rather stomp your city
and breath on you with atomic fire before ever playing
nice. |
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|  1953
and the movie of the year, and possibly one of the best
and most influential science fiction films (and radio
play and original novel) ever has to be The War
of the Worlds. A classic adaptation of the already
classic alien invasion story, this updated version typically
transported the action to America and replaced the iconic
tripods with equally iconic and much more timely (and
easy to replicate on film) flying saucer style attack
craft, but its beautiful colour photography, eerie aliens
and spectacular action scenes all remain true to the
original story where not even mankind’s enhanced
nuclear armaments can stall the invaders and again the
fate of the world hangs on the prevalence of our bacterial
cousins.
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 1952
was a particularly bland and boring year for science fiction
– the cosmic balance for great years like 1982 and
1968 perhaps. The best of a bad bunch is Red Planet
Mars, starring Mission Impossible stalwart
Peter Graves and exhibiting all the usual communist, nazi
and alien fears that were saturating science fiction at
the time. Rummaging through film history’s dustbin
is a dirty business and initially had us keen to head
back to the future. Coincidently 1952 was the year director
Robert Zemeckis was born, so it can’t have been
so bad really, and was perhaps just biding its time.
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1951
was a year of mixed messages regarding our extraterrestrial
relations. Robots and humanoid aliens were apparently
fine and friendly in The Day The Earth Stood Still,
even if there was the implicit threat of the Earth being
destroyed if we didn’t grow up and stop mucking
around with the nukes so much, while the real threat
was naturally from sentient alien plant life in The
Thing From Another World. It’s always nice,
though far too rare, that an already classic science
fiction film will spawn an equally classic remake in
future years as this film did for John Carpenter’s
The Thing, but when it works it works well,
and the original film continues to resonate with and
inform the genre along with both its immediate predecessor
and its many imitators.
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1950 was the
year of Destination Moon. An academy award winning
film (for special effects) and these days a timely reminder
of just how little time has elapsed between our dream
of reaching the Moon, our realisation of that dream and
the gradual fading of the space race from public consciousness
once more. This film is also notable for the active involvement
of SF author Robert A. Heinlein, and thus is doubly evocative
of a time when Hollywood actively sought the involvement
of our genre’s best writing talent. |
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