18 Vintage Sci Fi Posters: Robots, Aliens, Monsters and Hot Women

By Yosef Solomon on April 16th, 2009

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From the 1950s to the 1980s, sci-fi films were pretty bad: bad acting, bad special effects and overall lackluster villains. This was, however, and era in which movie posters were still pieces of art in an of themselves. They were pulpy, and they featured strange-looking robots, aliens and monsters. But most importantly, many of them featured hot women. Below is a collection of some of our favorite posters from this time.

Invasion of the Saucer-Men

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Apparently, these huge-headed little guys are coming to earth…to steal our women. They are, “Creeping Horror – From the Depths of Space and Time!” This film not only features disembodied hands that crawl, teenagers fighting saucer men, but also actors and actresses that most people have  never heard of.

Plan 9 From Outer Space

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Seeing these old film posters makes you wonder if they paid models to sit there as artists drew life-like renderings of them for use in promotional posters. In this poster, however, it makes us wonder why they decided to go with a tranny with awkward arms (above), rather than an attractive-looking woman. Maybe this was before it was universally known that sex indeed sells.

Robot Monster

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This poster has all the makings of a great sci-fi film. Actually it has too many makings: giant iguanas, rockets, middle aged people making out, a gorilla with a skeleton-face wearing a Russian cosmonaut helmet and carrying a woman. Oh and earthquakes and fighting dinosaurs. To make matters more intense, this orgy of pulp and craziness was in 3-D. But for all  the attempts at making this the film to end all films, they settled with the name, Robot Monster.

Startling Stories – Against The Fall of Night

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Now we are getting somewhere: the ladies are starting to show a little skin, and the robots are more complex-looking. Instead of having two eyes, they have one big eye and lots of little eyes; there are also non-functional tentacles, and it seems that the robots are more interested in male homosapiens, than female. Note: the woman also looks like she is laughing or looking for a way to jump in on the robot-on-man fun.

Planet Comics – Lost World, Space Rangers, Star Pirate

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This poster is bad-ass. But, wasn’t it crazy that humans were depicted as being able to cruise around on other planets as long as they were wearing a little face shield? I mean, isn’t it really cold in outer space…Not for nothing, this poster definitely one-ups its predecessor, due to the extra display of skin, and the alien-robot’s opposable tentacles.

Tobor The Great

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This film bravely set the stage for a world in which one day, one man could invent the Sybian.

The Green Slime

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The silver body-suit clad woman doing the Heisman is hot and all, but what is up with the little red claw at the end of the monster’s tentacle. Not believable at all. God, she is hot…

March of Robots

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Not too much new here– a couple robots are taking over human cities and stealing  women for who knows what reason. Or is there a reason? In the history of sci-fi, was there ever an unattractive woman abducted by: a) aliens; b) monsters; c) robots? I mean, most of us are up for seeing a little cleavage and a struggle, but maybe we should let Renee Zellwegger get abducted one day – just to be fair.

Galaxina

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Best movie poster ever. I have no idea what the premise is, but I know I want to watch this movie. Especially, when after looking at it more closely, I realized that Playboy had something to do with it.

The Human Bat V. The Robot Gangster

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This looks and sounds like a cheap Romanian rip-off of popular American comics that uses too-literal of translations as a title.  It also looks like the inspiration for Arthur’s costume on The Tick animated series.

Amazing Adventues – Invasion of the Love Robots

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Ahh, the more interesting of the posters, the robot-on-woman ones. The coolest thing about this robot is that it is controlled by the little green guy that gets the robot to have sex with women, and lives vicariously through it. And if you note, this voyeuristic little pervert is drooling he’s so excited. Not really feeling all the roses, however…

Ray Gun Robot

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We have no idea where this poster came from, but could not help but include it into the list.

Une Vierge Chez Les Morts Vivants

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Rough translation: A Virgin (sweet!) at the House of the Living Dead (also sweet!). If you haven’t already noticed, the French are a lot more progressive when it comes to nudity. And have we mentioned lately that we love the French?

Creature From The Black Lagoon

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Kind of a weak monster “outfit” (not even going to call it a costume – it’s that bad), but this film is a classic.

Forbidden Planet

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This is perhaps the most famous robot-themed sci-fi poster from the pulp era. Interestingly, this film features Leslie Nielsen before he made the switch to comedic roles. There are tons of promotional posters online featuring Robby the Robot, and his co-star Anne Francis doing mundane things such as answering the phone and trying on shoes. Oh and Anne Francis was a veritable babe.

Target Earth

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Another presumably formulaic robot-alien movie: robot aliens come from outer space, abduct some babes, and earth men are bummed. But why the flamenco dancer in the promotional poster?  IT’S RAW PANIC THE SCREEN NEVER DARED REVEAL!

Planet Stories – Femdom From Another World

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This is where feminism came from.

Oh, and Star Wars

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One of the most famous movie posters of all time, this version features people that look nothing like Carrie Fischer or Mark Hamill, but robots that look like C-3PO and R2-D2. The Luke Skywalker is also a little too ripped for reality, but we thought we’d include this one in the list for good measure.

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