S P A C E M AY B E A M E R I C A ’ S F I N A L F R O N T I E R , B U T B R I T S P R E F E R T H E I R S PAC E M E N TO P O S S E S S H E R O I C E C C E N T R I C I T Y R AT H E R T H A N T H E R I G H T S T U F F.
Damned and its 1964 sequel children of the Damned); or those aliens closest to home, housewives and career women. ever since the perfect Woman in 1949, in which a male scientist tries to make an obedient female robot, an abiding theme in British science-fiction has been an eroticised fear of assertive, independent and uncontrollable women. in the strange World of planet X (1958), unearthly stranger (1963), invasion (1966) and the Body stealers (aka thin air, 1969), women were literally creatures from another world; alluring threats to normality and the British way of life. their erotic threat would be overt in sexploitation films like Zeta one (1969) and the sexplorer (or the Girl from starship Venus, 1975), where luscious alien femmes fatales seduced earthmen and whisked them off to repopulate their dying planets.
the late ’60s saw a new seriousness in screen sF with the release of two major hits in 1968 – in the us, planet of the apes; and in Britain, stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a space odyssey, which is the greatest of all British sF films, even if its co-author and director was american. its focus on space travel was unusual in British sciencefiction. in the 1950s, a few British films such as spaceways (1953) and satellite in the sky (1956) chirpily assumed that Britain would lead the space race, but their Dan Dare fantasies didn’t survive Britain’s loss of power and esteem. since the 1960s few British movies have been interested in the idea of space travel, with notable exceptions like spaceflight ic-1 (1965), hammer’s ‘space western’ moon Zero two (1969), and Danny Boyle’s sunshine (2007). otherwise, the only Britons who make it to infinity and beyond are kidnapped by aliens, as in they came from Beyond space (1967). imagining John Bull amongst the stars is usually left either
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to nostalgic adaptations of Victorian novels such as First men in the moon (1964) or comedies mocking the very idea, like nick park’s 1989 a Grand Day out with Wallace and Gromit. space may be america’s final frontier, but Brits prefer their spacemen to possess heroic eccentricity rather than the right stuff – think of arthur Dent in the hitchhiker’s Guide, patrick moore, colin pillinger and the mercurial Doctor Who. Despite 2001’s mystical explorations of inner space, nor was there much exchange between British sF cinema and the psychedelic ‘new Wave’ of sci-fi writers in the 1960s such as michael moorcock and JG Ballard (although Ballard did write the original treatment of hammer’s somewhat inaccurate prehistoric fantasy When Dinosaurs ruled the earth in 1970, which he later described as ‘the worst film ever made’; and moorcock’s novel the Final programme became an amusingly colourful campfest in 1973, which moorcock, predictably, loathed). But there is an authentically groovy vibe to space oddities like moon Zero two and the sF musical toomorrow (1970), which was supposed to launch olivia newton John’s eponymous pop group as the new monkees.
most sF production still consisted of tV spinoffs or horror films adrift in a waning exploitation market. those masterpieces and cult classics that emerged in the 1970s were art movie one-offs from auteurs like nic roeg who, in an inspired move, cast David Bowie as the alien brought low by human pleasures in the man Who Fell to earth (1976); or John Boorman, who put sean connery in a nappy for Zardoz (1974); and Kubrick, whose controversial and prescient a clockwork orange was withdrawn from circulation after death threats to his family. commercially, the most successful British
contribution to sF continued to be the James Bond films, whose fascination with gizmos lapsed into outright science-fiction with the star Warsinspired moonraker (1979), in which roger moore swapped his safari jacket for a space suit. science-fiction production pretty much dried up from the mid-1970s, which was a low point for British film production in general. after the release of star Wars in 1977, Britain’s main contribution was as a base for international co-productions such as saturn 3 (1980), scripted by martin amis, and alien, directed by ridley scott, who later made Blade runner in the us and is consequently one of the very few British directors responsible for two great sF films. Fans of the bizarre, however, should hunt down the indescribably bad Queen Kong – unreleased because of copyright problems – in which robin askwith of the confessions… films leads the women of Britain in defence of a giant love-sick feminist gorilla. since the 1980s, science-fiction production has mostly consisted of occasional one-offs along the same lines as before – tV spin-offs (the hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, 2005), trashy exploitation (roy ‘chubby’ Brown’s uFo, 1993) and literary adaptations (children of men, 2006). While the dominant trend continues to be the horror hybrid, from 1997’s event horizon to shaun of the Dead (2004) and the Descent (2005). But even today, as James cameron ushers in a new era of mega-budget 3D sci-fi, the backyard British way survives. as a new generation emerges, spearheaded by the likes of Joe cornish, Duncan Jones and Gareth edwards, home-grown sci-fi continues to flourish and inspire because of (not despite) its modest means and outsized ambitions iQ hunter teaches Film studies at De montfort university, leicester. he edited British science Fiction cinema (routledge) in 1999, and is currently writing British trash cinema for BFi/palgrave.