A Long But Not Pointless Ramble In Which We Discuss Sci-Fi Flicks

We’re gonna ramble around a bunch of connected topics,
so pour yourself a cuppa and enjoy the ride.

. . .

I’m a big fan of 1950s sci-fi B-movies.

Years ago, when I was chatting with the late film historian Bill Warren on this, he made a pertinent observation:  1950s sci-fi B-movies tend to be more fondly remembered than most better mounted and more professionally executed sci-fi films that came afterwards.

There’s a couple of three reasons for this:

1. The shock of the new -- most of those films pioneered a brand new genre and style, looking far different from previous genre offerings such as Flash Gordon or Things To Come.  As such, they score branding points by being first, even if later examples are better made.
   

2. They possess a certain naïve charm -- by and large they’re not sophisticated nor exceptionally well thought out (though when they do demonstrate flashes of intellect, it’s always a delight).  One feels these films are being made up on the fly (and in a certain sense, they were; see (1) above) and in an odd manner they prove more innocent and thus more fun than those that came later.
   

3. Most of them were cheap -- this combines with points (1) & (2) to force most 1950s sci-fi B-movies to focus tightly on one idea / one image to sell the film.  As a result there’s a startling clarity of vision in even the most flimsy of productions that’s lacking in later, more elaborate movies.  The weaker examples of this genre are those films trying to cover more ground than their cheaper cousins.

. . .

Two cases in point:  Jack Arnold’s Tarantula for Universal is a technically better made movie than Bert I. Gordon’s The Spider for AIP, but Tarantula loses focus, dawdling about on character development and sub-plots instead of concentrating on the big ass spider.

The Spider is far weaker in the script / performances / production value departments, but who gives a %#@& ? -- it’s got a big ass spider tearing up the countryside for most of the picture.

Not to put down Arnold and his effects crew’s efforts; they ingeniously figured out a way to not only get their tarantula to realistically crawl over uneven landscapes but actually cast a shadow as it did so, heightening the realism.

Gordon, conversely, simple shot his spider in front of still photos; the shots look as crude as they sound.

But The Spider delivers what Tarantula only teases:  An attack by said big ass spider on a population center.  Tarantula famously ends with an uncredited Clint Eastwood napalming the monster in the desert on the outskirts of town; The Spider actually goes rampaging through its town, and features one of the most iconic shots of any sci-fi movie:  As the big ass spider bears down on her, a terrified woman slams her car door shut on her skirt and in her panic tries to tug it loose instead of simply opening the door again.

George Lucas crowds the screen with thousands of furiously dogfighting CGI starships and that lacks the gut punching impact of that one simple terrifying shot. 

. . .

An even more pertinent example can be found in the oeuvre of Irving Block and Jack Rabin (I know, you’re going “Who?”  Patience, young jedi; all will be explained below).

Block and Rabin (along with Louis DeWitt, their silent 3rd partner) ran a small special effects house in Hollywood in the late 1940s-50s with an interesting strategy for drumming up business.

They’d devise an interesting yet inexpensive (i.e., clever but cheap) special effects technique, build a story around it, then pitch that story to low budget movie producers with the proviso their firm would be hired to do the special effects for the final film.

This resulted in a number of low budget sci-fi films built around the kernel of an interesting visual, and while they might not have been great examples of the cinematic art, they certainly created a number of memorable scenes and images from little more than scotch tape and rubber bands.

Unknown World was their take on Jules Verne’s Journey To The Center Of The Earth (no dinosaurs but then again, no Pat Boone, so they came out ahead on that one); Atomic Submarine pitted the US Navy against a UFO; Kronos featured a wholly unique alien invader; and War Of The Satellites staged an epic space opera on a bargain basement budget.

All noteworthy 1950s sci-fi B-movies, but ironically it was the film where their strategy failed -- or rather, only proved 50% successful -- that stands out.

Figuring out how to make footprints appear as if by magic, Block and Rabin devised a story about a spaceship landing on a planet of invisible monsters (as they pointed out, the great thing about invisible monsters is that even the cheapest production can afford millions of ‘em).

Their agent sent the pitch around to all the usual suspects at that time in the low budget indie film universe but, learning another studio not known for low budget sci-fi wanted to hop on the band wagon, sent it there as well.

That studio bought the idea, thanked Block and Rabin for their input, but said they’d let their own B-movie unit team handle the special effects,

And that’s how MGM made Forbidden Planet.

. . .

Today Forbidden Planet is a much beloved classic of the genre, but when released it proved a bit of a disappointment.

Oh, it made money (then and now, studios refuse to fund a production unless they already know in advance they will recoup their expenses and make a profit in advance of actual production) but it didn’t do anywhere near the business they hoped.

Part of this was timing -- it came out after dozens of lesser / cheaper films crowded the market -- but part of it is paradox:  It’s just too damn good.

No bones about it, Forbidden Planet was a B-movie for MGM.

In terms of overall quality, however, any MGM B-movie is bound to look like an A-picture from any other studio, and that’s exactly what happened here:  A literate, dynamite script; solid performances; top notch production values; bursting at the seams with ideas and incidents and details.

Sci-fi fans loved it, mainstream audiences not so much.

What sci-fi fans perceived as a groundbreaking classic, mainstream audiences viewed as:  Flying saucer something something something robot blah blah blah invisible monster.

What audiences today remember when they think of Forbidden Planet is the single most iconic element of the film.

Robby the robot.

He’s what sticks.  Robby made a big enough impression to star in his own follow up feature a few years later (The Invisible Boy) as well as guest star appearances on The Twilight Zone, Lost In Space, Columbo, and scores of other movies / TV shows / personal appearances.

Pick an iconic element.
Stick with it.

. . .

The trick to doing memorable sci-fi movies is keeping the key visual elements down to as few sharply defined items as possible.

Star Wars (i.e., the unnumbered original release) is even more crowded in detail than Forbidden Planet but it holds its iconic visual elements down to a crucial handful:  Masked villain in black.  Laurel & Hardy robots.  Friendly yeti.  Glow swords.  Big bad artificial planet.

Every other visual element serves those, and while they provide detail and texture, they aren’t distractions.

Seriously, jettison the plot of the original Star Wars and reconfigure it from the ground up with those elements and it still winds up pretty much the same film, just set on different worlds.

This is why later films in the series, despite bigger and bigger revenues, lack the memorable freshness and emotional clarity of the original (getting cluttered up with superfluous characters and vehicles inserted just to sell toys doesn’t help, and I post this as one of the original writers for the G.I. Joe and Transformers series).

To reiterate:
If you want to make an impression, less is more.

. . .

We’re going to amble on over to a parallel path and talk about ultra-low budget / no budget / homemade / hand-crafted / DIY film making, particularly in the sci-fi arena.

I watch a fair amount of lo-to-no budget sci-fi on Amazon Prime and YouTube.  Many of these are done for pure love of the genre and the film making process, and from that POV of producers and participants just wanting to have fun, they’re modestly enjoyable.

From the POV of actual good film making and sci-fi…not so much.  (There are exceptions and we’ll get to one of those; patience, young jedi…)

The overwhelming bulk of these films -- features and shorts -- are pretty derivative.

I don’t mean “unoriginal” the way 80-90% of professionally produced media is unoriginal, I mean “derivative” as in trying specifically to re-create something someone else did first…

...and better.

And this is in addition to the plethora of Star Trek / Star Wars / Dr. Who / superhero fan films out there; those are a separate though related phenomenon.

Rather, it’s the umpteenth Alien ripoff / the 400th E.T. variant / the latest Mad Max clone / the most current example of last decade’s biggest hits.

They’re generally not that good taken on their own, no matter how much fun the makers are having.

For me the nadir of such films are those done by film makers imitating bad movies by deliberately making a bad movie.

Don’t do that, folks. 

Please. 

Don’t squander time and talent doing substandard work.

I’m not saying don’t make the kind of film (or draw the kind of art, or write the kind of story) you want to make; I’m just saying don’t deliberately make a piss-poor job of it.

Block and Rabin may never have made a truly good movie but not because they weren’t trying!

Cheap films?  Yes.
Exploitable films?  Yes.

But films meant to be as good as they could make them.

There’s an MST3K notorious bad 1950s sci-fi movie called Teenagers From Outer Space.  Tom Graef, its writer / producer / director / editor / co-star was a former film student wanting to break into the big time so he made this cheesy movie to the utmost of his ability.

And lordie, it ain’t good…

…but by gawd, he was trying.

The folks who make deliberately bad pastiches of substandard B-movies were always a sore point for Bill Warren.

“The original film makers weren’t trying to make a bad movie!” he’d rave.

So please, don’t do deliberately shoddy work and try to explain it away by calling it a “parody”.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a parody, and everybody in it is aiming for the centerfield fence, turning in A-level performances.

I know it’s fun making models and cobbling together costumes and props and sets from junk, and recruiting friends and family to have fun making a movie, and if your audience is just going to be those friends and family, fine.

But if you want to be seen and appreciated by a wider audience, have some respect for them…and your own abilities as a film maker.

. . .

All of which brings us in a roundabout fashion to The Vast Of Night, a recent ultra-low budget sci-fi film that asks the non-musical question “What would a Twilight Zone mash-up of X-Files and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind look like?”

“Pretty impressive,” is the answer.

Let’s start with the Achilles’ heel of most lo-to-no budget DIY productions:  The cast.

The Vast Of Night enjoys impeccable casting, all the way down to the most minor roles.

I can’t stress enough how important this is for small productions.

Actors give you more bounce for your buck than anything else on your budget.  Good actors can make mediocre material bearable, they can bring good material to full blown life.

In The Vast Of Night’s case, the two leads -- Jake Horowitz as Everett, an all night DJ in a tiny late 1950s New Mexico town, and Sierra McCormick as Fay Crocker, the local substitute late night phone operator -- play off each other with delightful on screen chemistry.

No kidding, I’d watch these two characters go grocery shopping for an hour and a half, that’s how well Horowitz and McCormick play off each other.

Next, the story.  Obviously story and screenplay come before casting, but in the final analysis an okay story is far better served by a good cast than a good story by an okay cast.

Screenwriters James Montague and Craig W. Sanger do a good job with their script for The Vast Of Night.  As noted, it’s far from original but is fleshed out with enough distinctive elements to let the cast find plenty to work with.

For aspiring film makers, the script is typically the least expensive part of the process, and if you don’t like your draft you can always chuck it out and start afresh,

Finally, it’s okay to look inexpensive but don’t look cheap.

You can get away with a stark cinema verité style if that’s what the material calls for but you need to keep a consistent style and tone throughout.

A lot of DIY films do themselves a grave disservice by spending a lot of time / energy / money on a prop / costume / special effect that calls undo attention to itself by being so much better than everything surrounding it.

Director Andrew Patterson keeps things stylish while clamping a lid on its budget; this good pre-production planning pays off with a consistency of style and tone that helps keep the audience engaged, their disbelief suspended.

The Vast Of Night is what I refer to as a “minimum basic movie” i.e., the lowest bar you should shoot for with your own film making.

It’s far from a deathless classic, but it’s a fun ride.

And speaking of fun rides…this ramble is o-v-e-r.

© Buzz Dixon