(Literal translation: The Lady from Beyond Nowhere) A one-hit wonder? That is what George Langelaan appears to be here in the States. After all, the French born Science Fiction writer is best remembered for one short story — or, at least, for the movie versions of that story. That story was “The Fly.” Within two […]
Read more "La Dame d’outre-nulle part (1965)"One of my biggest disappointments was the film The Last Mimsy. As happens far too often these days, it sounded like a good idea: a fun little children’s film based on a classic science fiction story written by the husband and wife team Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore. But the end result was poor, even […]
Read more "Tout spliques étaient les Borogoves [Mimsy Were the Borogoves] (1970)"Sometimes I’m just not sure what to make of these films. Consider for a moment, Ray Bradbury’s Twilight Zone episode, “I Sing the Body Electric”: Ray liked it enough that he re-wrote it as a short story, which was then adapted once again for television in a TV Movie starring Maureen Stapleton in 1982. So […]
Read more "Elektronnaya babushka [Electric Grandmother] (1985)"Honorable Mention Over the weekend, I watched two films based on H.P. Lovecraft’s tale, “The Shadow over Innsmouth.” It is, of course, not only one of his best-known tales but also one of his most highly regarded. But of all his stories, it is also quite probably the one which has been adapted most often. […]
Read more "Markham (2020)"“This is the story of how I became the archivist of the Miskatonic University’s Arctic Project.” A lot of people will tell you that there is no way that anyone will ever make a good adaptation of Lovecraft’s epic story, At the Mountains of Madness. You never know, that may be true (although I do […]
Read more "At the Mountains of Madness (2021)"(aka Edgar Allan Poe’s The Black Cat; Demons 6: De Profundis) Honorable Mention It is hard to convey just how bizarre this film is. Although, if you’ve seen Luigi Cozzi’s next film, Blood on Melies’ Moon (which he didn’t get around to until 2016) then you’ve got some idea of what to expect. What we’re […]
Read more "The Black Cat [Il gatto nero] (1989)"(aka, Proving Grounds, Polygon) I’ve never seen an animated film which looks like this before. And, what’s more, I have no idea how they did it. You might think it had been rotoscoped. That’s the only way it would seem possible in the pre-computer age. But not only doesn’t it look rotoscoped — it lacks […]
Read more "Poligon [Firing Range] (1977)"I’ve got to be honest here. Journey to the Center of the Earth was not one of my favorite Jules Verne novels. I suppose that was the fault of the some of the movie versions, which gave us monsters and subterranean civilizations and various other thrills, but found little to work with in the original […]
Read more "Journey to the Center of the Earth (2023)"Sometimes you just have to say it straight out: This is the TV movie version of a Science Fiction Opera. An Opera about a gigantic spaceship on a trip to the stars. It gets better. Aniara started life as an epic, book-length poem published in 1956. And, I will note, written by a Swedish Nobel […]
Read more "Aniara (1960)"I know, I know, I keep saying it: The one thing you can count on is that any movie adaptation of Jules Verne will bear little or no resemblance to his actual stories. Well… Yeah, I’ve been able to count on that as a general rule for years. But darn it, there’s always someone who […]
Read more "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea"
rivets on the poster 