Friday: Polish Sci-Fi Posters Revealed!

Last week we asked you to name these science fiction films, as expressed through the medium of the Polish Film Poster. To remind you, here were the clues:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

For the answers, keep on reading…

We had some good guesses in last week’s comments, and curiously every correct film was mentioned – just not always against the correct image. So let’s start at the very beginning (it’s a very good place to start):

1.

A surprising number of people correctly picked this as Alien (1979), even though it would seem more suitable for some of the other films suggested – which included The Invisible Man and Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. I suspect this might be the default Polish poster image, it’s the first thing every artist thinks of. “Hey Janek, what are you working on?” “Home Alone 2 – what do you think?” “Ah, too perky…”

2.

This one was a stumper. Slaughterhouse 5, Fahrenheit 451, Terminator 2, Rollerball… Would it help if I told you that number 5… is alive?

Edward from the Meat Brulee blog was both proud and ashamed that he correctly guessed this was the poster for Short Circuit (1986) – (“I am slightly embarrassed this is the first thing that came to mind when faced with the combination ‘science fiction’ and ‘No.5′”). Short Circuit was a family favourite and briefly made a star of the film’s robot lead – no, not Ally Sheedy or Steve Guttenberg – but Johnny 5. This is what Johnny 5 looked like:

And this is what he would look like if he was the Pope.

3.

Yes, it’s a Godzilla film. But which one? Suggestions included Godzilla vs The One Handed Pink Man, Godzilla vs The Kipper Tie, I Dream of Godzilla… Personally I like to think this is the original end of Yellow Submarine, before test audiences sent them back to the edit suite. Damn happy endings.

The clue here is the yellow lightning bolt coming from the eyes of “Godzilla”. Now Godzilla might be an enormous atomically-mutated lizard who can blast radiation out of his mouth, but can he send beams from his eyes? Of course not, that would be crazy. Only Mechagodzilla can do that!

(Yes, yes, Godzilla did have laser vision in the 1978 Hanna-Barbera cartoon, but let’s stay on track, shall we?)

This poster is for Terror Of Mechagodzilla (1975). It’s the second film to feature the robot copy of the King Of The Monsters, and the fifteenth film overall in the Godzilla series.

4.

Remember that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), where the giant robot… no?

5.

Well done to Glenn from Stale Popcorn who got both number 4 and 5 right – this is for Andrei Tarkovsky‘s Solaris (1972). The blandest poster you could imagine, my favourite response to this was from Dan Cardone, who named it The Literal Diagram Movie. It was obviously a big day in Poland when they finally got that Spirograph…

6.

As commonly guessed, this is for 1960’s The Time Machine. It just screams “exciting adventure movie”, doesn’t it? Here’s how the Americans saw the same film:

Sorry Dan Cardone, the poster was not for the classic film I Have Time In My Mouth – that’s not science fiction, it’s a romantic comedy. Don’t you remember the touching theme song by Aqua?

Thanks to everyone who played our game – remember this week’s challenge is to make this (possibly alarming) Cauliflower Cheese from the Doctor Who Cookbook and send in a photo and review to outlandonline@gmail.com.

So what did we learn from The Institute this week?

• Doctor Who Cookbook exists.
• AC/DC have at least two streets named after them.
• When he’s ill, John has a tendency to write about 1936’s Things To Come.

Thanks for visiting The Outland Institute again this week – as usual, comments below!

(Poster images from http://www.polishposter.com and http://www.cinemaposter.com)