The silent film era had a number of outstanding science fiction movies, but I am more interested in the syfy films of the talkie era.
Considered by many to be the best science fiction film of the 1930s, “Things to Come” (1936) has an eerie accuracy regarding the following hundred years. It predicts a second world war, but suggests that it lasts decades. This is an interesting film to watch from the perspective of what did Wells get right, what was wrong, and what was just off a few years in his efforts as a futurist.
H.G. Wells struck again with “The Invisible Man” actually filmed in 1933. One of two films suggesting that science inevitably runs amuck. This is a very watchable film, and mesmerized me as a pre-teen, while black and white was still the standard on television.
The other film that is a classic for science running amuck and the panic that often ensues by the unenlightened is Frankenstein. I always thought of this more as horror, but science is fundamental to the story line.
The heyday for square-jawed Buster Crabbe was in the 1930s and the movie serials. Serials were produced in much shorter form, usually 20-25 minutes for each episode, which inevitably ended with a cliffhanger. In the 1950s and early 1960s these 1930 serials were often used at the beginning of Saturday matinees to hook young viewers into coming back to the theater the next Saturday whether they liked the main feature or not. Buster Crabbe starred in two of these serials portraying both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, produced by different studios. The main difference in the stories and the actor was the color of his hair: blond in Flash Gordan and dark haired in Buck Rogers.
Classified as science fiction, although I’m not sure why, is the classic 1933 King Kong. It s a great movie and stars Fay Wray, who dated my father-in-law before she went off to Hollywood. It is a great movie, but I still quibble about calling it science fiction.
One more film I’ll mention that has made the list is “Air Hawks” (1935). The film includes Ralph Bellamy and Wiley Post, but is most interesting to me as it creates an EMT device (although its called a death ray) but interesting twist on a future weapon.
Okay, the 1930s weren’t great for science fiction movies, but there are a few worth viewing to see the path those films have taken. I have omitted some such as sequels “Son of Frankenstein” and one that I don’t really fits no matter how I twist it, “The Wizard of Oz”