This is Post 6 of 6 this afternoon and will bring to a close our June 2021 virtual meeting. If you are just now joining us, scroll back to today’s Post 1 of 6 to enjoy the whole meeting, start to finish.

12) POST 1’S TRIVIA CHALLENGE: OUR LIST OF 25 “WINTER” SF/F MOVIES!

How many genre movies did you list that take place, at least in part, on an ice planet or during winter? Here, in no particular order, is our list of 25 such films for you to compare to your own:

1) The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), the opening 15 minutes of which takes place above the Arctic Circle, where an atomic bomb test unleashes from its eons-long icy repose Ray Harryhausen’s prehistoric Rhedosaurus, the titular beast that promptly heads south to rampage through New York City.

2) Snowpiercer (2013) is a dystopian tale that takes place in the context of a future Ice Age brought about by failed attempts at climate engineering in order to halt global warming. Endlessly circumnavigating the globe is the Snowpiercer, a train aboard which ride the remnants of humanity, segregated into elites, who live in the luxury coaches at the head of the train, and commoners, who are housed in the squalor of the tail cars.

3) The Colony (2013), a Canadian production, is another dystopian story of a frozen future. Weather machines deployed to quell global warming break down when it begins snowing one day and doesn’t stop! To shelter from the resultant bitter cold, mankind must retreat to underground bunkers and live in these colonies. Finding a means of producing enough food and controlling disease becomes a preoccupation but eventually, cannibalism breaks out in one bunker while in another, a ruthless individual vies to depose his leader and rule the colony himself.

4) The Abominable Snowman (1957) is a British film scripted by Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale about scientists on a Himalayan expedition to find the fabled Yeti. One of the scientists, a glory-seeking American, hopes to capture a living Yeti and present the beast to the world’s press. His British counterpart is driven simply by scientific curiosity and a desire to learn more about the so-called Abominable Snowman, and later determines that Yetis appear to be intelligent creatures bidding their time until they may inherit the Earth after mankind has destroyed himself.

5) Snowbeast (1977), savaged by critics, this is an NBC made-for-television movie about a Sasquatch that terrorizes a ski resort in the Colorado Rockies.

6) Snow Beast (2011) follows a wildlife researcher and his team, along with his daughter and a couple of local rangers, as they investigate the recent disappearances of a number of tourists near a ski lodge in the Canadian wilderness. They discover that a huge Yeti has been stalking and killing vacationers on the slopes and in the forest.

7) Yeti: Curse of the Snow Demon (2008) was produced for the SyFy Channel. When a college football team’s plane crashes in the Himalayas, the survivors must find food and fend off the legendary Yeti lest the bloodthirsty monster make a meal of them!

8) Snow Shark: Ancient Snow Beast (2012). Don’t even ask!

9) 30 Days of Night (2007) is a vampire flick based on a comic-book series. Barrow, Alaska, situated north of the Arctic Circle, is a town that endures month-long “polar nights” during the winter, the opposite of the “midnight sun” phenomenon experienced during the summer. A group of vampires cuts off the town’s communication and transportation links with the outside world before taking advantage of this extended night to feast on the townspeople in an uninterrupted orgy of blood. The town’s sheriff and a handful of others manage to evade the slaughter by hiding in the concealed attic of a boarded-up house. They must hold out until the sun rises again and disperses the vampires.

10) The Empire Strikes Back (1980), sequel to Star Wars and the fifth chapter in the chronology, opens on the ice world Hoth and features Luke’s encounter with an ape-like Wampa snow monster, as well as an assault on the Rebel’s secret Echo Base by an imposing phalanx of Imperial Walkers.

11) Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), in which Kirk and McCoy, convicted of assassinating the Klingon Chancellor just as peace talks are about to begin between the Klingon Empire and the Federation, are sentenced to imprisonment at a Klingon penal colony on the frozen planetoid Rura Penthe.

12) The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998), the first X-Files feature film, includes Mulder’s climatic rescue of Scully from an underground Antarctic facility, and the break-out from beneath the ice and departure skyward of an enormous flying saucer.

13) Alien vs Predator (2004), bringing together two popular sci-fi/horror franchises, is set on glacial Bouvet Island near Antarctica, where explorers discover an ancient pyramid buried beneath the ice in which Predators test their mettle in Coliseum-like battle against Aliens.

14) The Thing from Another World (1951), Howard Hawks’ classic about Air Force men and scientists at an isolated Arctic research station battling an ambulatory, plant-like alien monster they’ve discovered encased in the ice beside a flying saucer crash-site. Astoundingly, the creature is still alive, even after countless years frozen!

15) The Thing (1982), John Carpenter’s paranoia-infused remake of the above, the storyline of which follows more closely the source material, John Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” The alien, here, is a shape-shifter able to assume the form of any living being with which it comes in contact.
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16) The Thing (2011), a prequel to the Carpenter film.

17) The Thaw (2009) takes place at a remote facility in the Canadian Arctic and is about a research team’s discovery of a lethal prehistoric organism released from the thawing carcass of a Woolly Mammoth. Before too long, almost everyone is infected and dying, with humanity at risk should a survivor manage to get back to civilization carrying the bug!

18) Dreamcatcher (2003) is based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and involves four friends with uncanny telepathic abilities, strangely acquired in childhood, who get together for their annual, mid-winter, deep-woods hunting trip in Maine. A blizzard blows in and they soon find themselves contending with parasitic worms from outer space capable of possessing bodies and minds, and an elite military unit tasked with eradicating these alien invaders, as well as anyone with whom they may have come in contact.

19) The Shining (1980), Stanley Kubrick’s screen adaptation of this well-known Stephen King novel, tells the story of Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as the off-season caretaker of the historic and very much haunted Overlook Hotel, a resort in the Colorado Rockies that closes during the snowbound winter months. Staying with him for the duration are his wife and young son, who come under increasing threat when the hotel’s ghosts slowly drive Torrance murderously insane. Kubrick makes good use of a wintery palette, particularly during Torrance’s climatic, homicidal, axe-wielding chase of his family through the resort’s famous hedge maze.

20) Dead Snow (2009) is the English-language dub of a Norwegian film, Død snø, inspired by Scandinavian folk tales of the undead draugar, who zealously guard their ill-gotten booty. A group of students partying over the Easter break at a cabin in the snow-covered mountains of Norway find an old, wooden box filled with gold coins and trinkets, and are later attacked by zombies dressed in World War II-era Nazi military uniforms! Seems that during the war, these Nazis terrorized the people of the area and looted the nearby town of its valuables. But the locals rose up and took their revenge, either killing the soldiers or chasing them into the mountains where, presumably, they froze to death before coming back as cursed zombies.

21) Legend (1985) is a fantasy film directed by Ridley Scott in which a dark, icy winter descends upon the land when, at the bidding of the Lord of Darkness, goblins slay a magical unicorn, sever its alicorn, or horn, and deliver it to Darkness. A plucky princess and an assortment of forest-dwellers, including her green-man paramour, a couple of dwarves, an elf, and a fairy are instrumental in retrieving the alicorn so as to reattach it and return the fallen unicorn to life, thus lifting the curse of darkness and winter.

22) Quintet (1979) is a post-apocalyptic science fiction film helmed by non-conformist, satirical director Robert Altman in which a new Ice Age has enveloped Earth and mankind is close to extinction. Quintet is a violent and deadly board game in which people act as the game tokens. It’s played at a gambling resort in a deteriorating metropolis doomed by the relentless advance of a glacier that will eventually crush the city. The film was shot here in Montreal during the frigid winter of 1978 on the site of the Expo 67 World’s Fair, which post-exhibition had been rebranded Man and his World. The fair’s former pavilions and structures looked the part of a crumbling, ice-encased city of the distant future.

23) The Day After Tomorrow (2004), a cautionary but overblown, big-budget disaster movie premised on catastrophic shifts in ocean temperatures triggering extreme weather events. Scientists warn of impending doom, politicians ignore them, and we all know too well the result when that happens! Soon, massive and devastating hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis, and flash-freeze events develop around the world as the northern hemisphere is blanketed in ice and snow, plunging the planet into a new Ice Age. Vast populations migrate to the warmer, equatorial regions of the globe, including droves of Americans fleeing south who illegally cross the border into Mexico!

24) It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), Frank Capra’s heartwarming, perennial Christmas favourite, about a guardian angel’s efforts on Christmas Eve to convince despondent businessman George Bailey of the value of what the suicidal man believes has been his pedestrian and worthless life. The film features a chilling alternate-history sequence in which Bailey is shown how much worse things would have been for his family and friends had he never been born.

25) Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), a Ray Harryhausen mythological pastiche in which Sinbad and crew sail to the polar wastelands of Hyperborea. Here, Sinbad hopes to break an evil spell which has turned a prince into a baboon so that said prince may be restored to human form and crowned Caliph of his kingdom.

13) THANK YOU!

We hope you have enjoyed your time with us this afternoon, and we ask all of you to check in regularly here at www.MonSFFA.ca for additional content during this continuing vaccination push/gradual reopening, and for any news as to when the club expects a return to face-to-face meetings. Thank you for your interest and attention, and don’t forget to comment on today’s meeting!

We’d also like to thank Keith Braithwaite, Joe Aspler, and Cathy Palmer-Lister for putting this June 12, 2021 DIY, Virtual MonSFFA e-Meeting together, with a nod, as well, to our supporting contributors today, Brian Knapp, Wayne Glover, and Lindsay Brown.

Until next month, when we will gather virtually once more on July 10, please continue to exercise all recommended safety practices, and get your shots as soon as the vaccination is made available to you! Continued patience and discipline, folks; we’re almost there!

14) A CLOSING SONG BY THE HOLDERNESS FAMILY

We wrap up with this Father’s Day ditty from the zany Holderness Family (www.youtube.com/TheHoldernessFamily):