A sudden, vivid flash of memory:
A Martian princess and a doctor replace the women on Mars, destroyed by atomic war, by raiding Puerto Rico while a shot down android terrorizes all.
It’s summertime. I’m 9 years old, I’m clutching a couple of quarters in my hand, every day I’m checking the posters outside the Vale Theater in Kent, and I’m eagerly going to the Saturday afternoon matinee, to see this movie. It was awesome. This was high cinema in the 1960s — it had two rubber monsters, Martian invaders, and a bikini beach party.
Watch the trailer here, or you can watch the whole thing for free on Tubi. There’s also going to be a watch party on Mastodon this evening. It sounds like a great way to spend an evening.
Another 60s scifi fav was
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.
So “an Earth astro-robot” is ‘Frankenstein’? I’d feel cheated if I were a Frankenstein fan.
ethicsgradient@2
That’s “fronk-un-steen”!
I think Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews is bound to get to that film.
John Watts @ 1
See “God Awful Movies” at Youtube.
A relatively high-brow 1960s film is the Soviet Planeta Bur.
…And the East German Schweigende Stern.
French hybrid noir/SF film 1965 with Eddie Constantine: “Alphaville”.
It was good enough to be shown on Swedish TV at the time – back then, there were still some quality criteria.
It was on Svengoolie a two weeks ago…we watched it https://www.metv.com/svengoolie/blog/its-no-love-island-when-martians-and-a-half-android-astronaut-clash-in-puerto-rico-when-frankenstein-meets-the-spacemonster
MAXIMUM POWER!
For horror The Harbinger wasn’t bad.
I also have seen most of what Ari Aster put out and think Beau is Afraid is a gem, mainly because no old people jumped off cliffs while going Viking, some asshole wasn’t drugged and SA’ed by naked hippy chicks only to see his research rival’s leg sticking up out of the ground later, or grandma didn’t doom the family to the machinations of a death cult as her daughter depicted that in messed up dioramas and later hung out in a ceiling corner like a deranged spider demon.
Beau has mommy issues though (paging Freud). And is 3 hours long!
The Harbinger transcends all that. Can’t say if you will get Nightmare on Elm Streeted into nightmares just watching it. Might need trigger warnings on reliving COVID trauma. It plays heavily on that. Super disturbing because the COVID stuff resurfaces. Otherwise quite Nightmare on Elm Street don’t dare sleep vibes! And COVID measures. Still too soon! Decent movie though.
“Might need trigger warnings on reliving COVID trauma.”
To what COVID trauma do you refer? I don’t remember any.
John Morales @11
Not quite as intense as flashbacks in the Max show The Pitt, but I cannot see how anyone could ask what COVID trauma is. I never got sick from SARS-CoV-2 yet I still feel traumatized by it. I can’t imagine what it was like for others. Hence my caveats on that movie.
Um. OK, some speculative trauma that’s ineffable.
Me, I was not at all traumatised by it, and I can’t see how anyone could be.
The converse of your perception.
(For me, the effects cause the trauma, not the circumstances)
Those B movies were the Sharknados of their day.
John Morales @13
So in your world nobody has anxiety issues exacerbated by a deadly pandemic. Must be nice to be so blinkered and oblivious to the experiences of others.
To those who were on the verge of death or lost family members…wait…are we seriously having this convo? Your failure of empathy or imagination is not my shortcoming. Egads.
The movie I mentioned could be rough, but also a form of immersion as some horror may be to confront anxiety.
That said I am Legend messed me up for a very specific reason and I don’t think you earned the right to know why.
That’s fine, I am not a psychiatrist, Hemidactylus.
I only asked what this trauma might be, but you now say many people were in some unstated way traumatised, and you therefore infer that in my world, nobody has anxiety issues exacerbated by a deadly pandemic.
See, now you are referring to an exacerbation of a pre-existing condition, so really, you refer to the COVID anxiety exacerbation, which is a different thing.
I know for a fact I’m not the only person in the world who was not traumatised, by this exacerbation.
—
“That said I am Legend messed me up for a very specific reason and I don’t think you earned the right to know why.”
Nah, it’s probably ineffable too.
(Also, I saw the movie, and it’s weak and fails to get the actual source material — Neville is the monster, not the hero!)
@7– Alphaville is a great 60s sf movie, but it is more noir/arthouse than B-movie schlock. No bikini beach party scenes!
Similar to (non-sf) I Walked With a Zombie, which I suspect surprised a lot of cinema-goers into watching a beautifully-shot atmospheric psychological horror with complex undertones instead of the hokey monster flick they were expecting.
I just watched “Kelly’s Heroes”.
It’s still good.
And now I just started “Catch 22” but I feel I should go to bed.
[OT]
chigau, it’s sometimes nice to live in the second quarter of C21, no?
“I just watched “Kelly’s Heroes”.
It’s still good.”
You want it, you can get it.
Anyway.
I watch many a ‘reaction’ video from youngies, kinda makes me get it again.
(FWTW)
@7, 10 For pure unadulterated horror, nothing trumps Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Both the original and the 70s remake. Although I think the 70s remake has a slight edge over the original.
@3 BLUCHER!
xkcd: Exoplanet System
https://xkcd.com/3103/
And if you like space-themed thrash, there are about a million anime with scantily clad japanese women in space.
If you want quality, try Cowboy Bebop.
Sailor Moon is for kids, but it is more fantasy than SF.
And there is a cool anime where Mars has been terraformed, given oceans and now there are gondolas moving through the channels in the towns. Young women train to become gondoliers in this charming, non-trashy film:
Aria The Animation: ‘Athena’s song’
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=PvBjGgzhfP0
The sexual interest of extraterrestrial monsters for human women keeps amazing me. For example, why would a Hutt be attracted to a human princess in a slave costume? I guess in their culture, it is considered a kind of kink.
“For example, why would a Hutt be attracted to a human princess in a slave costume? I guess in their culture, it is considered a kind of kink.”
Nah, you’re over-thinking it.
https://www.looper.com/1104730/carrie-fisher-once-gave-her-unfiltered-thoughts-on-that-controversial-slave-leia-costume/
Even 39 years after “Return of the Jedi” premiered, its iconic gold bikini — as worn by star Carrie Fisher — remains a capital “M” moment in pop culture history. Surely, if memes had existed in 1983, there would have been a flurry of them with her bikini as the centerpiece that year.
But Fisher wasn’t always so keen on the outfit, as evidenced by interviews she gave over the years. In fact, she didn’t even like to see the outfit on other women at Comic-Con anymore. (She did, however, like to see it on certain people. More on that later.) During one interview, in particular, preceding the premiere of “The Last Jedi,” Fisher revealed to NPR that the bikini she wore in “Return of the Jedi” wasn’t her first fashion choice for the film. Read on for Fisher’s unearthed, unfiltered thoughts on the outfit, as well as her opinion about what ultimately redeemed her involuntary bikini-wearing.
[In case I was unclear: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Fanservice ]
[um, rietpluim, I’m wondering if maybe that’s what you said all along. Now I’ve confused myself!
Anyway, if so, kudos, and for me, bare competence. Meh. So it goes. Mansplainer, me :]
John Morales
So you copy and pasted two paragraphs explaining really nothing except that Carrie Fisher had mixed feelings about the costume just so you can make the point that the costume was fanservice?
OK.
Of course it was fanservice. It still doesn’t explain the in-universe interest Jabba has in scantily-clad human women or the interest extraterrestrials generally show for human women in film. Wouldn’t Jabba prefer a Hutt woman gyrating in a bikini?
Such understatement.. Such subtlety. Love it, whilst being glad we have moved on as a culture too.
Also, hope the knee is feeling better PZ.
Also also: @hemidactylus The correct answer is ‘Fuck off you tediously oblivious pedantic twit.’
I remember seeing this movie under the title “Mars Needs Women.”
@23 What you are thinking of is the BEM trope–Bug Eyed Monsters, in which an alien species inexplicably has a lascivious/sexual interest in “Earth women” for no discernible reason (certainly not one with any logical biological explanation). Popular (damn near ubiquitous) in 30s & 40s pulp fiction (with covers to match), the trope lasted well into the 50s and 60s B movies and TV shows. See also Fanservice, since the BEMs only ever seem to be interested in conventionally pretty women.
https://fanlore.org/wiki/Bug-Eyed_Monster
Room 104 kind of turned the meme on its head in the “Itchy” episode, where an unwitting human serves as a host for alien reproduction.
@15, 28 Well said.
“Of course it was fanservice. It still doesn’t explain the in-universe interest Jabba has in scantily-clad human women or the interest extraterrestrials generally show for human women in film. Wouldn’t Jabba prefer a Hutt woman gyrating in a bikini?”
There is nothing to explain other than the fanservice. It is indeed a very silly conceit, until you realise all the “aliens” are funny-shaped people, but people.
I mean, one could say it’s a display of power, or some other attempted justification, but it’d be a weak effort.
silvrhalide @ # 30: … the BEM trope–Bug Eyed Monsters, in which an alien species inexplicably has a lascivious/sexual interest in “Earth women” for no discernible reason…
Except for Hugo Gernsback’s 1911 novel, Ralph 124C41+: A Romance of the Year 2660, in which the Alien Monster kidnaps Ralph’s girlfriend and explicitly reassures her that he acknowledges their anatomies are incompatible but he loves her with a Platonic passion.
Such a pity they don’t teach classics like that in the schools any more!
Room 104 kind of turned the meme on its head in the “Itchy” episode, where an unwitting human serves as a host for alien reproduction.
In 1984, Octavia Butler’s “Bloodchild” turned the meme inside-out (trigger warning: not for the easily squicked!).
Then there’s
Ah yes. Late 50’s early 60’s movies. In Tulsa, Mom used to drop me and my brother off at the Circle Theater on Saturdays for the double creature feature. She got the afternoon off for herself. We got our brains turned to jelly by bad B movies. And movie house popcorn.
“The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb” was a transformative event for me. My family were on summer vacation in 1967 in the small, small resort town of Sylvan Lake. I saw the lurid posters for the horror movie and whined at my parents to go. They didn’t want to, so they gave me movie fare for me (age 10) and my younger brother (age 7). We trudged the several hundred yards up the lakeside road to the little theatre in the waning sunset light. After a thrilling movie with crushed skulls, reincarnated pharoahs, hands chopped off, the credits rolls and the two of us walked out into the balmy summer evening.
A summer evening of stygian blackness.
There was no moon.
Clouds covered the stars.
The lake road back to our rented cabin had no streetlights.
And there was nobody else on the road.
No pedestrians.
No cars.
The walk back took about 15 minutes realtime, a bloodsoaked, demon-haunted, mummy-creeping eternity in our hyperstimulated young minds. I recently talked with my brother about it. I am now 68, my brother is 65, and he still remembers it well. His wife was shocked and horrified that our parents would do that to us. To which we replied,
“Eh, it was the 60’s.”
[Hairhead, a most perfect anecdote!]
Hairhead
Well my goodness.
I had a very similar experience with that very movie but my walk home was MUCH shorter and well lit.
Sprinting was still involved.
233
Aha, but they still do! At least if the class is teaching/reading David Brin’s Uplift War, which tackled that very issue.
Octavia Butler’s been on my to-do list for ages… I just don’t have the time. Damnably, the reading pile just keeps getting bigger.
@39– IMO Butler’s Kindred is one of the great 20th century novels. I would put that near the top of the reading list. Do not on any account watch the terrible TV adaptation (tbf, the lead actor is fantastic).