Recommend a less-known scifi movie/series

[Chaldfont]

They don't build computers like that anymore: into the side of a giant mountain and protected by a hi-tech retractable drawbridge.

That would be the ULTIMATE CASE MOD!

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

And if you haven't heard of it, there is a great 60's show called "The Prisoner" - very sharp dialogue and thought provoking stuff.

I totally concur. I had such fond memories of this series that I bought the entire series. I recall reading that it was being remade. A lot of the issues dealt with in the series are still timely today.

 

[WayneLigon]

Primer: Low budget (but frickin' cool) movie about time travel. Its more like a puzzle than a movie. You might have to watch it several times to figure out what's going on.

I would strongly suggest watching it a second time with the audio commentary on, and then going to look at some textual explanations You can truly see what a complex mess the inventors make of things, then.

Brainstorm: Scientists invent a "brain VCR" that can record and play back all the senses at once. This movie really messed up my head as a kid. Bonus: It has Christopher Walken, so it's automatically an awesome movie.

Loved, loved that movie. Natalie Wood's last movie before she died under rather mysterious circumstances.

Another cool movie from the 80's was Looker. In it, a company invents a way to scan a person, creating a perfectly realistic digital model of them, indistinquishable from the real thing. Of course the digital model will never get old, never get fat, etc. The models then get a paycheck for life as 'they' go on to do more work. Then they start turning up dead. (Looking at wikipedia, a deleted scene explains why they did this, which was sort of left up in the air in the theatrical release: it was to prevent other companies in the future from using them to produce knockoffs).

[sblock]Another aspect of the LOOKER technology was the instant light hypnosis tech, which used a timed pulse of light to directly 'talk' to targeted parts of the brain directly through the optic nerves. Agents of the company have these light guns that instantly hypnotise a person into dropping about 2 minutes of time, so it looks like the agents just vanish.

(One really effective scene has the main character fleeing the agents in the car behind him. They zap him through his car's rear-view mirror, hoping to provoke a fatal car accident that they can't be blamed for).

This also means that they can incorporate one tech into another. A really creepy scene occurs when the main characters are snooping around the LOOKER tech labs, and Susan Dey watches one of the commercials utilizing (I think) her digital model; the model's eyes flash briefly, and she starts repeating the commercial messge: she's been hypnotised into wanting that product.

Then they find that the company has created a composite Presidential candidate from several different object models, and it's hypnotic message is, of course, 'Elect me'.[/sblock]