With the Space Race between the USSR and the USA going on, documentaries and illustrations of actual events, pioneers and technology were plenty. Any movie featuring realistic space travel was at risk of being obsolete at its time of release, rather fossil than fiction. There were relatively few science fiction films in the 1960s, but some of the films transformed science fiction cinema. Stanley Kubrick's "" (1968) brought new realism to the genre, with its groundbreaking visual effects and realistic portrayal of space travel and influenced the genre with its epic story and transcendent philosophical scope. Other 1960s films included "Planet of the Vampires" (1965) by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava, that is regarded as one of the best movies of the period, "Planet of the Apes" (1968) and "Fahrenheit 451" (1966), which provided social commentary, and the campy "Barbarella" (1968), which explored the comical side of earlier science fiction. Jean-Luc Godard's French "new wave" film "Alphaville" (1965) posited a futuristic Paris commanded by an artificial intelligence which has outlawed all emotion.