In its day this really did move the needle so to speak. Definitely ahead of its time.

I watched an interview with David Jason a while back. He said the writers of only fools and horses initially always wanted him to make jokes about the random stuff in the flat. He said that he managed to persuade the writers not to do this by convincing them the audience was smart enough to work things out for themselves, spelling out the joke would ruin it.

Same applies with CGI, we've gone through years of having every detail of each event shown to us. It doesn't need to be like that, better to just show a glimpse of the action correctly, and let the audience figure the rest of by themselves.

Like the shower seen in psycho. It's a bit naff, but showing it in gruesome detail wouldn't add to the film.

Val Lewton would probably agree. Tasked to direct a film called Cat people he had no money for special effects and the "cat" was a stunt man in an unconvincing suit. Lewton chose not to show the killer cat and build the tension around not seeing it.

He also introduced a cliche much loved by horror fans. A woman is being stalked by the cat the music and tension builds any moment the cat will strike, a loud noise and the audience jumps however it is a false scare as it is just a bus pulling up at a stop.

This false scare has been used by horror film makers hundreds of times since and is known in the trade as a "Lewton Bus stop".

One more point

By far, the best most convincing sfx award goes to..

Blake 7..

I'll get my coat..

The 6 o'clock news had better sfx. (Althought it was brilliant)..

"You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead"

Stan Laurel

Now that is funny. That really made me smile...

"You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead"

Stan Laurel

I never thought that the effects in Star Wars were that good. The scale was ambitious but the effects were never of the standard of say 2001 which came out years earlier.

Edited by Hrolf The Ganger (28 Oct 2019 7.56pm)