Sci-Fi

King Lear (1987) Jean-Luc Godard, Woody Allen, Freddy Buache, Leos Carax, Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi

King Lear (1987)
Everything returns to normal after Chernobyl. That is, everything but art. Most of the great works are lost, and it is up to people like William Shakespear Junior the Fifth to restore the lost artwork of the human race. He finds strange goings-on at a resort enough to remind him of all the lines of the play, dealing with mob boss Don Learo and his daughter Cordelia, a strange professor named Jean Luc-Godard (sic), who repeatedly xeroxes his hand for no particular reason. He is followed by four humanoid goblins that keep tormenting Cordelia. There is also the gentleman whose girlfriend, Valerie, isn’t always visible. Then the film is sent off to New York for Mr. Alien to edit.
Read More »

The President’s Analyst (1967) Theodore J. Flicker, James Coburn, Godfrey Cambridge, Severn Darden, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Thriller

The President's Analyst (1967)
At first, Dr. Sidney Schaefer feels honored and thrilled to be offered the job of the President’s Analyst. But then the stress of the job and the paranoid spies that come with a sensitive government position get to him, and he runs away. Now spies from all over the world are after him, either to get him for their own side or to kill him and prevent someone else from getting him.
Read More »

Night of the Lepus (1972) William F. Claxton, Stuart Whitman, Janet Leigh, Rory Calhoun, Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Night of the Lepus (1972)
Cole Hillman’s Arizona ranch is plagued with ‘mongrel’ rabbits, and he wants to employ an ecologically sound control method. As a favor to college benefactor Hillman, college president Elgin Clark calls in zoologist Roy Bennett to help. Bennett immediately begins injecting rabbits with hormones and genetically mutated blood in an effort to develop a method of disrupting rabbit reproduction. One of the test subjects escapes, resulting in a race of bloodthirsty, wolf-sized, man-, horse-, and cow-eating bunnies. Eventually the National Guard is called in for a final showdown with the terrorizing rabbits.
Read More »

The Martian Chronicles (1980) Michael Anderson

The Martian Chronicles
Earth sends its first manned probe to Mars in 1999, and a jealous Martian murders the two astronauts when his wife has erotic dreams of meeting them. Members of a subsequent expedition are hypnotized into believing that they have landed in the childhood community of their leader and have been reunited with deceased family and friends, and they are poisoned by the Martians. Col. John Wilder leads a third expedition and learns that a chicken pox virus brought to Mars by the first two expeditions has almost eradicated the Martian population. A member of Wilder’s team becomes obsessed with protecting Mars from Earthman and murders some of the others in Wilder’s party, before Wilder kills him. Colonists arrive on Mars to settle, among them priests seeking God, and a lone Martian masquerades as the most desired persons of various settlers. Global war on Earth reduces man’s natal planet to radioactive waste, and most of the settlers returned there prior to the holocaust.
Read More »

Izbavitelj / The Rat Savior (1976) Krsto Papic

Izbavitelj (1976)
A poor writer discovers that a species of rats has banded together to impersonate humans and supplant them unnoticed, in a manner reminiscent of the transformations in Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, or the covert conspiracy of pod-people in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This film’s story is based on a book by the Soviet writer Alexander Greene.
Read More »

First Man Into Space (1959) Robert Day

First Man Into Space (1959)
Navy test pilot Lieut. Dan Prescott, in experimental rocket plane Y-13, disobeys orders and becomes the first man to fly outside the ionosphere. Unable to turn, he ejects…and is plastered with metallic meteor dust. The pilot compartment lands with no trace of the pilot… but first cattle, then people, are found with their throats cut as if with an axe, by something that seems to have a craving for blood…
Read More »

Bunker Palace Hôtel (1989) Enki Bilal

Bunker Palace Hotel (1989)
In an imaginary dictature of a futuristic world, rebellion has broken out. The men in power scramble to the Bunker Palace Hotel, a bunker built long ago for just this kind of contingency. But a rebel spy sneaks in, and although her nature is very quickly suspected, she is left to observe the raving of the decadent power class, who keeps wondering what happened to their leader, who has failed to show up.
Read More »

The Man from Planet X (1951) Edgar G. Ulmer, Robert Clarke, Margaret Field, Raymond Bond

The Man from Planet X (1951)
To study a rogue planet heading for a near-miss with Earth, Prof. Elliot sets up an observatory on the foggy moors of a remote Scottish island, with his pretty daughter and Dr. Mears, a former student with a shady past. Soon after arrival of reporter John Lawrence, a ship from Planet X just happens to land near the observatory. Is the visitor (who actually looks alien) benevolent? What are Mears’ real motives for trying to communicate with it?
Read More »

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) Robert Wise, Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
An alien (Klaatu) with his mighty robot (Gort) land their spacecraft on Cold War-era Earth just after the end of World War II. They bring an important message to the planet that Klaatu wishes to tell to representatives of all nations. However, communication turns out to be difficult, so, after learning something about the natives, Klaatu decides on an alternative approach.
Read More »

Attack of the Puppet People (1958) Bert I. Gordon, John Agar, John Hoyt, June Kenney

Attack of the Puppet People (1958)
Deranged doll-maker Mr. Franz is deathly afraid of being left alone, so he creates a machine that can shrink humans down to only a few inches tall. He soon accumulates a troupe of shrunken prisoners whom he forces to perform for him and keep him company. When he shrinks his secretary Sally and her fiance Bob, the pair decide against spending their days as pint-sized playthings and try to find a way to escape and re-enlarge themselves.
Read More »

Liquid Sky (1982) Slava Tsukerman, Anne Carlisle, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas

Liquid Sky (1982)
Invisible aliens in a tiny flying saucer come to Earth looking for heroin. They land on top of a New York apartment inhabited by a drug dealer and her female, androgynous, bisexual nymphomaniac lover, a fashion model. The aliens soon find the human pheromones created in the brain during orgasm preferable to heroin, and the model’s casual sex partners begin to disappear. This increasingly bizarre scenario is observed by a lonely woman in the building across the street, a German scientist who is following the aliens, and an equally androgynous, drug-addicted male model. (Both models are played by Anne Carlisle, in a dual role.) Darkly funny and thoroughly weird.
Read More »