 |
| Von Braun points out his plan for a new space station in a 1955 Disney film. This round revolving shape would henceforth be the go-to design for the next decade+'s science fiction space stations. |
 |
| more post-Axis sci-fi: X FROM OUTER SPACE, THE |
This era between Sputnik and Apollo became known in comic book circles as the Silver Age: the era when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby replaced bland square jawed superheroes with dudes complex, tortured, relatable, with a cohesive universe full of crazy Steve Ditko abstraction. Onscreen, the squaresville atomic caution of the golden 50s was being replaced by colorful space opera cocktail decadence. Strong female characters no longer had to fight sexist blowhards to be respected as officers (see: Angry Red Planet, Rocketship XM). Now they could heads of communications and operations, doctors in astro-biology and chemistry; they could be pretty without having male crew members snicker behind their backs or wolfishly lick their lips. I've deliberately eschewed any movie from this list that contains even a hint of that type of dated 50s sexism. I've also avoided any streaming titles of less than watchable quality, though your mileage may vary. So.... What are we waiting for!? The future ain't gonna get much older!
1. CREATION OF THE HUMANOIDS
(1962) Dir. Wesley Barry
***1/2 / Amazon Image - A
I'm beginning to understand the fuss about this being Andy Warhol's favorite movie. It's fast becoming one of my favorites too! It contains everything I love in a late night sci-fi chill-out film and nothing I don't. Deep dark reds and grays, extendable tubes, silver eyeballs, skeletons, space age decor, pulp novel skies, heightened theatricality, an 'all in a single night' time frame, and spooky analog sci-fi music. I love the total absence of exterior shots and that it all occurs against painted backdrops that seem lifted right out off the covers of early-60s space age paperbacks (including great lighting, colors, and cinematography from the legendary Hal Mohr). It also has an endlessly fascinating premise that warrants its talky nature. Set in a post-nuclear future where cities have become more advanced than ever and most humans are sterile, robots have become highly advanced and do most of our work and have taken on human form, albeit with gray skin, silver yes, and bald heads. Don Megowan stars as "the" Craigis, a member of the Order of Flesh and Blood, a space age luddite hate group out to halt the production of humanoid-looking robots as they're too much like "us" for these racist/homophobic-style comfort. They hassle robots on the street and strut around in fascist sashes and Civil War caps. Meanwhile, Dudley Manlove--in his second best sci-fi role--is one of the robots, cementing the film's queer-coded message (i.e. 'we're closer than you know, we mean you no harm, and we don't intend to stay in the shadows much longer'). David Cross (no relation) is Pax, the 'clicker' (as the robots are derisively called) in 'rapport' with Craigis' sister more liberal sister Esme (Frances McCann). Cragis tries to get her to break it off via a 3 AM visit, but not everyone is afraid of having all their needs met by a mechanical device in this most perfect of all eternal nights. She just happens to be up having cocktails with her friend ! Doesn't anyone sleep in the future?
Beautiful to look at and never boring (even if no one seems to ever 'move'), this is clearly a real labor of love from director Wesley Barry. I like to imagine it got workshopped at some off-off-Broadway East Village coffeehouse all through the 50s as--for all its measured talkiness--it's never dull, uneven, or repetitive. Occasional deadpan jokes ("we did make you a bit thinner,") land like gentle spiders amidst the vocalizing space age echoes on the soundtrack (courtesy an uncredited Edward J. Kay). The serene George Milan is Acto, the head robot. Able to seem comforting yet otherworldly at the same time, Milan makes a great team with Manlove as his right hand "man" - droll, laid-back, and unfazable. I urge you to watch it late at night, with a loved one sleeping next to you, so you can gaze down at them occasionally and wonder...
(1966) Dir. Antonio Margheriti
*** / Amazon Image - A
The wild planet they find causing the trouble is an uninhabited but impressive red ball, 25 miles in diameter, with fields of cold red gelatin quicksand and islands of hairy ground surrounding craters breathing out plumes of cold steam. They descend into one of the craters to plant anti-matter charges and find themselves attacked by white tendrils that bleed but repair themselves as soon as Rod stops hacking at them. It's quite a destination!
I love this crazy movie. It has some of the best dubbing ever, matching the lips with weird hesitance and fast-talking when necessary. Dialogue is rich with technical savvy, using the weird pauses of the actors to create mood and drama... rather than just making them sound drunk (though there's that too): "Read your retros - don't get clogged, Mack!" / "Who's got the flagship?!" / "I'm engaged to her, Terry... not that... I want to be."
An instant immersion in a future world of moon bases and orbiting space stations, anti-matter bombs, and astronauts soaring through black soundstage space on visible wires onto planets that breathe out through their craters. The ever-marvelous Giacomo Rossi Stuart (Kill Baby, Kill) is Commander Rod Jacskon, in charge of the Gamma One space station, tasked with finding the gravitational disturbance that's destroying Earth's weather patterns. Sultry-eyed Terry Sanchez (Ombretta Colli) is his head of communications and an organized officer. Rod loves her, but his needy cat-eyed fiancee (Halina Zalewski) on Earth ("a no-good ground chick!" as his pissy right hand man calls her) happens to be the daughter of General Norton (Enzo 'Italian Burt Lancaster' Fiermonte)! "It's too involved" Rod tells Terri. There's no time for that now, though; if they don't find the source of the disturbance there'll be no Earth to go back to, and--as the ineffective Norton puts it--"it's not a matter of days, but hours!" As with all the best science fiction films, we barely see Earth or exterior shots at all aside from some disaster shots on the monitors and a coda funeral/memorial. Instead director Anthony Dawson (Antonio Margheriti) makes sure everything is space ships and soundstage space, full of odd sound effects and eerie music.
I love this crazy movie. It has some of the best dubbing ever, matching the lips with weird hesitance and fast-talking when necessary. Dialogue is rich with technical savvy, using the weird pauses of the actors to create mood and drama... rather than just making them sound drunk (though there's that too): "Read your retros - don't get clogged, Mack!" / "Who's got the flagship?!" / "I'm engaged to her, Terry... not that... I want to be."
The imdb score is unfairly low, and perhaps based on old faded VHS pan and scans (I remember hating it when catching it on early morning TV back in the 70s) but the Prime print puts it on a whole other level. The deep blacks and reds that make up the bulk of the colors look really rich and alluring now, making Gamma-1 seem the place to be, way cooler than the Enterprise or anyplace like that. So if space opera style drama and mature adults doing work as an organized group in constant radio communication is your bag, with plenty of women in capable professional positions. Rod doesn't really even try to stop Terry from going along on all the dangerous missions, instead just telling her "it's every man for himself." In other words, though far, far from perfect, this film should be the cornerstone of your spiritual Euro-6os science fiction pyramid. As Commander Rod says "use your retros!" And then seek out the others in the series: Wild Wild Planet, Battle of the Planets, The Snow Devils and The Green Slime as well as Battle of the Worlds (below),
3. VOYAGE TO THE PLANET OF PREHISTORIC WOMEN
(1968) Dir. Peter Bogdanovich
*** / Amazon Image - D+
When I can't sleep in a foreign land I like to fall asleep to this crazy movie, with Mamie Van Doren and assorted Venusian blondes indirectly encountering cosmonauts from a relatively expensive-looking Russian science fiction film (Planet of Storms). As the cosmonauts encounter man-eating plants and various dinosaurs, the hippie mermaids watch and sing, swim, spy, eat raw fish while treading water, worship a pterodactyl, and wait to see what happens. When the cosmonauts shoot down their pterodactyl god (in self defense), the ladies take action, get really mad and create volcanos and floods through chanting like witches.
The story of this brilliant melange is cinematic legend: Roger Corman tasked young Peter Bogdanovich with dubbing one of the Russian sci-fi films he'd recently acquired into English and adding Mamie Van Doren and a cadre of her fellow blonde sea nymphs (with great hip hugger green lame flair slacks subliminally evoking mermaid tails -- a truly inspired high-fashion solution courtesy Alice Mitchell) to jack the sex appeal. In addition to the dubbing, the new soundtrack washes over one in a near constant flow of ocean sounds, eerie pitch-shifting electronic wind, spooky-swooping two-note siren singing, t satisfying ambient noises, the deep mechanical voice of John, the ship's boxy robot, occasional bursts of Keith Benjamin's score, and Bogdanovich's hipster narration as the younger, romantically inclined cosmonaut (proving it's the Bog by assorted allusions to Welles in Lady from Shanghai). Take all those sounds overlapping together and you have the best white noise machine in the galaxy.
In short, I love this terrible movie. Sure the Russian film (now available and seeable on YouTube) is fantastic on its own. I love the giant man-eating plant, the attack of the man-sized Allosauruses, a passing brontosaur. But also I love the dopey, near muppet-like voice (uncredited) of Commander Lockhart and the dreamy telepathic voice of van Doren's character. I love the way when we first see the sirens they completely blend in with the rocks around them, like sleeping seals. In short, watch Planeta Bur / Planet of Storms if you want good science fiction. Watch Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women if you want to fall into a pleasant alpha wave trance on your next flight.
4. PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES
(1966) Dir. Mario Bava
**** / Amazon Image - A+
Fourth on the bill, Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires is actually the best as far as gorgeous cinematography and clever, if not always successful, in-camera effects. The storyline fuses elements of Last Man on Earth with Invasion of the Body Snatchers and looks forward to Night of the Living Dead, and most notably Alien (which it partially inspired). It's gorgeous and fascinating film that would be worth seeing even if you had to see it in Italian without subtitles, just cuz it's so beguiling to look at. The plot concerns a rescue mission to a strange foggy planet where the soon-dead crewmen are taken over by fourth dimensional aliens eager to hitch a ride off their dying world. The co-ed crew wear sexy high-collared black leather uniforms with deep yellow trim (the coolest and most high fashion space crew uniforms ever), and their ship is a huge minimalist black floored matte and mirage wonder. The outside miniatures make the ship look at times like soap on the rope anchored to the bottom of an aquarium (but that's not a debit) and the planet is a bizarre landscape or red and blue gels, swirling fog, petrified tentacle tree rocks, quicksand type burbling pits, and weird noises and disembodied voices barely audible in the whooshing winds. Sublime. The shots of the outside guards looking deep into fog for signs of life are some of the most eerily beautiful in all of science fiction. The dubbing is good (lead Barry Sullivan does his own) and the music is super eerie. It just gets better with every viewing, especially in this HD color-restored super-marvelous shape.
(1966) Dir. Curtis Harrington
*** (image quality: A-)
A tale of first contact with Mars, we're in a near future where space exploration is done mostly by young people played by hip Corman company future-stars like Dennis Hopper and John Saxon, in a big international space center led by Basil Rathbone. The mission: escorting a female vampire alien from a Martian moon to Earth after her ship crash lands. As with the above Prehistoric Women, it's a case of reverse engineering as another Corman protege, Curtis Harrington, intercuts footage from Corman's imported print of Soviet bloc sci-fi film MESTRE NASTRESHU. Acting as a fine mirror to issues of gender as well as Soviet-American relations of the era, the footage is matched brilliantly to its respective sides: the Dionysian and ornate deep red Russian footage for the female vampire Martian ship and the "Red" planet surfaces / the Harrington-shot Earth scenes and space ship interiors a nice powder blues with cafeteria grays on threadbare Apollonian sets; the combination works perfectly - allowing for an artistic level of special effects quality and, for devotees, a chance to marvel at the ingenuity Harrington used in matching the footage. The end result is not only atmospheric and strangely sexy, it's coherent, and looks way more expensive than it probably was, not to mention there's a uniquely bitchy silent antagonism between Florence Marly's classy, mute green-skinned queen and Saxon's girlfriend (Judi Meredith), who seems to wear even more make-up than the green skinned queen! Indeed, her lipstick and eyeliner alone can cut through any amount of interplanetary white noise. We can tell, since the Prime print comes in blazing restored colors. See it a few times and then realize that--in warning of the short-sightedness science, the prioritizing of bringing the human-devouring, egg-laying monster back alive no matter how many astronauts die along the way--this is, like the previous entry on this list, one of the influences behind Alien. It's also short (79 minutes), and damned nice to look at it late at night while drifting towards dreamland.
6. TERROR BENEATH THE SEA
(1966) Dir. Hajime Sato
** / Amazon Image - A
Thanks to an amazing Prime HD image, this sexy-terrible Japanese fusion of underwater Bondian supervillain lair-trashing and Jules Verne-style fish people enslavement (ala AIP's War Gods of the Deep, Japan's Atragon, the Philippine's Beyond Atlantis, and Italy's Island of the Fishmen (AKA Screamers - also on Prime) is finally worth seeing thanks to a spiffy HD remastering. A young Sonny Chiba and a cute blond gaijin named Peggy Neal (The X from Outer Space - see below) star as a pair of intrepid diving reporters who follow fishmen tracks in search of a missing scientist while their contact in the American Navy (Franz Gruber) tries to get clearance to help them. While he berates Navy protocol, the interracial lovers find a grotto underwater, run into a squad of fish men; then wake up at a secret lair on the bottom of the sea, their wetsuits replaced by sleek white tunics. Youthfully gorgeous and well-lit as they are, you can understand their horror when the evil sunglasses-wearing villain starts converting them to ugly fish people -"with no differentiation between the sexes"! Biloxi-born Neal's revulsion at being "scaly" (actually more like sudsy) is hilarious, as are the fish people -- they have opaque black marble eyes set too close together and skin looks like that silver plastic foam wrapping your toaster comes in.
Naturally things go wrong and they run amok, shooting everyone in sight and carefully fighting hand-to-hand (their fish suits get torn up really easily - as the now glistening HD print shows all too clearly). Meanwhile Gruber still labors to convince the top brass to send a search sub once the pair go missing. But will he find them in time?
Lastly, though there are one too many unflattering close-ups of the sunglass enthusiast / megalomaniacal gaijin master villain Dr. Moore (Erik Nielsen) and the snaggle-toothed assistant scientist (Mike Daneen), it evens out as there also many lovely close-ups of Chiba and Neal, whose blazing white form-fitting tunic and villain-issued beige slacks hang on her just perfectly. Beaming with vitality and poise, flipping her short bob of a blonde hairdo, she's a perfect gaijin counterpoint to Chiba, whose deep dark eyes can drown any unsuspecting viewer who gazes into them too long (and we have plenty of opportunities). So see it anyway. Shunsuke Kikuchi's memorably groovy score and the gorgeous evil lair lighting on Prime's flawless HD print makes experiencing TERROR BENEATH THE SEA worth the time, as long as you don't forget to anchor yourself to rock bottom expectations.
---------
7. BATTLE OF THE WORLDS
Il Pianeta degli uomini spenti / Translation: Planet of Extinct Men
(1961) Dir. Antonio Marghereti
**1/2 / Amazon Image - C
Sort of the prequel to Margheriti's 1966-7 "Gamma One" Tetralogy (note its American title is Battle of the Worlds, and is not be confused his War Between the Planets or War of the Planets, both of which came later). This one has a runaway planet entering our solar system and taking up orbit around Earth, all predicted by an aged, vaguely portly Claude Rains in owlish spectacles, hamming wildly, but dubbing his own voice so it's great, as a mathematics expert. Such a team player is our Claude, he sells the dialogue like its Shakespeare and even wears a space helmet during the big alien planet-landing climax, racing around like a kid in a candy store through miles of alien tubing and red gel lights while issuing grating 'music of the spheres' from his portable synthesizer. (The alien UFOs are maneuvered via soundwaves, leading to lots of overlaid asynchronous tones as ships race into heavily-edited dogfights ).Mixing Mycroft Holmes and Peter O'Toole doing Henry II, Raine's mathematician physicist is so brilliant he can just write an equation on the observatory floor in chalk for all the world's leaders to see (via camera set-ups from around the world) and he convinces them to give him complete control of the coming battle. Meanwhile the young couples (a pair from a Martian outpost, and a pair from his own observatory) fawn over him, stand around in awe and then saddle up when it's time to ride out of orbit and take on "the Outsider" (as Raines dubs the interloping world).
Mario Migliardi's score smoothes over any soft patches and helps to give the rocky island scenery a proto-giallo sense of class, though the barrage of synth noises in the second half may wake your sleeping girlfriend if you don't keep the volume low. Long a PD title, one can dream of seeing this one day remastered to look as good as the (above) War Between the Planets. What else is the stuffing of the stars, Professor? Dreams all come true, eventually, it's just a matter of when.
In this, a superior example of one of the countless international spy thrillers that proliferated in the mid-60s (due to the astronomic success of Thunderball), we get both rocket toppling and a trippy undersea lair powered by an undersea volcano, via the directorial coolness of that inexhaustible maestro Antonio Margheriti. Packed in amidst the quips, drinks, and car chases lurks some exciting footage of real-life Nasa rocket failures, with Anthony Eisley's staggering around in front of an ocean of fire. The rest of the time he's either being shot at by a lovely blonde (Wandisa Guida) or trying to score with his lovely handler, Captain Flanagan (Diana Lorys) in what's supposed to Florida but sure looks Mediterranean. A long forklifter chase/brawl through a brewery, from the loading docks all the way down the grain silos, is a big highlight. And the supervillain's ocean floor lair is an amazing expressionistic maze worth the price of admission itself. So many of Europe's countless mid-60s Bond imitations were encumbered with endless travelogue footage, stripteases, talking heads, comic relief, static plot-heavy dialogue, trite pick-up lines, and fashions so dated and sexist you can smell the cheap cologne lingering in the air for weeks after you watch it, but Lightning Bolt is worth standing in the rain for. Riz Ortolani spy music is on-point and on-message throughout and the sublime HD prime print makes the old new again.
A happy astro-theme song and groovy lounge soundtrack (courtesy Taku Izumi); cheerful blue colored outer space backgrounds; cute-if-unconvincing space miniatures and sets--X From Outer Space has my early-60s international sci-fi number, and yours too if you but let it. Once again where in that seemingly inevitable future (as envisioned by von Braun) of permanent bases on the moon, operated by a United World Order, where young people of both genders hold high-level positions on orbiting space stations and meet after hours at the space lounge to dance and be interrupted by urgent news. Cute blonde gaijin astrobiologist Lisa (Peggy Neal - see Terror Beneath the Sea above) is the girl in a group of four bound for Mars, stopping off on the moon to party with cute Michiko (Itoko Harada), whose got a crush on Capt. Sano (Shun'ya Wazaki), who crushes on Lisa (Neal) who likes him too but knows Michiko crushes so much harder. Franz Gruber (also back from Terror) sports a goatee as a high-ranking scientific advisor (he also counsels Lisa when hearts gets too heavy).
8. LIGHTNING BOLT
Operazione Goldman / Operation Goldman
Operazione Goldman / Operation Goldman
(1966) Dir. Antonio Margheriti
*** / Amazon Image - A-
9. FRANKENSTEIN MEETS THE SPACE MONSTER
(1965) Dir. Robert Gaffney
**1/2/ Amazon Image - A
Puerto Rico really needs your help right now, but Frankenstein Conquers the World isn't the reason, entirely. Sure, some fancy critics give it a bad rap and, sure, it's a little too aware of its own Party Beach hotrod absurdity, but some of the scenes have same kinetic weird nouvelle-pulp energy we fist saw in Rollin's Viol du Vampire and Franco's Diabolical Dr. Z, while still staying as gosh-darn American as a NASA-sponsored apple pie (filmed in Puerto Rico!). The plot follows a pair of evil aliens--the bald pointy eared, vaguely Uncle Fester-meets-Jon Lovitz Dr. Nadir (Lou Cutell) and the aloof Princess Marcuzen (Marilyn Hanold)--as they abduct a bunch of bathing suit wearing, cocktail drinking, pool party frugging, party girls to back to their sterile post-war planet. Threatening any resistors with their pet space monster, they're quite the hammy pair, milking every line to the point of dryness. But in contrast there's a nice current of realism with footage of driving past real-life NASA's gates and a funny press conference with their newest astronaut Col. Saunders (Robert Reilly), who freezes up halfway through the Q&A-- we find the secret: he's a robot! When his ship crashes (thanks to the alien's toppling powers), Saunders falls to earth a burnt robot amnesiac who proceeds to run amok until his creator (the great--always deadpan--James Karen) and his girlfriend (foxy Karen Grant) fix his circuitry and turn him around against the alien threat. And you can bet your bottom dollar that the title match is coming as the space monster is warmed and readied for Frankie's visit and Grant is next on the conveyor belt to Nadir and the Princess's home planet. The military arrives but daren't attack while all the girls are inside the (parked) ship.
Man, Puerto Rico seems like quite the spot! Never before has military footage from our Air Force and Army training maneuvers been so seamlessly interwoven with western poolside garage rock decadence! Those teens who first saw this funky gem at the drive-in probably thought they were dreaming. Cutell's Dr. Nadir makes Dudley Manlove's Eros in Plan Nine seem a model of deadpan cool; and scenes of him and Marcuzen examining the visibly uncomfortable swim suit models (from the Miss Puerto Rico contest!) veer close to icky; but once everything is sorted and the credits start their roll, the ever-cool James Karen and his lady friend enjoy a leisurely moped ride through sunny San Juan as the romantic harmonies of The Distant Cousins walk us out,
Now Come with me to Criterion Channel...!
10. THE X FROM OUTER SPACE
Uchû daikaijû Girara
(1963) Dir. Kazui Nihonmatsu
*** / Criterion Channel Image - /C
 |
| Grooving at the moon's astro-lounge |
Planetary danger erupts when Lisa collects a tiny alien spore she found stuck to the ship's tail fin and brings it down to earth in one of those sample jars that alien spores tend to escape from when everyone is off having more cocktails. This one leaves a chicken-size footprint etched in acid on the floor and immediately grows kaiju massive. Though joyful and triumphant, Guilala's attacks are a bit on the weaker side compared to his more esteemed Toho comrades, but with all the fun jetting back and forth from the moon to Earth--set to that swingin' pop score--plus visiting soap dish UFO visits, nicely arranged widescreen medium shot compositions, luminous glowing skin of the two lead actresses, and Guilala's aerodynamic head curling its edges when blasting laser spitballs--the balance is more than made up.
The Criterion image is way too soft but hey - if not for their "It came from Shochiku" Eclipse series, it wouldn't be out on anything but a $60 Japanese import (PS - I found the Blu-ray version on ebay-- the colors and image are so much crisper). To think, I may never have known it. Man, I'm sick just thinking about it, because if there are cocktails being served on space stations or the moon in a 60s science fiction film, I shall be there, insatiable. There is no 'counting days' in space --there are no days to count!
BONUS
SOLARIS
(1972) Dir. Andre Tarkovsky
**** / Criterion Image - B
Tarkovsky's acclaimed science fiction masterpiece (which seems like a 60s film, due perhaps to the slower pop trendshifting behind the Iron Curtain) is set in a future on space station orbiting above an all-ocean, possibly sentient, planet that's started causing long dead lovers to re-appear, out of nowhere. Based on a novel by Polish sci-fi novelist Stanislav Lem, it's slow, depressing, and long, yet never less than compelling. It's certainly no slower or less ponderous than its western counterpoint, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Less trippy, though, unless you turn up the volume and pay close attention to the sound mix. Once you let the slowness hypnotize you, which is what it's for, weird things start to happen. The long drive through Moscow's tunnels and elevated highways to the the airport for example, becomes otherworldly when you tune into the way the sound of the traffic begins to discombobulate into the rush of rockets and radio static. The slow pans around rooms show Kris's (Donatas Bationis) dead ex-wife Khari (Natalya Bondarchuk) appearing in different points in time and space in ways you might miss if not paying the kind of deep half-asleep attention Tarkovsky demands. I've seen it five times and only managed to stay awake to the end once. Any Big Message is entombed in its weird mise-en-scene of ever shifting memory, with Tarkovsky cannily avoiding any attempt at momentous narrative or some wild "Beyond Jupiter" light show climax. But with regularly mismatched glimpses of things both there and not there, he does evoke the bathroom/bedroom rebirthing scene of 2001... if you stretch it to three hours and add a girl and a film rotectorssa..
Did I nod off?
Nyet to whatever the answer is. Nyet.
Such things lie far beyond the limits of special effects, and even human imagination, to interpret in any concrete form.
So we bid farewell even to the most.... basic.... functions...zzz
(If you refuse to watch SOLARIS, let the tenth film on this list be Criterion's DESTROY ALL MONSTERS (1968- Dir. Ishoro Honda) Yeah, boy, Akira Ifukube's pounding score, female aliens (above) turning into rocks, and a full roster of kaiju favorites uniting to really stomp the shit out of Ghidorah. Get Criterion channel now!! I also recommend GHIDORAH, THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER (1964), also on Criterion, which has a cool alien possessed princess side plot!
FURTHER OUT:
For other cool Communist sci-fi films from the 70s that seem like they're from our 60s, I highly recommend these two films from East Germany (avail. only in OOP DVD and sometimes youtube)
Im Staub der Sterne
(1978) Dir.
*** / DVD image - B-
+
(1972) Dir. Herrmann Zschoche
*** / DVD image - B-
