Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

20 years later, the movie "Total Recall" still kicks butt

<< < (9/23) > >>

superboyac:
EWWW!

40hz:
At the risk of going back on topic, here's another great clunker sci-fi choice that has still held up over the years.

IT: The Terror from Beyond Space



A rescue ship is sent to to Mars find out what happened to an earlier expedition after all communications abruptly ceased. The rescue team finds only one delirious survivor. But during the voyage back to Earth they soon discover their ship also has one additional "passenger."

Now who will rescue the rescuers?

A remarkably well done picture for it's time. This is the original "unstoppable monster loose in a confined space" movie that spawned a host of imitators. Alien isn't much more than a rework of this little flick. The highly praised decision to wait until the last possible moment to clearly show the creature in Alien owes a lot to this picture.

Does this dining area scene look familiar?



Great bits of Eisenhower-era societal standards are found everywhere. Note how the women are doing 'girl's work' serving food and coffee? Apparently back in the 50s, her being an astronaut with two PhDs still couldn't keep Janey from finding a way make herself useful. And the crew members smoke too! They're in a sealed oxygen-enriched environment and smoking... but no worries about fire or explosions, right? Must be because they're puffing American cigarettes.

(Ward, I don't think the Beaver should be watching this... ;D)

With it's (mostly) intelligent dialog and brooding shadowy set, IT succeeds in creating a remarkably believable atmosphere of escalating tension.

You can watch the full film over at Hulu. IT runs 69 minutes.

http://www.hulu.com/watch/65658/it-the-terror-from-beyond-space

 :Thmbsup: :Thmbsup:

f0dder:
Great bits of Eisenhower-era societal standards are found everywhere. Note how the women are doing 'girl's work' serving coffee? Apparently back in the 50s, her being an astronaut with two PhDs couldn't keep Janey from finding a way make herself useful. And the crew members smoke too! They're in an oxygen enriched closed environment and smoking... but no worries about fire or explosions, right? Must be because they're puffing American cigarettes.-40hz (June 15, 2010, 07:22 AM)
--- End quote ---
Fun :-*

40hz:
Let's also not forget Howard Hawks original screen adaptation of by John W. Campbell, Jr.'s 1938 sci-fi novella Who Goes There.

This was the marvelous 1951 film The Thing form Another World which is usually just referred to as The Thing.

 




Great story of an arctic menace with full Cold War overtones. Bits and pieces of the plot, the characters, and the setting have been recycled into numerous films, the most recent example being the frozen alien base in the X-Files movie.

It's a good enough story that his film was remade two additional times. Carpenter's 1981 version (relocated from the North Pole to Antarctica) kept the original vibe and resulted in that rarest of all Hollywood creatures: a remake that compared favorably with an original. The 1998 edition was long on special effects and name actors, but somehow didn't quite capture the eerie feelings of isolation and weirdness that the previous two versions produced. Maybe this is just one of those pictures that benefits from slightly stilted dialog, lesser acting talent, and B&W photography.

I remember the 1951 edition scared the tar out of me the first time I saw it when I was a little kid. I had snuck out of bed to watch it from the staircase into the living room. My sister used to get to stay up and watch Chiller Theater with her friends on Saturday nights.

Chiller Theater was a favorite with the 'big kids' when I was growing up. It used to run all the old cheap sci-fi and horror movies from the 50s. Most likely because it cost the TV station nothing to do so. Being allowed to join in with the crowd that watched Chiller was a major rite of passage for us. It meant you got to go over a friend's house at night. It meant you got to stay up late drinking sodas and eating popcorn with your friends. But most of all, it meant you weren't a scaredy-cat.

It was on a windy autumn night. I remember watching, freezing my butt off on the stairs (which worked well with a story set in the arctic) scared stiff about what I was seeing - and even more by the thought of getting caught by my parents. My older sister spotted her 'little brat of a brother' almost immediately, but she didn't say anything.

When the movie was over, I quickly went back to bed - but not before I turned on every light in my room!

If my father noticed the lights being on (which I have no doubt he did since he was an incorrigible late-night snacker) he at least had the grace not turn them off. Nor was anything ever said to me about it. My father was a firm believer in the notion that a "burned hand teaches best." And to his credit, he seldom felt the need to personally repeat to us a lesson we had learned ourselves through our own suffering.

But the following Saturday (and every Saturday after that) my sister had to watch Chiller Theater over one of her friends' houses if she wanted to see it.

Apparently "The Dad-Thing" had spoken. ;D

mouser:
Have to agree with you 40hz, both the original and remake are fantastic movies.
"Chiller Theater" used to come on tv at my grandparents house, and even just seeing the intro, makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up -- terrifying stuff for a kid of my age.  Here's the intro, from youtube:

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page