Author Archive: Retro

Five individuals from five nations, including the “Superpowers,” USA, USSR, and China, suddenly find themselves on an alien spacecraft. An alien gives each a container holding capsules. No power on earth can open a given container except a mental command from the person to whom it is given. Each person has been provided with the power of life and death. Any of these individuals has the capability to instantaneously launch the capsules to whatever coordinates he/she chooses, and each capsule will then eradicate all human life within a 3,000-mile radius of its designated location.

An insurance investigator finds there’s more to electronic dream therapy than meets the eye.

Dr. Conway has perfected a machine which he believes will predict earthquakes, and has determined that one will strike California within 24 hours. He and his patron, Dr. Morton, attempt to convince the Governor but he cannot bring himself to declare an emergency when there is no proof the machine works – which, within 24 hours, it is proven to do. More significantly, Conway is getting readings which indicate a series of additional, pending quakes around the world, which also begin to occur; and more still seem to be on the way. With his assistant “Hutch”, to whose love for him he seems oblivious, Conway takes his equipment to the deepest point of Carlsbad Caverns, in hopes that being closer to the center of the earth will help discern the cause of the earthquake epidemic. It does, when they inadvertently discover a new element which lies dormant in watery pools deep within the earth but, [...]

An astronaut returns from space dead. The base that recovered him is then cut off from the outside world by an alien. The revival of the dead astronaut, the death of a scientist, and the discovery of alien embryos inside the resurrected astronaut’s body bodes ill for the survival of those trapped at the base and the rest of humanity.

Re-edited version of the 1939 Universal serial “Buck Rogers.”

A cyborg is programmed to kill a scientist who holds the fate of mankind in his hands. He fails and hides in a diner in a desert run by a woman who likes him. The people who sent him are after him and so is the local arm wrestling champ.

To protect a magic talisman from being used for evil, a boy is given the power to become an adult superhero with a single magic word.

Lang’s conclusive masterpiece of futuristic fantasy depicts life in the year 2000, as a member of the idle ruling class goes underground to see how the dehumanized working class gets along. Excellent, ahead-of-its-time, Sci-Fi/Fantasy film that defined a genre. Produced by Erich Pommer. English titles. Dir. Fritz Lang.

An alien is hunted by a gang of drunken hillbillies who saw him crash-land his spaceship.