Aliens & Horror: Rivals of Terror

By Steve Hutchison

Aliens, or extraterrestrial beings, are forms of life which did not originate on Earth. They are a major archetype of horror movies. In this book, film critic Steve Hutchison reviews and ranks 50 of the best horror movies featuring aliens ever released. How many have you seen?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Hutchison
• Release date: May 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393920205

Steve Hutchison

Artist, developer and entrepreneur in film, video games and communications Steve Hutchison co-founded Shade.ca Art and Code in 1999, then Terror.ca and its French equivalent Terreur.ca in 2000. With his background as an artist and integrator, Steve worked on such games as Capcom's Street Fighter, PopCap's Bejeweled, Tetris, Bandai/Namco's Pac-Man and Mattel's Skip-Bo & Phase 10 as a localization manager, 2-D artist and usability expert. Having acquired skills in gamification, he invented a unique horror movie review system that is filterable, searchable and sortable by moods, genres, subgenres and antagonists. Horror movie fans love it, and so do horror authors and filmmakers, as it is a great source of inspiration. In March 2013, Steve launched Tales of Terror, with the same goals in mind but with a much finer technology and a complex engine, something that wasn’t possible initially. He has since published countless horror-themed books.

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Tales of Terror’s

Rivals of Terror 2019

Aliens & Horror

INTRODUCTION

Aliens, or extraterrestrial beings, are forms of life which did not originate on Earth. They are a major archetype of horror movies. In this book, film critic Steve Hutchison reviews and ranks 50 of the best horror movies featuring aliens ever released. How many have you seen?

The Faculty

1998

Six students find out their teachers are from another planet.

A splendid cast is introduced very early on, including the protagonists who are presented through character cards right after an epic prologue. There are obvious Body Snatchers and Scream influences, here. It’s no coincidence that Kevin Williamson, of Scream fame, is screenwriting. The Faculty is punctuated by an amazing rock soundtrack just when you think the film couldn’t get any cooler.

The students, in The Faculty, are mentally and physically abusive, from the get go, so we’re not sure exactly what they become when they’re possessed, and that’s a grey zone that never gets addressed. Some of the infected become more aggressive and some more passive. All characters are right out of a comic book and the acting is irreproachable. In fact, the film itself is almost perfect.

The Faculty is as mainstream as horror films get, but horror buffs will see it from a particular angle. It’s an alien invasion, a slasher, a whodunit and, well, it’s teen horror. What else is there to like? The actors are amazing: Josh Hartnett, Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick, Laura Harris, Salma Hayek, Piper Laurie, Usher Raymond and Elijah Wood, to name a few.

8/8

Aliens

1986

The survivor of a space invasion awakened from stasis by her employer is asked to assist a troop of soldiers in hunting aliens.

Ripley, played by returning actress Sigourney Weaver, is offered a promotion if she resumes her nightmare. She accepts, curiously, but for the good of a franchise’s birth. This time, her friends have big guns! They are not pencil pushers stuck in space; they’re tough soldiers on a kamikaze mission. Aliens is more military and borrows from action flicks, as well as horror and science-fiction.

Everything is bigger, more frantic, rougher. There is sporadically elongated group dialog and the movie has many crowded, elaborate battle scenes. It also behaves like a slasher film, as the support characters meet their end in dark corners. There is plenty of room for character exposition and it significantly pays off when things get tense and out of control as the bodies start piling up.

The players are vivid, cartoonish, superficial but purposely and not more than your average video game character. The effects range from rear projection to puppetry; all taken to gigantic proportions, this time. The detailed sets match those of the original. Elements that were left unexplored the first time around are given a meaning and a purpose. This certainly lives up to the original!

8/8

Alien

1979

An ore harvesting crew