Ten 1950s Sci-Fi Flicks You've (Probably) Never Seen That Are Streaming Now

I love 1950s sci-fi films, especially the low budget b-movies. Give me a cardboard robot, a rubbery monster, or flying saucers hanging from fishing wire and I'm happy. Yet a lot of these creaky black and white quickies can also be a ton of fun, and plenty of them are streaming online now! Let's dig into it.

1. How To Make A Monster (1958)

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One of the most meta monster/sci-fi movies of the 1950s, How to Make a Monster is set behind-the-scenes at the infamous teen exploitation studio American International. A makeup artist who loves to create elaborate monster makeup is being phased out of the business by rock & roll musicals, and sets out to have his revenge. His method? Using makeup glue as mind control (just go with it) to turn young actors into the monsters they're portraying. It's great, campy fun and it's streaming on Youtube now!

2. The Atomic Submarine (1959)

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This genre pic combines the claustrophobia of a submarine film with the paranoia of an alien invasion, as the crew of a nuclear submarine hunt for a mysterious underwater UFO beneath the icecaps. Some inventive special effects and a great Cold War atmosphere make this more than just a monster movie, and apparently the folks at the Criterion Collection thought so too! This is a Criterion release, streaming on Hulu!

3. I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)

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Beneath that lurid title is an intelligent film that owes a lot to 1956’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A young woman is delighted to get married, but soon has suspicions that her husband and all of his friends have been taken over by...something. But will mankind’s humanity triumph over alien hatred? Find out on Youtube!

4. Invaders From mars (1953)

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Another film about aliens that slowly start to possess people, only this one is told from the point of view of a child who watches as his parents get taken over by, you guessed it, aliens from Mars. It was remade in 1986, but the original is a lot more fun. Gorgeous, expressionistic color photography and set design make this a real treat to watch right now, on Youtube!

5. The Colossus of New York (1958)

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A b-movie Frankenstein saga about a brilliant scientist who dies in an accident, yet his brain is saved by his brother and their conniving father, and placed into a mechanical robot body. If you can get past the extreme low-budget nature of the film, it’s actually a dark thriller full of ruminations on humanity. And I’m not the film’s only fan! Patton Oswalt used an image from the film on the cover of his book, Silver Screen Fiend. Catch it on Youtube!

6. Cat-Women of the Moon (1953)

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A low budget interplanetary quest, where an expedition to the moon finds a race of surviving women who can control women’s minds and exploit men’s “weak points.” Is this a conservative rebuke to the growing women’s rights movement in America, or just campy fun with showgirls in skin-tight “cat” outfits? Watch for yourself on Youtube!

7. The Blob (1958)

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Notably mainly for Steve McQueen's debut as a leading man, The Blob is actually a lot of fun, as a group of teenagers witness a strange UFO crash, then try to get the adults to believe them as the alien blob grows to threaten the entire town (with some pretty inventive special effects). And dig those crazy opening credits and theme song! Amazingly, this is another Criterion collection film that's streaming on Hulu!

8. The Twonky (1953)

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In the early 1950s, Hollywood was terrified by the success of television, rightly fearing that it would take audiences away from movie theaters. Those fears, as well as the worries of an atomic push-button age, are reflected in the bizarre The Twonky, a movie about a sentient television that walks around, lights cigarettes, and eventually progresses to controlling minds. Played mostly for comedy (with Hans Conreid, the voice of Captain Hook in Disney's Peter Pan in the leading role), it's a mystifying film that has to be seen to be believed. See it here!

9. Target Earth (1954)

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In an opening that’s reminiscent of The Walking Dead, a woman awakens from a failed suicide attempt to find her city nearly deserted, and stalked by remorseless killing robots from Venus. This claustrophobic thriller’s low-budget limits the robot attacks and scale of devastation, but it does a great job with what it has...oh and the robots are a lot of fun too. Check it out!

10. Robot Monster (1953)

Okay, I know. You may have heard of Robot Monster, or seen it on Mystery Science Theater 3000, or know that it's considered one of the worst movies of all time. But you know what? It's actually got a lot going for it. Yes it's made for approximately zero dollars, has some terrible acting, and a monster that's a guy in a gorilla suit with a fishbowl on his head. But Robot Monster has ideas, crazy ideas that make no sense, but ideas nonetheless. It combines elements of an interplanetary invasion with apocalyptic nightmares, an alien defeated by human love, biblical imagery, and a surprise ending. Watch it on Youtube and decide for yourself!