Pre-Star Wars sci-fi

Any recommendations of sci-fi movies from the 1970s and earlier?

I haven't seen many. I enjoyed 2001: A Space Odyssey. How is Metropolis? It seems like it's revered as a pioneering movie in the genre.

Logan's Run is a great flick. But I haven't really seen much more than that, Planet of the Apes & 2001.

Metropolis is very good, but you have to keep in mind its age. It's an expressionist film, so they tend to overact intentionally (it works for the movie, but I don't know how someone would react if they didn't know), and the climax goes on for to long IMO. Also, much of the movie is missing; it was 3 and a half hours originally, but the longest version available now is less than 2 and a half (I might be a bit off on the numbers), so sometimes there will be some odd transitions and noticable missing bits (at one point in the version I saw, you see a screen saying "Maria escaped" and then a shot of her running away from the house with no explanation as to how that happened). Aside from those issues, it is definitely a very solid film, and it's worth watching just to see where so much stuff in other movies came from.

I always had a fondness for Forbidden Planet as a kid.

Invisible monsters, a hot babe skinny dipping,and an eerie foreign planet setting with odd noises throughout the whole movie make for an instant classic in the older sci-fi genre.

You can usually still catch a showing or two on American Movie Classics or Turner Classic Movies occasionally.

War of the Worlds and The Day the Earth Stood Still should be your first rentals. Both coupled with Forbidden Planet are revered as scifi classics.

"War" has this martian invasion vibe with humans worldwide going nuts. "Day" on the other hand focuses on one visitor and his message to planet earth. It's better known for the KLAATU BARADA NIKTU quote used in a bunch of other movies like Army of Darkness.

I've never watched Forbidden Planet but I know it has Leslie Nielsen of Naked Gun fame in it. Everyone tells me it's awesome anyway.

My personal reccomendations though would be the Fly/Return of the Fly double feature dvd. I'm a big Vincent Price fan and this guy will not let you down. He's also in another neat one called Last Man on Earth which I picked up at the dollar section in Target a while back.

It's a bit hard to give reccomendations when so much SciFi meshes with Horror. Technically, Horror is just violent SciFi. There's also schlock scifi like the Godzilla movies. Monster Zero gets my pick btw.

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Originally Posted by Xeno G

Logan's Run is a great flick.

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Cool movie but so goddamn goofy. That soundtrack cracks me up every time.

If you want '70s sci-fi, you've gotta watch the Heston flicks:

Soylent Green and The Omega Man

The Day the Earth Stood Still is the biggest piece of shit to ever be considered a classic. Seriously, only a moron would consider that Draconian nonsense thought-provoking or interesting.

I agree with Logan's Run, Soylent Green, Forbidden Planet, etc. (Logan's run is a favorite of mine -- goofy stuff that only the 70s could have delivered -- to think, I actually saw it in the theater...).

You might want to try Silent Running with (I think) Bruce Dern. A fairly serious sci-fi effort from the early 70s.

There were a few sci-fi flicks that hit just after starwars, obviously trying to cash in on the money train, but I can't think of too many that come to mind immediately as pre starwars. The Black Hole was Disney's attempt to cash in, and while its somewhat sad now, and I dont think the science was ever believable, its still a solid movie.

Nobody's mentioned all the old Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon shorts, but I'm not sure just how many of them you could find really.