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
In 1949, producer George Pal was desperate to break into feature films. He’d been making a lot of animated puppet shorts and advertisements but had a hankering to try something more ambitious. He persuaded independent producers Eagle-Lion Films to co-finance two films, the rest of the budgets coming from Pal’s own pockets. The first was … Continue reading
Shot in just 18 days as a response to the news that producer George Pal and director Irving Pichel were making Destination Moon (1950), Kurt Neumann’s Rocketship X-M actually beat Pichel’s more expensive film into cinemas and can legitimately lay claim to being the film that kick started the American science fiction boom of the … Continue reading
