ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's three threads about movies which nobody seems to care much about.

So, frankly I don't expect any new replies. But maybe I'll be surprised.
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1984 (1956 England)



Gloomy but effective treatment of George Orwell's classic novel about a world immersed in political slavery. The original English release version ends with the two main characters being executed, but the U.S. release version is accurate to the original novel and much more disturbing.

Early scenes in which star Edmond O'Brien enters his tiny apartment and bleakly allows himself to be inspected by the eyeball-like TV camera of Big Brother are unforgettable. When he lies down to sleep, a voice from the speaker softly reminds him that "Big Brother is watching". This scene sets a chilling mood for the whole film.

O'Brien defies the state by falling in love with Jan Sterling. Their struggle to be human and experience love in a loveless world is the cornerstone of this noteworthy film.

Directed by Michael Anderson from a screenplay by William P. Templton and Ralph Bettinson. Also starring Mervyn Johns, David Kossoff, Donald Pleasence, and Michael Redgrave.
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Billion Dollar Brain (1967)



Michael Caine again stars as Britain's reluctant secret agent, Harry Palmer.

This time Caine is up against a hawkish billionaire (Ed Begley, Sr.) who plans to use his private mini-army and his strategy-planning supercomputer to engineer an attack on Russia which will start a Russian revolution, not to mention the possible kick-off of World War III, forcing America to defeat the commies once and for all.

The problem with Begley's plan is that his assistant (Karl Malden) is feeding the super-computer phony data so he can embezzle money from Begley's war fund. As in the first two films ("The Ipcress File", "Funeral in Berlin"), Harry stays one step ahead of personal disaster only by sheer luck, not by any exercise of Bond-like skill.

Directed by Ken Russell. The Harry Palmer series was England's answer to it's own boastful Bond craze. America's answer was a bigger-and-better boast — "Our Man Flint".


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The Black Sleep (1956)



The gorgeous poster above is for a 1940s-style horror story made ten years after the horror craze, starring four of the biggest names from the classic horror era.

Basil Rathbone is a mad doctor whose beloved wife is comatose because of brain damage. Rathbone is obsessed with his desire to repair the damage and bring her out of her coma. With that goal in mind, the doctor ruthlessly experiments on kidnapped victims, probing their brains, carefully mapping the various neurological regions, turning his human guinea pigs into mindless vegetables (a redundant phrase, I'll admit, since there not vegetables with minds.)

Afterwards he consigns the victims to cells in the dungeon of his Victorian house.



Akim Tamiroff is the chuckling gypsy who sells kidnapped people to the doctor. Bela Lugosi (in his last completed roll) plays a mute butler. Lon Chaney, Jr. plays a sub-human strangler named Mongo. Both Lugosi and Chaney are seriously wasted in their underwritten roles. Tor Johnson plays a lumbering zombie (as usual), a brain-wrecked victim of the doctor's exploratory surgery.



The hero of the story is young Herbert Rudley, who must stop the doctor from using lovely Patricia Blair's brain for experimental surgery.



The movie's creepiest scene involves a demonstration Rathbone gives Rudley to show what he has learned about the human brain. He stimulates various parts of a subject's brain and makes them roll their eyes and flex their hands.

In the climax, the mindless victims escape from their cells and form a small zombie mob that converges on the doctor. I'd call that poetic justice, but there are no words that rhyme with "zombie".

Directed by Reginald LeBorg from a script by John C. Higgens. Also released as: Dr. Cadman's Secret.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)