JohnnyMovie

I guess I take The Thing from Another World (1951).

Mondo Kane

Incredible Shrinking Man

Much better than I was led to believe.

NoirFan

Were you thrown off by the title? I would assume that the reviews are uniformly positive. It's probably the most reflective, moving science-fiction film of the decade, with a typically excellent Matheson script, from his book. A minor masterpiece, really.

Mondo Kane

Since the dollhouse scene appeared on It Came From Hollywood, I expected the whole thing to be amusingly corny. But It turned out to (Possibly) be the best movie I saw for this marathon.

NoirFan

Don't pay attention to any of the idiotic, lazy potshots in It Came from Hollywood. It's an insulting and, worst of all, painfully unfunny piece of shoddily edited junk far drearier than any of the films it attempts to mock.

BobO'Link

There are *many* excellent films in the list but for the *favorite* I have to go with:

"War of the Worlds"

I loved it as a child and still do.

JANK

Good poll, good thread, Forbidden Planet followed by War of the Worlds

Ky-Fi

Although maybe not in the top tier, Harryhausen's mentor, King Kong's Willis O'Brien worked his stop-motion magic on a couple 50's sci-fi movies: The Giant Behemoth and The Black Scorpion. The Black Scorpion in particular had some absolutely classic sci-fi images, IMO, especially when they went down into the cave of scorpions.

FRwL

So many good movies here, tough to choose between Gojira, This Island Earth, Creature from the Black Lagoon but... i'll go with zilla. Another good one was Mole People. Scifi is the biggest reason why i love 50s so much.

Charlie Goose

Bumping thread because I just saw 20 Million Miles to Earth with Ymir and his Wilford Brimley mustache for the first time this week, and Tarantula last month.

Now I have my appetite whetted for all the 50s sci-fi monsters that I haven't seen. Hopefully I can find most on Netflix.

Cabman Gray

Forbidden Planet

Charlie Goose

I hope nobody minds if I bump this thread from time to time when i see a new one.

IT! was pretty good, supposedly a basis for Alien. The monster is just a tall guy in a rubber suit, but he's suitably scary for the time I suppose. There were previous Monster-from-space-run-amok, but I wonder if this was the first monster-IN-space-run-amok.

Trevor

Definitely make sure it's bumped July 1st!

JANK

I Was A Teenage Caveman w Robert Vaughn deserves mention. The twist at the end is just fantastic!

chente

Incredible Shrinking Man but it was close!

Charlie Goose

What happens on July 1st?

Charlie Goose

Next on my list:


Starts out pretty dull. You can't imagine how a brain floating in a fish tank can convey any kind of menace. However, thanks to the performance of Lew Ayres, the second half isn't too bad. The brain itself is kind of hokey as it glows, pulsates, and thrashes about in its evil glory.

TomOpus

As a child growing up in the L.A. area, there was a local show called "Strange Tales of Science Fiction" that I would watch with my dad. I watched many of the films listed on the poll thanks to that show. To say I love '50's sci-fi is an understatement.

By today's standards they were very hokey with crude effects. But as a kid, it was great to wonder, "What if..."

Ash Ketchum

That's when the Sci-Fi Challenge starts over on the DVD Talk board. You should participate. In fact, you should ALL participate.

EddieMoney

While certainly not the best on the list, The Thing from Another World would be my favorite.

kd5

For me it would be a toss up between:

The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, or Forbidden Planet.

Hokeyboy

I have to go with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea as my favorite, but it was REAL close. Plenty of classics there. But Leagues wins it, if only because I saw it as a kid, at Walt Disney World, on our first night of a weeklong vacation there. And I was TRANSFIXED. The next day we went to the Magic Kingdom (back when it was the ONLY park there) and found out they had an actual ride based on the movie. Madness! My Dad bought me the book later on and it introduced me to Jules Verne and science-fiction as a whole.

I recently rewatched it, and it still holds up well. There's something really magical about it. I could argue that Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, even The Thing From Another World are 'better' movies in the traditional sense, but I don't love them like I love 20,000 Leagues.

Hokeyboy

TomOpus

And I share your love of 20,000 Leagues. It's still one of my favorites.

Ash Ketchum

I saw 20,000 LEAGUES on the big screen when they re-released it in 1971 and I took a whole group of kids from a community program to see it when I was a youth worker (I was in high school at the time). It was on a double bill with RETURN OF THE SEVEN. 20,000 LEAGUES is significant because it was Disney's first Cinemascope film, but it was also the first Disney film to feature a top boxoffice American star, Kirk Douglas. It put Disney in the big studio leagues for the first time.