Let's Do The Numbers

Now I'm no mathemagician, but I just counted out the films screened in the first eleven weeks of Secret Movie Night.
the number is a bit staggering. over 170 different films, including the lone feature thus far, Pavel Klushantsev's Storm Planet.
This thrills me to no end. So what's next? Lots lots more. more features, more shorts, more films about bicycles, zombies, robots, monsters, social programming and anything else i can come up with.

Got a special request? Send it my way.

and stay tuned for a SecretMovieNight All Star show later in the summer.

Russian Sci-Fi invades Secret Movie Night

almost can't wait for Tuesday night. It's finally time to screen what i love the most: space travel, robots, giant monsters, alien worlds. what more could you ask for?

It's time for Pavel Klushantsev's 1962 Russian sci-fi/thriller "Planeta Bur" ("Storm Planet"),featuring a spaceship full of brave cosmonauts, the planet Venus, a robot named John and lots of the aforementioned monsters.

as far as I'm concerned, this film has it all.

so yea, this film has been ripped off countless times, by the likes of Roger Corman and many others. But this is the real deal. A very well written and prescient work, surprisingly so perhaps, although it's not without its communist leanings.
Nevertheless, it set new standards at the time for it's imaginative storytelling and inventive special effects. For me, it's the Communist answer to Fred Wilcox's 1956 "Forbidden Planet". Both way ahead of their time in terms of effects, storytelling and manner of conveying that human element so often lacking in modern sci-fi filmmaking.