6 The Monolith Monsters


The Monolith Monsters is a surprising sci-fi film whose "monsters" don't meet most typical definitions of the term. Instead, they're towering stone colossi that grow, tumble, and then grow up again from the broken pieces. (Sounds like a typical work week, right?)

What is mindblowing about this movie is the level of menace the film bestows on these stones. They are an implacable existential threat. The film also avoids the mistake so many modern movies do: it doesn't outwear its welcome. It's a taut film that will leave you thinking.

5 Them!


The precursor to wave upon wave of giant insect movies, this one deals with weighty ideas as big as its titular ants. And speaking of the ants, the practical effects hold up fairly well today. They don't look "real," but they do look substantial and the acting gives them the extra ingredient that puts you on the edge of your seat.

Not only is there the raw terror of facing off with these giant insects, but there's also the existential dread that humanity's position as lords of the earth is tenuous at best. It makes the case that ants will take over the world better than any movie, short of 1974's Phase IV.

4 The Fly


This is one movie that hasn't been hurt by its remake. David Cronenberg's 1986 remake is not only such high quality, but so different, that the two can coexist as separate movies. What makes this movie mindblowing is not the horrific effects--again, quite good for their day--but the question of whether life would truly be worth living if an essential part of one's nature where taken away, and the rest were slowly slipping.

Today, we might see this as an allegory of Alzheimer's disease or other dementia, but the 1958 movie sees it as a vision of what will happen to humanity amidst the onrushing advance of science.

3 Forbidden Planet


No discussion of quality 50s sci-fi is complete without reference to Forbidden Planet. And with good reason. In addition to its outstanding effects and unique electronic tonalities, this movie is based on the premise of how terrible it would be if people unleashed their darkest selves, even for just a moment.

Think that's not a mind-blowing idea? It's enough to sustain The Purge movies and TV series. And to make the idea even harder to swallow, the movie shows that once we let that darker self out, we may not be able to put it back in. It shows that, in some ways, that darkest self is our truest self.

2 The Incredible Shrinking Man


The Incredible Shrinking Man sounds like your typical sci-fi schlockfest, along the lines of Attack of the 50-Foot Woman and The Amazing Colossal Man. But there's a reason why giantism is so much more popular than shrinking: shrinking is so much harder to take.

Long before Downsizing, The Incredible Shrinking Man shows us the horror of humanity diminishing in stature before a world that is growing just too large for us to take in. Long before the Internet, the television brought this world into our homes, exposing us a terrifying world of commies and H-bombs, wars and revolutions that we just can't do anything about. Our inevitable disappearance is a hard fact that we still face today in looking at our chaotic world.