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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Comments

  1. yaki

    April 16th, 2009 - 2:11:45 PM

    Brilliant posters! But where to buy them?

  2. Nick

    April 16th, 2009 - 9:13:31 PM

    Great post! Can you do one on late 60's/early 70's sci-fi? I like Barbarella and would be happy to find there are movies similar to it.

  3. poop

    April 16th, 2009 - 9:49:33 PM

    Why can't these freaking women stay AWAKE during these times of crisis?!?!

  4. kevin

    April 16th, 2009 - 10:16:21 PM

    my father saw most of these in theaters!

  5. just some guy

    April 16th, 2009 - 10:39:02 PM

    How did he watch the ones that are obviously books?

  6. Daemon

    April 16th, 2009 - 11:48:01 PM

    Oh WOW! That Star Wars poster! I had bedsheets (when I was 8) there were printed with that rendering! I always thought it to be radically different from anything else "Star Wars". I've never seen it anywhere else! Thank you for sharing.

  7. Paula

    April 17th, 2009 - 12:13:59 AM

    Awesome posters! Thanks for this great post! :)

  8. Matt

    April 17th, 2009 - 12:39:17 AM

    I like how the URL for this post belies a last minute change to the post title for the sake of political correctness. Manolithic indeed. Good post though. I really want to read "The Human Bat vs The Robot Gangster"!

  9. Paula

    April 17th, 2009 - 5:31:20 AM

    Inspired and encouraged by this great collection, I have made a expo in Second Life with these poster. Of course with a link to this post. The slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bellobas/105/24/58

  10. Flave

    April 17th, 2009 - 10:33:35 AM

    Frank Gorshin (in "Invasion of the Saucer-Men") hardly qualifies for the category "...actors and actresses that most people have never heard of." http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0331319/

  11. Jared

    April 17th, 2009 - 10:52:50 AM

    Ray Gun Robot is from: http://www.rainfall.com/posters/scifimag/26875.htm

  12. Jeff Bond

    April 17th, 2009 - 11:57:38 AM

    How DARE you level such insults at the Creature from the Black Lagoon....

  13. Mark

    April 17th, 2009 - 12:14:01 PM

    I wonder if The Green Slime Is Coming is where the Japanese got the idea to do tentacle porn?

  14. Mike S.

    April 17th, 2009 - 1:19:52 PM

    Nice post. I can't believe I'm going to be the first to mention that like half of these movies were on Mystery Science Theater 3000. If you like terrible sci-fi, then mst3k is for you.

  15. Jerry

    April 17th, 2009 - 3:40:30 PM

    Very cool.

  16. Unblock Facebook

    April 17th, 2009 - 10:34:25 PM

    Horror movies always has some of teh hottest women :)

  17. Patternhead

    April 18th, 2009 - 3:12:22 AM

    Sweet. Love these super coo posters, thanks for sharing :)

  18. jjabraham

    April 18th, 2009 - 11:48:11 PM

    (books and comics)=/=movies

  19. Wrathwilde

    April 19th, 2009 - 2:29:55 PM

    What, No Barbarella? http://bibliotecnica.upc.es/CinemaiArquitectura/cinema/FITXA/Barbarella.jpg

  20. Michael Burks

    April 19th, 2009 - 10:59:22 PM

    I knew my ex-girlfriend wasn't blowing me off when she told me she was leaving me for an alien driving a robot that can french kiss. www.theunfunny.com

  21. Terence Taylor

    April 20th, 2009 - 9:21:22 AM

    I can't believe that no one noticed that the star of Galaxina is Dorothy Stratton -- not just a Playboy Playmate, but the subject of Bob Fosse's Star 80, about her murder by her jealous boyfriend who got her to Playboy, after she became successful and started dating Peter Bogdanovich. I always suspected her death was the subject of "Don't You Want Me, Baby" by Human League. It was one of the few films she made, (which include one by Bogdanovich) and one sees what might have been in her ethereal performance. She may not have had a brilliant career ahead of her, but she was touchingly sweet and lovely...

  22. jon

    April 21st, 2009 - 12:17:24 AM

    I believe The Green Slime would inspire generations of Japanese pornography.

  23. Kittybriton

    April 21st, 2009 - 5:30:06 AM

    As (I think it was...) Isaac Asimov would have put it, a superb example of the "Clank! Clank! Aaaaargh!" genre. Thank you.

  24. Stephen Ackart

    April 21st, 2009 - 9:06:44 AM

    Oh how this brings me back to the days before I was born and standing in line to see these cheesy movies with a date that hated scary movies and ate all my popcorn. Dam, I have gone and upset myself...need to go lay down.

  25. Aprişanti

    April 22nd, 2009 - 6:16:22 AM

    Gençlerbirliği

  26. larkin

    April 29th, 2009 - 12:40:50 PM

    @terrance taylor: glad you mentioned dorothy stratten! tragic.

  27. bobby

    June 13th, 2009 - 3:41:37 AM

    planet stories "they came because she made them" lol

  28. Richard

    June 17th, 2009 - 1:02:01 PM

    These are beautiful! The films though... varying degrees of quality. The Green Slime, despite the truly funky poster, is one of the most abysmal films I've ever seen. God it sucked.

  29. Sarah Jumel

    June 27th, 2009 - 2:31:47 PM

    I got that Creature of the Black Lagoon one for my niece, who looked like the chic being held by the monster (Nothing like the actual actress, though.)

  30. trevor

    October 4th, 2009 - 1:12:57 PM

    Women have always been known to play an exclusive part when it comes to any good drama or horror movie. If you notice mostly all women in horror movies are naked or their is a naked scene in any horror movie now a days. I was on this online dating site last month and read an article stating that even Jaime Lee Curtis never showed her breasts until trading places do to the regular fits of women being topless or nude in most horror movies she wanted to be different.

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