God Never Talks. But the Devil Keeps Advertising. — Hugo Cinema 1974

This blog post is the seventeenth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.

If you looked only at the Hugo shortlist for 1974, you might be excused for assuming that it was just a bad year for screen science fiction and fantasy. But there were, in fact, excellent movies and even television shows to be found. The Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation had missed the mark before, but never this substantially.

Rather than dwell on the uninspiring shortlist, the frankly abysmal winner, or the at-best controversial celebrity who created it, let’s start by talking about the works that deserved to be celebrated instead.

The Exorcist is an iconic and enduring movie, but
somehow was not honoured by the Hugo Awards.
(Image via Bloody Disgusting.)

For starters, the absence of The Exorcist on the 1974 Hugo ballot for best dramatic presentation is one of the most glaring omissions in the history of the award.

Reportedly, viewers fainted in the cinema and experienced nightmares for weeks after. To this day, it routinely tops lists of the greatest horror movies ever made. Nominated for 10 Academy Awards including Best Picture, The Exorcist won two Oscars including Best Screenplay. It was the highest-grossing movie of the year.

And considering that Rosemary’s Baby had earned a Hugo nomination just five years previously, it was obviously clear to WSFS members that supernatural horror movies were eligible for the award.

But … it appears not to have been well liked by fandom at the time. Writing in the WSFA Journal, Richard Delap describes it as a “shallow, poorly-written jumble of religious assertions and flaky characters.” Writing his own review a few months later in Son of the WSFA Journal, Don Miller was dismissive of the movie, suggesting that despite the hype, it would be quickly forgotten.

But for those of us watching The Exorcist with 50 years of hindsight, the movie holds up remarkably well — and better than most of its contemporaries. We can see why this movie was instantly hailed by most in the mainstream press as a classic. It straddles the line between high-art and pulp entertainment, combining superb filmmaking with well-paced dialogue and narrative momentum. The Exorcist stands out among supernatural horror by playing with the boundary between what is known and what is unknowable. From the perspective of science fiction and fantasy fandom, a surprising amount of the movie involves characters attempting to solve the problem scientifically before they turn to a supernatural solution.

We would suggest that the early dismissiveness that many in fandom had towards The Exorcist shows some of the difficulties of providing quick assessments of the enduring value of art. Or maybe the film just made them uncomfortable.

Don't Look Now, directed by Nicholas Roeg,
is an unsettling movie that remains a classic of
supernatural horror. 
(Image via The New Yorker)

Another horror-fantasy that would have been a creditable Hugo finalist is Don’t Look Now, a subtle and carefully constructed British ghost story based on a novelette by The Birds author Daphne du Maurier. The movie follows a couple after the accidental death of their daughter, as they start to explore supernatural options to regain contact with her. Director Nicolas Roeg approaches the subject with a Kubrickian attention to detail, alluding to themes and portents with carefully constructed visual elements. Interestingly, writing in the fanzine Starling in early 1974, Jim Turner highlighted the quality of Don’t Look Now, and noted that the movie was Hugo-eligible.

George Romero’s The Crazies received some attention from contemporaneous fanzines, with Christopher Fowler writing in Vector that it might make a credible Hugo finalist. Using the premise of a biological weapon being accidentally unleashed in an American small town, The Crazies paints a picture of organizational dysfunction and of government incompetence. It is worth noting that this is one of the few movies of the era to cast a BIPOC actor in a role of authority, with Lloyd Hollar playing Colonel Peckham, one of the few competent government officials trying to keep the disease contained. In the decades since its release, it has become a cult classic, and has been interpreted by libertarians as a condemnation of big government, and interpreted by leftists as a takedown of right-wing military thinking. It’s a rich text that continues to inspire conversations, but was overlooked.

Imagine if The Matrix had
been made in Germany during
the 1970s by an art-house genius,
that's World On A Wire.
(Image via Criterion)

Though any foreign-language movie is always unlikely to make the Hugo ballot, World On A Wire (AKA Welt am Draht) needs to be highlighted as an option, as it is possibly the first depiction of virtual reality in screen science fiction. A German-television adaptation of Daniel F. Galoye’s book Simulacron-3, the show follows a scientist who takes over a computing project after the mysterious death of his boss. As it turns out, the project is a simulation of the real world used for market research, and within the simulation, there are thousands of artificial intelligences who think they are in the real world. Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, this might be the best-looking television production of the decade, stylish, moody, and thoughtful. Although slow at points, this philosophical masterpiece would have topped the Hugo ballot for at least one member of our viewing group.

French animated sci-fi fantasy Fantastic Planet (AKA La Planète sauvage) received some discussion in that year’s fanzines, and would have been a worthy contender for the Hugo. An epic parable about colonization and the rights of sentient beings, the movie depicts humanity being enslaved by giant aliens who keep us as pets. It’s an odd and beautiful movie at times, because of the animation, with the visuals serving to hammer home the horrific nature of being treated as less than human. Similarly, The Belladonna of Sadness, a Japanese animated movie about a woman who makes a pact with the devil to enact revenge against men who assaulted her, uses innovative artwork to underscore the inhumanity of the villains. These have both stood the test of time far better than anything that actually made the ballot.

We might also highlight Alejandro Jodorowski’s sophomore effort The Holy Mountain, which was released in 1973, and would have been eligible for the Hugo. The surreal and poetically weird movie presents a parable about searching for meaning, and about the sins of humanity. The protagonist — who is either a thief or Jesus — must team up with human avatars of the planets of the solar system to journey to the top of a mountain in order to replace the magicians who live at the summit. It’s at turns self-indulgent and thoughtful, philosophical and crass, entertaining and ponderous, and is one of the high points of 1970s cinema overall.

Playful, beautiful, kaleidoscopic, The Holy
Mountain plays with the sacred and the profane.
One of the high points of 1970s cinema.
(Image via IMDB.com)

So given all these excellent options in terms of science fiction and fantasy on screen, what did make the ballot? Soylent Green, Sleeper, Westworld, Genesis II, and The Six Million Dollar Man.

Of these, only Soylent Green would have ranked slightly above ‘No Award’ for us. Though it has lines that are often quoted today, this adaptation of Harry Harrison’s novel Make Room, Make Room did not age as well as many other movies. There are some scenes that work; in particular the suicide machine, and the depiction of fresh fruit as something extraordinary. But more often than not, this movie fails. The sexism is pervasive, and stands out even among the contemporaneous movies we have watched. Live-in prostitutes are referred to as ‘furniture,’ and almost every female character is treated as little more than a sex object. Although the premise of a society that treats women as ‘furniture’ could have been a satire of real-world sexism, director Richard Fleischer seems unable to bring a critical lens to the behaviour. Even contemporaneous (and cis-male) critics found the sexism of Soylent Green objectionable — In the WSFA Journal, Richard Delap noted the uncritical and misogynist depiction of prostitution in a scathing review and concluded “It’s easy to complain about a film that aborts the fine material on which it was based; but Soylent Green is much worse than that.” 

Given that the movie Westworld — written and directed by Michael Chrichton — would go on to spawn a sequel and two television series, it clearly connected with audiences. With a great premise — an amusement park filled with robots that descends into chaos — this could have been a first-rate film. But it quickly devolves into a monster movie as robot Yul Brenner tries to kill the two protagonists. It’s light on dialogue, light on character, and mostly pretty wooden in direction. Some contemporaneous fans agreed; “The good moments are much too infrequent, and the remainder much too trite. Any SF fan is bound to be saddened to see such workable potential by bad editing to throw-away trivia.” Richard Delap wrote in the WSFS Journal. The narrative premise would be better implemented forty years later in an HBO adaptation, which deserved a Hugo nod far more than the original.

The Belladonna of Sadness is a weird, problematic
movie with some incredible artwork and themes.
Those planning to watch it should probably read
this essay from The Anime Feminist, which 
highlights both the movie's strengths and 
flaws. (Image via Anime Feminist).

Genesis II, one in a long line of Gene Roddenberry failed pilot episodes, is a jumbled mess of a show about Dylan Hunt, a scientist from the present who is frozen in time and wakes up in 2133. Finding himself in a post-apocalyptic world, Hunt joins up with pacifist scientists and fights against evil mutants. Laden with excessive narration, weak characters, and ethnic stereotypes, there’s little to recommend Genesis II. One can only suspect that leftover goodwill from Star Trek earned Roddenberry this Hugo nomination.

Conversely, The Six Million Dollar Man pilot episode did get picked up to series, going on to last five seasons, a spin-off series, and several TV movies. The character of Steve Austin, introduced in this Hugo-finalist TV movie, would grace screens for more than two decades and produce several excellent outings (The Seven Million Dollar Man and Death Probe come to mind.) But the pilot episode is clunky at best; there’s little narrative arc for the first two thirds of the episode, and the terrorism plot seems tacked on. The nominated episode is simply not Hugo worthy.

Woody Allen’s listless, puerile, Hugo-winning comedy Sleeper is self-indulgent to the point of onanism. Allen stars as Miles Monroe, a jazz clarinetist who is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 200 years later in a Brave New World-style dystopia. (To be clear, this is not an Orwellian dictatorship, but rather one that controls people through hedonism.) After various pratfalls and masturbation jokes, Miller is then caught up in a revolution to overthrow the oppressive society. It’s a fairly banal science fiction story whose plot is often twisted out of shape just to force one more joke about self-pleasure into the script. The movie still has fans today, but to us, most of the slapstick jokes fell relatively flat — though your mileage may vary. In retrospect, and in light of Allen’s later conduct, we feel deeply uncomfortable with him being honoured with a Hugo.

It is a shame — but not surprising — that in a year that offered cinema with such strong themes of rejection of authority, female empowerment and social activism, the Hugos went with some of the whitest, most regressive picks available. All-too-often, nerd culture has reproduced the exclusionary aspects of mainstream culture, and such was the case with the 1974 Hugos.

Having now watched almost two decades worth of Hugo-eligible movies and television, it’s clear that the Best Dramatic Presentation category has a poor track record of selecting works that would enjoy enduring value. But even by those standards, the 1974 shortlist is a low point. It is particularly galling considering the quality of cinematic and televised SFF that was available to viewers in the preceding year. The Exorcist should have won, and for it to be denied even a nomination must have been a bad look for the award itself, even in 1974.

Monolithic! (The Hugo cinema of 1969)

This blog post is the twelfth in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.

Content Warning: This article contains references to sexual violence, both that which is depicted in these movies, and perpetrated by the director of one of those movies.

Spoiler Warning: This article contains plot details of 50-year-old movies.

2001: A Space Odyssey was the first science fiction movie to be shortlisted for the Academy Award for screenwriting. It was a crossover success drawing rave reviews from the mainstream press, with audiences lining up to see it. On its release, it was the first science fiction film in more than a decade to be one of the top-grossing movies of the year. The American Film Institute places it 22nd on their list of the greatest movies ever made.

To non-fans, the fact that 2001 won the Hugo Award
in 1969 might seem like gilding the lily.
(Image via Harvard Crimson)

But still, winning a Hugo Award seemed far from certain.

The movie had been highly anticipated within fandom, but reactions immediately after it was released in April 1968 were extremely harsh. Reviewing an advance screening of the movie for Science Fiction Times, Walter R. Cole opined “2001 probably will be considered for a Hugo nomination in 1969, but unfortunately it is a big disappointment and should not win.” Lester del Rey was filled with invective for the movie. And although he would later change his tune, Isaac Asimov initially panned Space Odyssey.

Despite this initial vitriol, the movie slowly found champions among fandom. One of the most prominent voices in debates over Best Dramatic Presentation Hugos Juanita Coulson, declared that no science fiction movie had ever filled her with such awe. The fanzine Double Bill proclaimed it to be the best science fiction movie ever made. Even reactionary fan Ted White reluctantly went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey having told Samuel R. Delaney that he fully expected and intended to loathe it, but came out of the theatre a convert: “There is little in this movie which will be new to SF fans; in precis it reads like a 1931 SF story: a moralistic travelog that ends upon an almost sermon-like moral” White wrote in Shangri-L’affaires “But it is effective … I was impressed. In spite of myself.”

Certainly, the movie divided our viewing group as few films ever had.

Given the polarity of opinions about A Space Odyssey, it was bound to be a contentious winner, and arguments continued about it for years. Notably a faction of younger fans were all-in for The Prisoner, while another faction was peeved that Star Trek had been left off the ballot altogether.

There are numerous intriguing omissions from the ballot that year. Planet of the Apes, which was a cultural phenomenon and kicked off one of the most successful science fiction film franchises of all time, was nowhere on the ballot. 

Possibly the most egregious omission in hindsight is Night of the Living Dead, George A. Romero’s seminal and provocative classic. Though it has spawned numerous imitators, sequels, parodies, remakes, and rip-offs, this raw and visceral original has yet to be equaled. It’s tightly edited and enjoys a narrative momentum that distinguishes it from its contemporaries in SFF. The characters are quickly introduced, and they are thrown into a pressure cooker. The multipolar tensions in the group illuminate issues of race and class in ways that continue to resonate more than 50 years later. For at least one member of our cinema club, this movie deserved the Hugo Award most of all.

The movie that has possibly withstood the test of time
best of all is the low-budget Night of the Living Dead.
(Image via FilmComment)

Almost as notable an oversight is that after two years of Star Trek’s dominance, the show was shut out from the Hugo shortlist. Despite a common perception in 1969 that the show had jumped the shark, Star Trek had several worthy episodes that would have been eligible. These include The Enterprise Incident (air date September 27, 1968), The Immunity Syndrome (air date January 19, 1968), The Ultimate Computer (air date March 8, 1968), and The Tholian Web (air date November 15, 1968). Given the dominance of Trek the previous years, we were not too disappointed to see it off the ballot, though it is a shame that the late great Dorothy Fontana had to wait another 20 years to receive a Hugo Award.

The ballot as it stood hewed more to mainstream culture than to the fannish, which was unusual for that era of Hugo Awards. Between the five nominees, two of them were among the top-grossing movies of the year, another featured the most popular pop band in history, and another was an actor-focused drama and mainstream critical darling. Three of the shortlisted movies received trophies at that year’s Academy Awards: Ruth Gordon winning for Best Supporting Actress in Rosemary’s Baby; Charly getting best actor for Cliff Robertson; and 2001: A Space Odyssey being recognized for the best special effects.

Although Yellow Submarine is a visually compelling movie that’s livened by classic and enduring songs, it seemed to us the weakest of the nominated works. Despite the truly spectacular images, a thread-bare nonsensical plot, and the wittering banalities fobbed off as dialogue render long stretches of the movie almost unbearable. In retrospect, we would argue, this did not deserve consideration for a Hugo Award: it’s great as a sequence of music videos, but poor as fantasy or science fiction.

The Prisoner, which comes from the same “cool Britannia” moment of pop culture as Yellow Submarine, fares a lot better in the light of history. The concluding episode “Fall Out”, which made it onto the Hugo ballot, sums up the themes of the series nicely, and provides an emotional resolution to the question of whether or not Number Two can escape. Interestingly, both Yellow Submarine and The Prisoner: Fall Out use the song “All You Need Is Love” in their soundtracks. It’s used with sincerity in the Beatles movie, but with a twist of irony in The Prisoner. We would suggest that it is more effective in the latter.

Was Barbarella a good movie? Definitely not.
But it was visually compelling, and the focus
on female pleasure stands in sharp contrast to 
the violent and deeply troubling scenes in Charly.

Charly is the first remake to have been shortlisted for the Hugo Award, having been previously on the ballot as the TV movie The Two Worlds of Charlie Gordon in 1961, shortlisted as a novel, and having already won a Hugo as a short story Flowers For Algernon. In light of modern understandings of disabilities, this movie comes across as dated and condescending towards persons with Down’s Syndrome. And the scene in which the protagonist Charly Gordon tries to force himself on his teacher Alice is extremely problematic, especially in light of how this act of violence is framed as forgivable, and an expression of love. If we’d had our druthers, this movie would not have been a Hugo finalist.

It is impossible to talk about Rosemary’s Baby without addressing the later conduct of its director. Roman Polanski has admitted in court to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, and as such, his inclusion on this shortlist is a stain on the Hugo Awards. In fact, it is difficult to judge this movie without considering Polanski’s crimes, particularly given that the feminist themes in Rosemary’s Baby stand in stark contrast to the director’s personal life. While there is a scene in which sexual assault is depicted in this movie, it is framed much differently than in Charly. By showing the event from a female perspective, Rosemary’s Baby does not imply the act is anything other than horrific.

The whole movie can be read as a parable about how the patriarchy forces women into specific roles, and punishes those who confront conformity; and the horror of the final scene is that Rosemary ultimately gives in. This presents a significant question about how much a viewer should separate the art from the artist, or how much of a movie belongs to the director, rather than to the original novelist, or actors like Mia Farrow who gave an extraordinary performance, and accentuated the works feminist themes. In some ways, Rosemary's Baby might be more poignant these days than in 1969, and the fact that a predator created it makes it even more unsettling. It is a remarkably excellent movie on many levels and might have topped some of our ballots, though in light of his crimes, most of us would choose not to honour Polanski.

Revisiting 2001: A Space Odyssey in the context of contemporaneous screen science fiction highlights

As had become tradition, nobody
involved in the making of the
Best Dramatic Presentation winner
was on-hand to accept the award.
Well-known fan David Kyle
accepted the award on behalf
of the production.
(Photo by Jay Kay Klein
via Calisphere)

just how remarkable a movie it was. However, it remains just as polarizing. Some of the group could not get past how slow and ponderous it was, but all acknowledged the cinematography and immersive special effects were unlike anything that had been made to date. The special effects would not be equaled for almost a decade. Even such minor elements as the helmets on the spacesuits look light-years more believable than those from Marooned — a movie made a year later on an equivalent budget. The scope of the movie was huge but was made relatable through the slice-of-life-in-space scenes. Some go as far as to call it a masterpiece. Love it or loathe it, we could not deny its impact, both on science fiction and how mainstream audiences perceived the genre.

Screen science fiction and fantasy’s best and worst were on display at the 1969 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, and often within the same shortlisted work. Even more than previous years, the Hugo shortlist feels like a time capsule that both reflects a world that no longer exists and reminds us that, when it comes to gender-based violence, we’ve still got a ways to go.

Hugo Cinema Club: The "No Award" of 1959

This blog post is the second in a series examining past winners of the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award. An introductory blog post is here.  

At the 1959 Hugo Awards, three movies that are still well-remembered today vied for the title of “Best

(Image via IMDB)

Hollywood Movie.” There was The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, in which Ray Harryhausen crafted the first of his mythology-inspired adventure movies; the influential off-kilter science fiction horror in The Fly (directed by Kurt Neumann); and Christopher Lee redefined the modern vampire in the Hammer Studios version of Dracula. It was an excellent shortlist.

In a decision that looks more and more curious in retrospect, none of these films were honoured, as Hugo voters chose to present no award.

At the time, this was not a controversial choice. In the fanzine Science Fiction Times, Belle C. Dietz describes that the vote to do so was overwhelming. Writing in Fanac, Dick Eney describes people cheering as they learned that no movie would be honoured that year. The long-standing beef that many fans had with how filmmakers outside of fandom had adapted their genre to the screen seems to have been in full force that year.

It’s a shame because each of these movies has a lot of strengths, and each show differing ways in which science fiction and fantasy cinema continued to evolve.

Of the three, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad is the most visually compelling, but it’s also clearly the weakest in terms of storytelling and acting. The movie follows Sinbad (Kerwin Mathews) as he goes to Colossa Island, fights monsters, and gets involved in a magician’s subterfuge. The plot seems to exist mostly to take the viewer from one special effects sequence to the next, but those sequences are compelling enough to warrant a viewing.

In many ways, it is not a movie that has aged well: There are significant issues of cultural appropriation, of casting lilly-white actors to play Middle-Eastern protagonists, and the reinforcement of unfortunate

As visually impressive as any
movie made in the 1950s,
7th Voyage of Sinbad is
basically still just a kids movie.
 (Image via Classic Film)

cultural stereotypes. But the creature effects and the skeleton fight scene are epic. It pushed special effects forward so much that it was selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.

Modern viewers are probably more familiar with David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake, but the original The Fly also holds up remarkably well. Much like the remake, the 1958 original is a body horror about a man who becomes merged with a fly during an experiment in teleportation.

The narrative framing of having the story told as an extended flashback as police interrogate Hélène does a disservice to the plot. Because of this framing, viewers go into the horror knowing how the story will end, who will survive, and who will not. This unfortunately leeches some of the tension out of an otherwise first-rate science fiction horror.

The pacing of The Fly is terrific, the acting and directing are more naturalistic than was common for films of the era, and the horror of a man slowly losing himself is extremely effective. This would have been a worthy Hugo winner, and was the top pick for at least one of our viewers.

He may not have a clue and he may not have style
But everything he lacks, well, he makes up in denial.
(Image via Avalon Theatre)

But for most of our viewing group, the clear stand-out on the ballot was Dracula. From top-to-bottom, the 1958 version of Dracula has an extraordinary cast: Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Michael Gough, and Melissa Stribling are all note perfect.

Despite making significant changes to the novel, it was still clearly made with care and respect for the original source material. The story may be more confined to a smaller stage, but the broad strokes are all there. And unlike previous almost-chaste adaptations of the novel, the Hammer Horror version oozes with a dark lust. This is the definitive movie version of Dracula, and should have not only won the Hugo Award, but deserved recognition from the Oscars.

All three of these movies received significant praise and commercial success outside of fandom. The 7th

Christopher Lee is the all-time
 definitive movie Dracula.
(Image via Filmschoolrejects.com)

Voyage of Sinbad earned $6 million at the box office — more than ten times its budget. A contemporaneous review in the London Spectator praised The Fly as ‘serious,’ ‘respectable,’ and ‘ingenious.’ While Motion Picture Daily listed Dracula as one of the all-time best horror films.

Interestingly and likely relevant, 1959 was the first Hugo Awards in which “No Award” was an option, and voters chose to snub all the movies in this category. In explaining why they offered voters that choice, Worldcon publications editor George Young wrote “It was very apparent from the nominations ballots that in some categories there was no particularly outstanding selection. Because of this we have included a choice called “No award in this category.” The option was offered in three categories: Short Story, Best New Author, and Best Movie.

It is an intense shame that voters felt the need to insult these films by declaring that none of them deserved recognition. It is sometimes easier to assess the enduring merit of works with the benefit of hindsight. It seems likely that if there were Retro Hugos for 1959, modern audiences would not select “No Award.”