Before the uniqueness of Mad Max (1979), before the madness of Burning Man, and long before the flatness of Waterworld (1995), came the inventiveness of A Boy and his Dog. An unjustly forgotten apocalyptic tale of a young man and his telepathic dog wandering the desert in search of food and sex after the world has blown itself to smithereens, this film has become a cult classic and should be mandatory viewing for any Sci-Fi aficionados.

Satirical, disturbing, funny, unpleasant, anarchistic with strong macho undertones, critical of a petty middle class suburban mentality, A Boy and his Dog has got enough ammunition to rub many people the wrong way. Its social satire of the present is much more powerful than its representation of the future, and like other Sci-Fi films from the 70s, such as Logan’s Run (1976) and THX 1138 (1971), it certainly makes clear that our individual freedom and personal choice must prevail over potential collective, conservative and hygienic visions of the future.

Almost 10 years after Frankenheimer’s (The Manchurian Candidate 62, Seven Days in May 64, Seconds 66), Pakula directed his own paranoia trilogy (Klute 71, The Parallax View 74, All the President’s Men 76), as if possessed by somewhat similar demons and motivations, many of which drew from the collective spirit prevalent in the US at the time. It is probable that Pakula was also directly influenced by Frankenheimer’s work.

Indeed, The Parallax View reminds us at times of The Manchurian Candidate in its depiction of deception, fear, conspiracy and of an alternate reality in which the lone (in)sane character tries to uncover a conspiracy. But it reminds us also of the more recent Cypher (02) through its depiction of a world so easily constructed and deceived by large corporations and political entities pursuing their selfish aims at any cost.

But The Parallax View fails to live up to its pretensions and aspirations. The film is a bizarre mishmash of serious, dark and intelligent moments, action-driven mindless scenes, forced coincidences, overly convenient scene resolutions, and strange and often too abstract cuts and dialogues. The progression in time is frequently not perceived, resulting in a film that is often hard to follow. Finally, there is a sense of predictability to it all, making us question how truly intelligent this reporter is, when he seems to be the only one who does not know where this will all lead.

There are nonetheless some quality moments in this film, which is often mostly remembered for its five minutes brainwashing scene during which the viewer is exposed through the eyes of the lead character to a multiplicity of images and words, in a way which has a more profound and direct impact on the viewer, at the very least in the form of a headache, than a similar scene in A Clockwork Orange (71).

Isaac Asimov has published over 400 books in his lifetime. This is, apparently, more than anyone else has ever published, in any literary genre. My first reaction when I learned this, is that when someone churns out books so quickly, they are bound to come up at some point (or regularly) with less than average material. Stephen King, for example, is one of these authors whose great works are starting to become invisible in the middle of an ever-growing pile of nonsense.

The Gods Themselves is not one of Asimov’s bests (Asimov declared, however, that this was his favorite novel). It feels to me as if he came up with a great central idea but had to force himself to build a story around it.

This story revolves around the idea of parallel universes and the exchange of energy between these two universes.

‘Aliens’ in a parallel universe find a way to contact earth and to get the people of earth to build a Proton Pump. This pump allows each universe to get a free source of unlimited energy, something that, for different reasons, both sides need badly. But, in each universe, someone realizes that this will come at a cost and tries to stop the pump.

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For a Science Fiction writer, it sometimes feels that Philip K. Dick didn’t seem that concerned with the future. A reader of A Scanner Darkly (or a viewer of the recent Linklater film adaptation) might easily question how the term Science Fiction was even applied to this work in the first place.

Like Valis, a book which I found much more disturbing, A Scanner Darkly deals with the present (or close enough to the present), and it explores, in a rigorous and carefully laid-out fashion, one of Dick’s favourite themes, the questioning of reality. Set in Orange County, California, an undercover narcotic agent gradually and painfully looses his grasp on reality, as he becomes the victim of the drug he must use regularly to keep his cover. The change is very progressive and Dick carefully details this path to madness.

Yet, A Scanner lacks the excessiveness of Valis, the accessibility and intriguing speculation of The Man in the High Castle, the pace and futurist appeal of The Minority Report or the even the moodiness and intellectualism of Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?. A Scanner is a tale about the now, about not so interesting individuals who have few interests and few connections to the world. But its story still feels very real, perhaps too real for a piece that questions reality. I am sure this is also its appeal for a lot of readers who will find its details and believability more interesting and sincere than Dick’s more speculative work.

Creepy at times, funny at others, The Tenant is hard film to pin down. It disturbs us a little, scares us occasionally, confuses us somewhat and even makes us laugh at times (perhaps, sadly, unintentionally). Such a combination is clearly not for everyone. And it is this combination that makes The Tenant a diluted and confused effort. Polanski’s own Repulsion is a far superior tale of madness and Rosemary’s Baby a great deal scarier.

Remarkable in intensity, poignant in veracity, this 4 1/2 hours documentary by one of the masters of the genre explores how people and cultures deal with the concept of guilt. It is a fascinating look at what makes some people act, or not act, when confronted with certain events and situations and how they decide to deal with their decisions in the years that follow.

In 1951, Howard Hawks’ The Thing introduced audiences to horror science fiction. While the genre would prove quite popular with the public, it would also unfortunately be too often associated with cheap and amateurish B-movies.

British efforts, frequently more serious in intent than their American counterparts, provided a few solid entries into the genre, including The Quatermass Xperiment (55), Village of the Damned (60) and Unearthly Stranger (63).

But Ridley Scott’s Alien (79) marked the first time horror and science fiction were masterfully combined to create a realistic, serious, and truly scary film.

When the film came out in 1979, Ridley Scott was a relatively unknown director. With only the magnificently atmospheric film The Duelists (77) to his credit, Scott created The horror film in space, one whose premise and style continue to be an influence on many filmmakers, writers, production designers and audiences today.

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At the Earth’s Core (76) is the second film adaptation of a novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs by the team of director Kevin Connor, producer John Dark, actor Doug McClure and British production house Amicus.

It is not part of Burroughs’ Caprona book trilogy, on which Connor’s other films The Land that Time Forgot (75) and the People that Time Forgot (77) were based, but deals nevertheless with the theme of a lost and hidden world where the protagonists encounter humans and creatures from an ancient time.
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The first in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Caprona trilogy, The Land that Time Forgot (75) was Kevin Connor’ second feature after From Beyond the Grave (73).

Connor and producer John Dark must have found in Burroughs’ stories the ideal source for their vision as they would later bring to the screen two more of his works: At the Earth’s Core (76) and the People that Time Forgot (77).

Incidentally, the 3rd installment of Burroughs’s Caprona trilogy (the second was The People that Time Forgot), Out of Time’s Abyss, was never turned into a film.

Financed by Amicus, the British production company that was Hammer’s only major rival in the 60’s and 70’s, and by AIP, the American exploitation house behind many of Roger Corman 60’s films, The Land that Time Forgot is a surprisingly serious and reasonably well made film, in spite of its very low budget and the sometimes-amateurish special effects (stop motion animation would have made quite a difference in the rendition of the dinosaurs but was dropped due to budget constraints).

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