90) A Trip To The Moon
Made in 1902 by George Melies (that’s the guy Ben Kingsley played in Hugo, for the cinematically illiterate among us), A Trip To The Moon (Voyage de la Lune) marks one of the first and most iconic forays into space. Long before Sam Rockwell was abandoned by himself, before the USS Enterprise took flight, or HAL and Dave had their battle of minds, Melies was launching a rocket at the Man In The Moon.
At a meeting of the Astronomer’s Club, Professor Barbenfouillis (Melies) proposes a trip to the Moon. So, the Astronomers go about making a rocket, which they promptly launch into space. Adventures ensue as the travelers encounter moon goddesses, insectoid aliens and giant mushrooms aplenty.
A Trip To The Moon is part honest sci-fi and part farce: the marines who help the Astronomers build their rocket are actually buxom ladies in uniforms, Greek figures like Phoebe and Saturn appear, and the aliens explode when they’re hit. It’s a clever, entertaining little film, impressive for the time period and still a lot of fun to watch
89) Galaxy Quest
Don’t you sometimes wish that your favourite TV shows were real? I’m not talking about running through the airport like a love drunk puppy, but imagine spending a weekend in Westeros, or aboard Firefly’s smuggling ship Serenity? Well, as it turns out, this is very much a reality for Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver and Alan Rickman, who star in the goofy meta-narrative: Galaxy Quest.
On the surface, it’s a comedic sci-fi film famed for its wacky curveball narrative, although what makes Galaxy Quest such a beloved and underrated movie is its ingenious screenplay. As washed up stars of the titular TV show, Allen & Co. find themselves attending annual fan conventions and witnessing the craziest cosplay this side of Comic-Con. At least, until the show’s indigenous Thermians make a surprise appearance that effectively blows up that pesky line between fiction and reality. Astute parodies of science fiction and general fandom are mapped out in Galaxy Quest’s blueprint, making it one of those rare films you can’t help but smile with.
Remember, never give up! Never surrender!
88) Them!
One of the prototypes of the sci-fi b-movie genre is Them! As the genre’s apotheosis, it is about a series of unexplained deaths that gradually, through the medium of giant radioactive ants, come to be explained. The Wikipedia page for the movie proudly states that it was the very first of the “big bug” movies that came to proliferate cinemas in the 1950s, and, belying the tropes of fifties sci-fi, was actually nominated for an Academy Award for its special effects. It’s actually a fantastic movie but, if you’ve aware of the genre and its conventions, it holds few surprises.
There’s the scientist with a crazy theory and the disbelieving cop. Them! has everything you’d expect and more. The giant ants were created by the very first atomic bomb tests in nearby Alamorgordo, New Mexico, and run rampage around the town – its one of a line of radiation horror movies created to capitalize on the cold war fears of the civilised world, popularised by films like Godzilla.
Them! is probably one of the best horror films of the period, counted alongside The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Connossieurs of fifties cinema will already know how great Them! is, and shows like Mystery Science Theatre 3000 helped to repopularize the genre, giving Them! a new lease of life.
It’s surprising just how unironically good a film about giant radioactive ants can be.
87) Island Of The Lost Souls
Island of Lost Souls is one of the more disturbing adaptations of H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau for one simple, diabolical reason: Charles Laughton. As the mad scientist and whip-cracking master Dr. Moreau, Laughton is all simpering, leering villainy. Never mind Brando – this is the creepiest Moreau.
In a narrative that is pure 1930s science fiction, young and virile Edward Parker is cast ashore on an island inhabited by Moreau’s bizarre experiments in blending human beings and animals. The most predictably weird of these is Lota, a panther woman, whom Moreau would like to try to mate with Parker; but there are also wolfmen on hand for some variety, and Bela Lugosi as a leader of sorts to the manimals. Things get creepier when Parker’s lovely fiancée shows up along with a ship’s Captain to rescue Parker. Do you see at all where this is going?
While the film never quite crosses that line into bestiality, there’s a healthy dose of sexual perversion underlying everything Moreau does. He’s obsessed with control and torture, and lords over his bizarre creations like a god. The film moves along rapidly, dwelling on the scenes of near perversion with a relish. While the plot might be predictable, the whole thing is worth it to see just how weird 1930s science fiction can get.
86) The War Of The Worlds (1953)
Based on H.G. Wells’ book of the same name, 1953’s Martian invasion movie The War of the Worlds is widely acknowledged as one of the finest science fiction films made during the sci-fi boom of the 1950s. It’s a simple alien invasion motif, with the slow building of the plot as the UFOs land and begin to disclose their rather bizarre and creepy inhabitants. No one can quite agree on how to defeat the Martian hordes, and the heroes attempt everything from direct military attack to dropping an atomic bomb. But the Martians are inexorable and want nothing short of annihiliation. The apparently purposeless violence works remarkably well; one can feel the terror of Cold War mentality as the threat of nuclear conflict and international aggression looms large in the subtext.
Most know the plot twist that defeats the Martians, in a clever and still somewhat harrowing about-face. We never actually see the beings that inhabit the big war machines they use against humanity, but The War of the Worlds is iconic in both its simplicity and power. Every subsequent alien invasion film, from Independence Day to Mars Attacks!, owes a debt of gratitude to this one.
85) Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge Of The Sith
Yes, the Star Wars prequels were a major let-down for many. And yes, they don’t nearly compare with the original trilogy. Still, that doesn’t keep the best of the prequel trilogy, Revenge of the Sith, from being one of the best science fiction films of all-time.
This is the movie where it all comes together. Instead of just showing us background to the original trilogy, Episode III shows us the events that actually led to that trilogy. It shows the power of the dark side and the full depths of what it took for Anakin to become one of the greatest cinematic villains.
There’s no scene more memorable than that where Anakin actually becomes Vader. Watching Obi-Wan have to cut down a man who was his Padawan and his friend is extremely powerful. The pain Ewan McGregor shows in that scene is still one of my favorite moments of any performance he’s turned in. For all the aspects of Hayden Christensen’s performance that fell short, what he did with that scene was nothing less than excellent. All in all, it’s a fantastic ending which did a lot to redeem other aspects of the prequel trilogy.
84) 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
The dream of travelling in a vehicle beneath the ocean’s surface was a recurring one for centuries before Jules Verne dreamed up the Nautilusand and its enigmatic Captain Nemo in 1870. In fact, manned submarines had been created with varying degrees of success since the late 17th century, and were used with remarkable effectiveness in the then-recently concluded American Civil War. But in his book, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Verne’s ambitions concerning the capabilities of the sub were still a good 80 years away from being realized. Fittingly, it was about that time when the Walt Disney Company launched a film adaptation as ambitious as the Nautilus was for its time, and like the legendary ship, it stands unequalled for being the screen version of what is arguably Verne’s most popular work.
Director Richard Fleischer, who went on to make other classics like Mr. Majestyk and Soylent Green, brought together a couple of the biggest names of Hollywood’s Golden age for the film: James Mason (North By Northwest) as Captain Nemo, Kirk Douglas (Spartacus) as harpoonist Ned Land, Peter Lorre (Casablanca) as Conseil, and Hungarian-born actor Paul Lukas (Watch on the Rhine) as Professor Pierre Aronnax.
Faithfully adapted from Verne’s novel, the film follows Aronnax, Conseil and Land, the sole survivors of an expedition to find a mysterious “monster” sinking ships in the Pacific, as they’re brought aboard the Nautilus and introduced to the dual ideals of Capt. Nemo, his utopian view of life under the sea, and his revenge-driven quest to stop the engines of war.
Like many waterborne Hollywood movies since, like Waterworld and Titanic, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea struggled with cost overruns and scheduling delays, including a costly reshoot of the giant squid attack sequence. Despite that, the film became Disney’s first big live-action hit, and an instant classic. Mason’s authoritative and sophisticated portrayal of Nemo has been influential on all those to take up the role in the last 60 years, while Douglas affirmed the leading man status that would end up making him Hollywood royalty. But what Leagues is mostly remembered for, and fondly, is its then-revolutionary effects and its art design (both Oscar-winning). Combining practical underwater photography, mattes and miniatures, the film’s look still holds up, while the Nautilus set itself frequently cited as one of the progenitors of “Steampunk.”
Every now and then, a director like McG or David Fincher talks about trying to redo 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for the big screen, but for whatever reason the original seems to accidentally remain an increasingly rare Hollywood commodity: untouchable.
83) Silent Running
Not a lot of people have heard of this movie, unlike many of the others on this list, but it’s a classic of seventies sci-fi. Beloved by critics more than the general public, you won’t find many people on the street who’ve seen it, unless you live on a street where lots of film critics mill around, like a street in Hollywood.
It was directed by Douglas Trumbull, who did a lot of special effects work on Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, which has led to the films becoming inextricably linked, and compared unfavourably because of that. But why should its relative proximity to a true landmark in sci-fi diminish Silent Running‘s glow? How is that fair?
Anyway, it’s set after human civilization has basically finished with Earth. Its resources are completely drained, but there are small efforts here and there to eventually make moves to reforest Earth. Bruce Dern plays Freeman Lowell, a botanist tasked with ensuring some plants survive in a geodesic dome orbiting Saturn. Yes, the film has an environmental bent. The narrative drive is towards Freeman’s efforts to save some plants, which might not sound that exciting, but then again. Silent Running isn’t your average sci-fi movie. It’s brilliant.
Basically, if you don’t like it, you sort of want the world to die. And you don’t want the world to die, do you?
82) Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1978)
What do you do when you want to make an alien invasion film, but don’t really have the budget for your fancy alien special effects? You make Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Different from other alien invasion movies in that the aliens are mostly indistinguishable from regular people, that conceit allowed legendary director Don Siegel a lot of leeway when it came to action and story. That the remake somehow bettered the stunning original is a true achievement, and went on to reignite that fear in many children of the fifties of “the pod people,” a nightmarish signifier of the fear of something that resembles you in every way, but remains somehow different.
Is there a more terrifying concept in the whole of sci-fi than not being able to recognize what could eventually kill you? It could have been so terrible, but it wasn’t. Not terrible at all. Great in fact, so the exact opposite of terrible. Could anything starring both Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy be that bad? In a word, no.
Universally aclaimed by critics and the movie-going public alike, Invasion of the Body Snatchers deserves its place on this list. If you haven’t already seen it then please do so, because you’d absolutely love it. You have my personal guarantee. But then again, I might be a pod person, so you may not be able to trust everything I say.
81) Cloverfield
To people who ask why there are no good giant monster movies anymore, I say, “See Cloverfield.”
Here is a terrifying and agonizingly suspenseful monster movie, harrowingly captured by the protagonist’s handheld camera, that gets away with only showing glimpses of its big beastie a handful of times.
Give director Matt Reeves credit for that minor miracle. In the hands of a less skilled director, Cloverfield could have been an incomprehensible, dull mess, but with Reeves pulling the strings, it’s instead majorly entertaining, moving from scene to scene with frantic energy and urgency. We don’t need to see the monster, because the tension that Reeves mounts in its place is just as exhilarating to watch. And those few moments when we do see the creature are both supremely frightening and jarringly effective.
Lizzy Caplan is the best of an unknown cast as a partygoer dazed and confused by the devastation she finds around her when an unseen monster suddenly makes landfall in New York, but the real attraction of the film is the devastated landscape in which Reeves immerses his audience, and the unmistakable undercurrent of dread that permeates the entire film.
Cloverfield is a furiously intense creature feature that manipulates conventions of genre to deliver fresh scares and a heart-stopping final act. It’s the one of the most chillingly potent monster movies ever made, and one made with both flair and invention.
