"Things To Come" Classic Colorized + Others
It's Almost A Whole New Film Colorized, Very Watchable 100 years later (UPDATED)
Originally this was just a fanbois page for THINGS TO COME but it turned into an exhaustive list of all the free apocalyptic films on Tubi. I am linking to it on the main menu so it is easier to find.
Any additions, corrections or reviews please post to comments below. If I have omitted a really good one, be sure to tell me. Some of the most recent links are really top notch movies.
THINGS TO COME available free on Tubi.
The special effects, story and acting are superb - highly recommend this film. There’s a reason it is called a classic.
The shots of the apocalyptic war and the resulting ruins are better done than most of the crap churned out in the 80’s and afterwards. The effect of CGI has been to make people far less creative and movies lack atmosphere now.
I was a couple minutes in and I realized all the shots were real sets with a few glass matte paintings to fill out the depth in the background. The result was amazing.
Some more Post-Apocalyptic pearls to be found on Tubi …
A BREATH AWAY Wonderful french apocalyptic film with a very interesting premise. Won’t spoil it for you.
WOKEN Excellent low-budget post-apocalyptic gem, surprised me when I started to watch it and was soon engrossed in it.
FIVE By Arch Oboler. Rare classic from the Hollywood golden era on an atomic war. See it once for cultural literacy.
THE ROVER Chilling post-economic-apocalypse, Guy Pierce wants his car back because it is the only thing he has left. Excellent acting, direction and story arc.
THE DAY Cannibal horror at the end of the world. Bloody but gut-wrenching.
Z FOR ZACHARIAH Just boring. Supposed to be a triangle love drama but almost put me to sleep.
PRISONERS OF THE GHOSTLAND I enjoyed it, obviously it would have been nothing without Cage in it. Radioactive wasteland of Manga horrors, it definitely counted as post-apocalyptic.
THE ROAD is one grim flick and and instant classic. The kid was way too whiney to take seriously.
THE END Little known french zombie film in an elevator. Watch it, be patient. It keeps getting better the entire time.
ALONE Donald Sutherland looks like he is asking himself how in the hell he managed to get himself into this mess.
YOUNG ONES Very good movie, great script, superb plot, enjoyable to watch.
TIME OF THE WOLF … One of the best and most realistic post-apocalyptic films ever made. Grim and relentless and very likely.
DAY OF THE ANIMALS … Leslie Nielsen plays a seriously disturbed corporate executive in this one who ends up worse than the animals in this once-in-a-lifetime role. His portrayal scared the hell out of me when I was a little kid.
DAYBREAKERS … World overrun by vampires. Very good, bloody as hell but the most memorable scenes are of vampires lining up for their blood coffee in the morning before work. Good acting, top cast, well plotted.
THE DEAD Surprisingly good zombie film set in Africa. Has a gruesome despair in it that reminded me of Lucio Fulci’s flicks.
V FOR VENDETTA … A successful Britain that defends itself properly from a diversity invasion. Only to be overthrown by gay people by blowing stuff up. Usually it’s gay people who build totalitarian societies.
A BREATH AWAY … Cool concept, good acting and it’s french. The setting was really disturbing and it is a thoughtful film.
THE BRONX EXECUTIONER … Italian ripoff that like many of them is still evocative.
OMEGA DOOM … Albert Pyun loved post-apocalyptic films. This was one of his better ones and it has Rutger Hauer.
NEON CITY … Michael Ironside and Vanity in little known film that is pretty vanilla.
STRYKER … Random apocalypse plot generator from 1985 spat out another paint-by-numbers movie. Shot on same desert out behind Hollywood that Captain Kirk fought that alien on.
SPLIT SECOND … London under water and two cops pursuing a creature that might not be real.
DARK CITY … Post-Human metropolis that changes every night. Greatest fortean film ever made.
FUTUREWORLD … James Franco is quite good in it with quite a few stars in it.
WHEELS OF FIRE … Gary Watkins is actually a darn good B-movie hero in typical 80’s post-apoc formulaic flick.
RAIDERS OF THE SUN … Richard Norton has got to eat, people. Besides, he was the baddie in GYMKATA, my favorite action movie of all time and the inspiration for my 1985 All-Army Ironman victory.
EQUALIZER 2000 … Richard Norton ran out of the money he got paid for RAIDERS OF THE SUN.
RAVAGERS Classic 70’s post apocalypse with great actors. Low budget but extremely well shot and directed. Richard Harris turns it into Shakespeare with his terrific delivery of weak dialogue.
RADIOFLASH … low budget with Dominic Monaghan and slow but quite good.
POLARIS … Post-apocalyptic polar movie, a weird one but good in places.
DEAD FIRE … Matt Frewer thought he might try the genre. I think he should not have done that. Thomas Howell looks like he regrets his career as an actor in this movie.
DUNE WARRIOR … David Carradine and they must make these movies with a random script generator. All through the 1980’s the same stuff. “Kung Fu” except with slightly better production values.
BLACKOUT … found footage EMP catastrophe is the “THREADS” of power out nightmares and social collapses.
PLANET OF THE APES (2001) … remake by Tim Burton is forgettable but at least it had the shock ending of the original novel that inspired the true classic. Watchable because of the cameo by Heston. Millennials never “get it” but they always say they
”get it, man.”
WAR OF THE WORLDS … first decent English production of the original by Wells as a series. Perfect to the novel and one of those authentic flicks that respects the source.
MONSTERS … one of my favorite movies about an alien invasion. Lyrical, slow and beautiful with great actors.
STEEL DAWN … Patrick Swayze enters the fray with bargain basement samurai flick.
NEMESIS … Albert Pyun’s classic post-apocalyptic pastiche of a dozen films which is almost good at times.
NIGHT OF THE COMET … lighthearted and enjoyable, great actresses.
HAKAIDER … Manga live-action post-apoc sci-fi armor what’s not to enjoy here.
MAD MAX … Inspired forty years of ripoffs, the highest honor a movie can receive.
MAD MAX 2 - Much better scripted, story made it an instant cult classic as soon as it was released.
NIGHT RAIDERs - Good but choppy, pretty unknown but decent movie.
THE LAST MAN … bizarre thing with Christian Hayden and Harvey Keitel.
WICKED CITY … Animated but so crazy it has to be seen. Classic manga post-apoc with demons.
TANK GIRL … had all the right elements but not satisfying and needed a bit more polish before it was released.
ROBOT WARS … Pure pulp from Albert Band and heartening to think we will be driving giant robots in the aftermath of civilization.
IDAHO TRANSFER … bizarre 60’s counterculture movie and absolutely fantastic.
A BOY AND HIS DOG … suffers from budget restrictions yet still manages to capture much of the atmosphere from Harlan Ellison’s book that served as the source material. Today with CGI they should be able to make it correctly. I have a signed copy of the graphic comic by Richard Corben and it is amazingly engaging.
HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN … Absolutely enjoyable. My son and I laughed so hard at Rowdy Roddy Piper we kept rewinding. Shot on a budget of what looks like around $5.00 with a week’s schedule and it was a great film. Clearly a big influence on the FALLOUT series and several other films that followed. Even giant radioactive mutant frogs know Piper is a complete flake.
DEATH RACE 2000 … Absolute classic dystopian.
THE LAST SURVIVORS … Water wars again. Water must be scarce in the future.
UNDERGODS … Britain is almost there now, give it a couple more years.
APOCALYPTO … Possibly one of the greatest films ever made. The end of the Mayan Empire. No Oscars in Klownworld of course.
WARRIORS OF THE 21st CENTURY … Just downright sweet post-WW3 goodness, great movie on a budget.
WE’VE FORGOTTEN MORE THAN WE EVER KNEW … Loved it and still not sure I understood what it was about. I think it was after a biological attack that wiped out memories.
THREADS … what “The Day After” wanted to be before it became an afterschool special on Nuclear War.
VIRUS … Much better than it was originally estimated to be by critics. A lot of stars to carry the dialogue, which varies from good to campy.
DEMON SEED … a better propaganda film about the dangers of AI than anybody in the modern era is capable of making.
VANISHING ON 7th STREET … Fortean horror, post-apocalyptic and very original film.
DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS … short and kind of uneven but still a classic movie.
SNOWPIERCER … Most Ice Age apocalypse movies are terrible. This one is gripping from start to finish. This is likely the best adaptation of an Anime comic anybody has ever seen. Chris Evans superb as the leader of the revolt.
THE QUIET EARTH … New Zealand film, still the strangest post-apocalyptic (?) movie ever made.
SKYLINE … almost a good movie about alien invasion in a sea of schlock. Most of these similarly theme films ended up on Tubi for a reason.
TERMINUS … little known film with Karen Allen, not too bad at all.
I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW … High weirdness from Peter Dinklage. Enjoyed it.
WARLORDS OF ATLANTIS … called “Antediluvian CrystalPunk” because it almost created a genre of post-apocalyptic ancient civilization clashes. Doug McClure is the legend of low budget pulp films that play like comic books.
FIREBIRD 2015 A.D … because this world needed a Mad Max ripoff with Doug McClure and he was determined to get at least one flick in the genre. I lived through the horror of 2015 A.D. and I wish McClure had been there to help me.
DEFCON 4 … Astronauts surviving nuclear war in orbit, it is a shlock classic.
LAST MAN ON EARTH … respectable Italian made film that sticks to the original “I AM LEGEND” (Richard Matheson) pretty closely with Vincent Price. Eerie atmosphere and setting. THE OMEGA MAN with Heston was merely inspired by it, similar to the original PLANET OF THE APES and even SOYLENT GREEN. Charlton Heston made better movies than the novels that inspired them - you don’t see that much nowadays.
MIRACLE MILE … if you’ve never seen it, prepare for your mind to be blown. Classic atomic doom porn.
Finally, a Tubi Original documentary, “ZOMBIES : PREPPING FOR THE APOCALYPSE” which was pretty good, much better than “Doomsday Preppers” after seeing it.
P.S. Just had to append … RATS : NIGHT OF TERROR because it is the worst acting, worst direction, worst dialogue and worst script of all time … with the coolest concept, setting and atmosphere of any movie up here! If they remade this film today with CGI and polished the story, even with C-list actors it would be one of the best post-apoc movies of all time! Love that 70’s backlot apocalypse feeling and the post-nuke ruins and vehicle is awesome. Also the ragtag weirdos in it could have made it a very tense movie with good direction and better dialogue if it were remade. The movie has almost got you with the hydroponics research lab but then goes to pieces in the storyline. Obviously in a modern remake, food research = hungry rats eat genetically modified food = crazed fast breeding super tough monster rats in a post-apocalyptic city = total win screenplay. I only mention it because it is an element in my own game underway. I spent the past week giving these things brains and behavior in an underground setting, they came out really scary. I added IK chain to the tail so it slithers around behind them, plus spine animation when they are turning and they look awesome. I’ve got this great navigation patrol where they go in and out of pipes sniffing the air dragging their tails behind them, very eerie with a single glowstick in your character’s hand.
Regards, Tex
Good timing, we're snowed in today. 20 inches.
My kind of movies.
Awesome !! 👍