Best Films - British films

British cinema: Sci-Fi

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Stanley Kubrick

Millions of years ago, a tribe of herbivorous apelike hominids discover a mysterious black monolith which immediately exerts a strange influence over them. They learn how to kill other animals, to fashion bones into weapons and to assert their control over the world around them. Cut to the year 2001 AD, and Dr Heywood Floyd arrives at an American base on the moon where a remarkable discovery has been made... [More...]

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Stanley Kubrick

Alex DeLarge is a Beethoven-loving juvenile delinquent who spends his evenings indulging in orgies of violence with his droogies. This involves beating up rival gangs, breaking into houses and generally having a good time before heading back to the Korova Milk Bar for some nourishing lactose-based refreshment... [More...]

Alien (1979)

Ridley Scott

Commercial space freighter Nostromo is on its way back to Earth with a cargo of precious mineral ore. When the ship receives a distress call from a nearby planet, the crew - consisting of five men and two women – is revived from stasis and makes ready to investigate, in accordance with company procedure... [More...]

Aliens (1986)

James Cameron

57 years after her encounter with an alien being which wiped out her crew aboard the space freighter Nostromo, Ellen Ripley is picked up and taken back to Earth. Revived from hypersleep, she is put before a panel of Company executives, who listen to her story with incredulity. Ripley is appalled when Company representative Carter Burke tells her that a terraforming outfit has been sent to LV-426, the planet on which the alien eggs were found by her crew, to establish a colony... [More...]

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

Steven Spielberg

The scattered inhabitants of Muncie, a small rural community in Indiana, are visited by strange lights in the night sky. One evening, a mother watches in horror as her small child is abducted by a flying saucer. Electrical linesman Roy Neary is on his way to deal with a power blackout when his vehicle stalls and he is bathed in a blinding white light... [More...]

The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)

Terence Fisher

Whilst in prison, awaiting his execution for murder, Baron Victor Frankenstein relates his tragic life story to a priest. Inheriting his father’s estate, the young Victor began a series of experiments with his friend and mentor Paul Krempe, the aim being to artificially create life. Having successfully revived a dead dog, Frankenstein begins to assemble human body parts to construct a human being which he hopes to bring to life in his laboratory... [More...]

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Stanley Kubrick

Convinced that the Communists are infiltrating his country, General Jack D. Ripper, the commander of a US military airbase, gives the order for a bomber wing to launch a first strike nuclear attack on the USSR. Ripper’s executive officer, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, quickly realises that the general has lost his marbles and desperately tries to get out of him the three-letter code that will recall the bombers before they reach their target... [More...]

Fiddlers Three (1944)

Harry Watt

England, 1943. Tommy and the Professor, two sailors in the Royal Navy, are on their way back to their Portsmouth base when they see a WREN, Lydia, being molested by a man. Having rescued Lydia, the boys offer her a lift on the handlebars of their tandem. As the trio make their way across Salisbury Plain, a thunderstorm breaks... [More...]

Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

Terence Fisher

Baron Frankenstein believes he has perfected a means of extracting the soul of a human being from a corpse and transferring it into another body. He gets the opportunity to test his theories when his young assistant, Hans, is executed, after having been tried for the murder of a local innkeeper. The recipient of Hans’ soul is the innkeeper’s disfigured daughter, Christiana, who drowned herself after seeing Hans, her lover, guillotined... [More...]

Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)

Terence Fisher

Dr Frankenstein’s experiments in brain transplant surgery are temporarily suspended when the scientist’s cellar laboratory is discovered by an enterprising burglar. To evade capture by the police, Frankenstein relocates to a London boarding house run by Anna Spengler, whose fiancé, Dr Karl Holst, works at an asylum for the insane... [More...]

Goldfinger (1964)

Guy Hamilton

James Bond is enjoying a well-deserved break in Miama when he is requested by his superiors in MI6 to look into the activities of a wealthy businessman named Auric Goldfinger. Although Goldfinger has done nothing illegal, his recent acquisition of gold bullion is beginning to worry the British and American governments... [More...]

The Man in the White Suit (1951)

Alexander Mackendrick

Since graduating from Cambridge, Sidney Stratton has become obsessed with his idea of inventing an indestructible fibre, one which will revolutionise the clothes manufacturing industry. Unable to find a backer for his research, he resorts to carrying out experiments in secret in the laboratories of textile mills where he poses as a menial worker... [More...]

Quatermass 2 (1957)

Val Guest

Professor Bernard Quatermass’s ambition to build a colony on the Moon appears to be thwarted as government funds are diverted to other projects. Meanwhile, his team are busy investigating reports of meteorite landings in an area of English countryside known as Winnerden Flats. Visiting the site of the landings, Quatermass and his colleague Marsh are surprised to find a vast research installation which closely resembles the blueprint for their lunar base... [More...]

Quatermass and the Pit (1967)

Roy Ward Baker

Whilst workmen are building an extension to the London Underground, a prehistoric human skull is discovered. Palaeontologist Matthew Roney is called in and he concludes that the skull is over five million years old. Further excavation uncovers a strange metal object which Roney mistakes for an unexploded bomb... [More...]

The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)

Val Guest

Professor Bernard Quatermass is both excited and concerned when a rocket that he designed and launched crash-lands in the south of England. The rocket has travelled further into space than any previously manned flight, but the professor has had no contact with its three-man crew since shortly after take-off... [More...]

The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)

Terence Fisher

Sentenced to death for his diabolical experiments, Baron Frankenstein narrowly escapes his execution and sets up a medical practice in another town, working under an assumed name, Dr Stein. The baron’s success at attracting patients makes him the envy of his rivals, one of whom, Dr Hans Kleve, realises his true identity and insists on working as his assistant... [More...]

The Sound Barrier (1952)

David Lean

During WWII, fighter pilot Tony Garthwaite meets and falls in love with Susan, the daughter of the oil magnate John Ridgefield. After the war, now married to Susan, Tony finds himself employed by Ridgefield as a test pilot for the jet aeroplanes that he is developing at his burgeoning aeronautics factory... [More...]

Things to Come (1936)

William Cameron Menzies

During Christmas 1940, the world is engulfed by a devastating global conflict. The war lasts three decades and reduces human civilisation to rubble. By 1970, the remnants of mankind live in feudal communities, as in the Middle Ages, hungry and fearful of a terrible plague. But there is hope. In Iraq, a group of engineers and scientists have come together to rebuild civilisation... [More...]

Village of the Damned (1960)

Wolf Rilla

One day, Midwich, a small village in southern England, finds itself mysteriously cut off, its entire population rendered unconscious for two hours. No explanation for this bizarre occurrence is found. Then, a few months later, something even stranger happens. Every woman of child-bearing age in the village is found to be pregnant... [More...]

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