Wednesday, March 10, 2010

1962

Since the closing of science fiction cinema's Golden Age (the 1950s) far fewer sci-fi films were release each year. 1960 had far less than 1959. 1961 had a couple less than 1960. 1962 had a bit less than 1961. Curiously, almost none of them were "home grown." Reworked and dubbed foreign sci-fi films made up the bulk of the offerings for '62 audiences to enjoy.

Planets Against Us -- Italian production about stealthy alien cyborgs, all patterned after one dead human, sabotaging earth's space efforts.

Journey to the Seventh Planet -- Joint American & Danish production about an alien on Uranus that can conjure things, beautiful or terrible, from men's thoughts.

Creation of the Humanoids -- A future of mankind's slow extinction and eventual replacement by robots so advanced that even they don't know they're robots.

Underwater City -- A city on the sea floor is proposed as the answer to mankind's problems. It is built, but disaster strikes.

Invasion of the Animal People -- Originally a '59 Swedish sci-fi about an alien landing in northern Lappland and a Yeti which rampages.

The Brain That Wouldn't Die -- A mad/gifted surgeon rescues his fiancee's head from a car crash, then searches for a suitable body to transplant it to.

The First Spaceship on Venus -- English dub of the 1960 East German film "Silent Star". An earth mission finds traces of a dead civilization on Venus.

Battle Beyond the Sun -- English dub of the 1959 Soviet Sci-fi, about a Mars mission which must divert to save a doomed rocket. Roger Corman inserted some gratuitous and questionable monsters.

Planeta Bur -- A Soviet sci-fi, benchmarked here, but used in english-dubs in two later films.

Hand of Death -- Not yet reviewed, pending.

3 comments:

  1. When I was a boy, my best friend and I used to watch B&W SF movies every Saturday morning in the early 60s. One of our favorites had alien beings growing in large gasoline storage tanks which were eventually blown up. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Thanks, Jim

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  2. Jim:
    You could be describing Quatermass 2: Enemy From Space. Check out my index for 1956. This sounds like what you've described.

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  3. The best SF film of 1962 was Panic in Year Zero!

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