"It's Too Hot to Think": Old Scifi Films

[sartorias]

Yesterday the spouse was watching one of those cheezy old scifi (and I use the term on purpose) films. I never liked them when I was a kid. I loathed monsters. I still do. They used to terrorize me, then they just seemed ugly and boring. Monster fights always signal time to get a snack, or read another few pages, until the story starts up

Comments

[fidelioscabinet]

I wonder how much overlap there was among the set designes and so on for these things--or how much of it was re-use of props and such they already had on hand, so as to save money.

[sartorias]

Now that's a thought. Back when I lived in Hollywood, up over the Hollywood Bowl Hill (I'm spacing on the name of the street in this heat, but it was near us) there used to be an empty lot where a lot of those fiberglass "future" cars from the sixties had been parked. Plus, if I recall correctly, one of the Oscar Meyer Wienermobiles. I do think those futuremobiles did a lot of duty in old movies and TV--one of them I recognized from a couple of movies plus an ep of Star Trek.

[lynn_maudlin]

Cahuenga Blvd. to Barham Blvd...

Yeah, definitely the re-use of existing props-- "Get me a silver-thingy that will work as the hyper-fuffer, and make it CHEAP!"

For myself, I really liked the old B&W scifi films - consider what else was on the television on a weekend afternoon in the 1960s...?! I didn't like the monster movies *per se* (the first Godzilla was kind of fun, otherwise that whole series of Japanese SF films didn't make it for me). But I wasn't nearly so analytical as you; I don't think I ever noticed the skirts & spike heels, etc. - I liked the way they look and didn't notice what a pain they are until I was actually wearing mini-skirts (!!).

It took me a much longer time to appreciate period dramas - I'll bet we flip-flop each other there, don't we?

[sartorias]

That's it! I had "C" in my mind, but it's too hot to remember Cahuenga.

Yeah, period dramas...though I distrusted period dramas where the women's hairdos looked like the women in my mom's bridge club.

[lynn_maudlin]

Yes, hair has the capacity to make people look more ridiculous, to the contemporary mind, than about anything else. And if you're spending ooodles of money making a movie, risking its audience acceptance by going for really authentic hair... it's a big risk and a relatively cheap fix. Why I like that SF masquerades recognize the difference between "historical costuming" (skin-out accuracy) and stage historical.