I’ve always loved animated science fiction films, particularly those which are set in outer space. Unfortunately, they are quite rare. Well, outside the world of Japanese anime, that is. Very few were made in the English-speaking world, but for some reason a number of quite interesting examples came out of Europe. Or it might be […]
Read more "Fiul Stelelor [The Son of the Stars] (1985)"(aka, 360 Google Doodles/Spotlight Stories: Back to the Moon) Honorable Mention George Melies holds a special place in the history of Science Fiction film, as his legendary short film, A Trip to the Moon is generally held to be the first Space flight movie. It is often called the oldest science fiction film as well, […]
Read more "Back to the Moon (2018)"I’m not sure why this film is so hard to find. Yeah, it’s true that it is one of the long, long succession of low budget films Earl Owensby turned out at his North Carolina studios. You probably aren’t familiar with any of them as they never got much play and most of them sank […]
Read more "Hyperspace [Gremloids] (1984)"I’ve seen quite a few Chinese Science Fiction films lately, but most of them left me rather unsatisfied. So it seems a bit of a shock to find a beautiful, comedy about a man who is stranded on the moon and forced to find some way to survive there. Now, I’ll admit that most of […]
Read more "Du xing yue qiu [Moon Man] (2022)"I have to confess that if this were an American film, I’d probably have guessed that Le navire étoile had been made in the Fifties. And yes, if you’d told me it was a TV movie, I would still have thought it came from the Fifties. After all, we are talking about a film in […]
Read more "Le navire étoile [The Spaceship] (1962)"Sometimes you have to relax for a few minutes and just have fun. Consider today’s film, an animated short film by Walerian Borowczyk. Yes, it was made in France, and has been labeled “experimental” or “arty.” But that doesn’t change the fact that it is an amusing little bit of comic storytelling with no greater […]
Read more "Les astronautes (1959)"What is an Elp, you ask? Apparently, it’s some sort of local variant on the bigfoot, notable for its long claws, ferocious disposition and big feet. What’s worse, a recent series of murders in Farcical County looks suspiciously like the work of their local cryptid, and the new mayor calls in a small team of […]
Read more "The Elp; A Creature of Legend (2022)"Parallel Evolution. That’s the only explanation I can find. Here we have two movies with a remarkably similar story, which came out the same year and only three months apart: the first, Joe Dante’s shaggy dog of a science fiction epic, Explorers, and the other a little-seen Czech children’s film. There’s no way they saw Joe […]
Read more "Tretí sarkan [The Third Dragon] (1985)"(aka, Crazy Rabbit) It is often hard to explain why we get obsessed with finding certain films. I think I stumbled across a reference to it on Letterboxed…or was it that some search or other led me to its page on IMDB? I honestly can’t remember. But, when you are talking about a film which […]
Read more "Feng kuang de tu zi [Mad Rabbit] (1997)"I suppose you could say it is a tradition. Although it isn’t too hard to spot the moment when it actually began. When Toho’s first major monster epic, Godzilla, first came to the United State, the U.S. producer added a lot of new footage with Raymond Burr as a reporter (with the funniest moment coming in […]
Read more "Daikaijû Gamera (Gamera: The Giant Monster) (1965)"
rivets on the poster 