When I think about Banshee Chapter, I keep finding myself saying “almost” or “nearly” or “not quite” over and over. It is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond. Well, almost. The original version of the script started life as a first draft of Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark, but obviously that didn’t quite […]
Read more "Banshee Chapter (2013)"Honorable Mention (Well, the novel it’s based on is more or less science fiction…) Stanislaw Lem is perhaps the best know science fiction writer who emerged from behind the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. What is perhaps the most curious aspect of his career — at least from out perspective here in the West […]
Read more "Sledztwo [The Investigation](1974)"Recipe for disaster: Take the dinosaur footage from Planet of the Dinosaurs — no one will mind, it is public domain — and combine it with some footage you shot near your home on VHS with a camcorder. And, of course, make only the most minimal effort to integrate the dinosaur footage into your magnum […]
Read more "Galaxy of the Dinosaurs (1992)"Honorable Mention Trust me, I know what the title says. But that still doesn’t make this a science fiction film. What it is, exactly is slightly harder to define: most summaries will tell you that this was a Dogme (or Dogme 95) film, although that probably doesn’t mean much to the average viewer. A group […]
Read more "Science Fiction (2016)"This is one of those films which looks just incredible. Not that it looks like any other film you’ve seen. Instead, it had a beautifully strange aesthetic, with weird set pieces that are meant to represent a future city, even if they are clearly flats and hanging scenery elements on a stage-bound set. And a […]
Read more "Vernyy robot [The Faithful Robot] (1965)"“A steamy psycho-sci fi thriller about madness and mind control” The blurb on Summer of Secrets VHS case truly deserves some sort of award. After all, almost every word in that statement is wrong. It is a little more difficult to explain exactly what Summer of Secrets is about — although that is largely because […]
Read more "Summer of Secrets (1976)"You have to love the British. Who else in our sad day and age could still make a lovely little film like this: a sweet buddy comedy about loneliness; a study of an unlikely friendship; with a gentle little romance thrown in along with plenty of bittersweet moments. Brian lives a very lonely little life: […]
Read more "Brian and Charles (2022)"Honorable Mention I’m not quite sure of what I think of this one. Although perhaps that is because it becomes so many different things along the way. It starts out as a breezy adventure film with the young and clever alchemist Sendivius tricking a prince and escaping with the help of an unexpected invention. But […]
Read more "Alchemik [The Alchemist] (1989)"It’s all Tim Kincaid’s fault. I mean, Robot Holocaust is an amazingly stupid post-apocalyptic movie, full of the weird and eccentric, complete with sock puppet monsters, the world’s most annoying robot pal, and a girl with an incredibly heavy Bronx accent trying to sound like an Italian countess. Mutant Hunt, his second science fiction film, […]
Read more "Breeders (1986)"In 1967, the BBC submitted its first entry to the Festival Internazionale del Film di Fantascienza in Trieste. Their choice seems mildly odd, as it was merely an episode of their anthology show, Out of the Unknown — and an episode which was not particularly successful at the time it ran. However, they ended up […]
Read more "Out of the Unknown: “The Machine Stops” (1966)"
rivets on the poster 