Science Fiction Films: 1980-1989
As the science fiction genre proliferated in the 1980s, Phil Hardy's The Overlook Film Encyclopedia: Science Fiction (The Overlook Press, 1995) becomes less and less comprehensive, unable to address so many foreign rip-offs of Alien, The Terminator, and Mad Max that were being issued straight to video in the U.S., although it does include many of them. I enhanced the list with a handwritten list from Movie Recall, a DOS computer program consumer companion circa 1994 to Trade Service Corporation's Videolog, to which I no longer have access. A page must have disappeared because it starts with Death Ray, so any that come before that alphabetically are from memory, along with the 28 films from the 1970s that start the list, none of which were included by Hardy, who opines on the greater self-reflexivity and less special effects-motivated films such as Videodrome, They Live, The Wizard of Speed and Time, and Earth Girls Are Easy, and the ascension of family in peril themes, even in comedy.
avg. score: 65 of 453 (14%)
required scores: 1, 23, 42, 61, 95
