Holy Smokes!! “A flakey time macine and a future chick named Cupcake.”
I so missed out on this one.
All that, and a dog named Mr. Cool too.
Flashback !
Silent Running !! Bruce Dern, and his little robot buddies Huey, Dewy, and Louie, the precursors to R2D2 !! A 1972 special effects extravaganza ! John Dykstra earned his chops on this one, and Doug Trumbull as well. If this has been mentioned previously I missed it. And unless I’m mistaken the original BSG series used shots of this movie’s “fleet” in space.
Silent Running was great. Moody and very touching.
Silent Runnings footage was also recycled in what I consider my most obscure Sci-Fi memory, the Canadian show The Starlost.
(It used exterior clips from the movie when it was repackaged as a series of “movies” for American markets.)
Here’s a shot of their original ship.
All I remember is a guy walking from dome to dome in a 200 mile “ark” ship.
I was very young when I saw this, and the concept of a ship that size just blew my mind at the time.
Follow this link for more:
http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/star.html
Starlost was the second Sci-Fi show I ever saw. My cousin plopped me down in front of a TV when I was about four and showed me “Star Trek” which was followed by “The Starlost.”
For the longest time I thought I misremembered “Silent Running” as that show. I only recently found the WikiP entry on it.
And then the footage of the Valley Forge was used again in BSG:TOS as the Agro ships. 
Pretty cool stuff in the early 70’s.
Though arguably sci-fi (the ending makes it so), lets not forget
-Repoman.
One of the best soundtracks on film. (See also: The Crow; Natural Born Killers; O Brother, Where Art Thou?)
It’s because of this film that, when I whistle the “Secret Agent Man” theme, it’s the Spanish version.
And how I learned the Pablo Picasso was never called a [colon egress], …not like me.
and while I’m in the 80s:
-The Man Who Fell to Earth (Bowie)
-Cat People (Bowie title song didn’t have the inane “putting out the fire with gasoline” refrain that the radio version had)
-Brother From Another Planet
-Liquid Sky
-Altered States
-Earth Girls Are Easy
oh my…Altered States…I saw a double feature once, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Altered States. And boy did my friends and I alter our states before we went into the movie ! Yikes, those were the bad old days.
Quote the gospel according to Marv
These are the old days, the bad days, the all-or-nothing days
Hey Lonely Toaster. As a UK resident I definitely remember both UFO and Space 1999 which have both been repeated this year in the UK.
Just in case you did not know, UFO was supposed to get a second series, in which SHADO would be a much bigger organisation with a much larger infrastructure, so a larger model of the moonbase with armed ships were built and all the costumes designed and made. When UFO was cancelled, Space 1999 was created to justify all the costs spent in advance. Hence the same hair, clothes and spaceship design.
Just to add about forgotten Sci-Fi, does anybody remember Dark Star or Earth 2?
Roger Corman’s crap-tastic Seven Samauri-esque
Battle Beyond the Stars anyone?
Great score,
Cheesy Aliens…
Boobs…
and a ship design that should have been in any movie called SpaceBalls.
Viewed from another angle, it’s a uterus.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=uterus&btnG=Google+Search
I am going to file that under, “What the frak were they thinking?” If you take a different perspective it can meet Audra’s requirement to always have a boob scene.
Funny, first thing I thought of was that “hammerhead” guy from Star Wars. I’m such a dork!
Yeah, I remember that…
“Johnny, what can you make out of this?”
“This? Why, I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl… Raawr, Raaawr!”
What is that Corman flick called, again? “Space Boobs”?
Mentioned it a few podcasts ago, but y’all might get a kick out of Lathe of Heaven. It’s got a few things going for it:
- Crazy cheese-70s production value
- Based on a classic Ursula LeGuin sci-fi text
- One of the loopiest time continuum mindfracks put to film (to that point, at least)
- The fact that it was unavailable and out of print for years, thereby enhancing its legend
- Bruce “Psycho Doc Roberts” Davison is the star, though nobody will recognize him from his BSG or X-men turns
- A DVD extra interview with LeGuin conducted by (gasp) Bill Moyers.
- Apparently, PBS’ biggest film production ever.
It’s available on Netflix.
When I grew up (late '60s/early 70’s) we didn’t have so many channels or syndication options as later. The few channels we had if they didn’t have network shows would play old movies, again and again and again.
There were really trashy ones, but I’ll try to keep my list to the must-watch. Many of these movies are archetypes of many later movies, or the original to the remakes.
Destination Moon(1950) - tries to realistic for 1950
The Thing (1951) - ends with the “Keep watching the skies!” speech.
The War of the World (1953) - Not Cruise’s version. First time a spaceship wasn’t some rocket or saucer. Creepy alien too.
Them (1954) - The best of the radiation makes the animals get big movie. Creepy sound effects.
The Forbidden Planet (1956) - Everyone must see this movie! Almost every SF movie since has borrowed something from this movie.
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) - I don’t remember the red scare, but my dad did build a bomb shelter in the basement. This was a total allegory to the fear that communist were among us.
The Fly(1958) - Oh, but the grace of a no-pest-strip go I.