Best Films - American films - Sci-Fi

American cinema: Sci-Fi (Page 1 of 3)

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...]

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

Charles Barton

Chick Young and Wilbur Grey are baggage clerks who, one day, are asked to deliver two crates to a waxworks museum. According to the crates’ owner, these contain the last remains of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster. Sure enough, as Chick and Wilbur are unpacking the crates, the two horror fiends are revived... [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...]

Alien 3 (1992)

David Fincher

When a fire breaks out aboard the Colonial Marine spaceship Sulaco, an escape pod containing the surviving crew members is ejected into space. The pod crashlands on Fiorina 161, a maximum security penal planet inhabited by some of the most dangerous criminals in the galaxy. The prison’s population is entirely male, mostly pathologically hostile to women, and is employed in operating a large metal foundry... [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...]

The Andromeda Strain (1971)

Robert Wise

Returning to Earth after probing the dark reaches of space, a satellite drifts off course and crashes into Piedmont, a small town in New Mexico. The team who are sent to recover the satellite find the town strewn with dead bodies. The only survivors are a drunken old man and a baby. Everyone else has died from a mysterious blood-clotting condition... [More...]

Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott

Los Angeles, 2019. One-time cop Rick Deckard is lured out of his voluntary retirement by his former boss, Bryant, and recruited as a so-called Blade Runner. His mission: to track down and kill four rogue replicants, highly advanced androids which are indistinguishable from humans except in their emotional responses... [More...]

Bride of Frankenstein (1935)

James Whale

Prompted by Lord Byron and her husband one stormy night in 1817, Mary Shelley tells the second part of her story about Dr Frankenstein and his unearthly creation. Surviving the conflagration at the windmill, the monster goes on a rampage across the Bavarian countryside. He encounters a blind hermit, who gives him food and shelter, and teaches him the rudiments of speech... [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...]

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

George A. Romero

The world is in the grip of an unexplained pandemic. The bodies of the dead have become reanimated and are preying on the flesh of the living, creating worldwide pandemonium. Believing that this zombie threat is confined to the United States, Stephen, an employee at a television studio in Philadelphia decides to escape to Canada in a helicopter with his girlfriend Francine... [More...]

Day of the Dead (1985)

George A. Romero

Human civilization is virtually at an end, obliterated by a mysterious plague that is animating the dead, turning them into flesh-eating zombies with disgusting table manners. A small group of scientists and military men are holed up in a former missile silo, hoping to come up with a way to defeat the zombies and save the world... [More...]

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Robert Wise

The world falls under a spell of expectant dread when a flying saucer appears in orbit above the Earth before landing in Washington D.C. Before an assembled mass of onlookers, a space-suited humanoid emerges from the alien craft. He is Klaatu, a representative from another world who has come to deliver an ultimatum to the people of Earth... [More...]

Destination Moon (1950)

Irving Pichel

A team of scientists persuade a consortium of wealthy businessmen to back their project to send a manned rocket to the moon. On the day of the launch, one of the four astronauts is taken ill and has to be replaced, by engineer Joe Sweeney. The rocket takes off as planned and accomplishes a successful landing on the lunar surface... [More...]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)

John S. Robertson

Dr Henry Jekyll is a man of flawless repute, a philanthropist who divides his time between treating the sick poor of London and conducting scientific research in his laboratory. So preoccupied is Jekyll with his good works that he neglects his fiancée, Millicent, prompting his prospective father-in-law, Sir George Carew, to mock his unstinting selflessness... [More...]

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931)

Rouben Mamoulian

Dr Henry Jekyll, a renowned medical practitioner and philanthropist, is anxious to marry the woman he loves, Muriel Carew, but the latter’s father insists that he must wait awhile yet for decorum’s sake. To distract himself, Jekyll immerses himself in his scientific research, convinced that he can develop a potion which will separate the two opposing sides in man’s nature, the good and the evil... [More...]

Duel (1971)

Steven Spielberg

David Mann is driving his red Plymouth Valiant through the California desert on his way to a business meeting. The only other vehicle on the otherwise empty highway is a lumbering tanker truck which is expelling noxious black exhaust fumes in his direction. When Mann overtakes the truck, he is surprised when it suddenly accelerates and overtakes him, before slowing down again... [More...]

Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB (1967)

George Lucas

In a sterile underground city, there lives a well-organised society that is under constant surveillance. One man, THX 1138, is unhappy with this status quo and goes on the run. Despite being monitored at every stage of his flight, he evades capture. Finally, he climbs up a duct and emerges on to the surface of a beautiful world..... [More...]

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Irvin Kershner

The destruction of the Death Star by the Rebel Alliance is followed by a swift retaliation from the Galactic Empire, with Darth Vader leading the offensive. Luke Skywalker and his rebel friends are driven from their base and forced to take refuge on the inhospitable ice world, Hoth. But even here they are not safe... [More...]

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971)

Don Taylor

In the early 1970s, a spaceship lands off the coast of California. As a party of US marines watch in anticipation, three astronauts emerge. They remove their helmets to reveal that they are not humans, but apes, humanoid chimpanzees to be precise. These are Cornelius, Zira and Dr Milo, who managed to escape from their world, two thousand years in the future, in the very same spaceship that a human astronaut named Taylor had arrived in... [More...]

1 2 3 Next

A-Z