Filmmakers have instilled in us the fear for the unknown - vampires, zombies, ghosts, aliens and anything unexplainable. For this post, I'm tackling alien movies. Aliens movies are a dime a dozen these days. I've seen scary aliens, funny aliens, endearing aliens, ugly aliens, gooey aliens and evil aliens. These are just some of the memorable alien films I've watched.
1. Alien - Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott (Gladiator) and starring Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature which stalks and kills the crew of a spaceship.
2. Aliens - Aliens is a 1986 science fiction action film directed by James Cameron (Titanic) and starring Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, and Bill Paxton. A sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Aliens is set fifty-seven years after the first film and is regarded by many film critics as a benchmark for the action and science fiction genres. In Aliens, Weaver's character Ellen Ripley returns to the planetoid LV-426 where she first encountered the hostile Alien. This time she is accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines.
3. The Blob - The Blob is a 1988 American monster horror film directed by Chuck Russell. It is a remake of the 1958 film of the same name, which starred Steve McQueen. The Blob, in which the title goo crashes to earth and promptly begins digesting the residents of a small California town while growing to gargantuan proportions. The clean-cut teen hero originally portrayed by Steve McQueen (his first starring role) is replaced here with a rebellious outsider (Kevin Dillon).
4. E.T. - E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is a 1982 American science fiction film co-produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Henry Thomas, Robert MacNaughton, Drew Barrymore, and Dee Wallace. It tells the story of Elliott (played by Thomas), a lonely boy who befriends a friendly extraterrestrial, dubbed "E.T.", who is stranded on Earth. Elliott and his siblings help the extraterrestrial return home while attempting to keep it hidden from their mother and the government. The movie made more than US$792 million.
5. Coneheads - Coneheads is the title of a 1993 movie based on the Saturday Night Live sketches about the Coneheads. The film was directed by Steve Barron and produced by Lorne Michaels. The film stars Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin as Beldar and Prymaat Clorhone (who later Anglicize their Remulakian surname to "Conehead"), parents of Connie (Michelle Burke). Michael McKean and David Spade play INS officials; also appearing are Sinbad and SNL alumni Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, Tim Meadows, Jon Lovitz, Peter Aykroyd, Tom Davis, Garrett Morris, Chris Farley, Laraine Newman, Kevin Nealon, Julia Sweeney, and Adam Sandler.
6. Species - Species is a 1995 science fiction horror film directed by Roger Donaldson, and starring Natasha Henstridge, Ben Kingsley, Michael Madsen, Forest Whitaker, Alfred Molina and Marg Helgenberger. It was given an R rating for sci-fi violence, strong sexuality, and some language.The movie is about a group of scientists who try to track down and trap a killer alien succubus before she successfully mates with a human male.
7. Starship Troopers - Starship Troopers is a 1997 American military science fiction film directed by Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall), with some names and details taken from Starship Troopers, a novel by Robert A. Heinlein. It was the first of three films released in the Starship Troopers franchise. The story follows a young soldier named Johnny Rico and his exploits in the Mobile Infantry, a futuristic military unit. Rico's military career progresses from recruit to non-commissioned officer and finally to officer against the backdrop of an interstellar war between mankind and an arachnoid species known as "the Bugs".
8. Independence Day - Independence Day (also known by its promotional abbreviation ID4) is a 1996 science fiction film about a hostile alien invasion of Earth, focusing on a disparate group of individuals and families as they coincidentally converge in the Nevada desert and, along with the rest of the human population, participate in a last-chance retaliation on July 4 – the same date as the Independence Day holiday in the United States. It was directed by Roland Emmerich (Godzilla, 2012) and starred Will Smith, Bill Pullman and Jeff Goldblum. The movie grossed more than US$817 million worldwide.
9. Signs - Signs is a 2002 science fiction thriller film written, produced, and directed by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense) and starring Mel Gibson, Joaquin Phoenix, Rory Culkin and Abigail Breslin. Although the plot revolves around aliens and crop circles, producer Frank Marshall said, "It's really about human emotions set in motion by a supernatural event." The film received generally positive critical reception and was one of the highest grossing films of 2002.
10. Slither - Slither is a 2006 comedy horror film written and directed by James Gunn and starring Nathan Fillion, Elizabeth Banks, Michael Rooker, Gregg Henry, Tania Saulnier and Jenna Fischer. Slither was James Gunn's directorial debut, and was influenced by B movies such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Shivers.
11. Men In Black - Men in Black is a 1997 science fiction-comedy-action film directed by Barry Sonnenfeld (The Addams Family, Wild Wild West), starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith and Vincent D'Onofrio. The film was based on the Men in Black comic book series by Lowell Cunningham, originally published by Aircel Comics. The film grossed over $587 million worldwide against a $90 million budget and was followed by a sequel, Men in Black II, in 2002. The MIB, a top-secret agency that polices, monitors and directs alien activity on Earth, has established the Earth as an apolitical "neutral zone" for alien refugees. MIB agents wear sunglasses and dark suits, and appear at UFO landing sites, similar to paranormal reports of real-world Men in Black.
12. The Thing - The Thing is a 1982 science fiction horror film directed by John Carpenter (Halloween) and starring Kurt Russell. The film's title refers to its primary antagonist: a parasitic extraterrestrial lifeform that assimilates other organisms and in turn imitates them. It infiltrates an Antarctic research team, taking the appearance of the researchers that it kills, and paranoia occurs within the group. Ostensibly a remake of the 1951 Howard Hawks-Christian Nyby film The Thing from Another World, Carpenter's film is a more faithful adaptation of the novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. which inspired the 1951 film.
13. Close Encounter Of The Third Kind - Close Encounters of the Third Kind is a 1977 science fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Richard Dreyfuss, François Truffaut, Melinda Dillon, Teri Garr, Bob Balaban and Cary Guffey. It tells the story of Roy Neary, an Indiana electrical lineman, whose life changes after he has an encounter with an unidentified flying object. However, the United States government is also aware of the UFOs as is a team of international scientific researchers.
14. Galaxy Quest - Galaxy Quest is a 1999 science fiction/comedy film directed by Dean Parisot and starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub, Sam Rockwell, Daryl Mitchell, Missi Pyle and Justin Long in his feature-film debut. The movie (a parody inspired by the television series Star Trek) is about the washed-up stars of a fictional 1978–1982 TV series called Galaxy Quest. On the show, the actors played the crew of a spaceship, the NSEA Protector and are recruited by aliens who believe that their fictional adventures were real.
15. Mars Attack! - Mars Attacks! is a 1996 comic science fiction film directed by Tim Burton and based on the cult trading card series of the same name. The film uses elements of black comedy, surreal humour and political satire, and is also a parody of multiple science fiction B movies. Mars Attacks! stars an ensemble cast, which includes Jack Nicholson, Lukas Haas, Annette Bening, Jim Brown, Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Glenn Close, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Jack Black, Natalie Portman and Danny DeVito. It tells the story of how Martians deceived Earthlings by announcing that 'they come in peace', but were actually planning an invasion. Earth retaliated and defeated the Martians when a boy accidentally discovered the Martians' deadly weakness (the noise of Slim Whitman's song, "Indian Love Call").
16. My Stepmother Is An Alien - My Stepmother Is An Alien is a 1988 comedy science fiction film directed by Richard Benjamin and starring Kim Basinger and Dan Aykroyd, with featured performances by Jon Lovitz and Alyson Hannigan. Kim Basinger is an alien sent to Earth to find out who has discovered a way to change gravity and how they did it. Her ewness on earth leads to some humorous situations where she nearly exposes herself as alien due to her strange behavior.
Additional information from Wikipedia.
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