(aka, The Star Diaries) This is frustrating. Here we have a brilliant and extremely funny Science Fiction television series, one which ranks right up there with the best science fiction comedy series ever made, like the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Red Dwarf, and yet… No one knows about it. Not in the […]
Read more "Ijon Tichy: Raumpilot [Ijon Tichy: Space Pilot] (2007)"Honorable Mention It has always seemed strange to me that Peter Lorre, who had a long career of playing interesting and often sinister characters, somehow got labelled as a horror icon later in his career, in movies like The Raven, or that episode of Route 66 he did with Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney, Jr. […]
Read more "Mad Love (1935)"[Mild Spoilers] To start in a less than obvious place: This happened back in 1986, when CBS announced their latest TV movie, a version of Edgar Allen Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue starring, of all people, George C. Scott. Yes, the same George C. Scott who seems to be playing the same stolid and […]
Read more "Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)"(aka, Mr. MacKinley’s Flight) This is a strange, strange film. I mean, really, really strange. And in all the best ways. Poor Mr. MacKinley. He’s about as grey and average a guy as you could hope to find in the advertising industry. Except that he dreams of one day having lots and lots of children […]
Read more "Begstvo mistera Mak-Kinli [Escape of Mr. McKinley] (1975)"Perhaps it would help if I started with a minor digression on the Quatermass movies. Now I’ve written extensively about them over the years — for example, in these essays at IRoSF and Clarkesworld — and have reviewed both the TV and Movie versions of Quatermass 2 (1957) and Hammer’s version of the first serial for […]
Read more "Quatermass and the Pit [Five Million Years to Earth] (1967)"I’d almost forgotten. I’ll admit it’s been a long time since I last saw Them!, but you think I’d have remembered. But then, it seems to be something that happens with the great classics — even if it is just an incredible classic of the Fifties genre of giant monster movies: We keep forgetting just […]
Read more "Them! (1954)"(aka, Kamikaze 89) “Suicide.” “It would be the first in four years.” “Sorry, I meant ‘premature death.’” You hear a lot about the French New Wave, and the Czech New Wave, but not as much has been said about the German New Wave of the seventies. Well, technically, the “Neuer Deutscher Film,” or New German Cinema. […]
Read more "Kamikaze 1989 (1982)"It can be so hard to tell whether a zombie film is science fiction or not. Take The Return of the Living Dead: we have the usual government secret weapon, we have barrels full of zombies, and the usual accidental release. But this time around, those darn zombies don’t seem to have any physical constraints […]
Read more "The Return of the Living Dead (1985)"(aka; Abdulladzhan, or Dedicated to Steven Spielberg; U.F.O. Boy Abdulladzhan) “I watched a movie yesterday. It’s called “Stalker”. Andrei Tarkovsky made it. “I understood nothing. “But I liked it” And perhaps it will give you a clue to the gentle humor and keen understanding of film underlying Abdullajon if I point out that our unseen […]
Read more "Abdulladzhan, ili posvyashchaetsya Stivenu Spilbergu [Abdullajon] (1991)"I’ll admit it, I was stunned. This film surprised me. Now I’ve known that this adaptation of the novel by Karel Čapek existed for a long time, but missed my chance some years ago to watch it on Youtube with subtitles. I’ve looked for it at times, but I’ll admit that I didn’t put too […]
Read more "Krakatit (1948)"
rivets on the poster 