SCIENCE FICTION FILMS

The Flood of Alien Monster Films:

The 'alien monster' gimmick was profitable although many of these 50s films were pure schlock. Sequels (of uneven quality) with more monstrous creatures included:

Japan's Giant Monster Films:

Japan's Toho Studios (and director Inoshiro Honda, known as "The Father of Godzilla") contributed to the "creature feature" output after noticing the influence of Ray Harryhausen's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953) with stop-motion animation. They released a trilogy of films about a similar monster (and an additional feature film), inevitably followed by numerous other schlocky, dubbed sequels. This and subsequent Japanese monster movies would feature actors in giant, rubber monster costumes, fake-looking miniatures, and double-exposure photography:

The first Gojira sequel was director Motoyoshi Oda's Gojira no Gyakushu (1955, Jp.) (aka Godzilla's CounterAttack or Gigantis, The Fire Monster), that was released in the US in 1959 (directed by Hugo Grimaldi) as Godzilla Raids Again (1959, US) (aka Gigantis and The Return of Godzilla).

Godzilla, King of the Monsters - 1956Godzilla, King of the Monsters (1956, US), d. Terrell O. Morse, was the US remake of Honda's original 1954 film, released by producer Joseph E. Levine and his Transworld Pictures. It was a very different, butchered and Americanized film for US audiences (without most of the anti-nuclear political statements and references to the dangers of the H-bomb), with 40 minutes excised and 20 minutes of new footage. The poorly-dubbed film featured American actor Raymond Burr as an American reporter who pleads with a scientist named Dr. Kyohei Yamane (Takashi Shimura) to challenge the monstrous dinosaur with his invention - an 'oxygen destroyer.' This film was remade as a Hollywood blockbuster by Roland Emmerich, titled Godzilla (1998), starring Matthew Broderick and featuring a computer-generated monster.

Inoshiro Honda's trilogy of monster films spawned new giant monsters, such as Majin (a monster of terror), Gamera (a jet-propelled flying turtle), Barugon (a gigantic lizard), Ghidrah (a three-headed dragon), Dagora (flying jellyfish) as well as Godzilla clones named Agon and Gappa. The sequels were often battles of elimination, including King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), Godzilla vs. Mothra (1964) (aka Godzilla vs. The Thing), Ghidrah: The Three-Headed Monster (1964), Godzilla vs. Monster Zero (1965) (aka Monster Zero), Destroy All Monsters (1968), and Godzilla's Revenge (1969) (aka All Monsters Attack). The Japanese Godzilla monster would later return in the mid-80s as Gojira (1984) (aka Godzilla 1985: The Legend is Reborn) - a remake of the 1956 classic, in the mid-90s as Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), and at the turn of the century with Godzilla 2000 (1999) (the first Japanese Godzilla movie since the 1985 installment to receive a US theatrical release). Toho's franchise of Godzilla films totaled almost 30 films in all. The ultimate films in the US series were Roland Emmerich's big-budget Godzilla (1998), and the 50th Anniversary film Godzilla: Final Wars (2004) - reprising the giant monster's battles with many of its old foes.

The Giant Mutated Monster and Giant People Films of Bert I. Gordon (1957-1977)

The famed schlockmeister B-director Bert Gordon (nicknamed Mr. Big, whose initials were B.I.G.) specialized in cheesy "giant mutated monster and giant people" films with cheap special effects, many of which were lampooned on the TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000. His most famous film was The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), about Army Lt. Colonel Glenn Manning (Glenn Logan), who in a futile attempt to save a downed pilot, was blasted by a plutonium bomb, and grew to the height of 50 feet as a bald giant and then rampaged through Las Vegas, where he fell off Hoover/Boulder Dam to his apparent death. (It was followed by an inferior sequel War of the Colossal Beast (1958), notable only as a B/W film with a color finale when the Beast was electrocuted.) Other notable Gordon films included the giant grasshopper film Beginning of the End (1957) (that resembled Them! (1954)) and starring Peter Graves, Earth Vs. the Spider (1958) (remade as a 2001 TV movie), a beach-party rock 'n' roll monster film Village of the Giants (1965) starring young Beau Bridges, Ron (as Ronny) Howard, Tommy Kirk and Johnny Crawford, The Food of the Gods (1976), and Empire of the Ants (1977) about giant marauding mutated ants in backwater Florida.

Britain's 50s Quatermass Series:

The Quatermass Xperiment - 1956By mid-century, Britain's Hammer Studios' also produced some pioneering sci-fi films, adapted from the BBC-TV's earlier six-part serials or mini-series between 1953 and 1960, each written by Nigel Kneale:

Verne and Wells Derivatives:

Many SF films were (and still are) a futuristic combination of the work of visionaries Jules Verne and H. G. Wells (1866-1946).

One of the earliest adapted US/Hollywood science fiction films was Mysterious Island (1929) - the filmed version of Jules Verne's 19th century novel with a Lost Atlantis theme. Other Verne adaptations reached their peak in the 50s and 60s, and included:

H.G. Wells' books also provided material from which to compose film adaptations, such as:


Previous Page Next Page
Copyright 2009 American Movie Classics Company LLC. All rights reserved.