Category Archives: Skiffy Flix

Some Sciency Bits

Posted on 11 July 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

Richard Dawkins on the ancestral language of DNA; How humans have interpreted fossils throughout history; Recalling the scientifically inaccurate and intellectually hostile movie Armageddon, from 1998; How an article about a refinement to our understanding of human evolution overstates its … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: Flight to Mars

Posted on 30 April 2023 by Mark R. Kelly

It’s been a while since I’ve watched and posted about a “skiffy flick,” that is, a science fiction movie from the 1950s, plus or minus a decade, when science fiction movies were very popular — or at least, a lot … Continue reading →

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Link and Comments: From McCarthyism to the Assault on the Capitol, via 1951 SF movies

Posted on 27 February 2021 by Mark R. Kelly

Slate: What UFOs and Joe McCarthy Have to Do With the Assault on the Capitol. Who knew?

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Skiffy Flix: Destination Moon

Posted on 8 August 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This 1951 film was the first prestigious science fiction film, its script inspired or perhaps partially written, by Robert A. Heinlein. The credits say “from a novel by” Heinlein but that’s not accurate. Heinlein had written a juvenile novel about … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: Rocketship X-M

Posted on 23 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

Now the fun starts. Having dutifully watched the precursors of science fiction films in the mostly horror films of the 1930s and ‘40s (with just two SF films from before 1950, Metropolis from 1927 and Things to Come from 1936), … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: Things to Come

Posted on 17 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This is an ambitious film from 1936, based on a treatment by H.G. Wells depicting future history from 1950 to 2036. Again, Wikipedia has a fairly detailed plot at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come. I’ve read that for decades after, Things to Come was … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: King Kong

Posted on 16 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This very famous and popular film, from 1933, isn’t exactly science fiction, but somewhat adjacent to SF: a variation of the “lost world” story popular in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when there were still unexplored areas of the … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: Son of Frankenstein

Posted on 15 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

This third Frankenstein film, Son of Frankenstein, from 1939 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Frankenstein), again features Boris Karloff as the monster. I saw this film decades ago, likely in the 1990s when there was a fine, independent video rental store around the corner from … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: The Wolf Man

Posted on 11 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

As I’ve said, the basis for these posts, and for my taking the time to watch these rather primitive films from the dawn of the movie era, is to revisit the predecessors of the earliest science fiction films; I have … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Posted on 8 July 2020 by Mark R. Kelly

In the Fall of 2019, September and October, I began a systematic review of early science fiction films, and adjacent horror films, going all the way back to the beginning of modern film, so to speak–excepting the many silent-movie era … Continue reading →

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