Classic sci-fi movies for kids

Godzilla

Watching futuristic fantasies—and speculating about fictional worlds, eye-popping gadgets and alternate realities—is a great way to fuel young imaginations. Most sci-fi flicks made today, like the Transformers franchise or the reboot of Star Trek, thrill viewers with adventure, special effects and violence, but 50 years ago the genre was a much headier, spookier place. Aliens and nuclear mutants were the ghosts and ghouls of the atomic age—and decades later, they are perfect Halloween-season viewing material for smart city kids. We picked five classics (all available on Netflix) that’ll give your grade-school children the chills.

Godzilla (1954)
A prehistoric reptile brought to life by A-bomb radiation terrorizes Tokyo with thermonuclear breath and thunder thighs that could crush a high-rise. The monster suits and balsa-wood cityscapes might elicit giggles from kids used to computer wizardry, but the thought of a mutant beast on the rampage will still be gleefully terrifying.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Giant seed pods from outer space create perfect duplicates of people as they sleep—with the purpose of destroying and supplanting the human race. Brainiac parents might recognize this classic B movie as an allegory for the mindless group-think hysteria of McCarthyism. Younger viewers will just be too freaked out to go to bed; be sure to screen on a weekend.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Radioactive mist and insecticides transform an unsuspecting husband into an ever-reductive version of himself. As his body becomes tinier and tinier, encounters with the family cat and a spider become battles of life or death. It’s a wonderfully disturbing parable about the nature of being small in an increasingly large and frightening world—just the sort of outlook any put-upon little brother or sister can understand.

The Fly (1958)
Technology goes violently awry when a scientist experiments with a teleportation device and accidentally fuses his own body with that of a wandering housefly. The result—a man with the head of an insect, plus a fly leg and a fly arm—gives new meaning to the phrase “bugged out” and just might turn a few macabre youngsters into budding entomologists.

The Tingler (1959)
Vincent Price (who is also in The Fly) stars in this lowbrow classic, made by campy shriek auteur William Castle, about a killer parasite that grows and tingles on people’s spines whenever their sense of fear is heightened. The only way to escape its deadly clutches? Something kids love to do: “Scream! Scream for your lives!” (Alas, one doomed woman can’t heed the warning: she’s deaf and mute.)

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