ueno_station54 vs. 100 Greatest Sci-Fi Classics

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feral housewife
12-09-21


I've had this stupid boxset for years (which is actually two different 50 movie boxsets stuck together) and I think its finally time to make my way through it. I doubt I'll actually keep this up but hopefully making it a whole thing will keep me motivated to some extent. Basically going to pick a number between 1-98 (yes there's actually only 98 films, what a ripoff) via RNG and watch it, give a little review hopefully (I suspect a lot of these will have nothing worth talking about) and place them on this incredibly scuffed MS Paint tier list:



There's no "S" tier because, lets be honest, there will not be an S-tier film in this set and since I'm expecting a large influx of F-tier films I've added the Super F tier to split those up a bit.

So yeah, I'll be starting the first film shortly after I post this and that film is War of the Robots from 1978 starring Antonio Sabato.
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12-09-21
Best of luck, the RNG picked a real cracker to start with



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That elusive hide-and-seek cow is at it again
12-09-21
The thread title alone deserves its own like. Great setup and I'm kinda looking forward to seeing how this plays out
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feral housewife
12-09-21
Film #1
War of the Robots



Basic plot goes aliens kidnap a scientist and his assistant who have found out how to create life from scratch and a group of space cops chase them down.

I really couldn't have asked for a better first film. This is exactly what comes to mind when you think of cheapo sci-fi crap. Big grey consoles with blinking lights and video screens, people with bad wigs wearing a track suit with a big waist belt, laser guns that don't actually shoot anything, you love to see it. That being said, the film kind of pulls this stuff off pretty well. The sets are generally a bit bigger than I would have thought and have some cool design ideas like a giant glowing orb in the middle of one room or details on the walls to make them look a bit more convincingly like steel. The costumes range from funny bad to legitimately sick like the main crew's space suits which are bright blue or orange and look like leather or the scientist just straight up wearing a wizard cloak. There's even some cool lighting effects here and there and the music is so rad. These really light feeling synths mixed with militaristic marching rhythms. So sick.

Most of the film I was thinking "this is one or two hype moments away from being a classic" and spoilers we don't really get that. Like there's enough little moments to keep the film fun and moving along but the last act drops the ball pretty heavily. A lot of it is this really drawn out space dogfight that just has no energy to it whatsoever. That and the fight scenes prior to that they just forgot to add sound effects to lmao. I'm not taking points away for this even though its a huge problem but the framing is disastrous and the reason I'm not taking away points for it is because I'm like 80% sure its mostly because it was cropped. It looks like they pan-and-scanned a fullscreen transfer to make it widescreen again. I expected better from you *checks notes* Mill Creek Entertainment... nevermind. Overall I still like it but just doesn't quite capitalize on its potential.



Cool, we're off to an alright start. Hopefully it won't be too long before I get to the next one. Speaking of the next one, the random number generator has been engaged and our next film will be The Astral Factor from 1976 featuring Robert Foxworth (I don't know who that is but the box gives you that info to get you hyped).
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Fouke-a-delic
12-09-21
Originally Posted by ueno_station54
the framing is disastrous and the reason I'm not taking away points for it is because I'm like 80% sure its mostly because it was cropped. It looks like they pan-and-scanned a fullscreen transfer to make it widescreen again. I expected better from you *checks notes* Mill Creek Entertainment... nevermind.
My dad has the Mill Creek "Warriors" set. I'm the only member of the family that's willing to sit through any of the films with him, so on Father's Day or birthdays I'll watch one with him and they're all wretched. Like they were dug out of a landfill somewhere. One time we got about 20 minutes into one when we both called out "Wait- this is in color??" It was so washed-out it was basically monochrome. Fun times.




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feral housewife
12-09-21
Originally Posted by Captain Terror
My dad has the Mill Creek "Warriors" set. I'm the only member of the family that's willing to sit through any of the films with him, so on Father's Day or birthdays I'll watch one with him and they're all wretched. Like they were dug out of a landfill somewhere. One time we got about 20 minutes into one when we both called out "Wait- this is in color??" It was so washed-out it was basically monochrome. Fun times.

Spoilers: I'm pretty sure there's going to be a surprising amount of overlap between the sci-fi and warriors sets.



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"How tall is King Kong ?"
12-11-21
Originally Posted by ueno_station54
The costumes range from funny bad to legitimately sick like the main crew's space suits which are bright blue or orange and look like leather or the scientist just straight up wearing a wizard cloak.
I'd have loved a couple of screenshots for stuff like this (and space guns and space ships and space robots, etc... I have a huge love for cheap old school space designs).
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feral housewife
12-13-21
Film #2
The Astral Factor


INT. Home for the Criminally Insane
Two prisoners sit in opposing cells.
Prisoner A
*Begins phasing out of reality*

Prisoner B
Hey what are you doing? I'll kick your a**.

Prisoner A
*Telepathically beats Prisoner B's a** with his own mattress, then leaves*

Now this is how you open a film.

So from here on out we have an invisible killer who is strangling a bunch of actresses and its kind of just a cop movie.

I don't have a ton to say about like the technical aspects of the film. To the surprise of no one this transfer is from a completely unrestored copy of the film and there's some wild **** going on visually as a result that I don't have the know-how to explain but once you get past all that its a surprisingly competently shot film. Not much going on in terms of design elements but it looks pretty good. Well, it did at one point probably. Anyway, here's a list of wacky things that happen (spoilers ofc):

-For whatever reason the opening scene is shot with TV cameras and the rest is on film.

-The cops track down the killer (like 25 minutes in) so he turns invisible and hurls innumerable vases at them.

-Cop's wife bakes him a cake that doesn't work, I don't know how to describe it further.

-They didn't know how to end a dialogue scene so they decided to have one of the cops drop his food out of the car window, stop the car, pick it up, hop back in and keep eating, end scene.

-Killer reverse DDTs a cop off a boat.

-Killer, despite being able to turn invisible, carries out one of his murders wearing a scuba suit. He evades police by taking the suit off but we've already seen him turn invisible with clothes on before??

-Killer is thwarted by either an electrified stairwell or gunshot, it is unclear, and he is then launched into the cosmos or something??

Other than like 15-20 minutes of exposition and setup early on that's pretty dull its a fun movie. The character dynamics are kinda cute, the wacky moments of course, and when its not doing wacky things its still like watchable. I like it.



Can't complain so far. Let's see if our next film, Snowbeast from 1977 featuring Bo Svenson can continue that trend.
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