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For me, you cannot beat the original (1951) "The Day The Earth Stood Still". Simply superb.

Most of you have missed the point of the early "B" Sci Fi movies, and maybe the purest one, that they were meant to be fun. I have a small, yet growing stable of these movies. Some were meant to be thought provoking, others were meant to scare. While some (a very few) were were surly meant to outline somebodies political agenda, and while those are, indeed, rare they are out there. Movies like the aforementioned "THEM" were cautionary tales of the dangers of atomic fallout, as was "Godzilla". And then you have the fluff movies, those filmed to bring in a quick buck. Here is a list of my favorite "B" movies.....

P.S. - the ones in quotation marks are those that are rarely shown on tv and are not long on story. Or, indeed acting, but they are fun to watch on a slow afternoon when its raining and the wind is blowing. Just build a fire in the fireplace and make some popcorn with lots of butter and kick back and allow your mind to drift down thru the years until you were a kid and the world was unknown territory, huge and lurking with all sorts of growling horrors.......

It Came From Beneath The Sea

Tarantula

The Deadly Mantis

The War of the Worlds

This Island Earth

When Worlds Collide

The Blob

IT Came From Outer Space

"Target Earth"

"The Giant Claw"

"Invasion of the Saucer Men"

There are a plethora of others that are worth watching and owning.


PPS....Start with those in quotation marks as they were the ones that gave me nightmares as a child of 8 and as a child of 12 or 13. the movie "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" caused a room full of my friends and I to crap our collective pants on a dark and stormy Oregon coast night during a sleepover. Because of the shrieks and loud clattering from us clawing our way under bed and bunk, my dad actually kicked my bedroom door off of its hinges and burst into the room with his .45 1911 Colt....Needless to say, I got street cred for his involvement as having a badass dad. He also set with us for the rest of the movie. My dad was also a fan of the sci fi movies.

Retired99 wrote:For me, you cannot beat the original (1951) "The Day The Earth Stood Still". Simply superb.

Absolutely the best! who could ever top Gort?

.....the day the earth stood still.........sheesh....we may be moving towards this in a different form......

yancovitch wrote:just thought i'd mention a couple sci-fi movies that really impressed me in the past....my favorite was ''forbidden planet''.....very intelligent, great effects, a mystery which kept one riveted...ahead of it's time.......
another was a tv movie which maybe no one here saw, which was called the martian chronicles with rock hudson.....a great concept.....i have a friend who often gets so impressed by the vibes and personalities of others, that she constantly has to gather herself back together
movies these days, are just a pile of shootem up video games on the big screen.....the awe, wonder, and mystery, take a back seat....or is totally absent......the first star war movies were quite good though....after that, forget it.....oh...of course, avatar was impressive.......was just curious about other's opinions....

According to your complaints above regarding the recent movies with empty scenario and just action, you might want to give a try to the BattleStar Galactica series that was done back in 2003.
It has 4 seasons made of 40 minutes-long episodes, and the very first episode is actually a two hours-long movie.
That serie has actually quite a rich scenario that tries to cover many aspects of society and human/life philosophy. The key characters are interesting, and actors are excellent. There are quite a few space fights, with good suspence, nice effects and cool music.

Daube wrote:... you might want to give a try to the BattleStar Galactica series that was done back in 2003. ...

A good series but, like Game of Thrones, remembered for one of the very worst-written endings of any TV series: stupid, disappointing, crap, insulting to anyone with a brain in their head. I think even more than one actor from that well done remake lamented just how bad that final "God did it" scene really was. Actually, bad writers did it, sorry to say.

ftldave wrote:

Daube wrote:... you might want to give a try to the BattleStar Galactica series that was done back in 2003. ...

A good series but, like Game of Thrones, remembered for one of the very worst-written endings of any TV series: stupid, disappointing, crap, insulting to anyone with a brain in their head. I think even more than one actor from that well done remake lamented just how bad that final "God did it" scene really was. Actually, bad writers did it, sorry to say.

Agree 100% with you on the ending, unfortunately :/

IMO, the best sci-fi film was the original black-and-white "The Day The Earth Stood Still" with Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe
and Sam Jaffe.

The message delivered at the end of the film could very well be prophetic for the future should we meet any other beings from another
planet. "Earthlings, shape up and get your act together to become good citizens of the universe. Do NOT bring your squabbles into the
universe to endanger us or YOU WILL BE DESTROYED".

And Gort, the robotic policeman that patrolled the universe and "disposed" of these problems .... Wow, I would like to see anyone try to
defund him.

2001 a space odyssey

darrenvox wrote:2001 a space odyssey

Surely the most honored of them all.

I once read a college thesis, yes, a college thesis about 2001: A Space Odyssey, the movie, about the symbolism in that film and, my God, there was a lot of symbolism in it. One interesting argument was that the "Dawn of Man" wasn't when the ape-man, Moonwalker, picked up the first tool, that bone, but that the dawn of man was actually the moment when he decided to whack the enemy ape-man at the water hole, the first premeditated murder. And then HAL became truly sentient when it decided to murder the two astronauts. Chilly stuff. And deep. Over most people's heads as a dear friend showed when he looked at me half way through the movie and asked, "Where are the monkeys?"