Category: Atomic Age
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Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story of Flying Saucers (1956)
This one is a real curiosity. It’s a documentary about UFOs made during the 1950s UFO craze that was sweeping the nation. I can’t say I learned anything from it, but it gave me a real sense of how the craze began at that time rather than looking back on it years later. For nostalgia’s…
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Satellite in the Sky (1956)
Now comes Satellite in the Sky, a version of the mid-century British sci-fi film I’ve mentioned the last couple of days… but one with a budget. Shot in CinemaScope in Warner Color, this was the first color science fiction movie made in the UK. It looks gorgeous and feels newer than 1956. It’s a shame…
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The Strange World of Planet X (1958)
aka Cosmic Monsters The Strange World of Planet X (1958), aka Cosmic Monsters, aka The Cosmic Monster, belongs to that sometimes-odd sub-genre of mid-century British science-fiction. Think of Hammer’s Four Sided Triangle or Spaceways… Curse of the Fly, The Brain, Konga, etc. They’re all a little dry… a little unusual. At least they are to…
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The Land Unknown (1957)
After descending through a thick fog in Antarctica and landing a damaged helicopter in a crater where the temperature is 91 degrees, one of the characters in The Land Unknown (1957) asks, “Can you tell where we got hit?” Since the movie was recorded on a Saturday night, Svengoolie interrupts to answer, “Yeah, in the…
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Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)
Author, Phil Hardy (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Movies), marks Roger Corman’s Attack of the Crab Monsters as a high point for young director Roger Corman, not just financially, but also stylistically: The most commercially successful of his early features, Attack of the Crab Monsters saw Corman refining his directorial style to produce a film…
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Beast from the Haunted Cave (1959)
In addition to Universal, Roger Corman, Dean of the Poe films, made his mark on the man-monster genre. His contributions were mostly in terms of science fiction: Day the World Ended (1956), with its atom-spawned mutants, and Night of the Blood Beast (1958), an astronaut turned into a crusty tendrilled being by an outer space…
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Robot Monster (1953)
Robot Monster (1953) is one of those supposedly awful sci-fi movies that I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch. However, when Amok Time Toys advertised a 13” deluxe vinyl figure of the titular creature (technically called “Ro-Man”), I realized how darned fun it might unexpectedly be. I mean, the gorilla body with a…
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The War of the Worlds (1953)
In the Movie Archaeologists bonus feature on Criterion’s beautiful new Blu-ray edition of The War of the Worlds (1953), Craig Barron and Ben Burtt mention an original Variety review in which the critic called the movie, “socko entertainment.” I had to find and read this review. Sure enough: War of the Worlds is a socko…
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The Hitch-Hiker (1953)
In his on-air introduction of The Hitch-Hiker (1953) on TCM, Ben Mankiewicz shared the kind of perceptions about the film that I wish I were smart enough to realize myself. The fact that it was directed by a woman (Ida Lupino), though, doesn’t impress me in and of itself as much as the fact that…
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From Hell It Came (1957)
At least I found two brief references to Destination Inner Space (1966) in my vintage monster movie reference books. I found none for From Hell It Came (1957.) This made me realize how many genre films must have been “discovered” sometime after the 1980s. Not worth mentioning in two decades’ worth of publishing, it’s well…
Classic Horrors Club 