auroratx

The 1960s saw the introduction of color television into the American home. Not to date myself but we had two BW television sets where the image reduced to a white dot that never seemed to go away. Never to a four year old is something around 10-11 minutes. I guess sometime around 1969 we got our first color TV. It was a Magnavox that served as both television, shelf, and auxiliary coffee table. I helped haul it to the street about 20 years after it finally died and was still being used as a shelf for a smaller, cheaper unit. It was damn heavy, but I digress.

So a lot more things came out in color but life was very very analog. This gave us an upgrade in quality but nothing approaching what we have today. As our understanding of science had grown we started seeing less things that were the stuff of the 1950s movies like smoke and flames in space and people flying from one planet to another without changing clothes. You don’t have to notice these things to enjoy a movie. After you watch one repeatedly, things start to pop to the surface.

One thing that characterizes the films of the 60s and 70s is the music.  “Twangy” is close but doesn’t quite describe it. They’re symphonies of twang. There are major exceptions, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey. But in the sleepers, which is the area of the genre I am focusing on, don’t all sound the same but you know from the sound when you’re watching one.

Actually it has been called the “Texas Roswell” by the History Channel. Aurora, Texas is the location of an alleged crash of a UFO on 17 April 1897. You can read the write-up on wikipedia about it. I’m Raymond and I’ll be doing sci-fi movie reviews. My focus will be Sleepers from the Sixties and Seventies. I’ll make the occasional foray into current films but we’ll start about 40-50 years ago and branch out here and there as things catch our eye.