This review is an expansion of a piece that was first published in the BFI’s The Sci-fi 60 app first published in 2014 and still available for iOS devices here. There are echoes of the BBC serial A for Andromeda (1961) in Robert Zemeckis’ thoughtful tale of the first contact between the human race and … Continue reading
If ever the was a film that really didn’t a sequel it must surely be Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Its enigmatic ending deserved to remain a mystery to be pondered and interpreted by audiences who didn’t need to be spoon fed prosaic answers to the many questions it raised. But it got … Continue reading
Byron Haskin followed up his H.G Wells adaptation The War of the Worlds (1953) and the Wernher von Braun derived Conquest of Space (1955) with this Jules Verne adaptation, one of many adaptations of the French science fiction pioneer’s work around the same time, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Around the World in … Continue reading
Before Paul W.S. Anderson’s Event Horizon (1997) or even Doctor Who‘s The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit (2006), the Devil went into space in this rather dreary and all but forgotten low-budgeter, the sole directing credit for one D.J. Webster. An intriguing premise, courtesy of scriptwriting brothers Carey and Chad Hayes, is bludgeoned to … Continue reading
Dr Evil is back and this time he’s got his sights set on stealing Austin Powers’ “mojo” in this bigger budgeted but otherwise business-as-usual follow-up to the hugely popular Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). Most of the original cast are back – some in little more than extended cameos – but the introduction … Continue reading
Arthur Hilton’s poverty-stricken Cat-Women of the Moon is one of the earliest examples of 50s science fiction’s obsession with interplanetary matriarchies (see also Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953), Devil Girl from Mars (1954), Fire Maidens of Outer Space (1956), Queen of Outer Space (1958) and others). It’s also one of the most blatantly … Continue reading
In 1980, The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) writing team of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker had effectively killed off the disaster movie (it would make a return many years later) with their riotous spoof Airplane! which replayed the entire plot of Hall Bartlett’s Zero Hour! (1957) replacing the original’s deadly earnestness with an … Continue reading
