Get ready to blast off on a two-month, 18-film intergalactic cinematic journey! We’ve compiled a terrific sci-fi survey of films that date from the “golden age” of the 1950s through the early part of the 2000s focusing on space travel, starships, and otherworldly beings, both of the friendly and the zap-you-with-their-rayguns variety. The visual and intellectual imaginations on display will stimulate your senses and beam you into another world.
In honor of the release of the newly revamped Star Trek movie, we begin with what is widely considered the most entertaining of the feature vehicles containing the original Starship Enterprise crew, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Also recently brought up to date (and not necessarily for the better) is the sci-fi standby The Day the Earth Stood Still, which shows in its still-terrific 1951 version.
While many of the films ask to be taken seriously, humor is nonetheless plentiful throughout the series. Camp moments abound when Jane Fonda travels to strange new worlds in the Euro superproduction Barbarella; a very smart sense of satire informs John Carpenter’s first feature, Dark Star; and Mars Attacks! is an out-and-out parody of the genre, right down to the giant-brained aliens modeled directly on the creatures from the classic This Island Earth, which also screens.
Some of the other genre milestones in this lineup include MGM’s Forbidden Planet, which retells Shakespeare’s The Tempest on planet Altair IV; It Came from Outer Space, showing in eye-popping 3-D; and Howard Hawks’s original production of The Thing (From Another World). The great contributions of fantasy film legend George Pal are seen in a double bill of War of the Worlds and Conquest of Space; and a double feature of Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth spotlights the innovative and influential stop-motion special effects of the great Ray Harryhausen.
Another twin bill, this time from Japan, shows what happens when visitors from other planets mess with Tokyo’s biggest movie star in Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah and Godzilla 2000. There’s also a double dose of “spaghetti sci-fi” when we pair Italian director Mario Bava’s atmospheric and chilling horror/sci-fi hybrid Planet of the Vampires with the sublimely ridiculous War of the Planets. The series concludes with a favorite from the first days of video arcade games, Nick Castle’s The Last Starfighter.
(GOJIRA VS. KINGU GIDORÂ, Kazuki Omori, Japan 1991, 100 min., Japanese/subtitles
then at 9 p.m. GODZILLA 2000
(GOJIRA NI-SEN MIRENIAMU, Takao Okawara, Japan 1999, 99 min.)
In the first of these two Godzilla films with an intergalactic bent, travelers from the future warn Japan that if Godzilla isn’t neutralized, the fate of the country is doomed. The plan backfires and King Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon from outer space, is unexpectedly unleashed! Next, follow Tokyo’s favorite big green monster as he tries to destroy Japan’s nuclear reactors and power plants while battling an alien spaceship that morphs into a gargantuan beast named Orga. Two films for one admission price.
(GOJIRA VS. KINGU GIDORÂ, Kazuki Omori, Japan 1991, 100 min., Japanese/subtitles
then at 4 p.m. GODZILLA 2000
(GOJIRA NI-SEN MIRENIAMU, Takao Okawara, Japan 1999, 99 min.)
In the first of these two Godzilla films with an intergalactic bent, travelers from the future warn Japan that if Godzilla isn’t neutralized, the fate of the country is doomed. The plan backfires and King Ghidorah, a three-headed dragon from outer space, is unexpectedly unleashed! Next, follow Tokyo’s favorite big green monster as he tries to destroy Japan’s nuclear reactors and power plants while battling an alien spaceship that morphs into a gargantuan beast named Orga. Two films for one admission price.
(DAI-NIPPONJIN, Hitoshi Matsumoto, Japan 2007, 113 min., Japanese/subtitles)
In a funny and action-packed variation on Godzilla and other Japanese monster movies, writer-director Hitoshi Matsumoto also stars as a modest, lonely man who occasionally transforms himself into a 100-foot-tall, thong-wearing giant who battles equally big monsters in downtown Tokyo. The beleaguered superhero finds himself increasingly out of favor with a fickle public who blame Big Man Japan for the destruction of city property. Told in a faux-documentary style, the satire also serves as an attack on contemporary media and reality television.
(DAI-NIPPONJIN, Hitoshi Matsumoto, Japan 2007, 113 min., Japanese/subtitles)
In a funny and action-packed variation on Godzilla and other Japanese monster movies, writer-director Hitoshi Matsumoto also stars as a modest, lonely man who occasionally transforms himself into a 100-foot-tall, thong-wearing giant who battles equally big monsters in downtown Tokyo. The beleaguered superhero finds himself increasingly out of favor with a fickle public who blame Big Man Japan for the destruction of city property. Told in a faux-documentary style, the satire also serves as an attack on contemporary media and reality television.
