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Sci-Fi Horror Films

Updated on July 5, 2014

Nightmare Visions of the Future

The aliens are coming.

They want to breed in your lungs. They will suck the life out of you. Their blood is a highly corrosive acid. And they plan to take over the Earth. Will you be able to stop them?

This lens contains reviews of the Alien movies starring Sigourney Weaver as a tough female action hero.

These toys, action figures and DVDs make great gifts.

Review of Alien

Review of Alien, a classic sci-fi horror movie.

Alien (The Director's Cut)
Alien (The Director's Cut)
Alien is a sci-fil classic. it was elegantly crafted by director Ridley Scott and starred a young Sigourney Weaver as a tough, all-action female hero. Check out the review below.
 

Alien

The Film that Helped to Define Sci-Fi Horror Films

Ridley Scott's 1980 film is a classic in the sci-fi horror genre. Alien helped to define the genre of sci-fi horror films.

The crew of the Nostromo are awakened from long-term slumber to find that the company that employs them wants them to capture and bring back an alien life form. And so it begins.

The alien is considered by the company to be the ultimate weapon - if the crew can survive capturing it.

Ripley emerges as the hero/ine, taking on the Alien.

This film scores a 10 out of 10 for suspense. The confines of the ship are claustrophobic, the technology cannot be trusted, and the company is driven by pure greed. The crew learn that they are expendable.

What makes this film so scary is that the alien can appear anywhere, at any moment - and we don't know who it will carry off next.

Probably the best-known scene has John Hurt, as a member of the crew, appearing to have an epileptic fit at the dinner table - until a baby alien emerges from his chest and scuttles off.

Warning: this is a seriously scary movie.

Sigourney Weaver on Ripley

The part of Ripley was originally writen for a male actor, but Sigourney Weaver was perfect casting.

Corporate Greed

Corporate Greed Is the Real Monster

The alien's blood is acid, which eats through several layers of the ship. This makes killing it that much more tricky.

But, although deadly, the alien is just an animal, acting on instinct.

In some ways, corporate greed is the real monster. In these days following the banking crisis, the Enron scandal, the phone hacking scandal, and on and on, corporate greed is on everybody's minds. It seems to eat through everything. These nightmare visions of the future reflect our current reality.

The Alien movies also explore definitions of femininity and motherhood. For more about this, read on.

Aliens Movies on DVD - Get the Aliens Movies on DVD

These are some seriously scary movies. Buy them now on DVD.

Alien (The Director's Cut)
Alien (The Director's Cut)
The original Allien movie. A scif-fi classic.
 
Alien: Illustrated Screenplay: Complete Illustrated Screenplay
Alien: Illustrated Screenplay: Complete Illustrated Screenplay
The screenplay of the original Alien film - a classic.
 

Aliens

The First Aliens Sequel, Directed by James Cameron

The first sequel, directed by James Cameron. I have seen Aliens at least half a dozen times, and it still has me on the edge of my seat from the very beginning. A seriously scary movie.

Ripley's ship is discovered drifting through space. It is found by people looking for salvage, but they cannot profit from it as she is still alive.

Taken to a facility, Ripley learns that she has been drifting for 60 years, and the young daughter she left behind has died of old age.

Accused of having destroyed the Nostromo for no reason, Ripley is stripped of her pilot's licence and goes to work in a loading bay, gaining skills she will use later when fighting the aliens

This would never happen nowadays. Although set in the distant future, Aliens is a little dated. Today, if a crew confronted an alien that bled acid and bred inside of people's lungs, the first thing they would do would be to take photos with their phones, and post them on Instagram, or Twitter, or FB, etc. So the cause of their demise and the destruction of the ship would be well-documented.

At night, Ripley has nightmares of being possessed by an alien, and she wakes every morning in a cold sweat.

She is asked to return to the planet, which has now been colonised. She knows the colonists will be killed by the alien, and at first refuses to return, but realises this is the only way she will become able to face her demons.

She goes back to the planet, accompanied by a crew of Marines, who are supposed to protect her. They have every type of weapon known to the armed forces. One of the marines runs through a list of all the weapons they are packing, including sharp sticks. This is in order to reassure Ripley. And yeah, Ripley turns out to be stronger, meaner and badder than the Marines.

Mother vs. Mother

Ripley vs. the Alien Mother

Ripley and the team meet a little girl, Newt, the only survivor of the alien attack. She has been hiding out in an air duct and knows her way around the base. When the crew get scared, Ripley reminds them that this little girl has managed to survive with no weapons and no training.

Every single time Ripley confronts the aliens, her first thought is always Newt's safety. "Get behind me, Newt", she says, or "Stay close". So the child knows she can trust Ripley, who puts Newt's safety ahead of her own.

We see how the creatures reproduce, and the mother alien protects her young while hunting for humans. So it's mother vs. mother.

James Cameron on Aliens

Director of Aliens

James Cameron has said he doesn't think Ridley Scott liked the fact that Cameron entered the world Scott created in the first Alien movie. Cameron says he knew he could not do what Ridley Scott had done, but he could make an action movie.

Aliens Video - "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit" - One Way to Survive in Sci-Fi Horror Films

One way to survive in sci-fi horror films - nuke 'em! Why don't more people do this?

Check out this video clip from a seriously scary classic sci-fi movie. .

More Aliens on Amazon - Alien DVDs, gift ideas

More Alien DVDs. The perfect gifts for your favorite Alien hunter.

Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) [DVD]
Aliens (Two-Disc Collector's Edition) [DVD]
Another seriously scary Alien movie. See the description above.
 
Aliens: The Deluxe Edition
Aliens: The Deluxe Edition
Deluxe edition of the seriously scary Aliens movie on DVD.
 

Alien3

Warning: This part contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the film, look away now.

Ripley wakes to find herself on another planet. We already know that everyone who escaped with her is dead. We see X-rays of a human skull with an alien attached to it. Something Very Bad has happened.

The little girl, Newt, whom she was protecting, is among the dead and Ripley insists on seeing the corpse. The chief medical officer, played by Charles Dance, watches as she examines the body with a weird fascination. Then she insists that he performs an autopsy, which she watches closely. She is obviously looking for something, but she's not letting on as to what.

After the autopsy, Ripley demands that the doctor burn all the bodies to avoid the risk of contagion.

Ripley is on a prison planet - a maximum security prison called Work Prison Fury 161. The prisoners are all sociopathic killers, all male, with double-Y chromosomes. In other words, extremely dangerous. And none of them have seen a woman for years.

Bishop, the android that saved Ripley's life in the previous movie, has been thrown onto the scrap heap. Ripley finds him, fires him up and asks him to access the ship's log so he can tell her what happened. She learns that an alien was on the ship - it was with them from the beginning, and it killed all of her surviving shipmates.

Bishop asks Ripley to switch him off - "I'll never be as good as I was". So she does. This foreshadows the point when Ripley herself will beg the alien to kill her.

An alien is staking the facility, killing people off one by one. In a room with Ripley, it gets up close and personal. So close she can smell it. She can feel its breath on her face. So close it can hear her heartbeat. She waits, terrified, for it to attack her, but it backs off, leaving her sitting there, shaken, wondering why. It knows she has an alien growing inside of her.

Another romp ensues, with the prisoners trying to stay alive, trying to find the alien and kill it or at least survive until the rescue party arrives. But Ripley knows that the company is not the cavalry. It doesn't care about her, or about the prisoners. It just wants the alien.

Not as well made as the first two films, Weaver has criticised the film company for not giving the director free reign. But it's still a great movie.

Alien Resurrection

What could have been a cheesy third sequel, stretching credulity, is saved by a superb script by Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer). The fact that Ripley is such a brilliant character, and the quality of Sigourney Weaver's acting, also contribute to making the film very watchable.

Ripley is back - but not as she was. The opening credits give us glimpses of the horror of two species - human and alien - whose DNA has comingled.

Beings in jars in the lab - some dead, others still alive - testify to a crime against nature. A new being has emerged. She looks like Ripley and has her sense of humour, but is part alien.

She doesn't fear the aliens, and their acid blood doesn't harm her. At one point, she kills some of them. Winona Ryder (later revealed to be a cyborg) recoils in horror - Ripley has killed her own kind. Ripley replies, "They were in my way".

She has had a baby alien removed from her body. Her gift to the species is live birth. No longer do they have to rely on pods to breed. The alien thinks Ripley is its mother - seriously creepy. Great movie.

More Sci-Fi Horror Movies

More Sci-Fi Horror Movie Reviews, Film Reviews, DVDs, and TV

More sci-fi horror movie reviews, film reviews, DVDs, and TV. .

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Alien Halloween Party
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More Aliens on Amazon - Aliens DVDs, gift ideas

More perfect gifts for your favorite alien-hunter. Seriously scary alien movies on DVD.

Alien: Resurrection
Alien: Resurrection
Check out the review above.
 
Alien: Resurrection
Alien: Resurrection
Check out the review above.
 

Ridley Scott on Sigourney Weaver as Ripley

Prometheus Trailer - Trailer for Prometheus

For the first time since the original Alien movie, Ridley Scott is on board with this Alien prequel.

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