Cinema Fantastique

    Nothing stirs the imagination like a good science fiction movie, something Earthlings discovered in 1902 with the release of the 14-minute French fantasy, A Trip to the Moon, or La Voyage dans la Lune. The iconic image, seen to the right, is of the intrepid astronauts' bullet-like spacecraft smacking the Man in the Moon right in his eye.

    A Trip to the Moon gave birth to a new genre of film, which really flourished after World War II. Destination Moon in 1950 is widely accepted as the first "modern" sci-fi movie and was followed by a plethora of mostly low-budget films about Earth-spawned monsters, expeditions into outer space and alien invasions.

    Some early efforts, like Robert Wise's The Day the Earth Stood Still in 1951 and 1953's War of the Worlds were excellent films. But until the Star Wars revolution, in many cases the posters for these films were better than the movies themselves.

    So, for your viewing pleasure, the Cosmic Cafe presents a sampling of our favorite outer space related sci-fi movie posters along with snarky commentary about the films.

Since this website is intended to entertain and educate, the use of the images in the Cinema Fantastique gallery qualifies as "fair use" under the provisions of international copyright law.

Click on the thumbnails for a larger version of the posters and info about the movies