I can’t pick just one. But these are some of my favorites.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Them! (1954)
War of the Worlds (1953)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

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On the Beach (1959)

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Forbidden planet


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Wheel guns are real guns too.

Those that made it to "Mystery Science Theater 3000".

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i cut and pasted them because they're on my list too.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Them! (1954)
War of the Worlds (1953)
20 Million Miles to Earth (1957)

Them! (1954)

Those cheesy ants just freaked me out to no end ...

The Incredible Shrinking Man, Godzilla movies , The Bob

I've never seen The Bob. What's it about?

I think he meant The Blob.

The Day The Earth Stood Still...... Let's hear it for Klaatu...

Queen of Outer Space. Zsa Zsa Gabor in the lead.

Y'all list some good ones. However, it seems everyone misses the best one-"The Thing from another World"with James Arness as the thing.Other good ones - Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

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Second vote for “The Thing-From Another World”. A really good movie. And “The Day the Earth Stood Still”. Two of the best.

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"Your other right........."

The original 13 ghosts ........ Scared the do-do out of me and the re-make was even worse!

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Can never get enough of "The Crawling Eye," AKA "The Trollenberg Terror" in Britain. It was featured on that Mystery Science Theater 3000 (correct title?). Laughed uncontrollably when the robot said: "You shake the snow globe and the heads come off." Forrest Tucker, star of "Eye" later did a giant insect flick in which the French scientist advised a woman to boil an insect egg she found to kill the embryo. The egg was over a foot in diameter...

"The H-Man," Japanese flick I saw in 1959. Couldn't sleep to save my life. "Kronos," about a giant robot from outer space (where else?) that emanated destructive rays (what else?). Horrible flick. Remember Lee Van Cleef's cameo in "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms" ? Add many of the movies other posters have cited.

Kaaskop49
Shield #5103

The Thing from Another World

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I don't know why, but this jumped straight into my head...
Must have made a "Big" impression.

Attack Of The 50ft Tall Woman

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) - IMDb

50 ft.jpg

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The original "Thing From Another World," and "Day The Earth Stood Still." You can keep the remakes with all their special effects.

Gort was the bad@@@ in that flick. "Klaatu barada nikto", a phrase that saved the planet. Joe

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The first horror movie I saw was "The Thing". I rode my bike to the movie house for the last show. When I got there it was still daylight. When I came out it was dark. I was so scared I must have rode my bike so fast I was just a blub.

Missed by one year. The 1960 'Time Machine', me 8yrs old and younger 7 yr. old brother were allowed to walk to the near by theater late afternoon to see this and by the time the movie was over, it was getting dark outside. We saw Morlocks with glowing eyes behind every tree and bush on the way home. I weren't scared tho.

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The Thing
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Day of the Triffids

No remakes

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Sure you did

What?? Over 20 posts, and no mention of "Plan 9 from Outer Space"? A classic!

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What, me worry?

Yeah, these for me too.

The Thing
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Day of the Triffids
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
Them! (1954)
War of the Worlds (1953)
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954)

Plus
The Time Machine

If 'Attack of the 50 foot Women' is on, I will have to stop anything I'm doing and re-watch again and again.

You didn't want to be in my house that evening when I arrived home after watching "The H-Man." Worse, it was the evening before school started.

Kaaskop49
Shield #5103

Yeh..When Worlds Collide. Wish they had made the next installment...After Worlds Collide...and again The Thing and the best classic The Day the Earth Stood Still...almost any of the bug monster movies

Zap Zsa Gabor?
Always suspected she was from outer space.
Big Tremors Fan Boy.
Have seen them all including the Series.
Just realized Tremors not a 50s.
So I’ll go with Creature From the Black Lagoon.
Never been comfortable in Black Lagoons since I saw it!

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To me the top three, in order, are "The Thing," "Them," and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers". All had more of a sense of realism than the others.

Invaders from Mars (1953) most certainly got my attention.. I was 9 and it was showing at the local Boys Club. I got special permission from my parents to attended the movie as it was over at 9PM and I had a 3 block walk home in the dark hours.

Not a problem I ran all the way home and did not sleep well for a couple weeks. At that age after seeing the movie I wished my parents had not let me go.

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"The Creeping Unknown"......pretty friggin creepy

Remember the glasses you wore to see the ghosts?

There is one more I'll add to the list - 1955's "Tarantula!" Much like "Them" but giant spiders instead of giant ants. Pretty well done. I don't think anyone has mentioned the original American version of "Godzilla" (with Raymond Burr added) either. Not one of my favorites, but nonetheless important to the genre.

Good thread! I give the nod to "Them!" and "Creature from the Black Lagoon", both 1954. I grew up in NYC and "Them!" was very heavily hyped before it was released; about half the kids in my school were wearing buttons that said "Them! is coming". A bunch of us took the subway to Times Square to see it on opening day before it came to the neighborhood theaters (yes, there were neighborhood theaters then). We all agreed that it was the scariest movie we'd ever seen and thought the giant ants were totally convincing. Even though we were sophisticated kids from New York, we were still 12 year old boys.

I seem to remember an oldie with a gorilla coming out of the desert with a TV for a head, maybe my imagination ?

Did a quick search and found Robot Monster with the possibility of being the worst sci fi ever. Guess not a TV head but a spaceman helmet.

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When I was a boy I didn't watch Queen of Outer Space to listen to anyone recite the Gettysburg Address. I still don't. I'll give you three guesses what I was interested in.

Then there was "The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes" (1955). I remember watching it but not much else. Plot was that some alien monster arrived on Earth and was taking over barnyard livestock and turning them into man-killers. The alien was living in a cave, or somewhere underground, so you never really got to see what it looked like. Monsters you can't see work cheap. Probably the lowest low budget sci-fi film ever. Possibly rivaled by "Plan 9 from Outer Space" that just kept repeating the same scene with Bela Lugosi over and over. Bela died early during the filming, so they used the only scene with him they had filmed. Otherwise, they used the director's dentist to fill in for him, but with a cape over his face showing only his eyes.

You made me recall there were 2 shades of plastic film in those 'glasses.' Look in one side/color "to see the ghosts." Look in the other "to not see the ghosts." Thanks for the memory!

Kaaskop49
Shield #5103

Was it called "Attack Of The Crab Monsters"? Giant crabs would eat people and their brains would be absorbed. As the monster pursued later prey, the brains would be heard speaking to the undigested.

Also: "Womaneater," "Congarilla," and "Frankenstein 1960."

Not a favorite but "memorable" .

I took a date to the drive in to see The Tingler. It was a low budget stinker but it had the desired effect. My date clung to me like a barnacle towards the end.

Thank goodness for bench seats.

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Forbidden Planet
The Day the Earth Stood Still
I'll put in another vote for George Pal's The Time Machine.

Cool thing is my kids like them too.

Edit: The original "The Fly" was good too. Better than the remake IMO.

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Another vote for Godzilla.

About 20 years or so ago, I read an article about a remake of "Kronos" with a big change, instead of the robot coming down to earth to suck power out of power plants(And destroy them, which made no sense), it was instead sucking in "Life Force" causing people and animals near it to die of old age in seconds. It looked like it was a go, then nothing. I always liked "Kronos" just because the guy who did the voice of George Jetson was one of the scientists who destroyed it. The cartoon special effects in one part was funny too. Usually, it's on Youtube, but now it's only available in Spanish.

You guys are too upper crust. LOL..
I've got to list my birth year campy best!
" Invasion of the Saucer Men" with Frank Gorshin
(orig Batman Riddler") as a funny drunk
dealing with the Big Headed Bloodshot Eyed Saucer Men.
And steers in the cow pasture fighting the Saucer Men.
A Real Hoot Movie!
Randy.

My favorites are the B movies.

The Killer Shrews
The Brain that wouldn’t die
The Wasp Woman
The Giant Leeches
It Conquered the world.

Gort is AWESOME to this day. One bad mistake in the remake was making Gort some shape shifting entity. The reason he was awesome is that he was understated. A big silver robot with little detail. All he had to do was open his visor. If he went on a rampage it would be kick *** deluxe.

I agree with a lot of the favorites here. I got tired os Godzilla vs everything.


It's THEM! Them!!!


Earth vs. the Flying Saucers

It Came From Outer Space

War of the Worlds

The Fly

From Earth to the Moon

Attack of the Giant Leeches (Maybe it was the actresses)

The World, the Flesh and the Devil

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Yes, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" and "Cat-women of the Moon" featuring the Hollywood Cover Girls as the Cat-women.

Perhaps one of the strangest sci-fi movies of the 50s was one called "The Magnetic Monster" with Richard Carlson. It wasn't a real monster in the sense of being an alien or a giant insect, but a radioactive isotope invented by some mad scientist. The isotope sucked up energy from the earth creating strong magnetism, and it kept growing larger and larger, threatening to eventually destroy the earth.

They were all great, even the campy ones and I'd be hard pressed to pick a favorite or even a top 10. But the one that stands out most in my memory is The Thing From Another World with James (Matt Dillon) Arness as the alien. It was in '50 or '51 and I was 5 or 6 years old.

My parents got into an argument over it. Mom didn't think I was old enough and it would be too scary for me. Dad didn't see a problem and I was caught between them. I wanted to see it in the worst way. Mom didn't agree but she relented in the end and we went to see it and I believe it was at the old Santa Rosa Theater on Telephone Rd.

I was holding my own...until the scene where the thing comes crashing through the door and the scene where they found the dogs in the bin. I was actually so scared I couldn't cry.

when we got home Mom asked if I was ok and of course I blew it all off and said that it didn't scare me at all. It was the biggest lie I ever told in my 76 years. I can't remember how long it was until I could sleep with out night mares but it was a while. They never knew. I knew they'd never let me see another show like that if they ever found out.

They've remade it a couple of times. Once in the late 80s with Kurt Russell, which was not bad but just didn't have that 50s quality that made it so effective and again a few years ago which was a flat flop to me.

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"The Thing" was a cut above most of the other 1950s Creature Features as it was realistic and believable. Especially so because "Flying Saucers" were becoming a hot topic in the early 1950s. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was also equally realistic and believable, except its theme was more influenced by the Red Scare passions of the time. You could go to sleep and wake up a Commie. Both had appropriate dramatic musical scores.

When I was only 5 my dad took me to see "The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms". I was 7 when he took me to see "War of the Worlds". It remains the movie I have seen the most in my life. Second place goes to "The Thing From Another World". When I was a boy, the movie adds for the weekend came out in the newspaper on Thursday. I eagerly checked it every week to see if a giant bug, lizard, resurrected dinosaur, space invader, or any other unknown horror was going to threaten humanity. If so, I knew my dad was up for going ! "Hey POP ...look at THIS ! "..."Can we go... huh...can we go...please..PLEASE ! " ..Oh yeah...we went !
I still LOVE to watch the old Sci-Fi. It is "comfort food" for my soul with great memories of my dad. .
God bless Ray Harryhausen and George Pal

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