quote:

shadowplayer Slacker
Posted 26 July 2008 10:46 AM

In The Faculty, itself a teen-themed knock off of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, there's a recursive (or a "science fiction squared") moment. An argument on the possibility of covert alien invasions eventually turns on the source novel by Jack Finney, which is accused of ripping off Robert Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters." The case of copyright infringement is, in actuality, anything but open and shut; there are published stories with similar ideation content that pre-date Heinlein's, such as Murray Leinster's "The Brain Stealers." Nevertheless, perhaps Heinlein could have prosecuted and won, but he tended to view litigation as time-consuming and debilitating, taking him away from his writing and his income (an attitude chronicled in the posthumous "Grumbles from the Grave"). As a consequence, many people copped his ideas as their own, not only for movies but also for tv. (Heinlein did sue the filmmakers of the schlocky The Brain Eaters--Leonard Nimoy is in the cast--and settled out of court.) Both "Invasion" and "Puppet Masters" were born in and reflect the Cold War paranoia of the McCarthyite Fifties, as did other movies like Invaders from Mars and I Married a Monster from Outer Space. Of the numerous Invasion films and imitators, I prefer the Phil Kaufman-directed version--I feel it's a shade better in all departments then the much lionized black-and-white original (note: Donald Sutherland is in both the Invasion redo and the poorly recieved Puppet Masters movie). The later and more problematic versions of Invasion are, of course, about social emptiness and alienation, not so much commie infiltration and lock-step conformity.

It sure would be nice if I could be as well read as you. A great backstory. Nevertheless it's unclear why you prefer the 1978 movie version director by the respected Philip Kaufman director except describing the conceptual differences between various versions that only begins to suggest what your thinking is. I actually prefer the 2007 version better for its continuing contemporary update nature and reflecting the strong science emphasis thriller and making it into something that I can relate to...a possible biochemical contagion scenario. There was even the compelling struggle between emotion versus non-emotion debate found in all versions, if I recall correctly.

I have never seen Blade Runner, time to put it on my list of movies to see!

"Star Trek" owes a great deal, if not its very existence, to Forbidden Planet. It's evident from cursory examination that "Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry had seen Forbidden Planet and borrowed/stole many of its concepts and ideas for his brainchild and cash cow. And it's not limited to format. The first, and rejected, pilot for the original tv series--later refashioned into the 2-part episode "The Menagerie"--shares the same distilled message as the 1956 movie, namely that mortal beings + godly power = self destruction. "Man does not behold the face of the Gorgon and live." That Man is too flawed to have complete mastery over matter and energy (including thermonukes), lacking the requisite perfect judgement or divine wisdom to handle limitless power without a learning curve (make a single mistake and you're toast) is also the thematic conclusion of Sphere, a movie based on a Michael Crichton novel. Unlike "Star Trek," however, Sphere's filmmakers may have been unaware of Forbidden Planet; they may have simply assumed they were in uncharted territory. Crichton himself, not surprisingly, exhibits little knowledge of the science fiction genre, e.g. writing that Verne and Wells were incapable of envisioning computer technology when in fact they had. I'm inclined to think that any similarities between the two feature films are coincidental. All of the foregoing are indications of the intellectual resonance Forbidden Planet still has, though its handcrafted, A-list, '50s-state-of-the-art, MGM technicolor visual marvels--unmatched in the intervening years between the movie's release and 2001:A Space Odyssey--looks quaint besides the massive CGI fests of today. What also makes Forbidden Planet endearing to me is its nifty lifting of Shakespeare's "The Tempest." The sorceror Prospero is Morbius, the elemental Miranda ("O brave new world...") is the daughter Altaira, the spirit Ariel is Robby the robot (the most recognizable of movie automatons) and the murderous witchspawn Caliban is the invisible Monster from the Id. On the downside are two items of the politically incorrect variety. The first is that a purported family film would come anywhere near a topic of incest. The second is that a "United Planets" starship crew would be comprised entirely of clean cut white earthmen. The "Star Trek" Enterprise is an improvement on the latter point. By its image it posits a future for the ethnically diverse and for gender equality. It's to the credit of the late Gene Roddenberry, whatever his creative shortcomings, that democracy--an exotic animal in the panoply of science fiction cinema--is given bright exposure.

• Another reason I like the Kaufman Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the dog with a man's face.

Mad Max 2 or The Road Warriorvalidated the short-lived Australian filmmaking boom of the'80s. It propelled Mel Gibson, who plays the tragic highway patrolman-turned-vigilante-turned-burn out case, into an international star. The Road Warrior builds on the success of the first movie Mad Max which was at heart an exploitation or grindhouse flick, its dialogue dubbed for American audiences. The money shots of motorized chases, mayhem, and spectacular car wrecks put it over the top. The Road Warrior is an assured, tautly directed and sophisticated sequel effort, sans dubbing. It capitalizes on the sun-baked tropes of Westerns, bringing to mind Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name and in particular Shane. The movie isn't long on plot, but it's full of fascinating details that beg for back-stories, such as the Feral Child with the lethal boomerang, the Warrior Woman in white, and Lord Humungous in his hockey mask. Like the first film, The Road Warrior pits the dwindling remnants of social order against a rising tide of anarchy, an aftermath of the devastating "Oil Wars." This time the barbarians are decked out in fetishistic gear and, in their motley squadron of hopped-up rust buckets, are bent on burning up the last drops of gasoline--the new currency. (The post-holocaust production design is said to be influenced by the survivalist makeshifts of A Boy and His Dog. BTW, who can forget the loyal canine that meets its fate defending Max in a dire moment?) The climactic vehicular carnage and wild stuntwork is nothing short of jaw-dropping. (Raiders of the Lost Ark--also known for its stunts--came out in the same summer as The Road Warrior.) The follow-up Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is a comparatively lax and rambling affair, though not without a degree of inventiveness and ingenuity. The commercial impact of The Road Warrior led to more wanna-be exploitation fare, much of it from Europe, and inspired at least one American A-list project, Kevin Costner's troubled Waterworld. All three Mad Max films were helmed by George Miller, who has been easily confused--as I was--by the George Miller who directed The NeverEnding Story:Part Two. Another Aussie venture dealing with the country's car culture is The Cars That Ate Paris, an early film by Peter Weir.

Of human-alien buddy movies, my favorite is The Hidden (1988). An alien criminal lands on Earth and proceeds to wreak havoc, selfishly using human hosts to facilitate his movements and to indulge in newly found hedonistic impulses such as sports cars, mayhem and rock music. FBI agent Kyle MacLachlan arrives on the scene in Los Angeles to aid the local police force--only he's really a cover for the good guy alien cop in pursuit of the evil extraterrestrial symbiote. The Hidden is bloody and violent, with a high body count, and gunfights galore, but it's also well-made and affecting. It's fair to say it's as much a horror and action picture as it is a science fiction outing. On top of that, it's intelligent, has the momentum of a runaway freight train, and is at times funny. Both MacLachlan and Michael Nouri turn in solid performances (sci-fi babe Claudia Christian has a striking bit part). The movie does have a sour note: its story is uncomfortably close to a novel by Hal Clement entitled "Needle" for which there is no screen credit. I Come in Peace (1989) shares to a good extent the premise of The Hidden, the principal differences being the former movie's dull-wittedness and star Dolph Lundgren. Need I say more? Enemy Mine (1985) is a sweeping space opera and is quite entertaining with high production values, though the bonding between the stranded man and alien is a little much. The makeup on Lou Gossett Jr. is the highlight here. Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964) is light on the makeup but remains engaging--until the flying saucers show up. ("Friday" is an escaped alien slave.) Alien Nation (1988) is perplexing in that it reaches for unhelpful science fiction trappings to tell a story of diaspora, immigration, assimilation, and the social experiment that is America.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) is the most mesmerizing of the renowned trio of paranoia movies by the late director John Frankenheimer. The other two films are Seven Days in May (1964), about a military plot to overthrow the U. S. government, and Seconds, in which an aging businessman is rejuvenated by surgical means in a bid for a new life and identity--but it goes horribly wrong. (The latter film is an expressionistic scenario well-suited for Rod Serling's "Twilight Zone" tv show.) The Manchurian Candidate is stark, black-and-white political science fiction from the Cold War era. While the Richard Condon novel on which the movie is based is satire bordering on farce, the overriding tone of the movie is one of deeply tragic irony and pathos. In the closing scenes, Laurence Harvey, playing the unwitting and abused sleeper agent who becomes a robotic triggerman, a condition activated by the Queen of Diamonds, dons his Congressional Medal of Honor just prior to his suicide after breaking free of his programming spell and dispatching those who would put the White House into the hands of a Sino/Soviet cabal; the medal was awarded to him under false pretenses, for acts of heroism he never committed. What heightens the surreality of Candidate are a number of goofball interludes David Lynch would appreciate. The first--a triumph of editing--is a conference of ranking oficials from China, Russia and North Korea on hand to view the nightmarish demonstration of a radical form of brainwashing on a patrol of American G. I.s predeterminedly captured in the Korean War. From the veiled point of view of the hypnotized prisoners, the conference is perceived to be a garden tea party innoculously hosted by genteel elderly women. Another off-kilter sequence is the introductory meeting between Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh on a moving train. The conversation is largely of non-sequiturs, sounding like a prolonged exchange of cryptic passwords. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, The Manchurian Candidate remains a powerful, chilling and suspenseful movie. It has been enshrined by so many film appreciation groups and organizations that it's almost an institution unto itself. It's a reference point for post-Watergate conspiracy movies like The Parallax View (1974) and for straight ahead thrillers like Telefon (1977) and The Dead Zone (1983). An updated remake starring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep came out in 2004, but it fizzled with audiences and critics. Frankenheimer went on to make a couple of full-fledged science fiction films in his highly uneven career: Prophecy (1979), an ecological monster movie, and The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), another take on the story by H. G. Wells (preceded by The Island of Lost Souls [1933] and The Island of Dr. Moreau [1977]). Both were misfires. I'll close this post with a final, parenthetical observation--Mrs. Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury) is the most evil mom in filmdom.

Blade runner is not only the best sci-fi film ever made, it's the best film, period.

(for me that is, but I think everybody should agree with me, and we can all be friends..)

Zelig (1983) is brainy science fiction comedy, one I single out from the subgenre as having the most appeal to me. Nobody makes fun of intellectuals the way Woody Allen does--and have the intellectuals love it. Perhaps recognizing Woody as one of their own, a peer in a word, heavyweights from academia agree to cameos in his movies. In the case of Zelig, Saul Bellow, Bruno Bettelheim, et al, participate in a black-and-white mockumentary about Leonard Zelig, an astonishing chameleon-like man who rises from medical curiosity to crooned-over celebrity of the 1920s and 30s. His singular talent is the ability to blend in with almost any prevailing crowd. He can pass himself off as a doctor at a meeting of doctors, for instance, or a Chinese man among Chinese men, and so on. Under analysis it's discovered that Leonard (Woody Allen) has a surpassing need for approval, and in his efforts to please he develops a power to conform to nearly any social situation. Alone and cutoff, he is merely a shell with no personality to call his own. Enter Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) who helps him recover a sense of self, with likes and dislikes. She is so successful that for a short time Leonard swings to the other extreme, to the point of being intolerant of other people's opinions. But just as his fame peaks, mishaps from his past catches up with him. Bigamy, practicing medicine without a license, and other illegalities--all due to the neutral or amoral mindset of his chameleon camouflage--obliges Leonard to revert to his previous condition. He disappears from sight. Eudora, who realizes she has romantic feelings for her former subject, is frantic with worry and finally tracks him down--to Nazi Germany. Her problem now becomes one of extraction as well as therapeutic redemption. Woody goes to extraordinary lengths to achieve period authenticity, especially for a comedy. In matching new footage to Jazz Age newsreels, he resorts to antique cameras, lenses, sound and lighting equipment. He had film purposely damaged to gain a time worn feel. The results are nearly seamless. It's frequently head-scratching to discern which is new and which is old. In addition, Woody uses blue-screen methods to insert himself next to long deceased historical personages. This kind of camera trickery is replicated in Forrest Gump--only with the then emerging, and less labor intensive, digital filmmaking techniques. Zelig, if nothing else, is the technical apex of Woody's career; it's to him what 2001: A Space Odyssey is to Stanley Kubrick. Even Woody's Sleeper, a more straight forward science fiction comic romp, is less complex, relying on low tech mechanical effects and set design to evoke the future (love the sight gag of the Volkswagon Beetle abandoned in a cave for 200 years and yet starts up the first time. Beneath the formalist play, the cinematic forgery, the deconstruction and recreation of a fad-driving zeitgeist and of a by-gone era of film conventions, are allusions to real life issues. The plight of Leonard is a reflection in microcosm of the Jewish experience--a preoccupation of Woody's--, of a people in search of homes in countries not of their own making, attempting assimilation with mixed (USA) to disastrous (Germany) results. Going with the flow, it's judged, is ultimately conducive to fascism.

• Honorable mentions: The President's Analyst (1967), The Man in the White Suit (1951), and Incident at Loch Ness (2004).

It might be surprising for some to learn that the movie Alien (1979), though based on imaginative xenobiology, isn't without parallel in plain old terrestrial biology. I refer specifically to the ichneumon wasp. It paralyzes a promising beetle, spider, or caterpillar before laying eggs on or in the victim's body. The parasitic larvae hatch and proceed to consume their immediate organic home. They save the central nervous system and whatever consciousness the helpless host possesses until the very last moment. The nightmarish life cycle caused consternation among proponents of natural theology and teleology (a watch implies a watchmaker). Somehow I doubt the Alien filmmakers had the ichneumon wasp in mind for their conventional but highly effective monster movie; a more likely subtext is HIV and STDs. Cinemaphiles have long contended that Alien's plot is anything but born in a vacuum. The movie's scenario is suspiciously similar to It, the Terror from Beyond Space (1958), a suspenseful B-movie undermined by a shoestring budget. Alien, too, appears derivative of particular aspects of Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires (1956), aka The Demon Planet, aka Terrore Nello Spazio. On top of that, science fiction author A. E. van Vogt reportedly settled out of court, for a sum of $50,000, an infringement case involving his story "Discord in Scarlet." While the narrative may be formulaic, Alien remains memorable for a list of reasons, H. R. Giger's "biomechanical" designs, for one, convey an unshakeable otherworldliness. Sigourney Weaver is so indelible as Ripley that she marks out new territory for female roles in sci-fi films (even if her lines were initially written for a man). Ridley Scott fully displays his directorial chops and strong visual sense that will put him in good stead for the blockbusters to come. The last time I remember being so jolted and shocked by a movie was at a screening of Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975)--a monster movie if there ever was one. If we are to keep within overt genre boundaries, however, then I would have to go all the way back to Howard Hawks' The Thing from Another World (1951), sharing Martin Scorsese's experience of jumping in fright at the first appearance of the blood-thirsty, perambulating carrot played by James Arness. I don't have the same fondness for the remake The Thing (1982), directed by Hawks' acolyte John Carpenter, but I do know there are a sizeable number of people who prefer this version over the black-and-white/Cold War/flying saucer mania original. Of course, there have been countless movies made in imitation of [i}Alien[/i], only a few in my estimation coming anywhere near its xenophobic fever-dream state. I include among them Predator (1987), Pitch Black (2000), and the sequel Aliens (1986), which I consider a special case in that it has an intensity very much its own.

Military science fiction, as might be expected, extols martial values--discipline, sacrifice, patriotism, and leadership--ideals pervaded by social Darwinism. The subgenre's main focus is on vanquishing an apparently invincible foe--frequently inhuman--by armed conflict. While strategy and tactics play a heavy part, the resolution usually depends on the heroic actions of a few or of an individual. The novel "War of the Worlds" (1898) by H. G. Wells would at first glance seem to meet the criteria until it's realized that the "War" in the title refers not to combat but to a massacre. The demoralized protagonist doesn't strike back at the invading force, instead retreating into piety and despair as the technological might of the Martians are posed to stamp out humanity. The disqualifications of the book are carried over to the movie adaptations, though the 1953 version manages a peek at something Wells wasn't privy to at the turn of the century, the emergence of the monolithic military-industrial complex. The Spielberg remake (2005) is an attempt at a 9/11 statement, but it doesn't come together in a cohesive way despite slick production values. As a sidenote to the book, Robert H. Goddard, the rocket pioneer, privately aspired to reach the planet Mars via rocketry after reading Wells' novel. His impressive research work was dismissed when it was offered to the U. S. armed forces, but in a twist of fate, Goddard's plans were obtained by the Nazis and Werhner Von Braun. They went on to produce buzz bombs and V-2 missiles--the first generation of terror weapons. Starship Troopers (1997) is a truer example of the subgenre, a movie as controversial as its source material. Oddly, some view the movie as a promotion for benevolent fascism. It does glorify war, but it also satirically swipes at jingoistic WWII films. Robert Heinlein's concept of meritocracy is given straight exposure, but the filmmakers personally seem ambivalent about it, at best. Director Paul Verhoeven, for instance, couldn't finish his reading of the novel. The real reason Verhoeven wanted to make Starship Troopers, apparently, is to recapture the intensity and tensions of Aliens and Them! (1953). Aliens left clues that it was at least aware of Heinlein's book--if not actually cross-fertilized by it--, using phrases like "bug hunt" and invented props like the cargo-loader exoskeleton. (Though Starship Troopers had a $100 million plus budget, it couldn't do justice to both the "bugs" and the armored powersuits for the Mobile Infantry as featured in the book. One or the other had to go and it was the suits.) Them! is one of the better monster movies out of the fifties, soldiers versus giant mutant ants. To bring one down often took a whole clip of ammo or more. For a generation weaned on sophisticated CGI, the full-scale mechanical creature mock-ups may be disappointing. To anyone who can access the dream logic with his suspension of disbelief intact, {i]Them![/i] can be riveting. (From a Cartesian perspective, there are technical issues. Ants the size of elephants, for one thing, would have massive organ failures.) The essential distinction between Starship Troopers and Aliens is the characterizations. The main protagonists in Troopers is a leg in an Archie comic book love triangle. Sigourney Weaver brings to Aliens a bravura performance as Ripley; the supporting cast, too, is memorable in their work. Aliens, for my money, is the best military science fiction movie to date.

anybody seen Event Horizon? Thats my favorite sci-fi movie (although it is also horror) pre matrix.

It's hard to pick one thats for sure. My top 3 are:

1)Blade Runner
2)The Fifth Element
3)Star Wars Ep IV: The Empire strikes Back.

2001 is better if you read the book first.

1. Star Wars
2. Blade Runner
3. Alien (scariest)

quote:

harrisonOWNSmccartney Enthusiast
Posted 18 September 2008 01:46 PM Hide Post
anybody seen Event Horizon? Thats my favorite sci-fi movie (although it is also horror) pre matrix.

Alas, Event Horizon (1997) started out with great promise, but once it became startlingly a horror movie half way through the movie, it lost me. I didn't believe the horror scenario and it really felt like a lazy script finale without much mental thought to it. Sci-Fi psychological thrillers can be much better accomplished than this. This movie became a typical slasher movie which I don't have much fondness for personally. I wanted to enjoy and like this movie but it became too Psycho without being that well done.
Memorable psychological sci-fi thrillers would be The Cell (2000) or Brazil (1985). As for scary horror, I'd just stick with Alien (1979) and perhaps one that really connects with the mind-altering horror genre, Galaxy of Terror (1981).