NUKE ME SLOWLY—Stealth Science Fiction Films: If it’s a realistic depiction of the End of the World, it’s probably science fiction [PART THREE of THREE]

As we end this three-part series (Part One HERE; Part Two HERE), we also look at the end of the world. Kind of timely with the end of the year…and a plague sweeping the land…

If a movie has an atomic bomb explode, and mutants appear, everyone knows the film is science fiction. But if a film has generals and soldiers trying to stop an atomic war, whether they succeed or fail, if the film stays in the realm of the realistic, viewers hardly consider it SF. But it is! (Especially if a doomsday machine is somehow involved…)

The LENTIL SOUP RECIPE: Actually Lentil-Cabbage Soup, with Kielbasa on the Side (Although it could all really be about cabbage…)

My delicious lentil cabbage kielbasa soup!

During the Spanish Civil War, the members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who were taken prisoner of war were fed only lentil beans. When many of them got home, they swore they would never touch lentil beans again. 

But we’re talking almost one hundred years ago, and some things have changed….

Fave Sci-Fi Mass-Market Paperback Covers

 

My love of mass-market paperbacks is strong, and they are my preferred delivery system for literature. I love the books' size, and their covers tend to trend on the lurid or psychedelic, especially with the New Wave Science Fiction I love so much. These books tend to be difficult to synopsize easily, and would often get themselves Yves Tanguy-style paintings. 

I thought I'd share some with you; they've been on my mind a lot, and I have been going to them for inspiration. 

Enjoy (continue past break)

Stealth Science Fiction Movies Two: Electric Boogaloo (Will That Joke Ever Get Old? Never!): SF Movies That People Don’t Think of Immediately as SF Movies Because There Aren’t Any Kilbots or Xenomorphs or Wormholes or… [PART TWO of THREE]

Ivan in the Infinity Room:
science fiction has taken over real life. 

This concept of mine was covered more in-depth last time, but in a nutshell, there is a notion in film appreciation that hasn’t been identified, or at least labeled and codified yet, what I call the
Stealth Science Fiction Film.

Some flicks, the minute you eyeball ’em, you know they’re sci-fi. Alien planets, or monsters, or intergalactic space federations. It’s obvious, whether the flick is high-brow (Arrival) or low-brow (Galaxy of Terror).

Others, not so much… It has to be pointed out that they are science fiction…. Last time, I noted how certain movies strongly avoided the SF label, as that was considered by the “cognoscenti” to be juvenile or indicative of base frivolity, and if you were making a serious dramatic film and wanted to be taken sincerely, letting your movie get called sci-fi might not actually help.

Last time we looked at these Stealth Sci-Fi Flicks:

—Earthquake (1974)
—Dr. No (1962)
—The President’s Analyst (1967)
—The China Syndrome (1979)
—Seconds (1966)

Today, it will be a much more eclectic group, dealing less with the technocratic status quo and its disruptions—and how those disruptions are dealt with by agents of/within those systems (as all of the last entry’s film dealt with to some extent),

This is what Consensus Reality
is all about...

and more with lonely outsiders and how they must deal with the pressures from The Normals and their damnable, vicious Consensus Reality….

Each of this entry’s films is a stand-out, and all are quite political in their own ways. They are all worth seeing if you still haven’t yet.

The movies on today’s list haven’t avoided the SF label so much, as, if anything, they have been mislabeled, or simply overlooked as to belonging to the genre.

In alphabetical order:

—Carrie (1976)
—The Man in the White Suit (1951)
—Punishment Park (1971)
—Repo Man (1984)

*[Yeah, yeah, yeah… SPOILERS, dude.]*

Stealth Science Fiction Movies: SF Movies That People Don’t Think of Immediately as SF Movies Because There Aren’t Aliens or Flying Saucers or Robots or…[PART ONE of THREE]

 

Covering:

—Earthquake (1974)

—Dr. No (1962)

—The President’s Analyst (1967)

—The China Syndrome (1979)

—Seconds (1966)

A concept in film critiquing that I have not noticed as being identified, or at least labeled and codified yet, is what I call the Stealth Science Fiction Film.

If it brings to mind the Stealth fighter and bomber planes of the USAF, good: Those aircraft can sneak up on you without you ever knowing it, and seem to derive more from science fiction than plain old aerodynamics.

These are the films that when they are, say, mentioned in a conversation, don’t immediately leap to mind as science fiction (or “sci-fi” or “SF”).

These Aren’t the Droids You Are Looking for: a review of “Raised by Wolves” (2020)

Raised by Wolves: Season One (2020; ten episodes; created by Aaron Guzikowski; co-executive producer and occasional director: Ridley Scott)

God, I hate these mystery-puzzle-box TV shows! Lost did it, The X-Files wound up doing it, far too many shows have done this!

And now, Raised by Wolves is doing it—after introducing itself as a freebie on YouTube, coming on like a filmed version of a New Wave science fiction book from the late-1960s/early-1970s, something that may have been written by a Robert Silverberg, Samuel Delaney, or Norman Spinrad, or perhaps by authors more on the “fringe,” like Arthur Byron Cover or Chester Anderson....
But it ends like “We Need to Talk About Kevin, Our Hideous Serpent-Leech Metaphor-Monster.”

Such a fucking mess…. (In fact, one commenter at the AV Club called the show “Lost… in space”—a witticism too good not to share!)

Kolchak’s Flying Saucer: In Praise of an Oft-Maligned Episode of "The Night Stalker"

“Kolchak is why I got into journalism,” –Peter L., journalist/writer/bon vivant

Back in the autumn of 1974, the American Broadcasting Company (then, as now, Channel 7 in NYC) did me a real solid. On Friday nights, ABC had scheduled The Six Million Dollar Man at 8pm; Kung Fu with David Carradine at 9pm; and then at 10pm, Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It was nerd heaven!

Being allowed to stay up to see these shows was special—until 1975, my bedtime was 7:30pm! It would be summertime, I’d be lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, and the sun would still be up, shining bright, and there would be kids screaming in the streets. (I discovered that counting sheep doesn’t work; I imagine a long corridor that is never-ending….) But these shows were on a Friday night, and they were “special:” Genre TV wasn’t as prevalent as it is now—it was quite catch as catch can. And the parental units, themselves of nerdish persuasion, understood. Besides, mom, it’s Friday, and there’s no school on Saturday!

At 10 p.m. EST, Friday, September 27, 1974, the now-considered-a-cult-classic TV show, the horror-themed Kolchak: The Night Stalker, premiered its third episode as an hour-long program: a UFO-centered show titled, “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…”  

The episode’s title was inspired by lines from H.P. Lovecraft’s 1928 story “The Dunwich Horror.” {read it HERE for free!} In it, Lovecraft writes, 
“The Old Ones were, the Old Ones are, and the Old Ones shall be. Not in the spaces we know, but between them. They walk serene and primal, undimensioned and to us unseen.”

Other segments from the show are more frightening (like “The Horror in the Heights”—written by Hammer Horror vet Jimmy Sangster, probably the best of the series’ 20 episodes), and to many “They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…”  is a mess.

But I find this episode a thought-provoking low-budget B-movie mélange of neo-noir (an honest reporter in a corrupt town dealing with a cover-up), Lovecraftian elements (the inexplicable cosmic horror of an invisible alien who sucks out our bone marrow—Ewww!), and UFO/conspiracy lore (aliens, contactees, secretive government agencies, “the Men in Black”).

(And if “mélange” is too highbrow for some, perhaps “mish-mash,” if we want to be egalitarian?)