Cattle ranchers feud over the mayor’s daughter while their cows mysteriously go missing in this ambitious US/Mexican B-movie. Beautiful colour photography and some adequate stop-motion dinosaurs partly make up for a sluggish script. 5/10
Larger than life in every aspect, the original King Kong was a juggernaut, as loud, daring and unstoppable as its titular monster, it crashed into cinemas in 1933 and has refused to leave ever since. Willis O’Brien’s revolutionary stop-motion work, a multitude of amazing visual tricks and Fay Wray’s legendary screams help cover up a weak script, terrible dialogue, non-existent character arcs and woeful acting. 8/10
The 1920s was an exciting time in science fiction film history. Cinema was booming after WWI, giving filmmakers successively bigger budgets to realise their visions with, and groundbreaking technical advancements allowed for ever more realistic depictions of the impossible. Here’s a list of the 10 best sci-fi films released between 1920 and 1929.
The original dinosaur blockbuster was released in 1925 by First National Pictures. With stop-motion animation by legendary Willis O’Brien and cinematography by multiple Oscar nominee Arthur Edeson, the film is a beauty to behold, even if the plot and pacing suffers from director Harry Hoyt’s determination to get as much dino action into the picture as possible. (8/10)
This 1918 short by stop-motion wizard Willis O’Brien and Herbert M. Dawley is probably the first film to describe time travel, and is a showcase for their marvellous stop-motion dinosaurs. (6/10) […]
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