The 1980's science fiction movie poll

^^^^
Lies

3 is pretty good except for the chitty-chitty-bang-bang ending.

BTTF 2 is horrid.

-- ledge, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 4:05 PM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

Is Outland good? Should I watch it?

-- Jordan, Wednesday, March 19, 2008 10:47 AM (15 minutes ago)

yes it is and yes you should!

* Space Western
* Drugs
* Mining
* Space
* Corruption
* Futuristic
* Io
* Jupiter
* Marshal
* Moon
* Racquetball
* Violence
* Hologram
* Exploding Body
* Explosive Decompression

The Thing, no question about it

You'd have to be pretty miserable not to be able to find something to enjoy in each of the BTTFs.

sweet, gff. it was already pretty high up on my queue, but space racquetball puts it over the top (i'll overlook the lack of hoverboards).

Brazil, easy.

what is this weird "sci-fi" criterion you seem to have that I'm sure no one else will agree with

I don't know! It's like obscenity to that dead Supreme Court justice, I just know it when I see it. Wrath of Khan is close enough, as eugenics and creation of 'artificial' life are at the core.

BTTF2 stunk, never saw 3.

I'm not going to vote for They Live, but I would like to point out that it's great.

ice pirates/spaceballs no show

this seems like a perfect time to plug my upcoming radio venture (with mark s!), a show about old SF short stories from 1935-1965 airing on Resonance FM 104.4 in London, on Wednesdays at 10pm. there'll be a web site, podcasts etc but we're still working on that part.

anyway, our very first show is going to be about "Who Goes There", the novella that was the basis for The Thing!

I remember that one! Written by John Campbell himself, no?

tempted by liquid sky komedy vote

Are you guys going to do "The Cold Equations," Tracer?

James - yes! it's really really good. I don't think Campbell himself ever really wrote any other stories of much note, but that one was a doozy.

buckaroo bonzai, worth re-watching?

Vincent Schiavelli, RIP.

i hope this turns into a 200 post thread with 0 votes.
I don't know if I'll be finished reading the list of candidates in time for the voting deadline.

woops xpost - I don't know, we've only sketched out the first 3 or 4 shows so far. I like "Cold Equations" a lot although i always get annoyed by the close tolerances for fuel necessary to make the story work - does that bother you too? I realize it is somewhat small of me to pick that nit.

I mean, surely the emergency craft wouldn't even take off if there was too much weight on board.

i only saw blade runner for the first time last week, so that has to get my vote.

Yeah, like maybe the guy made a mistake in his calculations and realized it later: Oops, sorry! Or like his bosses were really stingy with his allocation and didn't take into account such contingencies. And if that was the case, why didn't they weigh the ship before takeoff?
(xxpost)

Looks like y'alls show is intentionally pre-Dangerous Visions, which is probably for the best.

let's not forget jessica harbl's #11 movie of all time:

11. Enemy Mine – White spaceman and Louis Gossett Jr. - looking like an Admiral Ackbar knockoff or Miles Davis with severe sunburn peel - on a desolate barren wasteland planet for two hours. Cue “The Living Years.”

HA easy i thought this would be. Tron I ticked. Then remembered Wargames. shitting hell.

The Thing I always considered more of a riff on the early parts of At The Mountains of Madness...

The only way to win, Ste, is not to play.

ROAD WARRIOR

this is pretty hard. i think i'll vote for robocop because blade runner is already getting a ton of votes. i have to get morbiusy on y'all and say that the thing is more of a horror movie than a sci fi movie.

Robots = scifi
Spaceships = scifi

Also, I always considered if it was made in the 1980s and I liked it, then it must be sci-fi.

aliens on earth = horror, aliens in space = sci-fi?

aliens = scifi

and maybe horror too

yeah, i don't really think Road Warrior is Sci-fi, but it's post-apocalyptic so i guess that qualifies sort of not really

mostly i just know it isn't going to get any votes, and it's AWESOME

future = scifi

lol this is easy

same for the Day After.

xp

As I've said on another thread, I see sci-fi as more of window dressing for a variety of generic story structures than a genre in itself (in movies at least, literature is a different matter) - Blade Runner = detective movie, Aliens = war film, etc. Few SF movies actually give that much of a shit about conceptual matters. So, yeah, to all intents and purposes if it's got aliens and robots and what have you, it's SF as far as I'm concerned.

ok, where's the 'science' in Road Warrior aside from the world having been nuked? It's just a great biker movie.

fuck it, i'm voting for enemy mine

* Isolation
* Pepsi
* Identifying With The Enemy
* Based On Novella
* Alien
* Intolerance
* Futuristic
* Racism
* Slavery
* Tolerance
* Bonding
* Space
* Friendship
* Survival
* Eaten Alive
* Monster
* Uncle Nephew Relationship
* Fighter Pilot
* Football
* Meteor
* Mining
* Narrated
* Planet
* Pregnancy
* Reptilian
* Scavenger
* Severed Ear
* Snow
* Space Station
* Spaceship
* Stranded
* Alien Baby
* Alien Slave
* Male Pregnancy
* Shot In The Neck
* Multiple Monsters

I'm voting for The Dead Zone, for the movie itself and for the sketch on SNL where Christopher Walken reprises that role, playing the new guy at the office who shakes your hand and foretells your future -"You're going to get in the elevator at 11:45, go downstairs to the deli and come back with a paper bag holding a tuna salad sandwich and a blueberry yogurt."

Blade Runner = detective movie, Aliens = war film

nonononononononononononono

I think Stanislaw Lem wrote a article (or a book) complaining about that phenomenon.

an article

what I wd call a "hard" sci-fi film is Andromeda Strain (diff decade)

Alien = a nightmare that womanly affection and womanly reproduction have become separated, resulting in ruthless and uncontrollable proliferation

Aliens = the same, except with a sledgehammer rather than an icepick

(that first line is cribbed from Noah Berlatsky's "fecund horror" essay, which is brilliant and which everyone should read)

Andromeda Strain is suspense. All the "science" in it is bogus; the screenwriter made it up.

as screenwriters are apt to do! (Geo Lucas too)

vs. Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace

watched Robocop last night, and noticed that it featured at least two england footballer lookalikes, David Platt and Wayne Rooney

No MAC and me on this poll...so sad.

totally;_;

http://youtube.com/watch?v=8cqqjOUdgAw

more like Big Mac and me amirite

yeah I didn't vote - too hard. surprised to see Videodrome place so high and the Thing place so low tho.

I am pleased that Repo Man came in ahead of E.T..

Oops, forgot:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41SZPWZJT8L._AA280_.jpg

And Alan Rudolph's Endangered Species is either about aliens or black helicopters.

Oh, and with a similar poster, it turns out:
http://www.gasolinealleyantiques.com/celebrity/images/Movie/poster-endangered.JPG

everything thru the thing (and several after) i would take over any on the 90s list

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/d/d5/Zapped.jpg

I guess 80s teen science fiction is a whole other category.

of the top ten, i haven't seen videodrome or they live.
what are they all about and why do i love them>

oh man you need to see both asap, dude

i miss neon grids.

Videodrome is maybe DC's finest theorem about the New Flesh, I think of it every time I shoulder past some zombielike texter on the sidewalk

They Live is silly as hell but its good. Videodrome is definitely one of Cronenberg's high points and must be seen immediately.

also Zapped! gawd that is some funny shit

http://www.boomerangshop.com/dvdcover/ImageWeb/Heartbeeps19811059_f.jpg
http://eu.movieposter.com/posters/archive/main/3/A70-1988

^they also served.

i watched Outland last night. aside from a few silly plot points, it's pretty good! sean connery as wild west sheriff meets modern drugs/unions/corporations plot, set in space.

man The Hidden is great! can't believe I never saw that before. Deserved at least a vote :(

special lol @ Mrs. Haverchuck from Freaks and Geeks appearing as a stripper

You guys - there is this straight-to-VHS film from '87 called Death Row Game Show and it is amazing. Baffled that it never got a cult following, the blackly ironic tone is ridic.

I mean

http://cinapse.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Deathrow-Gameshow-03-Old-DVD.jpg

why don't i ask on one more thread -- anyone know this Sokurov '88 film?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_Eclipse