"From the outset, the cinema specialized in illusion to a degree that had been impossible on the stage," wrote John Clute and Peter Nichols in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. "SF itself takes as its subject matter that which does not exist, now, in the real world (though it might one day), so it has a natural affinity with the cinema...."
In Melies's A Trip to the Moon, the first SF movie, there weren't any deep thoughts or philosophical musings, just a series of vignettes guaranteed to awe audiences already staring in strained belief at this new medium. Has anyone not at one time or another seen the wonderful clip of the man in the moon wincing as the rocket lands in his eye? And if Melies's moon was populated by dancing girls in scandalously short (for 1902) satin tap pants, it also boasts the first cinematic Bug-Eyed Monsters.
Germany's Fritz Lang used some of Melies's tricks and added more of his own in his 1926 silent film Metropolis, the first dystopian film. This classic, despite its socialist overtones, is filled with stark images of dronelike workers marching in lockstep to the endless hours of labor that support the futuristic Art Deco city far above them in more than geography. Rotwang, part inventor, part alchemist and ancestor to Victor Frankenstein, Doctor X and a host of future mad scientists, has a laboratory jammed with bubbling flasks and coiled wires that generates enough lightning to power three cities.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic filmmakers were also exploring the world of science fiction and fantasy. One of the earliest entries to remain extant is a 1920 version of the often redone Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It was one of two made that year; and an even earlier one, most of which has been lost, had been done in 1911. The 1920 film starred John Barrymore as the ill-fated doctor and was directed by John S. Robertson. The story was done again (and again and again) in 1932 under director Rouben Mamoulian with Frederic March in the title role, an interpretation of R.L. Stevenson's novel many consider to be the best of the bunch.
By 1931, the world of science fiction cinema was ripe for development. That year, James Whale directed a newcomer named Boris Karloff in an adaptation of Mary Shelley's story of "A Modern Prometheus" and gave the world a new synonym for horror - Frankenstein. Although the title referred to Colin Clive's obsessed scientist Victor Frankenstein, the name was ever thereafter owned by his pathetic creation. Karloff's monster manages to arouse our sympathy even while we shudder at its amoral, unnatural parody of life. Like many of the BEMs to follow, Frankenstein's monster was an alien, a creature from some place other than here, and its fiery end did not bode well for the aliens that were to follow in the coming decades. Our fascination with this story is evident not only in the number of films that bear its name, but also by the information that a 1910 version of this story, filmed by none other than Thomas Edison himself, has been found and is currently undergoing restoration.
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