NEWS: Wil Wheaton's Geek In Review: Sci-Fi Guilty Pleasures

Oh yes , she was mighty fine indeed ! I'm such a geek that I loved both Zardoz & West World . I had no idea that Crichton directed that too .

First thing in my head too. Watch out for space herpes!!!!

I throw in a vote for "The Andromeda Stain" as well - That's the Sci-Fi movie I cut my teeth on at age 9.
As stated by Markus001, it "presented science fiction at its most 'scientific' " and as a young g.i.t, (geek in training) it fascinated, terrified and inspired all in one shot.

Can't disagree with the rest of the list, though.
After 30 years I'm still trying to convince my wife to play "Ice Caves". Unfortunately, she's more of the Princess Leia / Jabba the Hut Slave girl type, but, honestly, Rachel ruined for me in that "Friends" episode ...

Maybe it does not fit the criteria, but please consider the 1974 TV pilot "Planet Earth" staring John Saxon.

dude i still like the ewoks song, the shitty ending of jedi was the worst change in all the star wars special editions.

the original song kicked ass..

"yub yub...jub..yub...yuuuub...yub.....deh deh ta deh...DEH DEH!'

hehe...hope it's not stuck in everyone's head now....

Yeah, that was the first movie I saw by myself in the theater. There was nudity all over the place. Her, all the frozen people... plus kick-ass violence for a PG movie. It's still one of my favorites. I even read the very different trilogy of books (Logan's Run, Logan's Search and Logan's goes to Washington or something).

As for the list, I would have had Rollerball on it. As a kid, CBS and ABC would have a movie of the week; Rollerball and Silent Running were in heavy rotation with Planet of the Apes... which isn't a guilty pleasure as much as a pleasure period.

PS, there is a sequel to WestWorld called FutureWorld, with Peter Fonda and a robot janitor. A secret conspiracy wants to use the amusement park robot technology to replace real life politicians. Good times.

Here you go:

I feel no guilt at all over loving Westworld and Logan's Run. She wasn't really naked at any point in the movie. Everything she wore was diaphanous, to say the least, and she did get wet in a very sheer dress, but the only thing really close to nudity was when she changed clothes in that ice world and that was a quick shot. You know, I'm really trying to feel guilty about that one, and I just can't. It's one of the best Sci-Fi movies ever made.

And you beat me to Zardoz. How can you go wrong with Sean Connery in bright red short shorts and a bandalero talking about how guns shoot death and the penis shoots life. While the Rollerball remake makes me cry inside.

And Death Race 2000 should be on the list.

I saw almost all of those films..for one reason or another I enjoyed them all too.

If we were talking 80's though...Ice Pirates cause I laughed so hard, and Krull, because I still love that movie!

That was a great review of 70's scifi Will
I love Logans run... I thought of tattooing the gem in the middle of my hand, but I got a client to let me do it on them instead. I still might do it later. But unlike the photo most of it fell out..


And my favorite guilty pleasere of all sci fi is Barberalla. I know it was a 60's sci fi film so does not quailfy. but I do have a drinking game for it and it got me laid once..

Every time anyone says "Duran Duran'"
Every time she changes her clothing
or Every she has sex
you take a drink, not a shot or this will kill you. It's even better is you have a big enough group that you can split up into 3 teams and drink and each team picks one of the 3 scanerios to drink. see which team gets loaded first.

My father told me that the surprise twist to Logan's Run is that they scrape up everything after Carousel, and turn it into Soylent Green. My father saw these movies before I was born. He lives less than an hour from where parts of Logan's Run was filmed.

*sighs*

Non-geeks.

Anyway. 81 days until Last Day.

I just saw that!! Good cheesy fun!

Vincent does say "I'm the LAST MAN ON EARTH!" near the end... hence the title!

Some good choices. One movie I've found to be a guilty pleasure is actually from the 1980s, called Scanners. Michael Ironside plays the villain in this movie about superpowered psionics who have the ability to read minds, start fires, and explode bodies. Oh yeah, some of them can also transfer their minds into other people's bodies.

Naturally, the film must have the Scanners fight each other. Otherwise, there's no story. The ending is pretty predictable, but overall it's a wonderful example of bad to mediocre sci-fi of the 1980s.

Sci-fi films from the 1970s worth watching are Shockwave, about zombie nazis terrorizing innocent victims on an island; and Laserblast, featuring Roddy McDowall. In this film, a young man comes upon an alien laser cannon in the desert and becomes possessed by the "demonic" entity within it. Eventually aliens arrive to deal with the threat posed by the monster.

What about Dune and Blade Runner? Out of the time frame? Loved this article, and since I am a bit older than most here, got to see some of these in the theatre when they came out - amazing. I still think Soylent Green will happen, just a matter of when...

Thanks for the memories. Now do one on books! Especiall the older ones by heinlein, asimov and bradbury... awesome stuff.

The MST3K of Laserblast really did the film justice.

I watched Scanners pretty much entirely because it was directed by David Cronenberg. But it wasn't nearly as good as most of his movies, so. Meh.

My dad took me to see Logan's Run at the drive-in when i was a kid.

The Planet of the Apes series really reached its high point with the first sequel, Beneath the Planet of the Apes.

What, no mention of Dark Star? I guess it's not really a guilty pleasure, but it's one of the few examples of 70's American pre-Star Wars sci-fi that had anything close to a sense of humor.

Logan's Run is classic.
I am seriously offended that Invasion of the Body Snatchers doesn't rate higher than an "honorable mention" on the list. Philip Kaufman's brilliant re-make is just as good (if not better) than Don Siegel's original.

Interesting trivia (may be interesting only to a film buff): "Silent Running" was co-written by Michael ("The Deer Hunter") Cimino.

A wonderfully weird (and wonderfully awful) guilty pleasure for me is Stanley Donen's "Saturn 3" (which actually came out in 1980, but it LOOKS like it came out in about '75)
It features:
- Farrah Fawcett having drugged out sex with Kirk Douglass (who's old enough to be her great-grandfather)
- so much flangged-out, echoing sound f/x and dialogue that by the time the movie is over you feel like you're in a bad acid nightmare
- a giant, lumbering, silly-looking killer robot with the brain of (a dubbed over) Harvey Keitel

I had totally forgotten about Silent Running. What a brilliant film.
I really loved those robots, I remember being pretty devastated when big Bruce ran one of them over

i love Logans Run. I remember staying up late and watching it back when television had films on instead of infomercials.