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Showing posts with the label sci-fi

The Future Is Now: Logan's Run

It's interesting just how many future-set science fiction films of the 1970s didn't look anything like the future would look. Instead, they looked like the 1970s. Logan's Run (1976) is a fabulous example of this. Set in the twenty-third century—where society's remaining humans live under geodisic domes that resemble shopping malls, before having their lives terminated in the "Carrousel" when they turn thirty—the fashion and hairstyles, not to mention the dated special effects, of the 1970s still shine through. This is not a criticism. I genuinely love that about the film. One of the great pleasures in watching comes from this tension between the film's futurism and its undeniably groovy seventies clothes and feathered hair styles. The film is a science fiction cult classic, and much of the appeal for fans lies in the nostalgia it engenders. I was born in the seventies. I'm obsessed with the decade's culture, fashion, and media, largely be...

Writing Roundup: Holiday Horror and Classic Sci-Fi

Olivia Hussey, the original Final Girl, in Black Christmas (1974). How do you celebrate the holiday season? If you answer with anything other than, "Why, watch Black Christmas , of course!" then you need to reconsider your priorities. Okay, I understand we all have family obligations this time of year. Still, I implore you to take some time out and watch this 1974 cult classic, considered by many to be the birth of the slasher film genre. I wrote about it for The After Movie Diner this week, but the long and the short of it is this: I've seen an awful lot of slasher movies in my lifetime (I'm a child of the 1970s and 1980s, after all), and while several have been as good as Black Christmas , none have been better. I've long held John Carpenter's Halloween as the gold standard for horror/slasher movies, but now I'd slot Black Christmas in right alongside it. Amazingly I hadn't seen the film before this year. Oh I'd been hearing about an...