Based on Daniel F. Galouye's novel "Simulacron Three" Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 2 part TV production is a science-fiction classic that explores the notion of a computer-generated other world, pre-dating The Matrix by 26 years. Since its original broadcast in 1973 it has rarely been seen and following increasing demand the Fassbinder Foundation have restored this remarkable film.
The crowning glory of Mac Allan’s engineering career will be the construction of a tunnel beneath the Atlantic Ocean to connect America with Europe. But first he must find financial backing for the project. After some fierce negotiations, the project is given the go-ahead and work can begin. Unfortunately for Mac Allan this bold feat of human endeavour will involve a greater sacrifice than he had imagined...
A mysterious man, whose head is completely covered in bandages, wants a room. The proprietors of the pub aren't used to making their house an inn during the winter months, but the man insists. They soon come to regret their decision. The man quickly runs out of money, and he has a violent temper besides. Worse still, he seems to be some kind of chemist and has filled his room with messy chemicals, test tubes, beakers and the like.
This Russian sci-fi film, an adaptation of the Czech classic novel that gave the world the term "robot," tells the tale of an idealistic inventor who designs strong and intelligent robots to do human work. Unfortunately, the machines are utterly soulless. When factory bosses begin attempting to replace all people with the new robots, the displaced workers revolt
A scientist's invisible ray freezes Paris into immobility.
A man (Henri Rollan) lives in the Eiffel Tour. A morning he wakes up early and decides to take a walk by the street of Paris...but he realises that it's not the usual Paris but a diserted city. Little by little he sees some people that are like asleep, but they're really paralized. At the airport a plain arrives from Marseilles. It's passengers are a group of colorfull characters that soon encounter that all the people are paralized. When the truth is discovered, these characters will learn that a crazy cientist has developed a mistery ray that has paralized not only Paris but the hole world.
The Marxist struggle reaches outer space in this fanciful Russian science fiction film from the silent period. Los (Nikolai Tsereteli) is an engineer who dreams of traveling to other worlds and imagines that a beautiful woman named Aelita (Yuliya Solntseva) lives on the planet Mars. Frustrated with the petty political conflicts that are a big part of life on Earth, Los builds a spaceship and travels to Mars, where he discovers that the lovely Aelita really does exist and is Queen of the Planet.
When a military computer error deploys a squadron of SAC bombers to destroy Moscow, the American President (Fonda) tries to call them back. But their sophisticated fail-safe system prevents him from aborting the attack, so he must convince the Soviets not to retaliate. In desperation, the President offers to sacrifice an American city if his pilots succeed in their deadly mission over Moscow. A four-star techno-thriller that builds tension and suspense with every tick of the nuclear clock.
When the Czechoslovak writer and director Pavel Jurácek died, in 1989, he was 53 years old and hadn?t made a film in 20 years. The film industry is tough on its unique talents, and when a filmmaker labors under the restrictions of a repressive state, it?s even tougher. Czechoslovak Communism fell the year of Jurácek?s death. The playwright Václav Havel (who acted in one of Jurácek?s films) became his country?s first non-Communist president in 41 years, and Jurácek?s 1969 masterpiece Case for a Rookie Hangman, which had been suppressed by the Communists the year it was made, could finally be shown. It was too late for Jurácek. Havel was elected in December; Jurácek had died in August.
Forbidden Planet is a combination of science, romance, comedy, and horror. The basic story involves a space rescue to a distant alien world, in search of a long-missing, previous expedition. They discover an eccentric scientist, his beautiful daughter, a powerful robot, and a horrible secret.
This suspenseful screenplay, that is way ahead of its time, by Cyril Hume, (story by Irving Black and Allen Adler), was a VERY LOOSE adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest," mixed with elements from Freudian psychology.
Wunder der Schöpfung is an extraordinary, fascinating Kulturfilm trying to explain the whole human knowledge of the 1920s about the world and the universe. 15 special effects experts and 9 cameramen were involved in the production of this film which combines documentary scenes, historical documents, fiction elements, animation scenes and educational impact. It its beautifully colored, using tinting and toning in a very elaborated way. Some visual ideas in the sequences with a space shuttle visiting different planets in the universe seem to have to be the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The crew of the spaceship Palamino stumbles across the ``lost'' ship U.S.S. Cygnus, hovering on the edge of an immense black hole. Once aboard, they find the ship is manned by robots - it's only human inhabitant, one Dr. Hans Reinhardt; an eminent scientist, missing for the past twenty years. His plan - to enter the Black Hole . . . Whether Dr. Reinhardt is a genius or a mad-man, one thing is for sure, he will not be denied his life's dream. What lies beyond the Black Hole? Immortality . . .or, Oblivion . . . ?
Quiet, haunting, beautiful Phase IV is an intriguing, and largely overlooked, science-fiction masterwork centred on the latent destructive power of the insect world and humanity’s inherent vulnerability in the face of catastrophic change.
Curiously enough, the only feature film directed by Saul Bass - the ingenious credit sequence specialist - contains no credit sequences. The story begins in space, a shot of the sun emanating a solar flare. A colony of ants seem to have picked up a signal from the flare, something that shifts them up the evolutionary scale, something that gives them purpose, a desire to dominate the planet. At first they concentrate on eliminating their nearest threats: spiders, mice, lizards. Later, they direct their sole attention to the next most advanced creatures on the planet: us.
With subliminal influences on everything from Austin Powers (1997) to Fight Club (1999) to Daredevil's assassin girlfriend Elektra, The 10th Victim stands as one of the least known yet insider-influential classics of the Sci-Fi Cinema.
NEW YORK CITY, SOMETIME in the near future: Across a construction site, a fashionably clad woman is being chased by an Asian man who fires wild pistol shots at her. Remarkably, no bystander or policeman intervenes. For as a thin, feverish spokesman tells us, these two are engaged in the "Big Hunt," a socially sanctioned killing game.
Science fiction, blaxploitation, cosmic free-jazz and radical race politics combine when Sun Ra returns to earth in his music-powered space ship to battle for the future of the black race and offer an "alter-destiny" to those who would join him.
Eternity is an organization and a place which exists outside of time.
It is staffed by humans called "Eternals" capable of traveling “upwhen” and “downwhen” within Eternity and entering the conventional temporal world at almost any point of their choice. Collectively they form a corps of Platonic guardians who carry out carefully calculated and planned strategic minimum actions, called Reality Changes, within the temporal world in order to minimise human suffering as integrated over the whole of (future) human history.
Andrew Harlan, an expert in executing Reality Changes, falls in love with a non-Eternal as he comes to understand his part in a paradoxical scheme to secure the creation of Eternity by sending a young Eternal back in time with the mathematical knowledge to make it
Set in the near future when the world's population has reached critical mass, Soylent Green is equal part detective story and futuristic adventure. The world depicted in the film is a nightmarish possibility. Overpopulation has forced millions to live on the streets where any food is in short supply. People are forced to live amongst the rotting corpses of starvation victims as they wait for the Soylent company to distribute their weekly supply of Soylent Green, a manufactured food product developed to feed the starving masses. Charlton Heston plays Richard Thorn, a detective assigned to investigate the murder of a high-ranking Soylent Executive. His investigation leads to a shocking discovery that could devastate mankind.
A Boy and His Dog is a weird, offbeat sci-fi movie about one of the genre's favorite subjects: the survivors of a nuclear holocaust. The year is 2024, and America has been buried under a deep covering of radioactive dust. On the surface, roaming bands of marauders kill each other for women and canned goods. A half-mile below, domed cities preserve -- or should I say embalm -- a ghastly parody of middle-class life.
The boy of the title is Vic (played by Don Johnson), who's spent 18 years struggling to survive on the surface. The dog is Blood, a cheerful mutt who can communicate telepathically.”
This is the notorious Mars and Beyond episode of the Disneyland TV show. A masterpiece of animation and sci-fi that was way ahead of it's time. Directed by Ward Kimball, perhaps the most inventive of all Disney animators and probably the only one who admitted to experimenting with psychedelic drugs in the 60's, also the only animator who Walt Disney ever called a "genius." An excerpt from this program was included in Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt's The Animation Show a couple years ago, where it made all the other shorts look boring in comparison.
What would you do if the world was going to end in 72 hours?
The U.N. Secretary General has announced that a gigantic meteorite will collide with the Earth in three days time. There is no hope of survival after the impact. The world is swept by despair, chaos and death. The inhabitants of the isolated town of Laguna listen in terror to the news.
Seeing the collective hysteria, Ale, a frustrated young man who lives with his mother and does odd jobs around the town, decides to spend his final days shut away in his house, getting drunk and listening to his favorite music.
When a nuclear-powered submarine, the Tiger Shark, sets out to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances near the Arctic Circle, its fearless crew finds itself besieged by electrical storms, an Unidentified Floating Saucer, and lots of hairy tentacles.
Seasoned serial director Spencer Gordon Bennett helmed this story of a one-eyed, octopoidal space alien, wreaking havoc upon atomic subs at the North Pole.
