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FEATURED THREADS for 1-16-23

 
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 16, 2023 2:58 pm    Post subject: FEATURED THREADS for 1-16-23 Reply with quote



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All Sci-Fi member All The Spike has composed interesting comments on three of the best science fiction movies from the Classic Age!

Two movies about giant insects and an arachnid, along with a space adventure that predates The Martian by 51 years, with a similar premise — and it’s handled just as well as the 2015 blockbuster!

Imaginative people like All Sci-Fi's members should have no trouble adding a few comments to these threads.


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Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)



The title does the film no favours at all because it kind of reeks of daft Z movie origins, in fact if I hadn't looked up some research on the film prior to viewing it, I would have expected a comedy!

This is an interesting variant on the much loved Daniel Defoe story about Robinson Crusoe, only as the title suggests, this is set on Mars.

Whilst orbiting Mars, Commander Kit Draper is forced to eject and is stranded on Mars with only his wits and Mona the monkey for company. Here he has to source all the basic ingredients to stay alive, but he finds that man's need for companionship can trouble the mind greatly, and not only that, he finds that he is not alone after all, and the visitors that turn up are not exactly of the friendly kind.

This is a very solid and intelligent sci-fi picture, dealing with isolation and the will to stay alive. Robinson Crusoe On Mars is very much a film that relies on story over style.

That it succeeds is with much credit to Paul Mantee as the lonesome Draper, carrying the film for two thirds on his own (except for the wonderful Mona Monkey of course). He infuses emotion and credibility in abundance to lift the film way above average. 7.5/10

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Tarantula (1955)



Can all mankind escape the terror of its dread embrace...

Professor Gerald Deemer has been working on a special nutrient that will help offset a predicted food shortage, the serum he has created escalates growth in his lab animals at an alarmingly quick rate. Deemer quickly loses control of the experiment and during a fight at his lab a fire breaks out and a Tarantula that is already 50 sizes bigger than it should be, escapes, and soon all species are on the menu!

Tarantula is a big personal fave of mine from this particular genre, so I make no apologies for my uncontrolled bias! The film opens with a facially malformed man running through the desert until he collapses, and from then on in we are treated to a story involving acromegaly (a disease that causes gigantism), and a gigantic tarantula eating everything that gets in its path, its pure sci-fi/horror hokum for sure.

However, Tarantula has that knack of spinning the story with only minor glimpses of the spider until we are positively sensing the dread that is about to be unleashed. Using a real spider inserted onto the screened landscape, and then having it crawling over smartly moulded miniature sets, really adds to the creepy fun unfolding. Directed by genre hero Jack Arnold, and starring stoic actors like John Agar & Leo G Carroll, Tarantula is 80 minutes of pure genre entertainment. 8/10

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Them! (1954)

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Often imitated, rarely bettered.

Weird deaths are occurring in the New Mexico desert, it is revealed to be the work of giant mutated ants born out of the A Bomb tests that took place there. Trouble escalates to the big city of Los Angeles when one of the giant queen ants escapes to L.A. and starts laying eggs that could lead to the end of mankind as we know it.

This is a cautionary tale about scientific tampering fused with a Cold War theme of destroying a threat to the country. Boasting some wonderful scenes such as the first desert encounter (cloaked in a sandstorm) and the final underground battle, Them! is a truly enjoyable viewing experience that oozes the right amount of paranoia that became ever more prominent as the nuclear age grew.

The puppetry and special effects on show is of a very high standard for the time (well done Academy Award Nominee Ralph Ayres), and the direction from Gordon Douglas is one of the better efforts in the genre.

The tight story vanquishes any gripes about the plausibility factor, while the acting is, perhaps given the type of piece it is, of a surprisingly good standard. With James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, and Joan Weldon giving it a bit of oopmh. Them! went on to become Warner Brothers highest grossing film in 1954, it's really not hard to see why. Because Them! firmly stands up as one of the best films of a sadly much maligned genre. 8/10

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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