Old B-Movie Appreciation Thread

[Pappa]

I have fond memories of late-night b-movies on TV in my teens. Stuff like "The Man With X-Ray Eyes" and a slew of other crap that I can't remember the names of... half of it black and while, most of it sci-fi... all of it fair-to-middling in quality.

For christmas, I asked for and got a boxed set of "50 Classic Sci-Fi Movies". Yesterday, I had a day off work and watched one of them....

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058548/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Clau ... e_Martians

Martians, upset that their children have become obsessed with TV shows from Earth which extoll the virtues of Santa Claus, start an expedition to Earth to kidnap the one and only Santa. While on Earth, they kidnap two lively children that lead the group of Martians to the North Pole and Santa. The Martians then take Santa and the two children back to Mars with them. Voldar, a particularly grumpy Martian, attempts to do away with the children and Santa before they get to Mars, but their leader Lomas stops him. When they arrive on Mars, Santa, with the help of the two Earth children and a rather simple-minded Martian lackey, overcomes the Martians by bringing fun, happiness and Christmas cheer to the children of Mars.

It was completely awesome.

[maiforpeace]

I remember that one!

That was the thing to do on a weekend night - sleep over at my girlfriend's house in the rumpus room, where we would open up the fold out couch, make popcorn and stay up until they played the national anthem and the programming went off air for the evening.

One of my favorites:

[Bella Fortuna]

Trivia: Pia Zadora's in the Santa Claus movie... (of course no-one is going to know who she is... )

I love old 1940s b-movies of the film noir genre...



Mainly I got into them through the books they were based on, by great authors such as Cornell Woolrich, James Cain, David Goodis, Jim Thompson, etc...


Jokes now being accepted for Ride the Pink Horse...

[Animavore]

All these films look like complete crap

[CookieJon]

This one was surprisingly good...


The menace comes in the form of giant crystals which grow and grow, threatening to take over the whole planet!! Any guesses how they're finally defeated?

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And you can't really go wrong with Hammer, can you? This one's a corker..


"An ancient Martian spaceship is unearthed in London, and proves to have powerful psychic effects on the people around"

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BTW, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians is more of a "Z-grade" than a B-grade, and frequently appears in lists of the world's worst movies. Its production is covered in detail in the Medved brothers' wonderful book Fifty Worst Films of All Time: And How They Got That Way... a cracking read if you're into bad cinema!