Classic Sci-Fi
by josegf | created - 30 Oct 2015 | updated - 30 Oct 2015 | PublicSci Fi Movies before Star Wars era
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1. Forbidden Planet (1956)
G | 98 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
A starship crew in the 23rd century goes to investigate the silence of a distant planet's colony, only to find just two survivors, a powerful robot, and the deadly secret of a lost civilization.
Director: Fred M. Wilcox | Stars: Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, Leslie Nielsen, Warren Stevens
Votes: 53,217 | Gross: $3.00M
2. The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Approved | 81 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
After Scott Carey begins to shrink because of exposure to a combination of radiation and insecticide, medical science is powerless to help him.
Director: Jack Arnold | Stars: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton
Votes: 19,969
3. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Approved | 80 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A small-town doctor learns that the population of his community is being replaced by emotionless alien duplicates.
Director: Don Siegel | Stars: Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan
Votes: 54,766
4. Invaders from Mars (1953)
Approved | 78 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A young boy learns that space aliens are taking over the minds of earthlings.
Director: William Cameron Menzies | Stars: Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Jimmy Hunt, Leif Erickson
Votes: 8,836
5. The Time Machine (1960)
G | 103 min | Adventure, Romance, Sci-Fi
A man's vision for a utopian society is disillusioned when travelling forward into time reveals a dark and dangerous society.
Director: George Pal | Stars: Rod Taylor, Alan Young, Yvette Mimieux, Sebastian Cabot
Votes: 44,851
6. The War of the Worlds (1953)
G | 85 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A small town in California is attacked by Martians, beginning a worldwide invasion.
Director: Byron Haskin | Stars: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne, Robert Cornthwaite
Votes: 38,542 | Gross: $4.36M
7. The Thing from Another World (1951)
Approved | 87 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
Scientists and American Air Force officials fend off a bloodthirsty alien organism while at a remote arctic outpost.
Directors: Christian Nyby, Howard Hawks | Stars: Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, James Arness, Robert Cornthwaite
Votes: 33,361
8. Them! (1954)
Not Rated | 94 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
The earliest atomic tests in New Mexico cause common ants to mutate into giant man-eating monsters that threaten civilization.
Director: Gordon Douglas | Stars: James Whitmore, Edmund Gwenn, Joan Weldon, James Arness
Votes: 24,194
9. The Andromeda Strain (1971)
G | 131 min | Mystery, Sci-Fi, Thriller
Top scientists work feverishly in a secret, state-of-the-art laboratory to discover what killed the citizens of a small town and how the deadly contagion can be stopped.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: James Olson, Arthur Hill, David Wayne, Kate Reid
Votes: 40,446 | Gross: $3.42M
10. Soylent Green (1973)
PG | 97 min | Crime, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A nightmarish futuristic fantasy about the controlling power of big corporations and an innocent cop who stumbles on the truth.
Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: Charlton Heston, Edward G. Robinson, Leigh Taylor-Young, Chuck Connors
Votes: 70,576 | Gross: $7.92M
11. Logan's Run (1976)
PG | 119 min | Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi
A police officer in the future uncovers the deadly secret behind a society that worships youth.
Director: Michael Anderson | Stars: Michael York, Jenny Agutter, Richard Jordan, Roscoe Lee Browne
Votes: 61,042 | Gross: $25.00M
12. Westworld (1973)
PG | 88 min | Action, Drama, Sci-Fi
A robot malfunction creates havoc and terror for unsuspecting vacationers at a futuristic, adult-themed amusement park.
Director: Michael Crichton | Stars: Yul Brynner, Richard Benjamin, James Brolin, Norman Bartold
Votes: 62,976 | Gross: $16.06M
13. Silent Running (1972)
G | 89 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
In a future where all flora is extinct on Earth, an astronaut is given orders to destroy the last of Earth's botany, kept in a greenhouse aboard a spacecraft.
Director: Douglas Trumbull | Stars: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint
Votes: 31,472 | Gross: $0.69M
14. Fantastic Voyage (1966)
PG | 100 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
When a blood clot renders a scientist comatose, a submarine and its crew are shrunk and injected into his bloodstream in order to save him.
Director: Richard Fleischer | Stars: Stephen Boyd, Raquel Welch, Edmond O'Brien, Donald Pleasence
Votes: 20,835
15. When Worlds Collide (1951)
Approved | 83 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller
As a new star and planet hurtle toward a doomed Earth, a small group of survivalists frantically work to complete the rocket which will take them to their new home.
Director: Rudolph Maté | Stars: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, Peter Hansen, John Hoyt
Votes: 9,228
16. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
G | 92 min | Drama, Sci-Fi
An alien lands in Washington, D.C. and tells the people of Earth that they must live peacefully or be destroyed as a danger to other planets.
Director: Robert Wise | Stars: Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal, Hugh Marlowe, Sam Jaffe
Votes: 85,768
17. It Came from Outer Space (1953)
Approved | 81 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
A spaceship from another world crashes in the Arizona desert and only an amateur stargazer and a schoolteacher suspect alien influence when the local townsfolk begin to act strangely.
Director: Jack Arnold | Stars: Richard Carlson, Barbara Rush, Charles Drake, Joe Sawyer
Votes: 11,051
18. The Fly (1958)
Not Rated | 94 min | Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi
A scientist has a horrific accident when he tries to use his newly invented teleportation device.
Director: Kurt Neumann | Stars: David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price, Herbert Marshall
Votes: 25,667 | Gross: $3.00M
19. X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)
Not Rated | 79 min | Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller
A Roger Corman tale of Dr. James Xavier's devastating experiments on himself and the unforeseen.
Director: Roger Corman | Stars: Ray Milland, Diana Van der Vlis, Harold J. Stone, John Hoyt
Votes: 8,164
20. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
G | 149 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
After uncovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, a spacecraft is sent to Jupiter to find its origins: a spacecraft manned by two men and the supercomputer HAL 9000.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter
Votes: 719,603 | Gross: $56.95M
21. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
R | 136 min | Crime, Sci-Fi
In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.
Director: Stanley Kubrick | Stars: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Warren Clarke
Votes: 881,409 | Gross: $6.21M
22. Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Approved | 97 min | Horror, Mystery, Sci-Fi
A mysterious artifact is unearthed in London, and famous scientist Bernard Quatermass is called in to divine its origins and explain its strange effects on people.
Director: Roy Ward Baker | Stars: James Donald, Andrew Keir, Barbara Shelley, Julian Glover
Votes: 11,513
23. The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
Not Rated | 78 min | Horror, Sci-Fi
Professor Bernard Quatermass' manned rocket ship returns to Earth, but two of the astronauts are missing and the survivor seems ill and unable to communicate.
Director: Val Guest | Stars: Brian Donlevy, Jack Warner, Richard Wordsworth, Margia Dean
Votes: 7,183
24. Quatermass 2 (1957)
Approved | 85 min | Sci-Fi, Horror
Professor Quatermass, trying to gather support for his Lunar colonisation project, is intrigued by mysterious traces that have been showing up.
Director: Val Guest | Stars: Brian Donlevy, John Longden, Sidney James, Bryan Forbes
Votes: 4,657
25. Planet of the Apes (1968)
G | 112 min | Adventure, Sci-Fi
An astronaut crew crash-lands on a planet where highly intelligent non-human ape species are dominant and humans are enslaved.
Director: Franklin J. Schaffner | Stars: Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter, Maurice Evans
Votes: 193,265 | Gross: $33.40M
26. Rollerball (1975)
Approved | 125 min | Action, Sci-Fi, Sport
In a corporate-controlled future, an ultra-violent sport known as Rollerball represents the world, and one of its powerful athletes is out to defy those who want him out of the game.
Director: Norman Jewison | Stars: James Caan, John Houseman, Maud Adams, John Beck
Votes: 29,297 | Gross: $30.00M
27. Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973)
G | 93 min | Action, Sci-Fi
Ten years after a worldwide series of ape revolutions and a brutal nuclear war among humans, Caesar must protect survivors of both species from an insidious human cult and a militant ape faction alike.
Director: J. Lee Thompson | Stars: Roddy McDowall, Claude Akins, Natalie Trundy, Severn Darden
Votes: 33,777 | Gross: $8.84M
28. Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975–1976)
TV-G | 324 min | Animation, Adventure, Sci-Fi
While on a mission, three astronauts in their spaceship get caught in a time vortex. They return to Earth in the year 3979 A.D. and discover that intelligent apes are now the highest form of life.
Stars: Austin Stoker, Philippa Harris, Henry Corden, Richard Blackburn
Votes: 1,826
29. Futureworld (1976)
PG | 108 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
Upon uncovering the dirty secret of futuristic theme-park Futureworld, an ex-employee is killed after he tips off two other reporters who decide to do an undercover investigation.
Director: Richard T. Heffron | Stars: Peter Fonda, Blythe Danner, Arthur Hill, Yul Brynner
Votes: 11,786 | Gross: $8.72M
30. Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)
M | 100 min | Sci-Fi, Thriller
Thinking this will prevent war, the US government gives an impenetrable supercomputer total control over launching nuclear missiles. But what the computer does with the power is unimaginable to its creators.
Director: Joseph Sargent | Stars: Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, William Schallert
Votes: 10,155
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