Category: Mad scientist
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Mesa of Lost Women
A contender for the worst movie ever, this 1953 patch-job is a mind-boggling series of failures. Built upon existing footage from an unreleased picture, this one includes spider women, mad scientists and evil dwarfs, and still manages to be deadly dull. 0/10
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Four Sided Triangle
When two scientists fall in love with the same girl, they clone her. Despite strong direction from Terence Fisher, this British 1953 SF melodrama rejects all the premise’s interesting possibilities and settles for a dull relationship drama. 4/10
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The Whip Hand
This tense little 1951 thriller by W.C. Menzies had Hitler hiding in a US fishing village. RKO owner Howard Hughes wanted the Commies to be the bad guys instead, so it was reshot with Red Scare hysterics. Still, the genius of the original shines through. 7/10.
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The Vampire Bat
Dwight Frye, Fay Wray, Lionel Atwill and Melvyn Douglas star in this 1933 Poverty Row schlockfest, which is a lot better than its Majestic Pictures origin would imply. Filmed on the sets of Universal’s horror movies, it looks and feels like a prestige film, but sadly still has the script…
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Metropolis
The plot may be meandering and the political message naive, but the thematic and visual influence of Austrian director Fritz Lang’s exciting 1927 masterpiece Metropolis is rivalled by few in science fiction and in film in general. A great, entertaining, sprawling epic in a future tower of Babylon. (10/10)
Scifist. 