10 Obscure Sci-Fi Classics You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
Taking a look back at the futurists and innovators of the past as we build the entertainment industry of the future.
Science fiction has maintained a presence in the canon of film dating back to 1902 and the H.G Wells and Jules Verne-inspired surrealist French silent film Le Voyage dans la Lune, and has been continually in flux since that moment. Nowadays, comic book blockbusters have taken over the genre, and while such films do have their own big budget merits, their bombastic affect can overshadow both the science and the fiction elements of science fiction, and there is much to be gained from combing the more obscure corners of the genre over the years.
There’s a universe of sci-fi movies that stretches across decades, continents, languages, and philosophies, and and it may be hard to navigate the best from the worst sometimes. Ever since the unexpected successes of Star Wars and 2001: A Space Odyssey, studios have given license to any number of smaller budget sci-fi odysseys, inspiring similar classics and parodies — both intentional and unintentional. It remains ever satisfying to find the hidden and underrated gems among the experimental wonders…
Here’s a list, in no particular order, of 10 Obscure Science Fiction Classics You’ve probably never heard of…
Primer (2004)
Director: Shane Carruth // Cast: Shane Carruth, David Sullivan
Shane Carruth’s debut film went under the radar due to its complicated structure and experimental nature. You might need to map out the film to make full sense of it, but the audience is at least assured a totally satisfying experience in this seventy-seven minute film about time travel and its consequences.
Abe and Aaron are two engineers who have their own technical side projects. While doing research for one of these endeavours, they stumble upon a way of travelling through time loops using something as simple as a box. The pair uses the box to make money off the stock market and improve their lives. Eventually, as timeline altering tends to do, things get out of control and the two are faced with ethical and philosophical complications that prove deadly.
Carruth starred, directed, and scored this low budget film, but he also made no compromises to make it. What the audience is left with is a compelling piece that repeatedly asks: “If we find ourselves with the ability to change the world, should we, and can we be trusted with it?”
Voyage to the End of the Universe (1963)
Director: Jindřich Polák // Cast: Zdenek Stepánek, Frantisek Smolík, Dana Medrická
Also known as Ikarie XB-1, this pioneering Czechoslovakian film is a stunning masterpiece in set design and scoring. It is said to have inspired the films 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien, and was recently re-screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival in the Classics section.
The year is 2163 and the crew of the spaceship Ikarie are on a deep space mission to find alien life. They end up finding more than they had hoped for in their journey, including a destructive dark star and for some, their fading sanity. It is high brow subject matter in space that until then was an idea rarely explored before. Polák infuses his work with an attentive lens and keen eye on the grandeur of a giant room (and space) as psychological landscape. Zdeněk Liška’s score has moments of electronic forbidding and unrelenting luxuriousness. Everything about this film is ahead of its time.
Lifeforce (1985)
Director: Tobe Hooper // Cast: Steve Railsback, Patrick Stewart, Mathilda May
All I really need to say about this film is that it’s about naked space vampires, and you’d naturally assume it was B-movie material. While it can be seen as a throwaway film because of subject matter, this film is enlivened by one very memorable female space vampire starring in the wicked special effects-driven Tobe Hooper film.
The space shuttle Churchill has found an alien ship full of creatures that look like bats around three naked sleeping bodies encased in glass. Ground control loses contact with Churchill and sends a rescue mission. Churchill is damaged, but the bodies remain untouched and alive. The bodies are brought down to earth, and put in a lab for observation. Meanwhile, a crewmember from the Churchill is found in an escape pod and soon begins to recount the events that led up to the destruction of the ship and its crew. Back at the lab, the bodies begin to awaken and start to drain the life force out of everyone they meet.
Mathilda May’s portrays the main life force vampire in a performance reminiscent of Scarlett Johansson in Under The Skin.
Alphaville (1965)
Director: Jean-Luc Godard // Cast: Anna Karina, Eddie Constantine, Akim Tamiroff
One of the curious things about science fiction is its way of commenting on the state of the world in the present day. It’s as if putting a mask on the world makes its complex situations more palpable for a viewer. Jean-Luc Godard, places private detective, Lemmy Caution (a fictional character created by crime writer Peter Cheyney), in a future world called Alphaville. Emotions, art, and poetry are banned in there and anyone who exhibits feeling is promptly interrogated and executed. A computer by the name of Alpha 60 controls the population assimilating everyone, thereby shunning individual thought. Caution, under the guise as a journalist, has come on a mission to disrupt and destroy Alphaville and unexpectedly falls in love with one of its programmers.
Alphaville is an art house film threaded with poetic nuance through its camera work and dialogue. Most of the scenes were improvised by the actors and while the settings are in 1960s Paris, modern glass buildings are used for the film’s interiors. Godard makes old interiors look austere and futuristic.
The Hidden (1987)
Director: Jack Sholder // Cast: Kyle MacLachlan, Claudia Christian, Michael Nouri
Ever wanted to see Kyle McLachlan come out of nowhere and don a flamethrower? Well, you can find that is this movie and a hell of a lot more. The Hidden is most likely a poster or a DVD cover you’ve seen in passing, but never really picked up. It is Jack Sholder’s follow up film after Nightmare On Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge.
Detective Thomas Beck and the LAPD find themselves investigating various murders that somehow are connected, but they don’t know why. The truth is that there’s a shape shifter alien in town and there’s only one man who can help Beck get to the bottom of it, FBI Special Agent Lloyd Gallagher.
It’s a neat thriller with a great 1980s rock soundtrack and awesome car chases. The chemistry of Michael Nouri as Beck and McLachlan as Gallagher drives the film through its unique comedic turns and cool views of retro Los Angeles.
Orion’s Loop (1981)
Director: Vasili Levin // Cast: Leonid Bakshtayev, Gennadi Shkuratov, Anatoliy Mateshko
The appeal of watching Soviet Bloc films is that when there’s little freedom given to a people, the imagination is where it all goes. The mind becomes a space in itself where truly anything is possible. If you take a look at Russian films, especially shorts, sci-fi, and animation the ideas are completely out there, but so very human in nature. This is why a film like Orion’s Loop (also known as Petlya Oriona), stands as a sort of period piece.
A space crew of humans and their identical android doubles has been sent out to investigate a strange anomaly called the Orion’s Loop. Many who have found themselves there have been driven insane and died as a result. The crew’s investigation leads them into hallucinate actual people from their lives who really aliens in disguise.
Director Vasili Levin deals with themes of duality and memory throughout the film. It is interesting to note that in many ways this movie was made during a time that encountering extra-terrestrial life was thought to be entirely possible. Orion’s Loop deals with the consequences of that and the moral dilemma the world might face if it becomes a reality.
Beyond The Black Rainbow (2010)
Director: Panos Cosmatos // Cast: Eva Allan, Scott Hylands, Michael Rogers
Canadian filmmaker Panos Cosmatos was inspired by the VHS covers of video rental stores to make Beyond The Black Rainbow. If you were a kid in the 1980s, you would see extraordinary cardboard VHS cover design as one way studios would draw audiences for their films. Sometimes the films were nothing like what their covers portray, but nonetheless it would do its job if it got someone to take that film off the dusty shelves. This film is like a compilation of the images Cosmatos saw in those covers as well as his dealing with his personal present.
Sometime in the 1960s New Age researcher, Dr. Arboria, builds the Arboria Institute, a place where humans can integrate science and spirituality to find eternal happiness. His top student, Dr. Barry Nyle takes over the institute in the 1980s and holds Dr. Arboria’s psychic daughter, Elena, prisoner within the institute’s walls. Nyle subjects Elena to daily sessions where he pushes her psychic boundaries.
I guarantee you will be left with some interesting questions and in need of the acquiring the retro electronic soundtrack after a viewing.
La Jetée (1962)
Director: Chris Marker // Cast: Hélène Chatelain, Davos Hanich, Jean Négroni
Chris Marker is the father of the avant-garde approach to video essays, a way of presenting a thesis to a film audience and working through it with them as a way of filmmaking. La Jetée is composed in a series of film stills that are brought together by a omnipresent narrator. It is a short film, but an important sci-fi treasure that won the Prix Jean Vigo and inspired Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys.
The time is post World War III in Paris and the surviving members of the human race live in the underground. Scientists enlist a prisoner in their time travelling experiments to send an SOS into the future to anyone that could help. He travels through his memories and eventually ends up in pre-war France where he locates a woman who leaves a deep impression in his mind. She becomes an anchor to his travels to the future and ultimately prepares him for what is to come.
Dark Star (1974)
Director: John Carpenter // Cast: Dan O’Bannon, Brian Narelle, Dre Pahich
This low budget space movie is a hilarious play on the sci-fi genre and it spun out of a student film project by John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon. A reminder this was made in a time before CGI and modern special effects, thus model work may be inferior to now, but it is quite the feat for a film made with little money.
The time is about 22nd century and humans have the ability to colonize other planets in the far reaches of outer space. The crew of the ship Dark Star are sent on a long time mission to destroy unstable planets in humanity’s path. A crewmember adopts a beach ball-like alien and plays pranks on his fellow astronauts. Goofs happen and everything on the ship goes haywire resulting in a poignant tragic comedy set in what is ultimately the chaotic unknown.
Stalker (1979)
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky // Cast: Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn
We end our list with an Andrei Tarkovsky film, but as it is with this director, it’s a beautiful feast of the senses. Based on Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s novel, “Roadside Picnic,” this stark film proves to be minimalist science fiction film with hugely philosophical bent.
Sometime and someplace in the future, a person called a “Stalker” guides people to the “Zone.” In the Zone, all laws of reality are gone and it contains a place, “The Room,” where any person can make a wish and it will come true. The government keeps this place secret, but the Stalker is paid great money by those looking to find it. The Stalker takes two men, ”The Writer” and “The Professor” into The Zone and there they explore the paths and their individual psychological crises.
This is film is a test of endurance, but a satisfying one until the very end. It is filled with slow takes and long views of dystopian settings. If you are able to view the newly restored version for the first time, be prepared for a gorgeous think piece.
Toronto-based film/music/literary critic and dj Jacqueline Valencia earned her Honours BA in English at the University of Toronto. Jacqueline is currently a freelancer, senior literary editor at The Rusty Toque, editor at many gendered mothers, critic at Broken Pencil Magazine, founding editor of These Girls On Film, and a film journalist and senior staff film critic at Next Projection.
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