Matt Scott Barnes
From the rubber masks of Planet of the Apes (1968) to the chrome-plated destruction of Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), exploitation sci-fi has always been a strange gospel. Cheap, super-charged, and gloriously excessive, these films traded restraint for spectacle, dystopia for entertainment, and somehow became scripture for generations of followers. Death Race 2000 (1975) turned blood-sport into parody; RoboCop (1987) gave us a cyborg Christ-like martyr bleeding motor oil. Somewhere between nihilism and explosions, these movies started feeling less like fiction and more like prophecy with sermons about technology, power, and what happens when humanity plays god. Low-budget or big-budget, the throughline is clear, wreckage as ritual, machines as messiahs, and an audience ready to worship the carnage. What began as pulp became relics, and those relics? They endure—icons of a future we were always promised, but never wanted.