… the search continues.
The hunt for overlooked genre films (see my previous post) resumed in Buffalo, NY, when Hugo Award Winning artist Frank Wu hosted a panel on forgotten science fiction films.
Held on the first day of the 16th North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), the panel gave me the chance to join featured writers Ira Nayman, Matthew S. Rotundo, and Stephen R. Wilk in a gameshow format that cast panelists as contestants and audience members as judges.
Here’s how Frank explained the rules to the members of the audience:
“A panelist will name a movie, and then you–the studio audience–will judge it. You raise … two hands if you saw it and liked it, one hand if you saw it and didn’t like it.”
Frank explained he would then tabulate a score based on the film’s obscurity (the percentage of audience members who saw the film) and popularity (the number of people who saw it and liked it).
So, let’s look at the movies covered in the first round.
Phase IV
Matthew S. Rotundo kicked things off by naming this Saul Bass film from 1974. “It’s a very creepy exercise involving super-intelligent ants,” Matthew explained. “They’re not supersize ants, just regular but intelligent ants. I saw it when I was a kid and it creeped me the hell out.”
Phase IV’s creep factor comes in large part from Bass’s judicious use of close-up footage of real ants in action. Shot by Ken Middleham, the wildlife photographer who also photographed the insect sequences for the award-winning documentary The Hellstrom Chronicle (1971), Phase IV delivers a sense of realism lightyears ahead of the wonky puppets of Them (1954) or the rear-screen projections of The Beginning of the End (1957).
But despite its merits, Phase IV remains relatively obscure, as attested by the 88.6% never-seen score the film received from our studio audience. However, 75% of those who had seen it said they enjoyed it. Indeed, the praise was so great that many of those who had never heard of it said they were eager to give it a look.
“That’s one of the great things about a panel like this,” Matthew said. “It makes you aware of great movies you haven’t seen.”
Phase IV can be streamed on numerous platforms (Amazon, Apple+, Google Play, and others). It’s also available in a newly restored 4K edition from Vinegar Syndrome, complete with a commentary track and making-of documentary.
The Angry Red Planet
This film was my recommendation, and I thank writer Michael Libling (see previous post) for reminding me that it is one of the weirdest forgotten space movies of the 1950s.
Here’s the pitch.
The first rocket to Mars has crash-landed on Earth.
The Mission Commander is unconscious with a green parasite growing from his arm.
The mission scientist is conscious but unable to recall what has happened.
In an effort to save the commander’s life, the scientist agrees to be injected with a powerful psychotropic drug that might unlock her memories and offer the clues needed to save the commander.
And so—with her recollections filtered through both a mind-altering drug and the terrible trauma she lived through on Mars, the scientist tells of an expedition to a strange, red-tinted world inhabited by some of the wildest creatures ever to appear in a science fiction film.
That’s one of the Martian monsters pictured below, rendered in the surreal, red-tinted glare that producer Sid Pink called Cinemagic.
According to the panel’s audience, The Angry Red Planet is less obscure than Phase IV. Sixty-five percent of those in attendance had not seen it, but although those who had gave it a liked-it rating of 91.7%, the score was not enough to overtake Phase IV.
The Angry Red Planet is currently streaming on Amazon, but unfortunately, a bare-bones Blu-Ray edition that Shout Factory! released in 2017 is out of print and no longer available on their website. Let’s hope that means someone is prepping a deluxe edition like the Phase IV disk mentioned above.
It: The Terror from Beyond Space
Stephen R. Wilk selected this cat-and-mouse space adventure from the 1950s.
Though dated in some ways, most notably in its portrayal of women crew members who serve coffee to the male astronauts (many of whom smoke cigarettes onboard the ship), the film is nevertheless, as Stephen pointed out, “one of the high points of 1950s science fiction.”
While summarizing the film, Stephen made a case for It: The Terror being the inspiration for Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). The similarities are evident not only in how the monster inhabits the ship’s ventilation system but also in the way the humans outwit the creature in the film’s climax.
Interestingly, the It creature seems to have a projecting tongue similar to the one in Scott’s Alien. However, according to Glenn Erikson at Trailers from Hell, that tongue is actually the chin of man-in-the-suit Ray Corrigan, whose “head was too big for the mask.”
It: The Terror‘s never-seen-it score was 78.4%, with a liked-it score of 62.5%, both of which combined to put the film in third place behind Phase IV and Angry Red Planet.
It: The Terror from Beyond Space is available on Amazon, Apple+, and most other major platforms.
You can also watch it on a fine Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber, which includes three audio commentaries and a featurette by film historian Craig Beam.
Avalon
No, it’s not the 1990 Barry Levinson film about an immigrant family living in early 20th-century Baltimore.
Rather, it’s a Polish-Japanese film about “a professional VR gamer who learns of an ultra-secret level that allows a person to enter an alternate reality.” That’s how Ira Nayman summarized his pick for a great-but-forgotten movie–a cinematic work so obscure that no one in the panel’s studio audience had ever seen or heard of it!
So how did Ira come across it?
“I was teaching a course at the University of Toronto,” he explained. “One part of the course was on artificial intelligence and virtual reality, and one of my students said, ‘Oh, you’re into virtual reality? You have to see this movie!’ And he gave me a DVD.”
And that’s how Ira took over first place in the Great But Obscure Movie game.
Directed by Mamoru Oshii, Avalon was apparently released in 2001. That’s according to IMDb, although Ira recalled it being available earlier. (If any movie buffs out there have additional information, please let us know by leaving a comment.)
You can stream Avalon on Amazon, where you can also find links to vendors selling imported DVDs and VHS tapes.
And the winner is …
Not so fast. A lightning round followed, and things were about to change.
Nevertheless, coming up with something as obscure as Avalon easily put Ira in first-place at halftime.
Matthew was in second, and Stephen and yours truly were bringing up the rear.
So … be sure to stop back here later this week to find out what other films were discussed and who actually won the Great but Forgotten Movie Game.
I’ll meet you here!
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