Ultimate Cheesey Sci-Fi - 1970

flhrci said:
Found this quite by accident on Youtube. A series called UFO from 1970.

I am sooooo glad I was not around for this. LOL

Could there still be worse yet to find?

David
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Yes, The Starlost. I made the mistake of downloading the series, thinking it might be "campy".

 
Alphadog,

That might just do it! The music was horrible! ewwww

How much of The Star Lost did you watch?

David
 
flhrci said:
Alphadog,

That might just do it! The music was horrible! ewwww

How much of The Star Lost did you watch?

David
Click to expand...

Parts of a couple episodes. You can inflict full episodes on yourself on YouTube if you care to have a look.
 
flhrci said:
Never heard of that one. Looking up on the net....

David
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That is a classic terrible movie. Bela Lugosi's last "role". Ed Wood, the director, was played by Johnny Depp in the biopic the same name.

On the flip side, here is a cheesy sci-fi series that is a delight to watch, The Strangerers:

 
It was Gerry Anderson's attempt at live action. He had huge success with campy marionettes, the inspiration for Trey &Matt's Team America (f**k yeah!).
 
Any pilot who hasn't seen MST3K's version of The Starfighters, should. LOL
 
I thought the 80's return of "The Invaders" was pretty cheesy. Then you had "Space: 1999". On the other hand, I really liked "Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century".
It was those cheesy Sci-Fis that gave sci-fi a bad name.
 
alfadog said:
Yes, The Starlost. I made the mistake of downloading the series, thinking it might be "campy".
Click to expand...
The Starlost was based on a concept by Harlan Ellison, who no one ever accused of being "campy," and had Ben Bova, one of the leading writers in SF to be the technical adviser.

However, the producers warped it far beyond the pale and ignored the "professionals." Bova even wrote a fictionalization of the process, called "The Starcrossed."

"Plan 9" was a basic low-budget '50s horror film by that master of the genre, Ed Wood. Johnny Depp starred in the biographic pic about him, about 10-15 years ago, and it showed some of the aspects of its production (as well as his other efforts).

I remember liking "UFO" at the time, though no-doubt, if I saw it now, I'd view it differently. The movie had space fighters based on the moon. I swear one of the takeoff scenes deliberately tried to copy the look of Spitfires taking off.

Gerry Anderson's greatest claim to fame, of course, is the production of the first British TV series aired on an American network: "Fireball XL-5." I was at an impressionable age when that came out, and have a Fireball model in my den.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Bova even wrote a fictionalization of the process, called "The Starcrossed."
Ron Wanttaja
Click to expand...

Starcrossed is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Don't miss it if you can.

Plan 9 from Outer Space is generally considered the worse movie ever made. Johnny Depp stared in a movie about the Director Ed Wood and Martian Landau won an Oscar for his role playing Bela Lugosi. The movie Ed Wood, in contrast to the subject, is considered a top-notch movie.

Plan 9 is just bad enough to be campy. Others "worse" in the campy category include:

Reefer Madness -- "Dance faster, faster. I'm dancing as fast as I can!"
Glen and Glenda -- written, directed and starred in (as both Glen and Glenda) by Ed Wood of Plan 9 fame
Robot Monster (a gorilla in a deep diving helmet.)
The Horror of Party Beach

Truly Bad movies without being campy (and most lost a ton of money):
Myra Breckinridge
Caligula
Haven's Gate
Ishtar
Gigli
 
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tinerj said:
Truly Bad movies without being campy (and most lost a ton of money):
Myra Breckinridge
Caligula
Haven's Gate
Ishtar
Gigli
Click to expand...
You forgot Wag the Dog. How anyone could stay awake through more than the first 15 minutes mystifies me.
 
wanttaja said:
The Starlost was based on a concept by Harlan Ellison, who no one ever accused of being "campy," and had Ben Bova, one of the leading writers in SF to be the technical adviser.

However, the producers warped it far beyond the pale and ignored the "professionals." Bova even wrote a fictionalization of the process, called "The Starcrossed."
Click to expand...

Ellison hated it so much that he had his name removed. Bova wanted to but did not have that in his contract.
 
DaleB said:
You forgot Wag the Dog. How anyone could stay awake through more than the first 15 minutes mystifies me.
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Because it was the greatest satire and indictment of DC politics.
 
I used to like UFO. Of course, I was a pre-teen when they were showing the re-runs in the US.

Now, Space 1999. THAT was a cheesy series. Premise was that the moon got blown out of the Earth's orbit. It's about the survivors on the Moon Base.
 
I like UFO. I bought the DVD set. Given the constraints that Anderson had to work under, he did very well with it and provide a very broad-based concept.

Space: 1999 (while supplies last, with coupon, one per customer, was $24.99) was originally based on the UFO storyline, but after UFO was spiked, it was extensively reworked developed as a stand-alone for the US market.

You have to be careful not to judge these series against shows such as Babylon 5. In the days before Star Wars, science fiction was considered all but unmarketable. There were a handful of very well done films, such as Destination: Moon, Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still, but by and large science fiction was hard to find financial backing for.

Star Trek and Lost In Space were the first prime-time science fiction TV shows which featured a regular cast, and even those almost didn't get made. NEITHER made a profit, and UFO came on their heels, so there were a lot of shortcuts made.

To put this into perspective, when UFO was being produced, Burt Rutan had never heard the word "composites" (remember, the VariViggen was built from WOOD)! In the same way we look at aircraft completely differently today than in 1970, we can't expect TV of 1970 to have the same look and feel that we consider normal today.

Gerry Anderson gave my TV some of its best moments: Supercar, Fireball XL5, Thunderbirds and UFO, and he did it on a shoestring budget.
 
tinerj said:
Starcrossed is one of the funniest books I have ever read. Don't miss it if you can.



Plan 9 from Outer Space is generally considered the worse movie ever made. Johnny Depp stared in a movie about the Director Ed Wood and Martian Landau won an Oscar for his role playing Bela Lugosi. The movie Ed Wood, in contrast to the subject, is considered a top-notch movie.



Plan 9 is just bad enough to be campy. Others "worse" in the campy category include:



Reefer Madness -- "Dance faster, faster. I'm dancing as fast as I can!"

Glen and Glenda -- written, directed and starred in (as both Glen and Glenda) by Ed Wood of Plan 9 fame

Robot Monster (a gorilla in a deep diving helmet.)

The Horror of Party Beach



Truly Bad movies without being campy (and most lost a ton of money):

Myra Breckinridge

Caligula

Haven's Gate

Ishtar

Gigli
Click to expand...


You forgot every one of the Iron Eagle movies. LOL
 
I liked UFO, I was about 8 years old then. You can't appreciate it as much unless you watch it on an old color tv, broadcast analog over the air......
 
wanttaja said:
The Starlost was based on a concept by Harlan Ellison, who no one ever accused of being "campy," and had Ben Bova, one of the leading writers in SF to be the technical adviser.

However, the producers warped it far beyond the pale and ignored the "professionals." Bova even wrote a fictionalization of the process, called "The Starcrossed."

"Plan 9" was a basic low-budget '50s horror film by that master of the genre, Ed Wood. Johnny Depp starred in the biographic pic about him, about 10-15 years ago, and it showed some of the aspects of its production (as well as his other efforts).

I remember liking "UFO" at the time, though no-doubt, if I saw it now, I'd view it differently. The movie had space fighters based on the moon. I swear one of the takeoff scenes deliberately tried to copy the look of Spitfires taking off.

Gerry Anderson's greatest claim to fame, of course, is the production of the first British TV series aired on an American network: "Fireball XL-5." I was at an impressionable age when that came out, and have a Fireball model in my den.

Ron Wanttaja
Click to expand...

Somewhere in all the boxes, I've got a copy of "Starcrossed". IIRC one of the last sentences in the book as "What? And leave show business?!"
 
I'm amazed at the number of people here who have read "The Starcrossed," which is a very obscure book fictionalizing the events surrounding an even more obscure TV show.

When I met Harlan the first time (back in the '70s), I mentioned that I had bought a copy of the book, and he said "Oh, so YOU'RE the one!"
 
wanttaja said:
Gerry Anderson's greatest claim to fame, of course, is the production of the first British TV series aired on an American network: "Fireball XL-5."
Click to expand...

While I have fond memories of Fireball XL-5, Gerry is most remembered for "Thunderbirds," which inspired the creation of a REAL International Rescue group! Haynes even published a shop manual covering the Thunderbirds machines.

He also did "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun," a feature film with an interesting premise.
 
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SoloEqs said:
He also did "Journey to the Far Side of the Sun," a feature film with an interesting premise.
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I always think about that movie when I reach for a light switch and can't find it. (Gotta watch the movie to get it. Seriously obscure reference.)

ScottM said:
For really bad Sci-Fi of that era I turn to the movie Battle Beyond the Stars with Richard Thomas

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080421/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_70

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I actually saw that one in the theater!
 
Ishtar.

Oh, wait, that wasn't sci-fi. How about "Repo Man"?
 
Purple hair moon women in silver, come on it doesn't get any better....
 
RevDMV said:
Purple hair moon women in silver, come on it doesn't get any better....
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It did when the one lady changed from silver pants into silver mini-skirt. And they spent like ten minutes it seemed showing her checking her makeup. :D

David
 
Wait, Repo man is not campy. It's just a very fine movie (most are when Harry Dean Stanton is in them.) "The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."
 
I'm actually a bit of a fan of UFO. I've got all the DVDs and a couple of books on the series.

As for the Starlost, that one is really an indication of how bad an implementation can be. Harlan Ellison (not my favorite author, as I like to say "I Have No Brain But I Must Write") wrote a pretty good screenplay for the pilot which was absolutely screwed up by idiots in production. Ben Bova wrote a parody of the whole thing called "The Starcrossed." There's a forward by Ellison telling his brief view of how it happened. The book "Phoneix without Ashes" novelized by Ed Bryant on Ellison's story is pretty good.
 
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