70's Sci-Fi Appreciation Thread (pre-Star Wars)

Two fun ones! I just noticed I have Omega Man in my collection. News to me! I've gotta go watch it.

Interesting fact. The director of Omega Man, Boris Sagal, was "Married With Children" star Katey Sagal's dad. Also, he died on the set of WWIII, when he accidentally backed into a spinning helicopter blade. Sad.

 

Yes, "Silent Running" is an odd one. The FX shots of Saturn look good, but the actual ships themselves often look phony - the design doesn't really help.

And the theme of the film is ludicrous - spaceships near Saturn with domes full of trees? Really, if there'd been some kind of ecological disaster on Earth you'd just build a space station in orbit around Earth, or maybe some kind of Moonbase to do this job of preserving Earth's plantlife. For that matter, why not just build the domes on Earth, but keep them isolated from whatever it is that's killing the trees?

I'm just not sure what kind of message the film is trying to send - other than "trees are good" and "robots can be cute". The film misses the mark because the premise just isn't believable: we've screwed up the environment so bad the trees have are dying BUT we were smart enough to be able to build giant spaceships to send all the remaining trees to Saturn. Uh yeah, that makes loads of sense.

The end of the film is deeply irritating, and the rest of it is a yawnfest.

Now if you want good subversive ultra low-budget 70s sci-fi, you need Dark Star

 

Not one of my favorite films. On the other hand, look at the visual effects for other films from the same time frame--"2001" being the exception almost all of them look less than stellar. Actually for the time the effects look quite good. Of course they look like models--just about any film from that time frame the miniatures look like models. Its the rare film that DOESN'T look like model work.

 

... and then there's this one:

"The Last Days of Man on Earth" (1973or4) also known as The Final Programme



"After the death of his Nobel Prize-winning father, billionaire physicist Jerry Cornelius becomes embroiled in the search for the mysterious "Final Programme", developed by his father. The programme, a design for a perfect, self-replicating human being, is contained on microfilm. A group of scientists, led by the formidable Miss Brunner (who consumes her lovers), has sought Cornelius's help in obtaining it. After a chase across a war-torn Europe on the verge of anarchy, Brunner and Cornelius obtain the microfilm from Jerry's loathsome brother Frank. They proceed to an abandoned underground Nazi fortress in the Arctic to run the programme, with Jerry and Miss Brunner as the subjects."

 

Awesome! I've heard of it before. Now I need to check it out.

Another lesser known film in this genre is The Ultimate Warrior, starring Yul Brynner. Anybody seen that one?

 

Haven't seen it ...

"The Ultimate Warrior" (1975)



"New York in AD 2012 is in an advanced state of decay after a man-made biological catastrophe that occurred decades earlier. The leader of a group who have barricaded a street against gangs of thugs roaming outside hires the services of a super-Samurai (Brynner). This was promoted as the first kung-fu sf movie, following, as it does, the basic formula of the kung-fu genre (two camps each with their own champion fight it out to the death in the final reel) and it was produced by Fred Weintraub and Paul Heller, who had made Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973), also directed by Clouse. But, surprisingly, it is well scripted and unpretentious, though cynical."
-The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

 

... and your intrepid reporter continues ...

Honorable mention (TV):

"LA 2017" (1971)
episode, "The Name of the Game"
dir. Steven Spielberg (pre-Duel)

"This odd series had three rotating stars, who were featured in independent (90-minute) episodes tied together by a loose common theme."

"Spielberg's episode took on a distinct science fiction theme. Gene Barry, as series regular Glenn Howard, is driving to a conference on ecology ... when he falls asleep at the wheel and crashes. When he wakes up, it is to a nightmarishly yellow-orange skyline; and he is found by men in gas masks. He is taken to an underground complex, where he is met by the new "mayor" of Los Angeles (Barry Sullivan). Sullivan's explanation for the state of L.A.'s problems is that a toxic algae has spread across the world and mixed with L.A.'s smog, creating a deadly mix that killed all life above ground. Barry learns that he has somehow travelled nearly half a century into an ecological nightmare of the future."

You crash your car—boom!—you're nearly fifty years in the future. Happens all the time.

It bears repeating: a toxic algae has spread across the world and mixed with L.A.'s smog!
Can't beat that.

Somebody somewhere recorded this off TV and cobbled together this "trailer".

 

That's funny, I was trying to remember the name of this film the other day. I haven't seen it since I was 13 or 14, and I recall it being very very strange. Of course, I'm all for strange science fiction, so now I'm itching to see it again.

Jason

 

... sooner or later I'll run out of discoveries, 'til then I'm having fun with it:

The Mind Snatchers (1972)
aka The Happiness Cage
with Christopher Walken

...something about snatching minds, or something...



What I don't get is why the 'E' in 'snatchers' doesn't deserve an electrode.

 

two more:

Idaho Transfer (1973)
"A crew of young researchers escape into the future to avoid the shutdown of their project. They find that some type of 'eco-crisis' disaster has de-populated the area around their lab (in rural Idaho) and, by implication, the nation or maybe the world. Stranded in the barren future, in their travels they encounter an abandoned freight train possibly full of corpses (maybe, it isn't very clear). One of them travels further into the future and meets a family in a futuristic automobile, implying that humankind has recovered from the disaster (or have they?)"

The Noah (1975)
"Noah, the sole remaining survivor on our planet after a nuclear holocaust, finds himself unable to to accept his unique predicament. To cope with his loneliness, he creates an imaginary companion, then a companion for his companion and finally an entire civilization—a world of illusion in which there is no reality but Noah, no rules but those of the extinct world of his memory—our world."

 

Apparently this is a good one!

http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1320

 

Yes, and it's not so "bootleg" anymore, as that article was written previous to its release on DVD in '06.
Not sure about its availability in Oz, though ...

Me? I just watched Glen And Randa for the first time.

hmm ....... it's very heavy on the 'hippie' (not that there's anything wrong with that)

some cool imagery, an abandoned HoJo's, a couple scenes that really work, but ......

It's no Quiet Earth (which is 7 or 8 years too late for this thread).

 

Don't you worry about that! I am untroubled by international borders when it comes to DVDs

Well, what is? Damn that's a good movie. Bruno Lawrence - it's a pity he's not around any more...

 

... speaking of The Quiet Earth, it's a near-remake of The World, The Flesh, and The Devil from 1959, with a black/white role-reversal (when you see it you'll know what I mean).
Still, Quiet Earth is better ...

 

For a lot of these early 70's sci-fi fllicks, the movie posters are more entertaining than the actual movie.

 

I found this today on CNN..Kinda gows with this thread.




http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20036782_20037403_20037541,00.html?cnn=yes

 

...ah, that reminds me...


The Clones (1973)





The Terminal Man (1974)

 

Yeah, there is something of a similarity, but Quiet Earth is better executed even if the basic ideas in each film are the same. However, nice catch, as The World, The Flesh, and The Devil is very similar on many levels

 

I've seen that. Damned if I can remember anything about it, though.

 

Agreed! Quiet Earth rocks.

 

Isn't The Quiet Earth circa-1983?

If we're getting into early 80's sci-fi, that's a whole new bag. Looker, Wolfen, Cat People, Android, Saturn 3, The Thing, The Road Warrior, Flash Gordon, Clash of the Titans, Brainstorm, The Dead Zone, etc. Should I start an early-80's Sci fi appreciation thread as well?

 

Post-Star Wars, but still 1970's:

Outland, a High Noon remake in space staring Sean Connery. I really liked that one . . .

 

Bahax, keep 'em coming! Where are you discovering these gems?

I saw the Terminal Man, too, way back when.

 

Where? In the ether.
Oh, there has to be some more still, lurking in the corners of the '70s .....
a ripe decade, indeed