Cold War fears made the 1950s a golden era for paranoid science-fiction flicks. TIME looks back at the decade's best outer-space and nuclear-monster movies.
While the ants were annoying Los Angeles, a more majestic trouble-maker rose from Tokyo Bay: Gojira, a Japanese portmanteau word meaning killer whale. In fact, the creature is a 200-ft.-tall dinosaur awakened from a hundred-million-year snooze by, what else, A-bomb tests. He snacks on fishermen from remote islands, then comes to the big city to be a star, and carrying all the modern star’s baggage: nasty disposition, need to demolish things, insatiable appetite for mischief. The original Japanese film, directed by Ishiro Honda, was Americanized as Godzilla (an inspiration coinage, by the way: God + gorilla), with Perry Mason star Raymond Burr inserted into a few scenes. Both versions were big hits; the Japanese followed up with 27 more Godzilla films and many others with such oversize predators as Rodan and Gamera. They’re still making these pictures today.
The young audience for ’50s sci-fi movies lived in a democracy of blissful ignorance. With no Internet blogs to alert them to cult films, and with few newspapers reviewing B pictures, kids went innocently to Saturday matinees and consumed whatever they were fed. Even an Edward D. Wood, Jr., movie. Bride of the Monster, Night of the Ghouls, The Sinister Urge: all were no-budget fiascoes — movies so cheesy, cheese would say they stink. What makes them watchable is Ed Wood’s unconquerable passion, which kept him going through so many (self-made) disasters. His anti-masterpiece, described by Mystery Science Theater’s Michael J. Nelson as “the Citizen Kane of bad movies,” is this interspecies marriage of sci-fi epic and zombie thriller. As the ads read: “Unspeakable Horrors From Outer Space Paralyze The Living And Resurrect The Dead!” Many more people have laughed at Plan 9‘s inadequacies than ever saw it in the ’50s. The difference is, today’s connoisseurs are ready to sneer. Once upon a time, though, the movie was met with a theater-full of youngsters, wide-eyed with perplexity.
In light of the Material Girl performing at Super Bowl XLVI, TIME takes a look at her life and career, both of which have been lived firmly in the public eye.
