Dark Star, A Boy and His Dog, and The Forbin Project
The cinema before Star Wars came along and turned most SF films into video games
had some true gems. Some have already been mentioned here, and now I would
like to mention three more that deserve both recognition and rewatching.
Dark Star - Made in 1974 on a $35,000 budget, with more intriguing ideas than most
films with their bloated whale budgets while being a satire on the genre at the same
time. How many films do you see these days where a guy tries to use philosophy to
convince a thermostellar bomb with AI not to blow up in the spaceship's cargo bay:
A Boy and His Dog - Also from the early Seventies about a guy (Don Johnson in his
pre-Miami Vice days) who goes around a post-nuclear holocaust wasteland looking
for food and women with the help of his hyperintelligent dog. Our "hero" comes
across an underground society that on the surface pretends to be a preservation
of Midwestern American ideals, but of course it is not.
The Forbin Project - A story about an AI that is not defeated by Will Smith dumping
nanites into it, or Captain Kirk talking it to death. In fact Colossus is always 100 steps
ahead of the puny humans right to the very end, plus it has total control of all the
world's nuclear weapons.
Some other favorites despite their flaws:
Beaneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) - Mutants under the ruins of NYC worshipping
a nuclear bomb. C'mon, people, how much cooler can you get?!
Silent Running - just cause.