• Friday on TCM, Six Sci-Fi You'll Be Sorry You Saw

    From Jack Bohn@21:1/5 to All on Tue Sep 22 07:27:43 2020
    And after that, a two competent movies to leave you in a better mood.

    "War of the Planets" (1965)
    "The Cosmic Monster" (1958)
    "Satellite in the Sky" (1956)
    "The Green Slime" (1969)
    "Queen of Outer Space" (1958)
    "The Wild, Wild Planet" (1965)
    "Village of the Damned" (1960)
    "Children of the Damned" (1964)

    The two with "planet" in the title are from a package of 4 films MGM commissioned from an Italian studio. By shooting all four simultaneously on the same sets, and using the same effects miniatures, each has production values greater than its cost.
    Each of these two does have at least one striking visual.

    "Comic Monsters" is a low budget British entry. As the only one of this six in b&w, it's going to look particularly dismal.

    "Satellite in the Sky" (a good place for it, I say) is a bigger budget British film. Technicolor and widescreen, with a script strong on dialog and story. However, it lapses in logic in the technical aspects of the rocketship, the arguments both for
    and against its carrying an atom bomb to be exploded in space, and the emotional journey of one character (well, since it's an emotional journey, it doesn't have to be logical). At least when things go wrong, the warmonger only briefly shows himself to
    be a whimpering coward before re-stiffening his upper lip.

    "Green Slime" is a co-production of MGM and a Japanese studio. It looks so much like the Italian movies that it suggests even four years later MGM considers them the acme of space film.


    "Queen of Outer Space", ah, "Queen of Outer Space", can't blame anyone but the U.S. for that one.

    Two Damned good movies at the end, I'm not even sure Children suffers being seen immediately after Village.

    --
    -Jack

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