The Summer of Science Fiction: This Time…It’s Gonna Get Above the 90’s

Last year…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

“Hey Unk…

What about Sci-Fi?”

So I created lists of some sick and twisted summertime sci-fi flicks…

 

And because his idea was so damn good…

I’m gonna do it again!

 

But this time…

I’ve got some current ones for ya!

 

So…

Turn off the lights…

Turn on the A/C…

And get ready for another dose of…

 

The Summer of Science Fiction: This Time…It’s Gonna Get Above The 90’s.

 

Let’s take another chronological look at the scariest, most bizarre and maybe even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from after the 90’s that you may not have seen…But should.

Ghosts of Mars (2001) – Originally designed to be a Snake Plissken film called, Escape from Mars…The studio did not want another box office failure like they got with Escape from L.A., so they changed the main character to Desolation Williams, and forced the casting of Ice Cube…Regardless of the fact that Carpenter felt even more burnt out at this point in his career…There are still a ton of things that work in this twisted little sci-fi horror film…Cube was even more of a bad-ass than Statham…And Natasha Henstridge was more of a bad-ass than both of them…As with most of Carpenter’s later films…This one was also maligned by critics…Not me…I love Carpenter…In my humble opinion…His worst films are still better than most critically acclaimed, snooze-fest, award winners out there…I would much rather watch Ice Cube kicking the lime-green ass off of these Martian ghosts, than two and a half hours of Queen Elizabeth’s heart-warming relationship with her favorite corgi, Mr. Buttonsworth…Or the life and times of Hubert Humphrey’s quirky, one-armed gardener, Ned…But that’s me…I’m just crazy like that.

Evil Aliens (2005) – This low-budget gore fest starts off with a bang, as we watch an alien abduction and subsequent anal-probing, taken to a level that would make Eli Roth cringe…Written and directed by Jake West, who created the original and mildly misogynistic zombie film called Doghouse…This film is a fast-paced, gruesome, ultra-violent, super-cheesy answer to all of those big-budget, family friendly alien invasion movies…It reminded me of Peter Jackson’s Braindead, AKA Dead Alive…Following the events of that brutal anal-probing…The viewer follows the host and crew of British TV Show, Weird Worlde as they investigate, and eventually battle it out with the invading aliens…This tongue-in-cheek splatter-a-thon tickled me…Makes me wish that Jake West would stop making documentaries about horror…And get back to making horror movies about horror again…I miss him.

 

Sunshine (2007) – The creative team behind 28 Days Later teamed up again for this one…Danny Boyle directed…And Alex Garland wrote the script about a group of scientists aboard the spaceship Icarus II, on a mission to try to reignite Earth’s dying sun…The difficult mission isn’t going to be the hardest part…When they discover the Icarus I…The ship that attempted this same mission, and failed seven years earlier…That’s when their own mission begins to disintegrate before their eyes…Rather than simply just a sci-fi flick about astronauts…This is a taut psychological thriller…With vibrant and interesting characters…All of whom are in their own desperate struggle to deal with the repercussions of not just the mission that they are on…But the cavalcade of events that are seemingly trying with all of their power to prevent that mission from being accomplished. 

 

Source Code (2011) – In his first film, Moon…Duncan Jones brought us a trippy, totally messed up sci-fi cult classic…And with this…His sophomore effort…He did it again…This film takes us on a mind-bending journey through time…Army Captain Colter Stevens, played by Jake Gyllenhaal…Is sent on a mission to the past…To a location of a recent bombing…He has eight minutes to find the source of the bomb and the identity of the bomber…This mission proves to be quite difficult…So we follow him, over and over again, on these eight minute missions…The whole time, his superiors are giving him instructions…And inadvertantly giving both Stevens and the viewer glimpses of the larger story…And when we finally get there…We are almost as surprised as he is.

 

Attack The Block (2011) – This film, written and directed by Joe Cornish…The man behind the awesome Ant-Man script…Shines the spotlight on two current sci-fi legends before they became them…From the new Star wars films, Lando Calrissian’s son, former storm trooper, and friend of the rebels, Finn…Played by John Boyega…and from the ever-amazing BBC series, Doctor Who, the unnecessarily controversial, thirteenth Doctor…Played by Jodie Whittaker…These two actors play characters in this film that begin as adversaries…But join forces as they evolve into members of a small group of survivors that are dealing with an aggressive alien invasion on Guy Fawkes Night…Look for the incredible Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead), as horticulturist…Oh, I mean…Pot dealer, Ron…This film became an instant classic for me…But now with the heavy-hitting sci-fi street cred of it’s two main characters being in two of the biggest sci-fi franchises ever…It’s guaranteed to become a classic for everyone.

 

Grabbers (2012) – The premise of this film was all that I ever needed to fall in love with it…A giant, tentacled, blood-sucking alien arrives on a remote Irish island where Richard Coyle (Coupling), and Ruth Bradley (Humans)…Play police officers who have become unlikely partners…In order to defend themselves against the enormous creature…They and all of the other townspeople must get completely shit-faced…That’s right…You heard me…In this bizarre world created by director Jon Wright (Tormented, Robot Overlords) and screenwriter Kevin Lehane…You have to be plastered…You know…Drunk…In order to survive their attacks…There are plenty of comedic elements here, as there usually are when large quantities of alcohol are added. But the horror side of this horror-comedy is handled with skilled effects and intense action sequences.

 

Ex Machina (2015) – After writing some intense and incredible genre screenplays like…28 Days Later, the aforementioned Sunshine, and the incredible comic book adaptation, Dredd…Alex Garland stepped behind the camera and directed this, his first film…Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a programmer who wins the chance to work with his idol, the reclusive CEO of the company he works for…Played by Oscar Isaac, the CEO has more in store for young Caleb than working side by side on lines of code…He has brought him to his isolated home to interact with the worlds first humanoid android…The android is called Ava, and is played to perfection by, Alicia Vikander (Soon to be Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider reboot)…This film is full of intense intrigue, strange seduction, and momentary morality…I dug this flick a lot.,..And I am anxiously awaiting his adaptation of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, Annihilation…Currently in post-production.

 

Morgan (2016) –  No stranger to science fiction, Luke Scott gave us this, his directorial debut, following his work as a second-unit director on The Martian…Now, this film was wrongfully compared to the film that precedes it on this list…Nothing like Ex Machina, in my opinion, because that film dealt with the softer side of human emotions, and the chicken and the egg scenario of intellect driving desire, or desire driving intellect…This film on the other hand…Is about unbridled aggression and the inability to handle the inherent strength that will undoubtedly be endowed upon a sentient android…This is a darker film…And although there are unexpected twists and turns…There is much less mindfuckery than there was in Ex Machina…This film feels more like a thriller…And the performances are impeccable…Especially Anya Taylor-Joy, who is clearly the new Horror It Girl…And Jennifer Jason Leigh’s performance was out of this world…She just rocks…I highly recommend this underrated flick.

 

Life (2017) – The search for life on Mars…Why the fuck are we doing this? I mean seriously…The last time something got to the top of the Bad Ideas Pile this fast, was when John Hammond and his band of merry geneticists thought bringing dinosaurs back to life and putting them in a theme park was a good idea…Was their life on Mars? Sure…Shit…Who knows?…Maybe…Either way…Do we really need to find out? Apparently this bunch of unlucky astronauts are about to find out…That the answer to that question is a resounding…Fuck No…The dread that comes from this unlikely discovery is driven not by the claustrophobic environment…Nor the frightening exterior of the cold, black vacuum of space…Nor the ever-evolving creature that they are increasingly shown to be incapable of dealing with…But it’s the cast…These actors…Led primarily by Jake Gyllenhaal and Rebecca Ferguson…With equally intense and compelling performances by Ryan Reynolds and Hiroyuki Sanada…The way they react to their bizarre circumstances make the audience frightened for these characters that are outmatched at each and every turn.

Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 90’s…Again.

Last year…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

“Hey Unk…

What about Sci-Fi?”

 

So I created lists of some sick and twisted summertime sci-fi flicks…

 

And because his idea was so damn good…

I’m gonna do it again!

 

So…

Turn off the lights…

Turn on the A/C…

And get ready for another dose of…

 

The Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 90’s…

Again.

 

Let’s take another chronological look at the scariest, most bizarre and maybe even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from the 90’s that you may not have seen…But should.

 

Flatliners (1990) – Okay…I know a lot of you saw this pseudo-bratpackian flick about med students who dance with death for a sweet, sweet taste of the afterlife…But I just don’t care…The reboot, or remake, or reimagining, or sequel…Whatever the hell it was came out without much fanfare…But that original film…Is still an unsettling, and disturbed ride into the psyche…Or the afterlife…I’m still not sure which…This film…The original…Was directed by a pre-bat nippling Joel Schumacher, who had Jan de Bont (Speed) as his cinematographer…The film is groovy…On one hand, the cinematography looks gloomy and gothic…And somehow…At the same time…On the other hand…It is trippy and technicolored…Right away…It has a sort of otherworldly feel to it…Very haunting stuff…So for those of you that haven’t seen this one…Check it out…Especially if you found the trailer for the new one even a little bit tantalizing.

Body Parts (1991) – This flick from Eric Red, the man who wrote two 80’s classics…Near Dark, and The Hitcher…Tells a tale of transplantation gone wrong…Jeff Fahey plays a psychologist who loses an arm in a car accident…He then receives a slightly used one, in an experimental surgery…When he awakens…He’s the proud new owner of a mildly aggressive limb, and he starts to smell what’s cooking, as the arm gets more and more grabby with the ones he loves…Brad Dourif is awesome, as usual…He plays a starving artist whose work begins to gain notoriety once he starts painting with his very own, pre-owned arm…Even stuntman, John Walsh is great as the lumbering madman who…Well I wouldn’t say donated…How about relinqueshed?…Who relinqueshed his parts…But wants them back…Really freakin’ bad…A quarter of a century later…And this cat and mouse sci-fi thriller still kicks ass…And you should definitely check it out.

 

Alien3 (1992) – I take almost as much shit for loving this film, as I do for loving Halloween III: Season of the Witch…Well…Tough turtle turds, I say…This film was not only the directorial debut of one of my all-time favorite directors, David Fincher…But it also has what I consider to be the most memorable scene in any of the Alien films…

Just look at this picture…

That iconic scene…Along with…The shaved head of Sigourney Weaver…Amazing and strong as hell performances from both Charles Dance and Charles S. Dutton…The killer setting of an all-male space prison…More than make up for the minor flaws…Sure some of the early 90’s CGI looks like shit…But, doesn’t most?…Okay not Jurassic Park…But not everyone has Spielberg-level cash…Sometimes a film is wrongly maligned for minor flaws…But I truly believe that this film is a worthy addition to the franchise…And if you spent all these years avoiding it…Now’s your chance…I highly recommend that you get your hands on a special edition version of this film…The Alien Quadrilogy released in 2003, contained what’s called The Assembly Cut…It is the closest thing to what Fincher wanted…And gives you yet another reason to give this film a second chance.

 

Ghost In The Machine (1993) I’ve always dug this sci-fi serial killer movie…It is basically the same premise as Child’s Play, but instead of the killer’s soul inhabiting a doll…It jumps into a computer…Karen Allen who has starred in such classics as, Scrooged, Animal House, and John Carpenter’s Starman…But who I will always remember as Indiana Jones’ bae in Raiders of the Lost Ark…Is the intended victim of this cyber-killer…And must protect her son in the process…The computer effects are dated at times, because when it comes to CGI, we’ve come so far…But some of them are pulled off surprisingly well, and their timelessness adds to the film…Some of the outlandish kills in this flick are almost worthy of being in a Final Destination film…Especially the microwave scene…So…Give this one a go…Grab some popcorn…Um…But…Not microwave popcorn…Obviously…And enjoy!

 

Screamers (1995) – Here’s a two great tastes that taste great together moment…Dan O’Bannon, the man behind the concept and script of Alien…And the director of the cult classic Return of the Living Dead, adapted this screenplay from a story by Philip K. Dick, a man whose work has been, and will continue to be, adapted into some amazing sci-fi classics like, Blade Runner, Minority Report, and Total Recall…They come together in this futuristic dystopian nightmare where robots are the hunters, and humans are their prey…Called “screamers” because of the high pitched noise they make as they are attacking…These robots track their prey by detecting their heartbeats…The machines have evolved and like they always do…They want to eradicate all human life…Ungrateful metal bastards…Peter Weller (RoboCop) and Jennifer Rubin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: The Dream Warriors) star in this desolate and desperate sci-fi nightmare…And it is one that you should definitely watch.

 

Mimic: The Director’s Cut (1997) – I just recently found this one on Blu-ray…It was so awesome to see this, Guillermo del Toro’s first American film…And although he had so many issues with the studio executives stepping all over his junk…That he ran back to Mexico to start his own production company…He still somehow managed to create a sci-fi horror classic…Admittedly…He was pissed that he couldn’t get final cut on the film…So, this Director’s Cut, which looks absolutely beautiful in 1080p…Brings the audience as close to his original concept as possible…And what an original concept it is…A giant cockroach that pretends to be a man so that it can lure you in and kill you…How you ask? With either a giant shoe…Or a really big can of Raid…Hey…What did you expect…Karma’s a bitch.

 

 

Six-String Samurai (1998) – When I first saw this crazy post-apocalyptic flick…I thought Buddy, the title character, played by Jeffrey Falcon…Looked like Guy Pearce playing Buddy Holly…What I didn’t realize…But after seeing his killer moves in this flick…And it all made sense…Was that he had been acting in martial arts films out of Hong Kong for ten years prior to making this fim…So here’s the scoop…In 1957…The Soviet Union bombed the shit out of us…Leaving the country a wasteland…Except for one safe haven…Lost Vegas…There the country was ruled for the next forty years by King Elvis…And now that he has died…The search for a new King of rock and Roll is on…Buddy and his young sidekick, The Kid…Are working their way through the wasteland, in hopes of Buddy claiming the throne…Here’s the best way to describe this flick…It’s like that AMC show, Into the Badlands…If you were watching it…While on some serious LSD…And…Listening to The Cramps on vinyl…And..Well…That about sums it up…It’s equal parts bad-ass and funny…It’s a cult classic…And you should watch it…Right away.

 

eXistenZ (1999) – A warped body-horror sci-fi nightmare directed by…Yep, you guessed it…David Cronenberg…The king of body-horror himself…Cronenberg takes us on a wildly weird ride into a world where virtual reality gaming requires you to insert an “UmbyCord” into your “Bioport”…You’ve got to be one helluva dedicated gamer to create a new orifice and jam something in it in order to play…Who am I kidding…With this generation not only would it be acceptable…But before long it would be part of their lexicon…”Hey baby…Can I stick my UmbyCord into your Bioport?”…Oh these whippersnappers today…Anyway…This flick has an amazing cast that includes, Jude Law, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Willem Dafoe, and Sarah Polley…Add that to the creepy shit going on and the general mind-fuckery of Cronenberg…And you’ve got yourself a tasty sci-fi treat.

Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 80’s…Again.

Last year…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

“Hey Unk…

What about Sci-Fi?”

 

So I created lists of some sick and twisted summertime sci-fi flicks…

 

And because his idea was so goddamn good…

I’m gonna do it again!

 

So…

Turn off the lights…

Turn on the A/C…

And get ready for another dose of…

 

The Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 80’s…

Again.

 

 Let’s take another chronological look at the scariest, most bizarre and maybe even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from the 80’s that you may not have seen…But like totally should.

 

Galaxy of Terror (1981) – This film has the standard Roger Corman recipe for B-Movie success…Spend some of the dough on some decent actors…Spend the rest on production value and special effects…And the rest will take care of itself…So in the acting category, we’ve got a couple of horror movie icons…Robert Englund and Sid Haig…In the production value category…James Cameron was the Production Designer, and the Second Unit Director on this one…Many consider this film his precursor to Aliens, rather than what it was labeled by critics…A rip-off of Alien…Not only did Cameron cut his science fiction teeth on this film, but the techniques he used are visible in both this film, and Aliens…This is a classic gross-out horror sci-fi flick…With one of the freakiest and most controversial sex scenes that I’ve ever witnessed…I saw this delightful freakshow at the drive-in along with another Corman classic, Humanoids from the Deep…That shit happened thirty-six years ago…And this film is still one of my faves.

 

Swamp Thing 1982) – Thirty years before comic book movies were box office record breakers…Wes Craven brought this incredible title to life for the first time…The original run of this comic, which is still one of my all time favorite runs…Was written by legendary comic creator Len Wein, with artwork by the king of creepy details, Bernie Wrightson…This film was a sort-of homage to those mad scientist monster movies of the 50’s…And became a B-Movie cult classic almost immediately…It brought forth a resurgence in the character’s popularity…DC Comics even created a new series called Saga of the Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore…No matter how hard I try, I cannot get my hands on the uncut version of this film which was released on DVD accidentally in the year 2000…An unsuspecting mom in Dallas, Texas…Put it on for her kids…And then promptly shit a brick when she saw Adrienne Barbeau’s tits…Maybe one day we will get an uncut blu-ray release…Yeah…Maybe one day when our country isn’t filled to the brim with puritanical pussies.

 

The Philadelphia Experiment (1984) – In this film, time and space get all twisted up in knots when the military perform an anti-radar experiment on board the U.S.S. Eldridge in the waters off the coast of Philadelphia…The whole thing goes terribly wrong (with some wicked sweet film effects)…And two of the sailors are tossed through a time tunnel and land in 1984…Michael Paré (Eddie from Eddie and the Cruisers) plays one of the sailors…And with the help of Nancy Allen (Robocop)…The pair tries to find a patch for the tear in the fabric of time…I love this flick…And it stands up…Like I mentioned…I still dig some of the film effects used during the accident…And the romance that stirs between the two lead actors is authentic enough to keep the audience invested…Although this is hands-down, the tamest entry on this list…If you dig time travel flicks…Then check this puppy out.

 

Runaway (1984) – The inherent danger in the blind trust, and inevitable reliance in technology has always been a running theme throughout the works of Michael Crichton…And this film which he wrote and directed is no different…In the not too distant future…We have become extremely reliant on the many robotic devices at our disposal…And just like any machine, they can malfunction…But when a robot malfunctions,  it can sometimes be deadly for nearby humans…These fucked-up robots are called runaways, and there is a special division of the police force that have been tasked with containing and deactivating the little buggers…Tom Selleck (You know…Magnum, P.I.), and Cynthia Rhodes (Dirty Dancing) are partners in the runaway squad…And they are going toe-to-toe with an evil terrorist who uses robots to kill…The terrorist is played with seethingly delicious evil by Gene Simmons…This is another one of those cool 80’s sci-fi flicks that I absolutely adore, because it never gets old.

 

Lifeforce (1985) – In one of my first blogs…Under The Radar Monster Movies: Vampire Edition…I shined a light on a handful of my favorite, not your typical vampire movies…This film was on that list, because it features space vampires that suck the lifeforce out of their victims…Two of my favorite creative minds in horror work together in this one to create one of my desert island movies…Tobe Hooper directed, and Dan O’Bannon wrote the screenplay…And together they created some seriously messed up sci-fi horror that has stayed with me for decades…Was it the cool practical effects?…Was it the twisted symbiotic relationship between the astronaut and one of the space vampires?…Was it the killer cast full of talented British actors?…Was it all of that fluffy alien bush on the screen?…Who knows…But whatever it was…It worked…Hell…Who am I kidding…It still works.

 

Critters (1986) – Ahhh the 80’s…We had Gremlins…We had Ghoulies…We had Trolls…We had Munchies…Hell, we even had Hobgoblins…But of them all…My favorite little creature from hell, or in this case, outer space, was hands down the rolling furry nightmares known as The Krites…A rolling herd of insatiable intergalactic carnivores descends on a rural Kansas town…Like they were paying a visit to the Old Country Buffet…These toothy freaks are being pursued by a couple of shapeshifting alien bounty hunters led by Ug, played by Terrence Mann who played Bob in the short-lived but amazing Dresden Files…Ug takes the form of an 80’s rocker named Johnny Steele, but his partner is increasingly undecisive about which form to choose…The bounty hunters are almost as destructive as the little furry bastards, as they blast their way through the small town…The kick-ass creature effects were done by The Chiodo Brothers who gave us Killer Klowns From Outer Space…I loved the hell out of this film…Hell, I even dug the second one…The next two after that, were stretched a wee bit thin for me…But the first two are a bonafide barrel of fucking monkeys.

 

Chopping Mall (1986) – This is one of those quintessential 80’s movies…Like one of my faves, Night of the Comet…Which has a great scene that takes place in a mall…This film expands the obligatory 80’s mall scene, and spends the entire runtime there…The mall is a lot like arcades and video stores…They were all staples of our youth culture in the 80’s and now have their place on an endangered species list…Snif…Snif…Sorry…I miss them…Anyway…The kids in this one decide to stick around after hours at the mall’s furniture store where they work…While they commence the partying and rounding of many bases…The mall’s new security system of robots that use tasers and tranquilizers to incapacitate criminals is on the fritz…And that’s when things get really cooking…The teens are getting picked off one by one by these robotic killing machines…And are forced to fight back using whatever the mall has to offer…Keep your eyes peeled for scream queens, Kelli Maroney (Night of the Comet) and Barbara Crampton (Re-Animator) in this one…Tons of fun here, folks…Tons…Of…Fun.

 

The Blob (1988) – This remake of a 1950’s monster movie was directed by Chuck Russell on the heels of his well received horror sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors…And like he did with that film, he once again wrote the script with Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist) who, for shits and giggles, threw in a handful of Stephen King references…As if his résumé didn’t already prove his love for the author…Those of you familiar with King’s novel, The Stand, will remember the character of The Trashcan Man…The hobo above who went poking at the meteor was listed in the credits as “Can Man”…Not to mention the fact that the main character played by Kevin Dillon shared the same last name as the big bad in that novel, Randall Flagg…There’s not only some fun King references…But you’ve got the great 80’s horror movie archetypes in place here…There’s The Outcast…It’s usually a stoner…Or a nerd…Or sometimes like in this case…An all-around bad boy…Then you’ve got The Cheerleader…And of course…What horror film from the 80’s would be complete without…The Date-Rapey Jocks…It’s got all the ingredients you need to make an 80’s sci-fi horror classic…If you haven’t seen it…Better do it quick…There’s a remake on the way…And like ninety-three percent of all films made these days…It stars Samuel L. Jackson.

Leviathan (1989) – The recipe that made James Cameron’s 1986 classic Aliens, work so well, was three cups of claustrophobia, and a cup and a half of cast chemistry…His colorful cast of charaters all trapped in a life or death situation drove the story forward, towards an intense climax…Director George P. Cosmatos followed the same recipe for this film…Instead of the dark reaches of space…We follow a team of geologists and miners who, while on a deep sea mission, discover a shipwrecked Russian vessel named Leviathan…What they discover within carries the same level of destruction and paranoia that the creature in John Carpenter’s The Thing did…In this film…The creature effects are done by none other than Stan Winston…And his handywork means that the effects actually survive the nearly thirty year passage of time…And although the criticism that this film received always came down to comparing it to other films…In my opinion…It still stands out…On its own…As an 80’s sci-fi horror classic.

 

 

 

 

Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 90’s Edition

The other day…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

What about Sci Fi?…

 

And you know what…

He was right…

 

And, you know what else?…

 

For some reason…

 

I really love watching Sci-Fi Movies in the Summer…

The 80’s were the decade for not only a whole host of great science fiction films…

But it was also the decade that brought an ass-load of classic horror to us all…

But the 90’s…

 

The 90’s, as you may already know…

Is a decade that spawned as many good and memorable horror films in the entire ten years…

 

As the 80’s did in each of theirs…

But Sci-Fi…

Sci-Fi in the 90’s…Well, that’s a whole ‘nother ball of boogers…

 

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most believable and maybe even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from the 90’s that you may not have seen…But should.

 

Hardware (1990) – In this under-the-radar post apocalyptic film, which had to eventually admit to being based on a 2000AD comic called SHOK…Dylan McDermott (American Horror Story) plays Hard Mo, a former soldier who inherits a bunch of robot parts from a nomadic scavenger…He sells all but the head, which he brings to his girlfriend’s house…Yep…Something kind of delightfully banal about him going to his girlfriend’s house in a nuclear wasteland…It tickles me…Anyway…She’s a sculptress, whose medium is metal, and hopes to use the robot head in one of her pieces…They soon discover that this disassembled robot is able to repair itself and wants nothing more than to destroy them…Also…Don’t forget to look for cameos from Lemmy and Iggy Pop in this twisted little cyber-punk sci-fi cult classic.

 

Split Second (1992) – Set in the futuristic flooded city of London…This film, from director Tony Maylam (The Burning), is archetypically speaking, a buddy-cop movie…There’s a crazy cop…He’s on the fringe of the force and always walking the razor’s edge…That part is played by Rutger Hauer (Blade Runner, The Hitcher)…He receives a new partner, typically because like Dirty Harry and Martin Riggs, he either burns them out, or gets them killed…Enter the straight-laced, by-the-book rookie, played by Alastair Duncan (who stars in the upcoming series 86 Zombies, which boasts tons of horror legends, like Michael Berryman, Linnea Quigley, Kane Hodder, Bill Moseley, and Sid Haig)…Duncan did an amazing job of slowly becoming just like his partner as he realizes what they’re up against…The two work together to defeat a monster who not only absorbs the DNA of its snacked-upon victims, but also has a weird connection to the spiritual and the supernatural…Critics have been taking routine dumps on this film for two decades…And they couldn’t have been more wrong.

 

Fire In The Sky (1993) – Based on the accounts of Travis Walton, a Snowflake, Arizona logger who while riding home with six of his co-workers…Witnessed a UFO hovering in the sky…Walton hopped out of the pick-up truck and ran over to check it out…When he was struck by  a beam of light and tossed through the air…His co-workers shit their pants and fled the scene…For five days this man was missing, and no one believed the crew about what happened that night…This was hands down one of the most believable accounts of alien abduction…Five out of the six men took polygraph examinations and passed…One was inconclusive…This sci-fi  film is very organic and grounded, considering that it is dealing with a subject matter usually found in the pages of a tabloid…Walton was played by D.B. Sweeney, his best friend, and future brother-in-law, Mike, was played by one of my all time favorites…Robert Patrick.

 

Strange Days (1995) – Before receiving critical acclaim and praise from audiences for her military thrillers, The Hurt Locker, and Zero Dark Thirty…Kathryn Bigelow directed this film based on a script from James Cameron…Much like with Brainstorm (which was part of the Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 80’s Edition), this film deals with a technology that can record and replay sensory responses…They are little discs known as SQUIDS…One of these discs is the MacGuffin that contains the mystery that drives the plot forward in this film…Ralph Fiennes plays Nero, a SQUID dealer who gets caught up in the mystery…In a weird little love triangle…He asks the woman who loves him, played by Angela Bassett…To help him save the woman he loves, played by Juliette Lewis…This is a cool sci-fi mystery thriller that got discarded too quickly, by far too many.

 

The Arrival (1996) – Before we all knew that this winning, tiger-blooded warlock was running around shit-faced, coked-out, and playing S.T.D. Russian roulette with pornstars…He was just Charlie Sheen, the actor…And in this one, he played radio astronomer, Zane Zaminsky…Zane picks up a radio signal from a distant star, and thinks he might be on to something…Turns out he was right…Because of what he discovers…He loses his job and is blacklisted, humiliated and treated like an escaped mental patient whenever he tries to get anyone, even his girlfriend, to believe him…David Twohy (Riddick film series) did an outstanding job in this, his second feature film…And Sheen does an outstanding job as the film’s answer to Fox Mulder…And the conspiracy that he uncovers is cool as hell.

 

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) – Yeah that’s right…Star Trek: First Contact…Hey, hear me out…This was the darkest, and scariest of all of the films in the franchise…Start with the fact that director and co-star, Jonathan Frakes while shooting this, his first film, cites influences like The Empire Strikes Back, and Aliens…And those influences show through during the intense scene shifts from past to present…It had, by far, the scariest bunch of villains ever created by the series…The Borg…But this film took things up another notch when they introduced a leader to what had been thought of as a leaderless group…But with every hive…There is always a Queen…And Alice Krige (Ghost Story)…All on her own…Wound up being the scariest villian of them all…

See what I mean?…If Data wasn’t an android…He’d be shitting his shorts.

 

Event Horizon (1997) – The easiest way to describe director Paul W.S. Anderson’s (Resident Evil) film would have to be…Hellraiser in Space…The crew of the Lewis and Clark are on a rescue mission…They received a distress call from the starship, Event Horizon…Seven years after being reported missing…As they board the ship…The crew of the Lewis and Clark feel the effects of what could only be considered pure, unadulterated evil…Despite a great cast…A smart script that was re-written by Andrew Kevin Walker, the man behind the movie, Se7en…And one of the most original horror concepts ever thrust upon a science fiction film…Despite all of this…Once again…Critics took a meaty dump on yet another film that ended up with a strong cult following…So those of you that listened to them…Now’s your chance…To give this cool and scary sci-fi flick a shot.

 

Dark City (1998) – Following his amazing, yet tragic feature film debut, The Crow, director Alex Proyas followed up that film with another dark, gothic tale…In this film which seems to take place in a dystopian alternate universe version of America in the 1940’s…Rufus Sewell plays John Murdoch, our protagonist, and resident amnesiac…And as he tries to figure out who the hell he is…He starts to uncover where the hell he is…Proyas cast some great actors in some interesting roles…The most interesting would be Kiefer Sutherland…Yep…Ol’ Jack Bauer was channeling his inner Peter Lorre in this one…And it was awesome…As the story unfolds, and the pages of lies are ripped from the tome…What ends up being left behind is the truth…And that truth just might blow your ever-lovin’ mind.

 

The Faculty (1998) – Back in February, I added this film to my Under The Radar Monster Movies: Hey…Creature! Leave Those Kids Alone Edition…Now, not only does this amazing alien invasion flick have an incredible cast of both heroes and villains…But it was written by Kevin Williamson, the man behind the game-changing meta-horror, Scream…And also it was directed by, Robert Rodriguez…The man who created the El Rey Network, and helmed the film From Dusk ’til Dawn…The Teachers vs. Students theme is one that reaches us all universally…I’m sure there are a handful of people out there that didn’t find the majority of their teachers oppressive, adversarial, and abusive…But fuck those little brown-nosers…Once a teacher’s pet…Always a teacher’s pet, right?…But as for the rest of us…It’s a blast watching that line between teacher and student at times become the same line between life and death.

 

Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 80’s Edition

The other day…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

What about Sci Fi?…

 

And you know what…

 

He was right…

 

And, you know what else?…

 

For some reason…

 

I really love watching Sci-Fi Movies in the Summer…

It’s most likely because this is the time of year when the studios release them…

 

And after the release of Ridley Scott’s Science fiction masterpiece, Alien in 1979…

 

Bigger budgets, better effects, and thought-provoking storytelling became staples for science fiction in film…

And in the following decade, films like The Empire Strikes Back…

The Thing…

And Aliens…

Kept things rolling right on into the 90’s

 

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most believable and potentially even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from the 80’s that you may not have seen…But should.

 

Outland (1981) – This is one of those homage in a different genre films that totally rocks…Peter Hyams gives the science fiction treatment to High Noon, a western classic that  John Carpenter gave the urban crime treatment to in his film, Assault on Precinct 13…Sean Connery stars as the lone marshal who unravels a dark and sinister conspiracy on a mining facility on one of Jupiter’s moons…Once he begins to discover what is really going on…Those responsible dispatch a band of assassins to eliminate the marshal…But someone forgot to tell them…This guy used to be James Freakin’ Bond…And he’s a total bad-ass.

 

Endangered Species (1982) – In this long-lost nugget from the 80’s…A conspiracy in a small Colorado town involving a series of bizarre cattle mutilations is investigated by two very different cops…One, Harriet Perdue, played by JoBeth Williams (Poltergeist) is a naive, good-natured local sheriff…Her counterpart is Reuben Castle, played by Robert Urich (Spenser For Hire), a hardened, jaded former NYPD detective…The two dig right into the dark and unsettling mystery that feels like a precursor to the first few seasons of The X-Files…And much like The X-Files…The acting, and the subversive story are compelling, and eerily believable…This sci-fi film was Spooky…Just like Mulder.

 

Brainstorm (1983) – From the director of Silent Running, Douglas Trumbull…Comes the story of science gone wrong and as usual, that science is at the same time desired by the wrong hands…Two scientists played by Christopher Walken, and Louise Fletcher have designed a brain to computer interface that directly records the data from the user’s experience. Emotions and sensations are captured, and then transmitted the next user that interfaces and plays back the acquired data…So basically…It’s not virtual reality…It’s actual reality…The dark forces are ever-present in films where a new technology could be used for nefarious ends…And this one is no different…Although the tech in this flick looks unwieldy and clunky…It still works in this amazing sci-fi flick, because tech like this, has still not been achieved.

 

The Brother from Another Planet (1984) – John Sayles directed this totally unique science fiction tale about an alien who flees to our planet to escape the bonds of slavery…The alien, played endearingly and genuinely by Joe Morton (Terminator 2: Judgement Day), is a three-toed mute who possesses some other-worldly mental abilities…Like any other alien that arrives here…The Brother’s story starts at Ellis Island…Eventually he ends up in Harlem and attempts to make a place for himself there…It serves as an incredibly intelligent allegory for the actual experiences of immigrants who have had to integrate themselves into a new society so completely unlike their own…In this film, The Brother is being relentlessly pursued by an omenous and hilarious duo…David Strathairn and Sayles himself portray a couple of Men In Black who have come to our planet to take The Brother back to Another Planet.

 

The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) – I had to add this to the list…I just had to…Now, I’m sure that most, if not all of you out there have seen this sci-fi cult classic…Probably more than once…But after hearing the news that Kevin Smith’s Buckaroo Banzai TV Series is close to a deal with Amazon…I had to recommend this absolutely bizarre and brilliant film to the three of you…I’m talking to you, guy who was in a coma…And you too, reformed Amish farmer…But especially you, girl who spent the 80’s in a commune, living off the grid and reeking of patchouli oil…I want you three to experience the outlandish, cartoonish, uncontrollable barrel of fucking monkeys that this movie is…Enjoy.

 

The Quiet Earth (1985) – Reminiscent of the recent film, Z for Zachariah…Uh-oh! We might have another Double Feature on the way soon! Sorry, I couldn’t help myself…Anyway, this film comes from New Zealand…And it is a bleak and original twist on the “Last Man on Earth” scenario…Our last man, Zac, was a scientist working on a global energy initiative called Project Flashlight…Right after activating the experiment, it appears that every other human has been erased…That is until Joanne shows up…At this point, Zac is pretty psyched that he’s not alone, and he can do the hibbidy-dibbidy again…That is until Api shows up…At this point, Joanne uses her slutty ginger superpowers…And now it’s Api who gets to do the hibbidy-dibbidy…Love triangles suck…But let me tell you…They suck a whole lot worse at the end of the world…1985 was a great year for science fiction…You had films like, Back to the Future, Brazil, D.A.R.Y.L., Enemy Mine, Explorers, Lifeforce, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, My Science Project, Re-Animator, Trancers, and Weird Science…Just to name a shit-ton…And this film is definitely counted among them.

 

Invaders from Mars (1986) – This film pays homage to the alien invasion films of the late 50’s…Sadly, quite a few people over the years have freely taken a dump on this film…Simply because they didn’t grasp the fact that it was an homage film…After writer Dan O’Bannon and director Tobe Hooper completed their amazing soul-sucking space vampire epic, Lifeforce…They joined forces again to create a modern and eerie throwback to those old school cheesy classics about space invaders…Hooper and O’Bannon add their signature surrealism to the innocence of the original…Making the whole thing feel like one big bad dream…Which makes sense, because most of my bad dreams have Karen Black in them anyway…What?…Don’t yours?

 

The Hidden (1987) – Okay…Here’s the recipe for this film…Take 2 cups of buddy-cop…Add 1 cup of homicidal host-hopping parasitic alien creature…Carefully remove 1 cup of buddy-cop and replace it with 1 cup of bounty-hunting host-hopping parasitic alien creature…Bake in the L.A. sun for 96 minutes…And serve…I’ve always loved this strange genre-clashing little gem…Kyle MacLachlan (Twin Peaks, Dune) skillfully plays the FBI agent that is actually an alien bounty hunter wearing a man-suit…It’s a fast-paced, violent-as-hell, sci-fi action flick that stands out as one of the best and most original alien invasion tales that I’ve seen.

 

They Live (1988) – This counter-culture, anti-Reagan, anti-conformity tale from director John Carpenter, has a subversive alien species from another world that has infiltrated our society by blending in…Well…Blending in to the powerful and wealthy sect of our society that is…Our protagonist on the other hand is a member of the powerless and impoverish sect of our soceity…The heroic construction worker was played surprisingly well by the late, great Rowdy Roddy Piper…With the help of some kick-ass Ray-Ban knock-offs, he can see through not only the facades that the aliens are wearing, but the subliminal messages they’ve planted in every aspect of our media…It was Carpenter’s response to the Reagan era of excess, materialism, greed and classist exclusionism…And it is still…To this day…One of my all time favorite science fiction films.

 

Slipstream (1989) – So this film was not only trashed by critics, but from audiences, it received a somewhat cold reception at the time of its release…But that is a typical origin story for a film that gains a slow and steady cult following…The reason for the following, and the reason that I often revisit this one…Is the sci-fi genre street-cred that it is loaded with…Okay, from the top…This film was directed by Steven Lisberger, the man behind the sci-fi killer classic, TRON…It was produced by Gary Kurtz, who produced Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back…It stars Mark Hamill (A.K.A. Luke Freakin’ Skywalker) as a bounty hunter who is hunting down a mysterious man played by Bob Peck who, as the character of Muldoon uttered those famous words…”Clever girl” in Jurassic Park before being snacked on by a velociraptor…And of course…The sci-fi genre God himself…Bill Paxton as the hustler who tries to help him…Honestly…What more could you ask for?

Summer of Science Fiction: It’s Gonna Be In The 70’s Edition

The other day…

My nephew, Nick said to me…

 

What about Sci Fi?…

 

And you know what…

He was right…

 

And, you know what else?…

For some reason…

 

I really love watching Sci-Fi Movies in the Summer…

It’s most likely because this is the time of year when the studios release them…

And after the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, in 1968…

 

Stanley Kubrick raised the bar on science fiction in film…

 

And in the following decade, films like Star Wars…

 

Close Encounters of the Third Kind…

 

And Alien…

 

Carried the torch all the way into the 80’s.

 

Let’s take a chronological look at the best, most believable and maybe even unknown to you, Science Fiction Movies from the 70’s that you may not have seen…But should.

 

Andromeda Strain (1970) – In this film directed by Robert Wise (Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Day the Earth Stood Still), and based on the novel by Michael Crichton…Here’s the story…A satellite crashes to the ground in a small New Mexico town…Carrying with it…A deadly extraterrestrial pathogen that kills almost the entire town. The only two survivors who were immune to the skin dissolving alien organism, are an elderly man and a six month old baby…A team of doctors and scientists work furiously to solve the mystery of the outbreak, in this surprisingly intense and riveting sci-fi film.

 

THX-1138 (1971) – Tired of watching those smarmy Star Wars prequels from the turn of the century? Wishing there was a good George Lucas movie to watch? Look no further…In this film, Lucas creates a disturbingly dystopian future where two people doing the hibbidy-dibbidy is strictly prohibited…So the citizens take mind altering drugs and calmly cuff their collective carrots…Until THX, played by the amazing Robert Duvall has his meds altered, and his whole cooker cutter world crumbles around him…He finds himself doing the unspeakable with a woman…Getting arrested…And pulling back the curtain on the oppressive society that he lives in.

 

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972) – In this, the fourth, the most important, and in my opinion, the best installment of this series…The film takes the premise of its predecessors and places it under a very serious sociopolitical microscope for the audience…The effects of Slavery…Ongoing Racism…And the fight for Civil Rights…These issues dominated the late 60’s and early 70’s…And the filmmaker covered the landscape he created with those same issues, like an opaque mask…Watching the issues unfold with a decidedly different group and a decidedly different outcome is like…Well…Like what it is…An alternate Earth…We also get to meet the character of Caesar for the first time…There’s a damn good reason why the new films chose to re-tell his story…The character of Caesar was the catalyst that drove the story forward…His actions…Hell, his very existence…Makes the original film’s timeline a reality.

 

Silent Running (1972) – This environmentally conscious sci-fi film was directed by Douglas Trumbull, the man responsible for the photographic effects on films like The Andromeda Strain…2001: A Space Odyssey…Close Encounters of the Third Kind…Blade Runner…And…Star Trek: The Motion Picture…To say the man has Sci-Fi street cred, is an understatement…In his feature film debut, Trumbull tells the story of Freeman Lowell, played by one of my faves…Bruce Dern…A sort of post-modern tree-hugger who believes strongly in the duty of preserving the plant life that once existed on the now ecologically bereft planet Earth…That life only exists in geospheres in orbit around Saturn…When the order to destroy them and abandon the mission comes in…Lowell loses his proverbial shit and with the help of three truly awesome little robots…Tries to save Earth’s last forest.

 

Westworld (1973) – Soon to be an HBO series airing in October…This film was written and directed by Michael Crichton…And serves as the archetypical blueprint for his critically acclaimed novel Jurassic Park…Here’s why…An adult oriented amusement park…Check…The amusements if allowed to, could destroy human beings with ease…Check…The amusements go ape-shit and begin to kill guests and destroy the livelihood of the park…Check…The amusements are robots…Che-…Okay so imagine Jurassic Park with robots instead of dinosaurs.

 

The Terminal Man (1974) – Here’s a shocker…This one is based on a novel by…Come on…That’s right…It’s Michael Crichton again! The film is directed by Mike Hodges, the man behind the amazing 1971 pulpy-crime thriller, Get Carter…George Segal plays Harry Benson, a computer programmer who suffers from epilepsy and the delusion that computers will one day take over the world…Geez…Watch The Terminator a few too many times huh, Harry?…His epilepsy is caused by a lesion on his brain that can be fixed by merging Harry with a computer…A procedure that although a medical success, quickly becomes a psychiatric failure…And turns a man with violent and dangerous seizures into a cyborg with violent and dangerous actions.

 

Rollerball (1975) – In a weirdly too-close-to-home dystopian nightmare that Norman Jewison created…Soceity is now a corporate state…There are no more wars and no more team sports…There is only Rollerball…Teams are sponsored by various corporations, and they battle it out in this insanely ultra-violent version of roller derby…It’s kinda like if the movies Whip It, and Death Race 2000 had a baby…And then they put the baby into the foster care system for a few years just to toughen it up a little.

 

Shivers (1975) – This film, also known as They Came From Within, was written and directed by the God of Sci-Fi Body Horror, David Cronenberg…The inspiration that came from this story is directly responsible for two of my favorite horror films, the 1986 cult classic Night of the Creeps, and thirty years later the 2006 cult classic from James Gunn, Slither…Instead of being of extraterrestrial origin, and arriving on Earth via the Meteorite Express…This parasite was designed in the lab by a deranged scientist named Dr. Emil Hobbes…Hobbes’ slimy, slithering creation is one part MDMA-style aphrodesiac…One part highly communicable venereal disease…The parasite soon takes over the mad scientist’s Montreal apartment building…Next stop…The rest of the world.

 

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)– Philip Kaufman, the guy who wrote the script for The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the story for Raiders of the Lost Ark, directed this sci-fi gem about an alien invasion in the form of identity-thieving duplication…Numerous films have taken a crack at adapting the brilliant sci-fi novel, The Body Snatchers…The first was in 1956 with a film directed by Don Siegel, that shares the same name as this one…In 1993, Abel Ferrara made Body Snatchers…And most recently, in 2007 the underwhelming The Invasion…But this one…In my opinion…This one is the best…The most subversive…The most suspenseful…The most superbly cast…And the one with one of the best non-Hollywood ending that I have ever seen in a sci-fi film.

 

Time After Time (1979) – Hey! How’s this for a premise…H.G. Wells, played by Malcolm McDowell, the author of the book, The Time Machine…Builds a time machine of his own…When it is revealed to him, that one of his friends, played by David Warner, just might be the infamous Jack the Ripper…And that same friend has stolen his time machine in order to escape capture…Wells waits for the machine to bounce back to 1893…And then takes pursuit…Into present day 1979…Once there, this cat and mouse intense sci-fi thriller from director Nicholas Meyer (Star Trek II: The Wraith of Khan) takes off running in a time-travelling direction that I’ve never seen before, or since.