With our most recent review completed, it's high time for our fifth retrospective, as we commemorate the highs and lows of the 50 Sci-Fi Classics box set -- or, at least, the version that's included with our 250-movie Horror Collection mega-box set.
As a reminder, the 250-pack is essentially a compilation of five pre-existing box sets, of which 50 Sci-Fi Classics is the fifth and final set. As they did with Nightmare Worlds and Tales of Terror, Mill Creek thoughtfully eliminated six films that would have duplicated movies seen elsewhere on the big box, specifically:
The Alpha Incident
The Amazing Transparent Man
The Atomic Brain
Menace from Outer Space
She Gods of Shark Reef
The Wasp Woman
These were replaced by five films, mostly peplum, with only one borderline science-fiction movie in the mix:
Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops
Goliath and the Dragon
Hercules and the Masked Rider
Lucifer Complex
Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules
So, if you have the standalone version of 50 Sci-Fi Classics, please don't be confused by all the muscular men in sandals. And if you have an even older version made by Treeline -- the original one that had Zontar, Robot Monster, and Battle of the Worlds, before those got pulled -- then hooray for you.
All told, the revisions made to 50 Sci-Fi Classics have resulted in a set that should really be called 49 Movies (50% Sci-Fi, 20% Peplum, 30% Other Stuff), but them's the breaks.
Now, 14 months since our last awards ceremony -- and ten years and change since we started this project (and this site!) -- here are our nominees:
Actual Best Movie Award:
Assignment: Outer Space
Astral Factor
Giants of Rome
Snowbeast
Teenagers from Outer Space
Winner: Teenagers from Outer Space
We're tempted to hand this one to Snowbeast, which we fondly remember from a snowed-in afternoon of ages past, or to Assignment: Outer Space for its "hard" science fiction approach and post-racial outlook.
But it's not for nothing that we described Teenagers from Outer Space as "one of the most fun, endearing, sincere, and oddly memorable films we've seen in this box". It's everything a B-picture should be, and somehow manages to radiate warmth and joy while simultaneously maintaining a brisk pace and a high body count. Snarky critics be damned, Teenagers is a gem.
Actual Worst Movie Award:
Colossus and the Amazon Queen
Kong Island
Mesa of Lost Women
Prehistoric Women
Snow Creature
Winner: Prehistoric Women
There's a lot of pain etched in this list, but the winner was clear: we just didn't enjoy a minute, or even a moment, of Prehistoric Women. It had us groaning and cringing from beginning to end, offering no delights or clever moments to compensate for its crushing obviousness, and leaving us embarrassed for everyone involved.
When you manage to make Wild Women of freakin' Wongo look good by comparison, you know you've seriously misfired.
So-Bad-It's-Good Award:
Eegah
Galaxy Invader
Laser Mission
Lucifer Complex
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Winner: Laser Mission
After a long period without enough fitting nominees to muster a slate, it's nice to see this category come back. And the winner has to be Laser Mission, an absurd and self-aware action film that choogles its way through Namibia and South Africa, with Brandon Lee doing his best Bruce Campbell impersonation all the while. It's a near-ideal choice to watch with friends.
Best Hercules Movie:
Big slate for this one:
Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops
Goliath and the Dragon
Hercules Against the Moon Men
Hercules and the Captive Women
Hercules and the Masked Rider
Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon
Hercules Unchained
Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules
Son of Hercules: The Land of Darkness
Winner: Hercules and the Captive Women
There was some serious competition from Mole Men, which benefits from that glorious "Mighty Sons of Hercules" earworm. But in the end we had to give it to Hercules and the Captive Women, which strikes just the right tone: not too heavy on the comic relief, not too serious. Some don't like Reg Park as Hercules, but we thought he was near-ideal.
Also note that we've disqualified Giants of Rome, which is probably the best peplum on the box, but doesn't have a Hercules, Maciste, Colossus, or Goliath character.
(The Worst Hercules Movie, by the way, is easily Colossus and the Amazon Queen. Just excruciating on every level, and probably our runner-up for the Actual Worst Movie Award.)
Best Gamera Movie:
Attack of the Monsters
Destroy All Planets
Gammera the Invincible
Winner: The committee declines to name a winner in this category.
Having watched the first five Gamera movies, our position is that the two films not on this box -- #2 War of the Monsters and #3 Return of the Giant Monsters -- are so much better than the above three, it seems unjust to award anything to #1, #4, or #5.
The Hack 'n Slash Award for Bad Re-editing:
Lost Jungle
Planet Outlaws
Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Crash of the Moons
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
Winner: Planet Outlaws
No problems with Lost Jungle or Rocky Jones, and though it pains us to lose Masha, there's a kind of ingenuity to the two films that reworked Planet of Storms.
That leaves the editors who turned the Buck Rogers serial into a feature film. In their haste to trim four hours down to one, they managed to make a film whose narrative felt rushed and choppy, yet overlong and repetitive. It's not horrible, but it sure is a hack job -- and so Planet Outlaws gets the booby prize.
The Peter Loew Award:
Bride of the Gorilla
Cosmos: War of the Planets
Horrors of Spider Island
Moon of the Wolf
Winner: Moon of the Wolf
In all these films, someone turns into something (quiet, ZaSu Pitts), and that something runs amok. But Moon of the Wolf offered the most engaging tale of the bunch, taking advantage of its sleepy bayou setting to spin its lougarou yarn.
Subterranean Homesick Blues Award:
Incredible Petrified World
Killers from Space
Phantom Planet
Unknown World
Winner: Unknown World
Since none of these films were any great shakes, we'll give it to the one that went the deepest underground -- by far. And that's Unknown World, which would have turned into molten magma about 5% of the way into its journey, but otherwise did its thing resolutely.
She's The Boss And A Tough One Award:
Hercules Against the Moon Men
Prehistoric Women
Queen of the Amazons
Rocky Jones, Space Ranger: Crash of the Moons
They Came from Beyond Space
Winner: Suzerain Cleolanthe from Crash of the Moons
Queen Samara from Moon Men is willing to betray the entire human race to gain power. But heck, there weren't that many people back then to begin with: a few million, maybe?
Meanwhile, Cleolanthe doesn't even blink when ordering the destruction of an entire planet, so she gets the nod. She may not be Queen of Ophiuchius, but she's certainly the Queen of RBF.
The Unexpectedly Color-Blind Award:
Assignment: Outer Space
Blood Tide
First Spaceship on Venus
Planet Outlaws
Winner: Assignment: Outer Space
First Spaceship on Venus shows people of different races working side by side, but does so for propaganda purposes. Blood Tide and Planet Outlaws have prominent minority characters whose race is never even mentioned -- no big deal for a 1980 film, but downright remarkable in the case of a serial from 1938.
That said, Assignment: Outer Space impressed us the most in this department. Archie Savage is the first person you see in the film, not a word is said about his race, and he's arguably the hero of the whole affair. The phrase "post-racial" seems silly now, but had things gone a bit differently, our future could have looked like Assignment: Outer Space.
The You're-No-Horta-But-You'll-Do Award:
Attack of the Monsters
Killers from Space
Phantom from Space
They Came from Beyond Space
Warning from Space
Winner: Warning from Space
In this category for absurd aliens of roughly humanoid proportions, the easy winners are the starmen from Warning for Space. They remind us of the wonderful creatures from the intro to the Starman/Super Giant movies -- heck, it may even be the same set of costumes for all we know.
(Those googly-eyed fellows in Killers from Space definitely deserve an honorable mention, though.)
Special Awards for Special Campers:
The "Let's Just Kill the Whole Cast" Award:
It's not literally true that (spoiler) every named character in The Brain Machine gets offed, but when you're dealing with a film this unrelentingly grim, it's no surprise that we come close. Certainly, everyone who has a trace of human kindness gets the axe -- as do several with little or none to spare.
The Ongo-ing Concern Award (tie):
So if White Pongo somehow got loose and made it over to where The Wild Women of Wongo live, and then he somehow imported a Sega arcade machine from 1983 that hadn't been translated from the original Japanese, you'd have Wongo Pongo's nihongo Congo Bongo.
And if you paired that up with a rhinoceros from The Legend of Zelda...
...or a drone by Charlemagne Palestine...
...or an Afro-Cuban percussionist...
Does that mean we're done with the 250-pack? Well, not quite. For one, we'd like to do a retrospective overview of the whole pack -- and since we obviously can't address 250 films in one post, we'll be taking an approach that's slightly different from the retrospectives we've done thus far.
And before we can do that, we have some unfinished business with a few films...
And before we can do that, we have some unfinished business with a few films...
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