Science fiction frees you to go anyplace and examine anything. ~ Octavia E Butler

Happy Saturday Sci-fi Films

So I’m an older guy and when I was a kid Saturday mornings meant Saturday morning cartoons. Of course it included the basics originally, Looney Tunes including Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn and even Speedy Gonzalez. Of course I was a little kid in the late 60’s and early 70’s so that also meant Syd and Marty Kroft and their acid trip Saturday morning fantasies, Signund and the Sea Monster, HR Pufnstuff (I mean come on puffin stuff), The Boogaloos and my personal favorite Lidsville (check out the opening video). But I was a bowler and Saturday morning was when our youth bowling league happened so most of my Saturdays were spent at the lanes and I’d get back home Saturday afternoon. And Saturday afternoons meant Sci-fi and Horror movies.

So given the time period it meant a huge load of Godzilla, King Kong and all of the other crazy monster movies of the the 50’s and 60’s. It also meant a heavy dose old science fiction movies on rotation. So this meant The War of the Worlds, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Them! There were a lot of radiation monsters in films back then. There were also some really magnificent classic films like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Forbidden Planet and Fantastic Voyage. I loved these movies, they led me into reading science fiction and I became a science fiction junky as a young kid which then turned into me being an avid reader in general. I owe a lot to those old goofy old science fiction movies.

Recently, I was online and someone mentioned the Day of the Triffids and this was absolutely one of those Saturday morning sci-fi features. I remembered the film but honestly hadn’t seen it for literally 40 or 50 years. So a bit of nostalgia hit me thinking about it and I found it online at Tubi and watched it. It was awesome and terrible all at the same time. It’s obviously never been remastered so the video quality was awful. It definitely has the standard campy features of an old sci-fi film and some cheesy effects. But it was also awesome, and it hit me it was a definite parallel to a Romero zombie film. If you like campy old sci-fi films, definitely worth a view. For me, it brought about a bit of nostalgia and happy memories from my childhood. So go find an old film that does the same for you and have a happy day my friends. ~ Rev Kane