Cult Sci-Fi Movies E-Book

Ben Hudson

• Herausgeber: epubli
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 305

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Welcome to a world where reality and imagination collide, where robots roam freely alongside humans, and where spaceships travel through the vast expanse of the universe. In this book, we will explore the fascinating world of science fiction films, delving into the futuristic worlds, advanced technologies, and otherworldly creatures that have captivated audiences for generations. So sit back, grab your popcorn, and get ready to embark on a thrilling journey through the realms of science fiction cinema.

Leseprobe

Cult Sci-Fi Movies

Ben Hudson© Copyright 2024 Ben Hudson

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CONTENTSThe Invisible Man (1933)The Thing from Another World (1951)The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)It Came From Outer Space (1953)Robot Monster (1953)The War of the Worlds (1953)Them! (1954)This Island Earth (1955)Tarantula (1955)Forbidden Planet (1956)Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)Rodan (1956) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)The Fly (1958)Village of the Damned (1960)The Time Machine (1960)Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964)Planet of the Vampires (1965)Quatermass and the Pit (1967)Barbarella (1968)2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)Planet of the Apes (1968)Solaris (1972)Silent Running (1972)Soylent Green (1973)Phase IV (1973)Westworld (1973)Fantastic Planet (1973)Sleeper (1973)Dark Star (1974)The Stepford Wives (1975)The Man Who Fell To Earth (1976)Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)Starcrash (1979)Alien (1979)Stalker (1979)Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979)Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)Flash Gordon (1980)Galaxy of Terror (1981)Android (1982)Videodrome (1982)The Thing (1982)Forbidden World (1982)Blade Runner (1982)The Last Starfighter (1984)Night of the Comet (1984)The Terminator (1984)Repo Man (1984)Lifeforce (1985)Robocop (1987)Akira (1988)They Live (1988)Predator 2 (1990)Darkman (1990)Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)Alien 3 (1992)Starship Troopers (1997)Cube (1997)Event Horizon (1997)Last Night (1998)The Mist (2007)Moon (2009)Dredd (2012)Prometheus (2012)Chronicle (2012)Gravity (2013)Ex Machina (2014)Prey (2022)Photo CreditTHE INVISIBLE MAN (1933)The Invisible Man is a 1933 Pre-Code science fiction horror film based on HG Wells' classic science fiction novella. Be very careful what you wish for because it might come true is the moral of The Invisible Man. The film was directed by James Whale. In the sleepy, quiet village of Iping in Sussex, a mysterious stranger (Claude Rains) arrives and takes a room at The Coach and Horses inn. He is wrapped from head to foot in thick clothes, wears a hat and has his face completely covered by bandages and a pair of goggles. He is absolutely famished and frozen to the bone and seems to have endured quite an ordeal.The stranger demands absolute privacy and is rather short tempered, superior and sullen with the staff at the inn. Not the most charming man you'd ever meet. He attracts most unwelcome attention in the form of local gossip and speculation. It is assumed by the Sussex locals that he must have undergone some sort of terrible operation and be horribly disfigured but his extraordinary secret quickly begins to unravel. The Invisible Man is a scientist named Griffin and it would be apt to call him a mad scientist. As a young science student at university Griffin became obsessed with optics and the idea that once a person's refractive index is changed that person could actually become invisible. Drunk with the possibilities, he decided to test his theory out on himself because being invisible would be fantastic wouldn't it? He soon realises though that it isn't and there are many downsides he hadn't considered at all.Although the basic framework of the story and the characters' names are largely the same as in the novel, there are several differences between the book and the film. The novel takes place in the 1890s while the film takes place in 1933. In the novel Griffin remains almost a totally mysterious person with no fiancee or friends. In the film he is engaged to a beautiful woman and has the support of her father and his associate. In the novel Griffin is already insane before he makes himself invisible and he is entirely motivated by a lust for power. In the film though Griffin is driven mad by the drug that makes him invisible. Dr Kemp survives in the novel - his life is saved by those who ultimately kill Griffin. In the film, Dr Kemp is terrified throughout and pays for betraying Griffin with his life. This is a very entertaining and enjoyable film that is powered by a fantastic performance by Claude Rains as Griffin. He genuinely seems to be having the time of his life playing a villain and scaring all the other characters witless. William Harrigan is solid too as Dr Kemp. One has to mention the special effects in any review of this film and they remain very impressive for the era. The invisible scenes were apparently done with wires and a black velvet suit that meshed with a background.One effective thing about the novel and the film is the way that it plants Griffin and his incredible condition in a setting that feels completely down to earth and even realistic (though there are some broad supporting performances in the film). No wonder he provokes such a panic. The subtext of Wells seems to be an obvious one. Don't meddle with things that you don't truly understand. That goes for science and mankind as a whole. This invisibility lark, as Griffin discovers, was obviously not all it was cracked up to be. The Invisible Man is a highly entertaining film with a wicked sense of humour and fun. It's a very good early stab at translating this famous story to the screen. The vintage nature of the film makes it all the more atmospheric too.THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)The Thing from Another World is a 1951 science fiction/horror film. Although Christian Nyby is officially listed as the director it is sometimes alleged that the film was in fact directed by Howard Hawks. Nyby worked as an editor on several Howard Hawks films. The film was based on the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W Campbell and is one of the more influential results of the classic fifties monster/paranoia sci-fi boom. The story begins with a US Air Force crew led by Captain Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) being ordered to fly to the North Pole where the scientific Polar Expedition #6 base - headed by Dr Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) - has reported something very unusual.A strange unidentified aircraft that conforms to no known design has crashed in this frozen wilderness and is now trapped in the ice. "Twenty thousand tons of steel is an awful lot of metal for an airplane," notes Hendry after they assess what materials have been collated on the unidentified object. The Polar Expedition team and Air Crew duly head out to the windswept Arctic location of the crash site and find a huge saucer shaped craft buried beneath the freezing ice. An attempt by the team to release the craft with explosives fails and merely destroys it - but they do retrieve a body which they take back to the base frozen in a block of ice. Hendry orders the find to be placed under guard until he receives further instructions but Corporal Barnes (William Self) unwittingly begins thawing the block of ice by accident and the mysterious occupant escapes. Everyone at the base is soon in very big trouble.The original film version of Who Goes There? is very different from John Carpenter's famous 1982 remake The Thing. Carpenter's gruesome FX laden interpretation went back to the source novel where the alien could change shape and mimic the life forms it met but here we have a more traditional Frankenstein-esque monster (played by James Arness) that is wisely kept offscreen for much of the picture with suggestion and the building of tension more pronounced. The only glaring weakness with this enjoyable slice of fifties horror/sci-fi is that the alien monster can't help but be a little disappointing when it is finally revealed to the audience as it is essentially a big man with some garish face make-up. The Thing from Another World develops a good deal of tension and claustrophobia though when our alien visitor first gets loose and begins to pick off members of the base. The sequence near the start of the film where the men fan out around the crashed saucer trapped below the ice - to gauge how big it is and where exactly it lies - is a truly great and iconic scene.The fact this is really a Howard Hawks film is often very apparent with the brisk pace, witty dialogue and natural performances from the actors. "Dr Carrington, you're a man who won the Nobel Prize," says Scotty (Douglas Spencer), a journalist in search of a story who tags along with Hendry's crew. "You've received every kind of international kudos a scientist can attain. If you were for sale I could get a million bucks for you from any foreign government. I'm not, therefore, gonna stick my neck out and say you're stuffed absolutely clean full of wild blueberry muffins, but I promise my readers are gonna think so." There are a lot of little wisecracks and witty flourishes in the screenplay but the film is still suitably gripping and scary for its time with some memorable images - like the sight of the creature engulfed in flames as it runs through the base. The scene where the soldier guards the block of ice early in the film also does a great job in establishing an early creepy aura to the story as he becomes increasingly spooked and throws a blanket over the ice encased figure.The usual battle between the military and science also makes quite an effective backdrop here for the alien on the loose capers. "There are no enemies in science, only phenomena to be studied," says Dr Carrington. But when the alien creature begins to wreak havoc in the base as it searches for blood - which it uses to regenerate - the shoot-first-ask-questions-later factions in the base are firmly on the front foot. The Cold War subtext to The Thing from Another World is fairly evident, especially in some of the later lines which call for vigilance against outside threats with the Soviets, you suspect, probably considered even more terrifying and alien than extraterrestrials at the time the film was made. Beyond the tweed clad scientists and leather jacketed Air Force types there are some sassy female characters who prove just as important when it comes to a finding a way to stop this lumbering killer from the stars and Margaret Sheridan as Nikki generally gives as good as she gets.The Thing from Another World is a film I've always liked quite a lot from a young age and it still stacks up fairly well considering that it was made back in 1951. The windswept Arctic atmosphere is still very effective and the black and white and sparing use of the monster helps to disguise the constraints of the budget and make this a taut and claustrophobic experience where you really get a sense of a group of people who are in very great danger. It is a completely different film from John Carpenter's remake and a rare example where two different versions of the same story can be enjoyed as strong entities in their own right. The fact that this is allegedly a stealth Howard Hawks film and is laced with snappy dialogue is an enjoyable bonus. The Thing from Another World is one of the best examples of the fifties sci-fi boom and recommended.THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951)The Day the Earth Stood Still was directed by Robert Wise. The screenplay was written by Edmund H. North, based on the 1940 science fiction short story Farewell to the Master by Harry Bates. A flying saucer lands in Washington, D.C. containing a human looking alien named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and an indestructible (and very 1950s robot) named Gort. Klaatu has an important message for the human race but, wouldn't you know it, a trigger happy soldier shoots him and threatens to ruin this intergalactic peace mission. Klaatuis taken to hospital and decides he wants to learn more about the human race. But will humanity take heed of the important message he wants to give us?The Day the Earth Stood Still benefits a lot from the economical and polished direction by Robert Wise and also the central performance by Michael Rennie as Klaatu. The supporting cast around Rennie is a bit of a liability but the story is strong enough to mitigate this and keep us engaged. The film was made at the dawn of the Cold War - with deep distrust and division brewing between the Soviet Union and the United States. Not just distrust but atomic bombs sitting in silos and airbases too. Klaatu's mission in the film underlines the need for diplomacy rather than conflict. We must, as Rod Serling would say, remain civilised if we are to have any future.There are some obvious parallels between Klaatu and Jesus in the story although the final message of Klaatu is rather jarring in what is generally supposed to be a film about peace and not threatening your neighbours. The neighbours in this case are alien races and they are none too thrilled about the prospect of the human race developing space travel and paying them a visit. They think that humans are too violent and too prone to war, conquest, and conflict. You can hardly blame the aliens for coming to that conclusion as the 20th century was only just over halfway finished in 1951 and humanity had already experienced two devastating world wars. The Day the Earth Stood Still is less camp and overtly fantastical than many sci-fi films of this era but Gort is a memorable robot and the saucer scenes are good. Gort was played by Lock Martin - who was 7 foot tall in real life. You can see a few wires though when Gort has to carry Patricia Neal's Helen. Klaatu disguises himself as a human named Mr Carpenter to learn more about the human race and it is to the credit of Michael Rennie and the direction that this part of the story never lags or lulls too much. The military and scientist types in the film are rather stereotypical and everyone seems to be wearing the same suit but, generally, this film is pretty classy on the whole and one of the more thoughtful of the vintage sci-fi films. It has become an enduring classic since its release and is regarded in very high esteem today. From the iconic flying saucer that lands on the National Mall to Gort's imposing presence and Klaatu's enigmatic wisdom, The Day the Earth Stood Still immerses viewers in a world of wonder and danger. The haunting score by Bernard Herrmann makes a fine sonic backdrop too as the story plays out. Many years later there was a 2008 remake with Keanu Reeves as Klaatu. The less said about the remake the better. Stick with the original. IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953)"This is Sand Rock, Arizona, of a late evening in early spring. It's a nice town, knowing its past and sure of its future, as it makes ready for the night, and the predictable morning. The desert blankets the earth, cooling, resting for the fight with tomorrow's sun. And in my house near the town, we're also sure of the future. So very sure..." It Came From Outer Space was released in 1953 and directed by Jack Arnold in his first venture into science fiction/horror. It was written by Harry Essex from a screen treatment by Ray Bradbury (who based it on a story he wrote called The Comet) and emerges as a well made and enjoyable piece of fifties paranoia that plays like a cross between Invasion of the Body Snatchers (which of course was made a few years after this film) and an episode of The Outer Limits. This was the first of these types of films to really exploit the possibilities of a lonely desert location and its themes of human duplication and loss of identity would become a cliche soon enough but were obviously a lot fresher and less well worn in 1953. Astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) is out star gazing with fiancée Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) near the small town of Sand Rock. They see what appears to be meteorite crash to Earth through the atmosphere in the starkly beautiful Arizona desert and rush to the crater impact. Putnam is astonished to catch a brief glimpse of not a meteor but what appears to be an alien spaceship. This remarkable discovery and the crash site is then quickly buried by a rock slide. The townsfolk and (especially) Sheriff Matt Warren (Charles Drake) ridicule Putnam's subsequent claims that the aliens have landed but strange occurrences soon begin to abound in Small Rock. People begin acting strangely and disappearing and a huge protoplasmic eyeball is seen on the highway. Can our astronomer hero make people believe what he saw? Furthermore, if the aliens are here what exactly do they want?This is not the most big budget film you'll ever watch even for the 1950s and sometimes feels like watching an extended episode of a science fiction television series but the desert locations are well used and the picture, like the best films of Arnold, has a poetic quality in its very best moments and flourishes. The desert looks like the barren surface of an alien planet and heightens the sense of loneliness and isolation that Putnam feels in his alarming predicament. This film has very obvious parallels to the McCarthy trials and the fear of those that might be different. We quickly see that Putnam is regarded to be some sort of eccentric fruitcake by the local sheriff and the town in general for the high crime of being an individual and pottering about on the outskirts of town looking at stars through his telescope.Fear of those who are different on Earth seems to be just as rife as fear of aliens from outer space. Ellen is even told she is eschewing her responsibilities to the "community" when she plans to go alien hunting with her boyfriend. The attempt to isolate the outsider was something that was happening in American society at large and there seems to be an obvious subtext too about the dangers of adopting an anti-science stance. The sincere performances of the cast - especially Richard Carlson - help give the film a boost and the story doesn't quite go where one would expect an alien science fiction caper from the fifties to go. Ray Bradbury apparently gave the studio two choices in terms of what the outside threat would or would not constitute and I think they went for the slightly more interesting option although a certain ambiguity always remains. In a strange way the aliens - despite looking like gigantic eyeballs - are just as human as we are. Prone to fear, emotional responses and erratic behaviour. I quite like the fact here that the aliens are not destroying cities in flying saucers but if anything just as scared of us as we would be of them. The premise is simple and would soon be one of the great cinematic cliches but very effective. Putnam knows that people are being replaced by duplicates but he must make the other people in the town believe him. There is a wonderful image in the film where Barbara Rush is taken over and poses atop a desert rock with a flowing scarf and dress. There are some nice little arresting images like this by Arnold throughout that lift the film up a few more notches and make it less of a prosaic experience than it might potentially have been in lesser hands. I love the image of the honeycombed space ship too and the hulking cyclopic eyed aliens creatures are enjoyably bizarre in an Outer Limits sort of way. You get a blurry alien perspective on their surroundings which is fun and achieved by some sort of rudimentary gloopy camera trick. Vaseline lens maybe. Some of the effects are slightly risible to modern eyes but this is an occasionally alarming and atmospheric film that becomes quite gripping once you get into it. The deep alien voices are a bit silly but the human duplicates are rather eerie - although as ever in these films you wonder why Putnam is alone in sensing them at first, staring unblinkingly into the sun as they do. It Came From Outer Space remains an enjoyable sci-fi horror picture that often escapes from its B-picture origins and becomes something more in the capable hands of Arnold. This is highly enjoyable late night fun for young and old alike.ROBOT MONSTER (1953)Robot Monster was directed by Phil Tucker and written by Wyott Ordung. Earth has been attacked by aliens, chiefly Ro-Man (George Barrows) - who looks like a man in a gorilla costume wearing a deep sea diving helmet with TV aerials. Ro-Man has killed everyone on Earth with a Calcinator death ray. But not so fast. A few humans have apparently survived. The survivors are a scientist (John Mylong), his wife (Selena Royle), and their family. Ro-Man resolves to kill these pesky survivors but this becomes complicated when he takes a shine to the daughter Alice (Claudia Barrett). What doesn't help either is that Ro-Man, the big idiot, can't seem to find the family - despite them living in close proximity. Another alien (who also looks like a man in a gorilla suit wearing a diving helmet) known as the Great-Guidance might have to finish this frightful task...Robot Monster is a famously bad film but it's quite charming in its own ridiculous way. This is one of those films that can't help but make you smile and give you a preposterous hour of entertainment. Ro-Man is a completely pathetic villain in that he can't even seem to dispense with a family of survivors in a quarry and spends much of his time lumbering around in a cave with what looks like a bubble machine. Even the kids mock him when they come face to face. The hand gestures of George Barrows seldom seem to match Ro-Man's dialogue and this supplies a lot of comedy (which probably wasn't intended). The strange thing about Robot Monster is that the actors playing the family are delivering fairly straight (if hardly Oscar winning) performances.There's a lot of stock footage to pad out the modest running time and so we get some dinosaurs fighting and archive of atomic explosions and V-2 rockets. This scrambled together stock footage is Robot Monster's amusingly ineffective way of trying to convey global disaster and Earth destroyed by aliens. The actual film can't convey anything beyond a few actors standing around in a quarry as a man in a gorilla suit occasionally tries to apprehend them.That's the funniest thing about Robot Monster when you watch it. Ro-Man has wiped out the human race and vanquished the entire military capability of Earth but he can't seem to find a family living about five minutes walk from him. The acting is very run of the mill but the stand out has to be Austrian actor John Mylong as the scientist father. Mylong gives a Bela Lugosi type performance with truly bizarre misplaced emphases. I don't know if he was being serious or not but his performance is hilarious. The dialogue in the film is truly atrocious and Ro-Man is always funny as he threatens to destroy the "hoo-maaaaans" who have thus far managed to resist his mission of of destruction merely by running away or hiding in a quarry.If you did manage to get immunity to the Calcinator death ray then you'd probably stand a decent chance of survival with Ro-Man as it must be hard to run in a gorilla costume with a goldfish bowl on your head. One thing about Robot Monster that is genuinely great is the music by Elmer Bernstein. Bernstein was blacklisted at the time and struggling to get work. You'd think Bernstein was scoring the biggest epic known to man here. It's wonderful that this bargain bin quickie got such a rousing score. Robot Monster is not a good film but it does make for an amusing and strangely charming experience. There are certainly worse ways to waste an hour and, speaking personally, I'd much rather watch Robot Monster again than modern CGI blockbuster bilge like the Transformers franchise and the new Jurrassic Park films.THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (1953)The War of the Worlds is a 1953 science fiction film directed by Byron Haskin from a script by Barré Lyndon. The film was the first screen adaption of the classic HG Wells novel and won an Oscar for its colourful and striking special effects. This is a rather loose adaption of the story written by HG Wells with late Victorian London replaced by fifties California and the central protagonist now bespectacled square-jawed physicist Dr Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) - who just happens to be camping on a fishing holiday when a large meteorite lands in the hills around the small town of Linda Rosa. Forrester is eager and curious to examine the meteorite when it cools down but, of course, this is no meteorite but an alien cylinder from Mars readying for the first stage of a hostile takeover of Earth - as we soon find out when the cylinder produces a small humming metallic device which kills the three men watching over it with a deadly flaming heat ray. Reports start coming in of similar meteorites landing around the globe and producing flying saucers which destroy everything in their path and seem impervious to our own military technology. "Guns, tanks, bombs - they're like toys against them!" marvels Les Tremayne as General Mann. With these "terrible weapons of super-science" at their disposal, can the Martians ever be stopped?As much as it would be nice to have a relatively faithful adaption of Wells' novel onscreen one day, this famous and generally well regarded George Pal produced version is certainly a lot of fun on the whole despite some variable acting. The film dispenses with much of its literary inspiration although it does open with a suitably theatrical monologue by Cedric Hardwicke where we learn that Mars is a dying planet and they've now set their sights on Earth as a new place to live. The monologue retains much of HG Wells' opening passages to his novel and is therefore very enjoyable - in addition to setting the scene and building a mild air of dread. "No one would have believed in the middle of the 20th Century that human affairs were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than Man's. Yet, across the gulf of space on the planet Mars, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded our Earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely joined their plans against us."In this version of The War of the Worlds, a somewhat sappy Hollywood love story, between Gene Barry and Anne Robinson's Sylvia van Buren, replaces the novel's bedraggled central character searching for his wife in a ruined London and Wells' colonial subtext makes way for a Cold War/atomic age one with what must have been for the time slightly eerie images of American cities being reduced to rubble by incredible intergalactic weapons of mass destruction. The Martians are the Godless Russkies here as much as anyone with a religious message - which runs contrary to the themes of the novel - shoehorned into the film in the third act. One change that actually works rather well in this version though are the Martian tripod fighting machines of the book becoming - presumably for budgetary and design reasons - sleek glowing green flying saucers shaped like manta rays.The Martian saucer effects and designs, by Gordon Jennings, are marvellously streamlined and instantly iconic with the saucers gliding slowly and deliberately across the sky with snake-like heat ray projectors. The pulsating sound effects used for these sequences are wonderfully atmospheric and ominous and the film has some great battle montage scenes featuring jets and artillery vainly attempting to stave off these unwelcome extraterrestrial invaders. Stock footage of refugees and ruined cities from World War 2 is used to reasonable effect during these scenes of carnage and destruction to try and paint a picture of a world in crisis. "Washington is in constant touch with the leaders of other nations," barks General Mann. "Apparently they're coming down all over South America; Santiago has two cylinders. They're outside London. They're in Naples. We've got them between here and Fresno, outside Sacramento, two on Long Island." You can see a few strings during the saucer sequences and The War of the Worlds is rather cheesy at times but it always feels like an ambitious and grand Technicolor film that throws the kitchen sink at the screen for the sake of an entertaining show and does its level best to plug gaps in the budget.The film wisely only allows us brief glimpses of the actual Martian creatures (which look a bit puppety) and one of the best parts of the film - and certainly the most tense and creepy - comes when Barry and Robinson take refuge in a house that is subsequently hit by one of the Martian meteorites, trapping them inside. The film tells the story of the invasion from the perspective of scientists and the military and, if a tad wooden, Barry makes a likeable enough clean cut fifties hero in a Clark Kent type of way although he is given a fair degree of Star Trek-ish science/techno waffle to dispense. "It neutralizes meson somehow. They're the atomic glue holding matter together. Cut across their lines of magnetic force and any object will simply cease to exist! Take my word for it, General, this type of defense is useless against that kind of power! You'd better let Washington know, fast!" Barry doesn't have an awful lot of chemistry with Anne Robinson's Sylvia who is a cardboard dutiful girlfriend type who screams a lot when in trouble and always seems to be making hot drinks for the men. Despite its evident flaws - which you could endlessly nitpick - The War of the Worlds is a film to be enjoyed rather than studied too carefully. HG Wells might not have completely approved but this is a tremendously entertaining film at times with a colourful gloss, enjoyable special effects and an undercurrent of atomic age paranoia.THEM! (1954)Them! is a classic 1954 black and white monster film about giant radiated, mutated ants running amok in the New Mexico desert and was directed by Gordon Douglas. 'A horror horde of crawl-and-crush giants clawing out of the earth from mile-deep catacombs!' went the blurb on the theatrical poster. The film won an Oscar for its special effects and is regarded to be one of the more successful examples of the sci-fi atomic age paranoia genre. In the New Mexico desert, near the small town of Alamogordo, a five year old girl (Sandy Descher) is found wandering alone and traumatised by Police Sergeant Ben Peterson (James Whitmore), her family caravan having been destroyed by a great force and a local store in similar ruins. The puzzling thing about the wrecked store is that no cash was taken, only all the sugar, and the owner was found dead with massive injuries and vast quantities of formic acid injected into his body. Some very strange (and very large) footprints lead FBI agent Robert Graham (James Arness), now working with Sergeant Peterson, to signal Washington who send Doctors Harold (Edmund Gwenn) and Pat Medford (Joan Weldon), a father/daughter team of entomologists from the Department of Agriculture. The elder Medford is tight-lipped about their theories on events but places a flask of formic acid under the nose of the still catatonic little girl who wakes immediately screaming "Them! Them!"One of the great atomic scare pictures of the fifties, Them! is surprisingly well crafted and acted and the central mystery is very engaging and moves in an intriguing and unhurried way. The film is about halfway through before we finally get some giant ant capers but works much better for this sense of restraint. I particularly love the scenes where Dr Medford amps up the ant themed tension by showing documentary films about them and droning on about their extraordinary abilities to worried audiences of government and military types. And these are ordinary sized ants he's talking about, not the ones the size of a small bus which are now mooching about in the desert thanks to nuclear testing. "None of the ants previously seen by man were more than an inch in length - most considerably under that size. But even the most minute of them have an instinct and talent for industry, social organization, and savagery that makes man look feeble by comparison."Medford soon drops another bombshell. Unless the ant colonies are found and controlled, man will soon be an endangered species! "That, gentlemen, is why you are here - to consider this problem and, I hope, solve it. Because unless you solve it, unless these queens are located and destroyed before they've established thriving colonies and can produce, heaven alone knows, how many more queen ants, man, as the dominant species of life on earth, will probably be extinct..." When they finally enter the story, the ants (which are full-scale-mock-up models) are good fun with weird sounds and big lumbering antennae signalling their imminent arrival. There are never many of them onscreen and they of course appear rather mechanical but they are pretty scary all the same and have an old-fashioned charm that takes us back into another era of filmmaking. One very creepy thing about the ants is that they call out to one another in eerie fashion and are also impervious to revolvers. Their desert nest is located and the US Army is brought in with poisonous gas to dispatch them but two queens manage to escape (!) putting our heroes back to square one.The ant's underground nests are great fun too with skulls and bones lying around, their claustrophobic confines a little reminiscent of the strange alien tunnels in James Cameron's Aliens. "Look! Held together with saliva!" cries Dr Medford's boffin daughter. The ants could be the Russkies I suppose but they are also the unknown. A new era for mankind has begun - the atomic era - and at the time no one was quite sure what it all meant or where it could lead. I don't think anyone in the fifties actually believed giant insects would emerge from atomic tests but you sometimes get the impression watching films from the decade that they hadn't completely ruled it out! Unlikely, but you never know. "When Man entered the atomic age, he opened a door into a new world," opines that eternal optimist Medford. "What we'll eventually find in that new world, nobody can predict." Edmund Gwenn is good fun as Medford as he dispenses ant lore to all around him and battles with this new fangled thing called radio communication. The film has a documentary style at times and is far superior to more campy and overtly tongue-in-cheek sci-fi/monster pictures of the era with more of a sly sense of humour on show. This is good stuff on the whole, sort of like the Jurrassic Park or Jaws of the fifties. The unsettling atmosphere is developed right from the start with the little girl wandering the desert alone in a dressing gown clutching a small doll and we briskly become wrapped up in the mystery. "Gramps Johnson," says the coroner, of the unfortunate shopkeeper. "Could have died in any one of five ways. His neck and back were broken. His skull was fractured. His chest was crushed. And here's one for Sherlock Holmes. There was enough formic acid in his body to kill twenty men." Them! has an exciting climax too in the sewers of Los Angeles that owes quite a bit to The Third Man. Them! is great fun for all giant atomic insect fans and one of the best examples of these types of vintage monster films. The ants themselves are nicely done and the cast is good value for money.THIS ISLAND EARTH (1955)This Island Earth was directed by Joseph Newman and based on the novel by Raymond F Jones. This is a classic example of a superb bad film. The science is all over the place, the characters and performances are sometimes unintentionally comical, but it looks amazing, a Technicolour Space Opera epic that captures the flamboyance of pulp science fiction stories perhaps more than any other film from this era with the exception of Forbidden Planet. This Island Earth was so expensive to produce that films like this at the time were a rarity and understandably far more troublesome and costly to make than the (soon to be familiar) black and white monster in lonely desert approach to fifties science fiction.My first introduction to this film was actually watching it be mercilessly lampooned for Mystery Science Theater 3000 and although it is ripe for some fun, This Island Earth is a cheese laden classic of sorts and looks spectacular in the third act. What is the plot of This Island Earth you ask? Baritone voiced distinguished scientist Dr Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) receives some unusual and mysterious components in the mail instead of the electronic condensers he was expecting. Small glass beads with incredible properties. Very strange. Meacham, spurred on by his own scientific curiosity, eventually builds an "Interociter" with the parts and a man named Exeter (Jeff Morrow) with a large head and peroxide hair appears on a screen above (this Interociter was obviously a fancy telly) and tells Meacham he has now passed what was clearly an IQ test of some sort. Meacham is told to be at an airfield the next day for the chance to join a very special research project and naturally can't resist this offer, intrigued to see where it will all lead.After a journey in an unmanned aircraft with no windows (I hope he got a discount), he is taken to a mansion in Georgia where a gaggle of other scientists await - including an old girlfriend named Ruth (Faith Domergue). It probably won't come as a huge surprise to learn that Exeter is not all that he seems and the scientists are not here to build an alarm clock and tea maker for him or audition to be television repair men. Exeter is from the planet Metaluna and hopes that the expertise of the Earth scientists in the conversion of elements can save their world from the evil Zahgons. The Zahgons are conducting a meteoritic bombardment of Metaluna and the Metalunan "atomic shield" that protects them will not hold much longer. The scientists and fresh uranium deposits from Earth are their only hope and - although urbane and reasonable on the surface - these alien visitors seem prepared to use force if necessary to get exactly what they want.Despite a relatively modest running time, one could argue that This Island Earth takes rather too long to get going but it does make the final third of the film much more effective in terms of spectacle and wonder and it would clearly have been unreasonable to have expected the whole film to utilise Cliff Stine's extravagant special effects. The budget would have been positively astronomical for a fifties science fiction film and I doubt it would ever have been finished.Rex Reason is a bit wooden as our stalwart hero but I quite enjoyed parts of the more prosaic preamble to a journey through the "thermic barrier" and Metaluna. Meacham's curiosity getting the better of him when he receives the strange components so he therefore can't resist completing the test. This extraterrestrial IQ test is quite a nice idea and might possibly have inspired the recruitment from beyond the stars of Lance Guest in minor cult classic The Last Starfighter. I like to think so anyway.Mystery Science Theater 3000 found most of its heckling opportunities in the character of Exeter and to be honest one can see why. He looks like one of those vaguely alien crew members you see on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise in the background with a strange head. He can't place the name Mozart for a second when the suspicious Meacham engages him in mildly probing conversation at the dinner table. "I'm afraid I don't know the gent... my mind must have been wandering. Your composer, of course." Adolf Hitler? No, never heard of him I'm afraid. Was he famous for something on your, I mean, our planet?