The Most Underrated Science Fiction Films of the 1960s
Once upon a time, Netflix’s DVD library hosted well over 100,000 titles and sent out roughly 12 million DVDs per week. Now, with the advent of easy-to-use streaming services, the amount of content viewers have available has shrunk to the low thousands. Look up any list of “films to watch” and you’ll find a tiny selection of movies, usually curated by people all reading the same lists and commenting on the exact same hot new show or film.
But, is that all there is? With over a hundred years of incredible filmmaking on the planet, isn’t there something missed when we only pay attention to the latest and greatest? This series is dedicated to answering that question and to exploring a small handful of the unsung films from decades past. I’ll examine each decade in turn, all the way back to the earliest days of film, and I’ll be exploring every genre of film there is! From science fiction, to drama, to romance, to comedy—I’m going to cover the entirety of film history for you, bringing out the golden nuggets for you to enjoy.
1960s Science Fiction
Obviously, when you think of 1960s science fiction, you probably think of the original Planet of the Apes, or the utterly incomparable masterpiece 2001: a Space Odyssey. These were genius works of the time, for sure, but they were not the only science fiction films being made.
The 1960s was an interesting era for science fiction cinema. This was before the concept of blockbuster films even existed, and science fiction mostly lived in the world of “B films,” that shared much in common with flashy and low-budget horror. These genres were the popular entertainment of the era, not the high art, though the efforts in some of them managed to amount to something wonderful.
This decade saw the first major shift from the far campier 1950s science fiction, to something a little more serious, a little more intense, and featuring larger budgets and more complex stories than would have been dared just a few years before. What happened here would set the stage for everything to come, making it one of the most important transition periods in the history of the genre.
As always, with these articles, I love hearing your feedback in the comments section, or on Twitter @indubitablyodin. Let me know what your favorite films of the decade were, which ones you think I should have included, and which you hope I’ll mention in one of my next decades!