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.”

Hugo Cinema Club: The Best Of 1958

The Incredible Shrinking Man was the 
first movie honoured by the Hugo Awards.
(image via Empire Magazine)

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

By the late 1950s, science fiction cinema had developed a reputation for being the domain of B-movies. Shot quickly, on a cheap budget, and featuring mostly unknown actors, these movies appear to have aimed low and were a disappointment to serious science fiction fans. It was possibly to counteract this reputation that the organizing committee of Solacon (the 16th Worldcon) decided to introduce a Hugo Award for “Outstanding Science Fiction Motion Picture,” and promote movies that took the genre more seriously.

Author Charles Beamont, quoted in the September 1955 Science Fiction News, expressed a common opinion at the time among fans: “The correction of a single mistake — Hollywood’s mad insistence upon hiring writers who know nothing about science fiction, and care for it less, to write science fiction — might do wonders toward bringing about a renaissance.” Similar complaints litter almost every discussion of science fiction movies in fanzines in the 1950s.

Having Richard Matheson closely involved with a major motion picture adaptation of one of his books was therefore something that was welcomed by fandom. As the guest of honour for Solacon, Matheson was well-known, and it should be no surprise that a movie he’d crafted was worthy of winning the first award for what would later be known as Best Dramatic Presentation.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is head and shoulders above almost all other genre films released in 1957. The story is well told, nicely paced, and emotionally rich. The movie features an ordinary middle-class American named Scott Carey who begins to slowly shrink after being exposed to radiation. Though the premise might seem pulpy, Matheson’s writing draws in the audience, first with a tale of psychological turmoil as the protagonist’s normative privilege is stripped away, then later with an adventure movie in which he faces more physical threats. 

Brian Donlevy is the only actor to have
played Professor Quatermass twice. 
And he's excellent. 
(Image via hammerfilms.com)

One of the narrative arcs that highlights the strength of Matheson’s writing is Scott Carey’s relationship with his wife Louise. Before he starts shrinking, Scott and Louise seem to have a very positive, happy relationship — though she is to some degree depicted as subservient to him. Once he starts to decrease in size, he becomes increasingly controlling towards her and lashes out as his privilege metaphorically shrinks. This connection between diminishing privilege and reactionary anger is well observed, and still seems timely.

The Incredible Shrinking Man could be described as two stories stitched together; the first half of the movie is a story about Carey’s fraying relationships, while the second half is a pulp adventure story about survival. While this does create some pacing issues, both halves of the movie work on their own, and the result holds up well today.

The special effects in the second half of The Incredible Shrinking Man are particularly effective, and show attention to detail. Unlike several contemporaneous movies, these effects are used to tell a story, rather than the story being a vehicle on which to sell a visual spectacle. The ending is also remarkably grim — a fact that reportedly left 1950s audiences unsatisfied, but one that in our eyes helps make the movie relevant today.

With no shortlist to rely on, it’s difficult to know what other movies Hugo voters might have considered for the award in 1958. With the benefit of hindsight, we’d suggest Ray Harryhausen’s black-and-white movie 20 Million Miles To Earth might have warranted a nod. Only his second movie in charge of all special effects, 20 Million Miles To Earth was the first movie that was made entirely as a showcase for his work. Though the plot is thin — standard monster-movie fare — and the acting is uninspiring, the level of care put into the monster elevates the movie above many of its contemporaries.

Another film that may have been suitable for a Hugo shortlist that year would have been Quatermass 2,
the Hammer Films remake of the BBC serial from the previous year. One member of our viewing club did pick it as his favourite science fiction movie of 1957, and said he would vote for it ahead of Shrinking Man. Quatermass 2 is one of the better films to follow the Invasion Of The Bodysnatchers trope. It oozes tension as the protagonist Bernard Quatermass investigates the infiltration of the British government by alien forces. There’s a lot to love in this movie — particularly the acting and dialogue, but its inconsistent special effects and an incongruent slapstick ending are disappointing.

In some ways, the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo Award could not have been introduced at a better time than 1958: the movies that stood out from the pack that year show the medium moving forward, and helped introduce popular audiences to a new generation of science fiction writers, directors and special effects artists. 

The Hugo For Best Dramatic Presentation starts out on a high note. Not only does the winning movie stand the test of time, the award moves science fiction cinema forward.