2) Ikarie XB-1
There’s a hopeful message waiting at the end of Ikarie XB-1. To get to that, though, you have to endure 86 minutes of one of the more realistic depictions of people succumbing to space madness in cinema.
Jindrich Polak’s film is little-seen, but has influenced numerous movies and directors since, including but not limited to Stanley Kubrick and his own 2001. None of those to have taken inspiration, however, have thought to lend such banality to the space experience as Ikarie XB-1, a banality that gives the viewer a relatable sense of how pants-crappingly scary it can be when things start to go wrong out there.
On a mission to the surrounding planets of Alpha Centauri in search of life, the crew of the Ikarie XB-1 find that discovery of an aimlessly drifting ship full of corpses and nukes are the least of their worries. From there, insanity beckons in one crew member, as all the while a radioactive ‘dark star’ sickens the entire crew to the point of collapse, and the ship to the point of chaos.