Category: Future technology
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It Happens Every Spring
A university professor invents a wood-repelling baseball and decides to become a star pitcher in order to get enough money to marry one of his students. Ray Milland stars in this predictable 1949 major studio comedy which offers more feelgood than belly laughs. 4/10
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The Perfect Woman
A screwball comedy highlighting the confused gender politics of 1949, this very British doorswinger farce sees Bertie and Jeeves taking out a female robot for a night on the town. If you can get over the dated premise and tone, it’s quite an enjoyable and well-made comedy. 5/10
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Dick Barton Strikes Back
Did you ever wonder what it would have looked like if Hammer made a James Bond film? Well, look no further than to this 1949 spy-fi quota quickie. Here Barton, Dick Barton, chases a villain wielding a secret super-weapon which turns people’s brains into jelly. Plot holes abound, but it’s…
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The Genius
“Mexico’s Charlie Chaplin” Cantinflas shines as a research assistant in this SF romcom from 1948. Big Oil and authorities chase poor Cantinflas across the movie, believing he has his dead professor’s formula for turning water into oil. A talky and unnecessarily long, but sympathetic effort. 5/10
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The Jade Mask
Charlie Chan solves yet another murder mystery in this reasonably well made Monogram cheapo, aided by his #4 son and legendary black comedian Mantan Moreland. A whodunnit with a sci-fi MacGuffin in an old dark house with a fairly interesting cast led by Sidney Toler. Light fun, an incredibly convoluted…
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Time Flies
British radio star Tommy Handley trades puns with William Shakespeare in this 1944 jazz comedy, as three music hall performers accidentally hitch a ride in a nutty professor’s time machine back to 16th century London. Despite Handley’s dated jokes, good production values, nice musical numbers and petite US jazz singer…
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Tainstvennyy ostrov
The most accurate adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel Mysterious Island that has ever been put on screen was made in Soviet Ukraine in 1941. This doesn’t necessarily work in the film’s favour, as it is rather talky and static. Look out for Robert Ross, long-time leader of the African American…
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Sky Bandits
This 1940 film is the third version of the same story of a gang of criminals shooting planes out of the sky with a death ray, and arguably the best, thanks to its light tone and comedy. It is also the last entry in a series of juvenile films featuring…
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Sky Racket
The actors know how to hit their marks and the DP is capable of setting up a shot in the 1937 remake of the equally bad 1936 film Ghost Patrol. A government agent and a bride on the run are captured by a gang of criminals using a death ray…
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Undersea Kingdom
Inspired by Flash Gordon and The Phantom Empire, the young Republic Studios launched their own sci-fi serial in 1936, and the result was an action-packed, but rather brainless concoction. Occasional good design and an energetic Crash Corrigan can’t save this badly scripted Atlantis-themed hodgepodge. 3/10
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Ghost Patrol
Tim McCoy’s really big hat delivers the best performance in this derivative and uninspired sci-fi-tinged modern western. The Poverty Row production sees a G-man in a 10 gallon Stetson infiltrate a gang of criminals using a death ray to shoot down mail planes. Of you like your B movies on…
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Cosmic Voyage
Kosmichesky Reys is a stunning, costly Soviet moon landing adventure from 1936, inspired by Fritz Lang’s 1929 film Woman in the Moon. Thanks to the collaboration of legendary rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, it is impressively accurate. Aimed at a juvenile audience, Cosmic Voyage is an enjoyable and exciting space adventure…
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The Dead Speak
Mexico’s first science fiction feature film is an intriguing curio that involves a team of scientists trying to capture the last image recorded in a dead person’s eyes. Highly derivative of US genre films, but competently made and quite entertaining. 5/10
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Loss of Sensation
A 1935 communist propaganda film with quite a few enjoyable quirks. Capitalists and communists fight over an army of robots that is controlled by saxophone. Based on a story by “The Jules Verne of Ukraine” and directed with a certain expressionist and avantgarde flair, the film is not without its…
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Master of the World
A mad scientist, an army of killer robots, a grieving widow and a dashing hero. There are the ingredients for the German 1934 film Der Herr der Welt film by action hero Harry Piel. Perhaps his darkest movie, and one of the few where he doesn’t appear on screen. A…
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