Phil Hardy: Eleven Best Science Fiction Films

Phil Hardy was a film and music industry journalist and the editor of The Aurum Film Encyclopedia, published in the United States as The Overlook Film Encyclopedia. He published four of the projected volumes: The Western, Science Fiction (in which this list appears on page 499), Horror, and The Gangster Film. Unrealized volumes were to be Comedy, Romance, War, Epics, Musicals, and Thrillers. He also co-wrote The Encyclopedia of Rock with David Laing in 1975. In making his selections, which are in no particular order, Hardy wanted to "pinpoint resonant moments" and emphasize ideas over special effects, and that the ideas are "filmically realized rather than merely stated." Hardy feels these films represent "controlled imagination," "feel of science fiction literature," "ruthlessness and relentlessness" in the case of The Parasite Murders (Shivers) and Not of This Earth, the "pulp poetry" of Flash Gordon, and three "shining beacons" of the 1950s, to him the key decade of the genre.