Uen-Tv Sci-Fi Friday

Destination Moon (1950)

UEN-TV 9.1

Past Show Times:
9:00 PM on Jan 4, 2013

Destination Moon was the first major science fiction film produced in the U.S. and lifted the genre from the realm of the fantastic to the world of the believable. Co-scripted by Robert Heinlein from his novel "Rocketship Galileo", Destination Moon's suspenseful plot relates the saga of man's first voyage to the moon amid a series of scientific cliffhangers. It also marked producer George Pal's initial association with the genre. Later Pal would produce some of Hollywood's most popular science fiction films, including War of the Worlds, When World's Collide and The Time Machine. Breathtakingly photographed in vivid Technicolor, with astronomical art by Chesley Bonestell, a captivating score by Leith Stevens and Academy Award winning special effects, Destination Moon remains a science fiction landmark.

King Solomon's Mines (1937)

UEN-TV 9.1

Past Show Times:
9:00 PM on Jan 11, 2013

This is the classic story of adventure seekers in search of the lost diamond mines of King Solomon. Hired to lead a hunting expedition in deepest Africa, Allan Quartermain (Cedric Hardewicke) is persuaded by his party to join Kathy O'Brien (Anna Lee) and Umbopa (Paul Robeson) to search for her father who is presumed lost and possibly dead in his quest for the fabled diamond mines. After a gruelling trek through the desert and over a mountain, they are confronted by natives who control access to King Solomon's mines. Umbopa reveals that he is their deposed leader and tells the fortune seekers that if they help him overthrow the evil doers led by the witch doctor Gagool and the usurper Twala, he will help them get to the diamonds. In a savage ritual where Gagool selects victims for death with Quartermain's party as the next victims, Quartermain takes advantage of a solar eclipse to perform "magic" which makes the natives flee. In the ensuing battle, Umbopa retakes his throne, but as Kathy finds her father amidst the diamonds, the dormant volcano upon which the mine is situated erupts forcing Quartermain and his party to flee for their lives.

Devil Girl from Mars

UEN-TV 9.1

Past Show Times:
9:00 PM on Jan 18, 2013

Women beware! This cosmic vixen has come for your husbands, brothers and boyfriends. Her mission, bring men back to Mars as mates for a planetful of she-creatures who need fresh breeding stock to repopulate the red planet. And men, if you resist, you might just be incinerated by Chanti the Robot (a distant cousin of Robbie) or tossed into the atomic inferno that powers her ship. A beautifully-crafted production, unique special effects, inspired production design, and classy international beauty, Hazel Court, make this a true gem of Atomic Age entertainment.

Hercules Unchained (1959)

UEN-TV 9.1

Past Show Times:
9:00 PM on Jan 25, 2013

No description available.

Ugetsu (1953)

UEN-TV 9.1

Past Show Times:
9:00 PM on Feb 1, 2013

One of the acknowledged masterpieces of the world cinema, this was the first film to bring Mizoguchi adulation from the west. Based on two classic ghost stories, Tales of the Pale and Mysterious Moon After the Rain, it is about an ambitious potter in a war-torn medieval village who is lured away from his wife by a beautiful aparition. Warned by a priest that he is living with ghosts, he is able to break the spell and return home to his wife...but more surprises await. Film historian George Sadoul said, "Its stylistic perfection and rich overtones of its themes make Ugetsu Monogatari one of the most beautiful films of all time."

Missile to the Moon (1958)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Feb 8, 2013

Escaped convicts Gary and Lon are caught hiding in a rocket by scientist Dirk Green, who forces them to pilot the ship to the moon. Dirk, who's secretly a moon being, wants to return to his home satellite. Dirk's partner Steve Dayton and his fiancé June stowaway on the ship by accident. Will they all make it back safely?

Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Feb 15, 2013

In The Man Who Could Work Miracles, several angels decide to experiment. They give haberdasher's assistant George Fotheringay (Roland Young), almost unlimited powers. He enters the Long Dragon Pub and begins arguing with his friends about miracles and the impossibility of them, and during this argument he inadvertently causes a miracle; he causes an oil lamp to turn upside down, without anyone touching it and with the flame burning steadily downwards rather than righting itself. He soon runs out of willpower and is thrown out of the pub for spilling oil on the floor and causing a commotion. When he arrives at his home, he performs the same trick with a small candle and finds that it works. He is so overjoyed, he spends the better part of the night working miracles such as lifting his table, lifting his bed, enlarging a candle-extinguisher to a brightly painted cone, making a kitten appear under it, and turning his bed into a cornucopia of fruits and fluffy bunnies. Next day, he makes his miracles known to the public. A policeman discovers his powers, and when he begins to annoy Fotheringay, Fotheringay curses, telling him to "Go to blazes [hell]!" - where the poor Bobby finds himself surrounded by flames, swirling smoke, sulphur, and the howls of adulterers and liars. Fotheringay is shocked, and has the cop relocated to San Francisco where he finds himself in the midst of capitalists, automobiles, and Spearmint gum. Nobody agrees on how he should use his powers, so he contacts Mr. Maydig, the local vicar. The vicar thinks up a plan to bring about a millennium and have Fotheringay abolish famine, plague, and war. They celebrate this by playing a miraculous trick on a local war profiteer and having his whisky, beer, and cocktails turn to mineral water, and his swords and weapons turn to books and agricultural tools. When the war profiteer hears about this, he decides to kill Fotheringay but the assassination plot fails as Fotheringay has made himself invulnerable. Fotheringay decides not to have a millennium but to do what he wants, believing that everyone else only wants to use him. In a fit of reckless pompousness, Fotheringay changes the Colonel's house into a spectacular palace of real gold and marble. He then summons up all the pretty girls of Essex, after which he summons the butlers in Essex, the leaders of the world, the teachers, musicians, priests, etc. He dresses up like a king and appoints the girl he loves as empress. He then commands the leaders of the world to create a utopia, free of greed, war, plague, famine, jealousy, and toil. Maydig begs Fotheringay to wait until the following day, so Fotheringay buys some time by making the Earth stop rotating. Of course, everything on Earth has adapted to the rotation of the Earth and so, like a car coming to a sudden halt after travelling at 130 MPH, the world falls to pieces as people fly through the ice-cold air and buildings crumble. In the end Fotheringay, who had not died in the catastrophe, reconfigures the world as at the beginning with himself back at the Long Dragon Pub, and he relinquishes his powers. (Wikipedia)

Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Feb 22, 2013

If the word nudnick wasn#t invented for this film, it sure should have been. This is the greatest horror/comedy film of all time and one of B-movie director Roger Corman's best efforts. It also has one of Jack Nicholson's earliest screen appearance as the masochistic dental patient who pays a visit to the dentist to get as much drilling and teeth pulling as possible to satisfy his craving for pain! The real star of the show is Jonathan Haze as Seymour Krelboin, but his flesh eating plant 'Audrey Jr.' steals the show by craving fresh bodies to satisfy its hunger for blood. The plant also has the best line: FEEEEED ME!

Metropolis (1927)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Mar 1, 2013

Fritz Lang's frightening and Orwellian vision of the year 2026 is one of the greatest Science Fiction films of all time. Joh Fredersen, mastermind of Metropolis, lords over his incredible creation from his ivory tower. His son, Freder, is oblivious to the horrid conditions of the workers, until the beautiful Maria (Brigette Helm) interrupts his play to introduce him to his "brothers," the workers threadbare children. Curious at what lies beneath the city, and hoping to see Maria again, he ventures into the workers world and is horrified to see men working as slaves to machines. Freder's social consciousness is raised as he learns of the workers plight first hand by manning a machine for a ten hour shift, then attending a workers rally in the catacombs far below the city. He is startled to see Maria leading the rally, preaching that to better their conditions there must be a mediator between the "brains" who run the city and the "hands" who toil to run it. The result is disasterous, as Fredersen's son is caught up in the resulting mob violence and nearly killed by Rotwang. Realizing his son's brush with death is the result of his heartless actions, he lets Freder act as the mediator between himself and the workers.

Man Who Changed His Mind (1936)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Mar 8, 2013

Dr. Laurience (Boris Karloff), a once-respectable scientist, begins to research the origins of the mind and soul in an isolated manor house, aided only by the promising surgeon Clare Wyatt (Anna Lee) and a wheelchair-using confederate named Clayton (Donald Calthrop). The scientific community rejects his theories and Laurience risks losing everything for which he has worked so obsessively. To save his research, Laurience begins to use his discoveries in brain transference for his own nefarious purposes, replacing the mind of philanthropist Lord Haslewood (Frank Cellier) with the personality of the crippled, caustic Clayton. With Lord Haslewood's wealth and prestige at his command, Laurience becomes an almost unstoppable mad scientist. Despite a powerful patron and a state-of-the-art laboratory, chain-smoking Laurience remains the typical absent-minded professor, with eraser dust on the back of his wrinkled jacket, and in constant, desperate need of a strong hairbrush. However, he is not immune to the feminine charms of the lovely Dr. Wyatt. He attempts to take control of the body of Lord Haslewood's handsome son Dick (John Loder) in an effort to seduce Clare, but finds it impossible to disguise his own strange physicality even in the body of another man. Nor can he go without a cigarette in front of Clare although he is aware that young Dick Haslewood never smoked. Unfortunately, before transferring his mind with that of Dick, Laurience strangled Clayton, who was inhabiting the body of Lord Haslewood, so that Dick, afterwards a prisoner in Laurience's own body, would be hanged for the murder of the man presumed to be his father. Realizing the truth, Clare and her friend Dr. Gratton (Cecil Parker) return Laurience's mind to its proper body, but that body has been badly broken in a panicked fall out of a high window, taken while Dick Haslewood was in unwilling possession. Admitting he has wasted an incredible invention on a selfish and murderous scheme, the shattered Laurience tells Clare he should never have meddled with the human soul. He takes his knowledge to the grave, having changed his mind for the last time. (Wikipedia)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Mar 15, 2013

Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) is returning home by train after celebrating her last days as a single woman. She has befriended a kindly Governess who helped her board the train after an odd incident where she was grazed by a falling flower pot. After dining with the elderly lady and returning together to their compartment, Iris wakes up from a nap to discover Miss Froy has vanished. She is astonished and angry to learn that none of the other passengers can verify her existence. She enlists the help of a young musician, Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), who is more interested in her then the disappearance of Miss Froy. From here on, the film takes on psychological overtones as odd Doctor Hartz (Paul Lukas) suggests she has imagined the woman's existence. It turns out that Hartz is masterminding a plot to kidnap Froy who is a secret agent. Gilbert and Iris discover Miss Froy in Hartz's compartment and narrowly escape when the train car is sidetracked to the woods where soldiers are under orders from Hartz to storm the train. Miss Froy escapes and gives Gilbert a musical message to carry back to the Foreign Office if she is killed.

Bloodlust (1961)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Mar 22, 2013

An interesting version of Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, obviously meant to capitalize on American International Pictures' success tapping into the teen market in the 1950's. June Keeny (also the star of Roger Corman's Teenage Doll) does well in the Tuesday Weld styled role of the blond with brains as well as looks. When two young couples on a charter boat decide to take an excursion to a remote island, they soon find themselves as the quarry for a madman who loves to hunt humans for sport. With only their wits and the energy of youth, the couples out manoeuvre and thwart the Island owner's lust to kill. The high point of the film is the "trophy room" cave where the madman has captured his victims at their moment of death in a rather gruesome glass mausoleum. The madman is fittingly caught and killed when one of his servants, whom he thought he had killed, comes back to exact revenge on his master.

The Ghoul (1933)

UEN-TV 9.1

Upcoming Show Times:
9:00 PM on Mar 29, 2013

A master criminal popularly referred to as 'The Ghoul' has been responsible for a London crime wave. Betty inherits an estate on the Yorkshire moors from a mysterious benefactor, Edward Morlant, a dabbler in mysticism who years before had been her mother's paramour. But the will requires Betty to take up residence in the old house, where Morlant's corpse soon appears, walking and talking. Morlant tells her that he is an immortal adept and demands the return of his secret diary. The usual suspects and interlopers converge on the house, and upon Morlant's next appearance his resurrected self is killed anew, unquestionably stabbed through the heart. Morlant is soon perambulating again, as people begin turning up dead. All supernatural trappings are dispelled as 'The Ghoul' is penultimately unmasked as Edward Morlant's twin brother, James, a criminal mastermind whose fictive guises included not only his brother, but a bogus police sergeant and his brother's solicitor, Broughton. In a final act of madness James torches the mansion. The film screenplay uses the merest skeleton of the story and characters and blends it with the Egyptian mysticism of The Mummy while capitalizing on the "thunderstorm mystery" mood of The Old Dark House, Karloff's two previous Universal Pictures. Eccentric Egyptologist Professor Morlant believes that if he is buried with a jewel called "The Eternal Light", in a faux Egyptian tomb he has constructed at his English country estate, Anubis will manifest before him, accept his offering of the diamond, and grant him eternal life. Morlant appears to die, but the jewel is snatched by his servant before the internment. No sooner do the heirs arrive for the reading of the will, than Morlant rises from his tomb, finds his bauble gone, and attempts to punish the thieves. The jewel is punted from servant to lawyer to niece to Egyptian fanatic to spinster to mock vicar and eventually back to the revenant Morlant, who makes his blood sacrifice to Anubis before properly expiring. Morlant, it is learned, had merely suffered a cataleptic seizure, and had been buried alive. The mock vicar (Ralph Richardson) is revealed to be the chief villain, and having obtained the Eternal Light sets fire to Morlant's tomb. Betty and her lover manage to escape. (Wikipedia)

Upcoming Episodes:

Past Episodes:

Destination Moon (1950)

King Solomon's Mines (1937)

Devil Girl from Mars

Hercules Unchained (1959)

Ugetsu (1953)

Missile to the Moon (1958)

Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)

Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Metropolis (1927)

Man Who Changed His Mind (1936)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Bloodlust (1961)

The Ghoul (1933)