TOP 40 
ALIEN HORROR FILMS

"With infinite complacence people went to and fro over the earth about their little affairs, serene in the assurance of their dominion over this small spinning fragment of solar driftwood which by chance or design man has inherited out of the dark mystery of Time and Space. Yet across an immense ethereal gulf, minds that to our minds as ours are to the beasts in the jungle, intellects vast, cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes and slowly and surely drew their plans against us."

Excerpt spoken by Orson Welles, "War of the Worlds", Mercury Theater on the Air.

When Orson Welles spoke those immortal words on Halloween, 1938, he would never have imagined (or perhaps did) the panic that would ensue! Some listeners heard only a portion of the broadcast and, in the tension and anxiety prior to World War II, mistook it for a genuine news broadcast. Thousands of those people rushed to share the false reports with others, or called CBS, newspapers, or the police to ask if the broadcast was real. Many newspapers assumed that this large number of phone calls, and scattered reports of listeners rushing about or even fleeing their homes, proved the existence of a mass panic. Not to mention the hundreds of new reporters and police officers who would show up in person to CBS to furiously demand answers!

Ever since that fateful night, Hollywood has embraced the idea of aliens and alien invasions. From the classics of the 50's and 60's - The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, Invaders from Mars, and The War of the Worlds - to the more harder edge sci-fi films of the 70's and 80's - among them, Invasion of the Body Snatchers - alien/sci-fi films cross the entire range of genres, from thrillers and romantic comedies to dramatic and (IHdb's specialty!) horror movies.

We've gather together the Top 40 Alien Horror Movies from the last 40 years and ranked them according to the aggregated scores provided by Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and Metacritic. We hope your favorite's on the List.

Enjoy!!!

#40   Contamination (1980)

TRIVIA:   According to director Luigi Cozzi, the alien cyclops shown towards the end was supposed to be much more animated, but this was not shown due to problems with the mechanics.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   N/A

#39   Breeders (1986)

TRIVIA:   Shot back-to-back with Mutant Hunt, a remake was released in 1997.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   N/A

#38   Altered (2006)

TRIVIA:   The first solo directorial credit for Eduardo Sánchez, who co-wrote/directed The Blair Witch Project several years earlier.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   N/A

#37   Crawlspace (2012)

TRIVIA:   The entire film is set in a secret military facility Pine Gap, Australia's version of Area 51.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   N/A

#36   TerrorVision (1986)

Pluthar: Please, Earthling, there is little time. I've come to exterminate the hungry beast.
Suzy Putterman: Like, what is going on around here? What is a hungry beast?
Pluthar: On my planet, the hungry beast is a house pet similar to your Earthly dogs and cats. But, they are highly unstable, prone to mutate wildly and eat everything in sight. When mutation occurs, they must be exterminated at once.
Sherman Putterman: You mean, like, he was somebody's pet?
Pluthar: Oh yes, they're very lovable... before they mutate.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   0%

#35   Virus (1999)

TRIVIA:   The "Goliath" robot was approximately 9 ft tall and weighed an estimated 4000 lbs. The special effects company hired to create Goliath had only three-and-a-half months to produce the robot from the initial drawings to the finished product.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   9%

#34   The Darkest Hour (2011)

TRIVIA:   While most films about alien invasions are centered in the United States or have an international scale, producer Timor Bekmambetov's involvement ensured the premise to be an alien invasion from Russia's perspective.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   12%

#33   Doom (2005)

TRIVIA:   One of the most noteworthy aspects of the film is a short sequence near the end of the film where the camera follows the progress of Grimm from a first-person perspective in homage to the original game. The scene took 14-days to shoot.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   19%

#32   The Fourth Kind (2009)

TRIVIA:   The title is derived from the expansion of J. Allen Hynek's classification of close encounters with aliens, in which the fourth kind denotes alien abductions.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   19%

#31   Xtro (1982)

TRIVIA:   The creature that attacks the woman in the cottage was played by a mime they hired to crawl on his back.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   20%

#30   Area 51 (2015)

TRIVIA:   Producer/Director Oren Peli spent almost six years in post production on this movie.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   20%

#29   Ghosts of Mars (2001)

TRIVIA:   The script originally started off as a potential Snake Plissken sequel, entitled Escape from Mars. But without the alien spirit plot.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   21%

#28   Apollo 18 (2011)

TRIVIA:   Many more scenes were filmed for Captain Anderson (Warren Christie)'s death, in which he alternately suffocates to death aboard the Russian lander, gets infected by rock creatures, is attacked by a large creature entering the lander, and where his ship crashes. 

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   24%

#27   The Puppet Masters (1994)

TRIVIA:   Based on Robert A. Heinlein's 1951 science fiction novel of the same name, The Puppet Masters shares a similar premise to Invasion of the Body Snatchers released five years later in 1956.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   26%

#26   Dreamcatcher (2003)

Colonel Curtis: Whose radio is that?
[upon hearing crashed aliens pleading for sympathy]
Captain Owen Underhill: It's not the radio, boss. They're putting it directly into our heads.
Colonel Curtis: There it is, gentlemen. Directly into our heads. This gives you an idea what we're up against. Now if anybody is thinking, "Why, those poor helpless little fools... all naked and unarmed besides their crashed intergalactic Winnebago. What kind of a dog, what kind of a monster... could hear that heartbreak and go in just the same?" Well, I'm that dog. I'm that monster. These mothers are as harmless as a fox in a hen house. And I'm here to kick some ass! Are you with me?

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   30%

#25   Species (1995)

TRIVIA:   The alien SIL creature was designed by the legendary H.R. Giger, creator of Alien's xenomorph.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   34%

#24   Invaders from Mars (1986)

TRIVIA:   The Martian drones were performed by two people back-to-back in one suit. A little person was carried in a sort of backpack on the back of a normal-sized performer. The little person would operate the drone's mouth and smaller arms (as seen when the drones load their weapons) while the full-sized performer made the creature walk and used ski poles to move the longer arms

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   36%

#23   Dark Skies (2013)

Lacy Barrett: Why are the grays, or whatever they are, so interested in us? What makes us so special?
Edwin Pollard: Nothing. There's nothing special about you. I'm sorry. You were hoping for a different answer. But this is beyond our comprehension.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   40%

#22   The Faculty (1998)

Zeke: Sniff it.
Casey: You're out of your fucking mind!
Zeke: I'm about to take my chances. I leave for five minutes, and when I come back everyone's a fucking alien. Now, if I have to Men In Black your ass, you're gonna fucking take it!
[Casey sniffs it hasefuly]

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   54%

#21   Critters (1986)

Critter 1: Status report.
Critter 2: Minor Damage.
Critter 1: What now?
Critter 2: Food!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   57%

#20   The Blob (1988)

TRIVIA:   Director Chuck Russell did not tell Shawnee Smith it was really her co-star Donovan underneath the Blob for the first part of a scene. This was so he could get more of a shock out of her.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   61%

#19   Lifeforce (1985)

Dr. Hans Fallada: I mean, in a sense we're all vampires. We drain energy from other life forms. The difference is one of degree. That girl was no girl. She's totally alien to this planet and our life form... and totally dangerous.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   67%

#18   Bad Taste (1987)

TRIVIA:   Director Peter Jackson shot the film on weekends over a four-year period with friends playing the lead roles. Jackson also made all the alien masks in his mother's kitchen. The heads of the aliens are bent backwards because otherwise they wouldn't fit in the oven where the latex was hardened!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   68%

#17   Night of the Creeps (1986)

Detective Cameron: Zombies, exploding heads, creepy-crawlies... and a date for the formal. This is classic, Spanky.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   69%

#16   The Stuff (1985)

TRIVIA:   According to Larry Cohen himself, in some scenes in which the Stuff chases characters, a foam made of blended fish bones was used. It stank so much that, as soon as the shots were done, the actors ran to a river in order to bathe and get rid of the stench.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   70%

#15   Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)

Debbie Stone: We were up at "the top of the world" and we saw this shooting star and we decided to go look for it. But instead of finding the shooting star we saw this... this circus tent. And that's when we went inside, and that is when we saw those people in those... those pink, cotton candy cocoons. Dave, it was not a circus tent. It was something else.
Dave Hanson: What? What?
Mike Tobacco: It was a space ship. And there was these things, these killer clowns, and they shot popcorn at us! We barely got away!
Curtis Mooney: Killer clowns, from outer space. Holy shit!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   71%

#14   Monsters (2010)

TRIVIA:   Gareth Edwards created all the films visual effects himself using only his home computer and store bought visual effects programs.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   72%

#13   Grabbers (2012)

Dr. Adam Smith: I need a photograph with it for National Geographic! And Facebook.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   72%

#12   Signs (2002)

TRIVIA:   The crop circles are real as M. Night Shyamalan doesn't particularly like using CGI.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   74%

#11   Cloverfield (2008)

TRIVIA:   According to Neville Page, creature designer - the monster is a baby in a new environment - "spooked" and looking for its mother.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   77%

#10   Predator (1987)

TRIVIA:   Replacing Jean Claude Van Damme in the role of the Predator was 7'2" actor Kevin Peter Hall. The costume was heavy and off-balance and Hall couldn't see with the mask on; because of that, during the fight scene with Dutch, he actually did hit Schwarzenegger once.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   78%

#09   Banshee Chapter (2013)

TRIVIA:   The film is loosely based on the H. P. Lovecraft short story "From Beyond"

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   78%

#08   The Thing (1982)

Garry: So, come on now, MacReady, Norwegians get ahold of this... and they dig it up out of the ice.
MacReady: Yes, Garry, they dig it up, they cart it back, it gets thawed out, wakes up - probably not the best of moods - I don't know, I wasn't there!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   80%

#07   The Europa Report (2013)

CONNECTION:   At the end, there appears an alien squid similar to the ones in Monsters (2010). In Monsters, the beginning credits mention a crashed probe from Europa.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   80%

#06   They Live (1988)

Nada: You see, I take these glasses off, she looks like a regular person, doesn't she? Put 'em back on...
[puts them back on]
Nada: ...formaldehyde-face!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   83%

#05   Slither (2006)

Jack MacReady: [referring to Grant] He's a goddamn Martian?
Bill Pardy: Martians is from Mars, Jack.
Jack MacReady: [through gritted teeth] Or it's a general term meaning 'outer-space fucker'.
Bill Pardy: No it isn't!
Jack MacReady: Look it up, cocksucker!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   86%

#04   Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

Audrey II: [singing] I'm a mean green mother from outer space... and I'm baaaa-d!

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   90%

#03   Attack the Block (2011)

TRIVIA:   Writer/director Joe Cornish interviewed various kids in youth groups in order to find out what kind of weapons they would use if an alien invasion occurred.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   90%

#02   Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

TRIVIA:   Veronica Cartwright was not told that Sutherland's character had been captured and became an alien. When they filmed the ending in front of San Francisco City Hall and Sutherland pointed to her, imitating the pod scream, Cartwright's reaction of cold fear is authentic.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   94%

#01   Alien (1979)

TRIVIA:   Ridley Scott was inspired to hire Swiss surrealist and artist H. R. Giger to design the alien and the derelict spacecraft, after seeing Giger's artwork for a lithograph titled Necronom IV.  The practical effects for the Alien's head were designed and constructed by Italian special effects designer Carlo Rambaldi.

Rotten Tomatoes Score:   97%

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 5th

"HALLOWEEN H20: TWENTY YEARS LATER" 

released in 1998

"I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding, even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes."

Dr. Samuel Loomis, Halloween (1978)

Twenty years since Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) survived her deadly encounter with her homicidal brother, Michael Myers, Strode is now living under an assumed name as headmistress of a exclusive private school, raising her 17-year old son, John (Josh Hartnett). With only a few days until Halloween and, most of the school students leaving on a field trip, Michael Myers again reappears after his two decade absence to complete unfinished business with Laurie, in Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later!

Watch the Halloween H20: Twenty Years Later trailer below!

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Twenty years after the massacre in Haddonfield, Marion Chambers (Nancy Stephens), Dr. Sam Loomis' former colleague, is killed by Michael Myers (as well as her two teenaged neighbours), after having found the whereabouts of his "dead sister, Laurie (Curtis). Now living under the alias Keri Tate, Laurie is the headmistress of a private boarding school, Hillcrest Academy, where she also raises her son John (Hartnett) and has a relationship with the school's guidance counselor, Will Brennan (Adam Arkin). As October 31st arrives, most of the students leave the school for a weekend long field trip to Yosemite National Park, with only a few students remaining, including Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe), Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd) and John's girlfriend Molly (Michelle Williams). John also sneaks back into school to join them for a Halloween party in the school's basement. Unbeknownst to all of them, Michael has already slipped past the security guard, Ronny (LL Cool J) and is somewhere on the academy grounds stalking his next victims. Discovering Sarah and Charlie's bodies, John and Molly flee, chased through the grounds by Michael, until they are rescued by Laurie. Realizing she can no longer escape her fate, Laurie sends the few survivors to safety and remains behind to confront Michael and end their battle once and for all!

TRIVIA:   Jamie Lee Curtis considers the film a thank you note to her fans. Curtis: "Without that early career, I truly don't think I would have been an actor."

Top:   Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) with her son, John (Josh Hartnett);

Above:   A nervous mother has a close encounter with the Shape!

Contrary to popular belief, Kevin Williamson was in fact not the original writer of the film, which was Robert Zappia. Zappia had been approached to the write the screenplay back when Halloween 7 (as it was then known) was originally planned to be released direct-to-dvd after the lackluster performance of Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995). However, when Jamie Lee Curtis expressed interest in returning to the series, Kevin Williamson - who was coming off of his blockbuster success with Scream (1996) - was asked by Dimension Films to pen a treatment that added Laurie Strode. With a working title of Halloween 7: The Revenge of Laurie Strode, Williamson wrote numerous drafts with star Curtis's input, including a scene where a bitchy student at Keri/Laurie's school giving a class report on the "Haddonfield Murders", and going into great detail about Jamie Lloyd being hunted and eventually killed by her uncle, Michael Myers - as a way of incorporating the canon of Halloween 4 through 6 into the H20. Like much of his scipt, the scene was dropped (as well as a subplot about two detectives chasing Myers for the murder of Marion Chambers and a massive climax sequence involving a helicopter/bus chase that ends with Myers being decapitated by the out of control helicopter rotors) and only Williamson's bare treatment for H20 was used as the basis for Matt Greenberg's screenplay, with a new direction focusing on Laurie and ignoring the continuity of the Halloween films after Halloween 2.

John: It just occured to me today that I've never celebrated Halloween before.
Molly: And why's that?
John: Oh, we've got a psychotic serial killer in the family who loves to butcher people on Halloween, and I just thought it in bad taste to celebrate.

Top:   Hillcrest students, Charlie (Adam Hann-Byrd), Sarah (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe), 

John, and Molly (Michelle Williams);

Above:   Michael slips past security guard, Ronny (LL Cool J)

John Carpenter was originally in the running to be the director for this particular follow-up since Curtis wanted to reunite the cast and crew of the original to have active involvement in it. Carpenter agreed to direct the movie, but his starting fee as director was $10 million, rationalizing that the hefty fee was compensation for revenue he never received from the original Halloween. Producer Moustapha Akkad balked at the fee and Carpenter walked away from the project. Also starring in the film with Curtis was Michelle Williams (who signed on to the film without even seeing Williamson's script), LL Cool J (who was a huge fan of the original Halloween) and Josh Hartnett, in his feature film debut. Joseph Gordon-Levitt also appears in a cameo at the beginning of H20 as Marion Chamber's doomed teen neighbor, Jimmy. Curtis's real life mother, Janet Leigh, also has a memorable cameo as Keri Tate's secretary, Norma Watson (one of the coolest scenes in the movie). This would be Leigh's first role in a feature film for 18 years, her previous theatrical film was The Fog (1980) which also starred her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis. P.J. Soles was asked to play the role of Norma Watson (incidentally the same name as her character in Stephen King's Carrie (1976)), but was skeptical about returning to the series as someone completely different than her character Lynda, originally killed off in Halloween.

Norma Watson: Oh. Miss Tate. I didn't mean to make you jump. It's Halloween. I guess everyone's entitled to one good scare.
Laurie Strode: I've had my share.

Top and Above:   Laurie decides to face Michael in a fight to the end!

One of the biggest sources of tension between the filmmakers was the issue of the film's ending. Kevin Williamson's treatment had the Shape being cut in half by a helicopter rotor while early drafts of the script had Laurie stabbing him through the heart with a javelin while he was pinned between the two pieces of a retractable gym floor. Moustapha Akkad wanted the Shape to live at the end so he could produce more Halloween films while Bob Weinstein at Dimension Films wanted the Shape to die. Weinstein instructed screenwriter Robert Zappia to write two endings and send the ending with the Shape surviving to Akkad while they would actually shoot the ending where Michael was killed. Zappia refused (much to Weinstein's annoyance) and Williamson developed the film's ending where the Shape is "killed," as well as the twist shown in Halloween: Resurrection (2002) where it is revealed that Michael had switched clothes with a paramedic. This solution managed to appease both parties.

TRIVIA:   Moustapha Akkad had planned for the killer in H20 to not even be Michael Myers, but in fact a copycat killer, and that this would be explained in the next Halloween movie. This idea was scrapped for the story for Halloween: Resurrection.

Top:   Director Steve Miner (right) on set with the cast;

Above:   Jamie Lee Curtis with mother and co-star, Janet Leigh at the LA premiere

H20 would be the first film in the Halloween series to be released in the summer, a tradition that would continue with Halloween: Resurrection and Rob Zombie's Halloween and Halloween 2, to below expectations box office (although H20 is the second highest grossing film in the series after Zombie's Halloween remake in 2007, with $75 million gross worldwide) and to generally mixed reviews. Kevin Thomas of the LA Times wrote "Halloween: H20 is as stylish and scary as it is ultra-violent. It brings back a stunning Jamie Lee Curtis in the role that made her a star and it's a work of superior craftsmanship in all aspects", and David Nusair surmising it was "Unquestionably the best of the Halloween followups...". Roger Ebert wrote about the Shape, "Here is a man who feels no pain. He can take a licking and keep on slicing. In the latest Halloween movie, he absorbs a blow from an ax, several knife slashes, a rock pounded on the skull, a fall down a steep hillside and being crushed against a tree by a truck. Whatever he's got, mankind needs it!".

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:    51%

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 3rd

"PIRANHA" released in 1978

A school of vicious genetically engineered piranhas are accidentally released by an absent-minded insurance investigator from a seemingly abandoned military facility, endangering the lives at the Lost River Water Park and a nearby summer camp. Produced by Roger Corman, Piranha is his ultra-low budget homage to Jaws which would garner both critical and commercial success and become a cult horror classic!

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After two teenagers are viciously attacked underwater by an unseen creature while skinny dipping at an abandoned military facility, insurance investigator Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies) is hired to find them. With the aid of local drunk Paul Grogan (Bradford Dillman) as her guide, the pair come upon the abandoned compound. When Maggie starts to drain the pool, they are attacked by a hagged looking man they identify later as Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy). He frantically explains that the facility is a militarized fish hatchery used for Project Razorteeth - a defunct Vietnam War project engineering a ravenous and prodigious strain of piranha that could endure the cold water of the North Vietnamese rivers and inhibit Viet Cong movement. Realizing that with the dam now open the school of piranhas would have gotten into the river, Maggie, Paul, and Hoak race to warn people. Hoak is soon mortally injured while saving a small boy from a capsized canoe, dying before he can tell Maggie and Paul how to kill the piranha. Desperate, Paul calls the military, who send a team led by Colonel Waxman (Bruce Gordon) and former Razorteeth scientist Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele) with the intention of poisoning the piranhas from upstream. Knowing the army's plan will not succeed, Maggie and Paul devise their own plan and race against time to stop the piranhas before they devour the thousands of tourists at the Lake River Water park and the children at a nearby summer camp!

Maggie McKeown: That guard is still out there.
Paul Grogan: Fine, I need you to distract him.
Maggie McKeown: What for?
Paul Grogan: So I can get away.
Maggie McKeown: So YOU can get away? What about me?

Top:   What begins as a missing person case, turns into a struggle for

survival for Paul (Bradford Dillman) and Maggie (Heather Menzies);

Above:   Summer camp supervisor Mr. Dumont (Paul Bartel) gets a piranha 

right in the face!

Producer Roger Corman was known for producing films that were veiled imitations of more successful movies, called this film "my homage to 'Jaws'". But it still took a further three years to raise the $660,000 needed to make the film, by which time Jaws 2 (1978) had already been made. Proceeding nevertheless, Piranha had some documented production problems including last-minute cast changes, underwater cameras that kept breaking down, union woes (apparently the extras were only paid $5 a day and given a box lunch), and unusable second unit footage. After Peter Fonda turned down the role, Eric Braeden was cast as Paul Grogan, but he soon pulled out to pursue another project (he had already shot some underwater swimming footage which is used in the film). Braeden's replacement, Bradford Dillman was originally unhappy with his character's two-dimensional nature, and asked writer John Sayles why his character was so thin. Sayles responded that Roger Corman regularly did not use good actors in his film, so he deliberately didn't elaborate on characters. But since Dillman was a "real" actor, he was more than happy to enhance his character's depth.

Whitney: The piranhas...
Buck Gardner: What about the goddamn piranhas?
Whitney: They're eating the guests, sir.

Top:   While escaping on the raft, Dr Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy) 

explains to Paul and Maggie about the piranhas;   Above:   Counselor 

Betsy (Belinda Balaski) is dragged away to her watery death!

Filmed at The Aquarena Springs and Resort theme park in San Marcos Springs, Texas, Piranha would be the first solo directing credit for Joe Dante (his first film, Hollywood Boulevard, Dante co-directed with Allan Arkush). Rick Baker was originally tapped to provide the make-up effects but recommended the then 17-year-old Rob Bottin instead. This movie was one of the first efforts for effects and makeup artists Bottin and Phil Tippett, and had a budget of $50,000 to create the titular characters (mostly by attaching rubber puppet fish to sticks and moving them about!). Filming for Belinda Balaski's (playing camp supervisor, Betsy) death scene was shot in a pool with thirty fake piranha being attached to Balaski's body with gaffer's tape and a bunch of crew members pulled her into the deep end of the pool with ropes to make it look like her character was sinking into the water. However, Roger Corman demanded a re-shoot of Balaski's death scene because he thought the first version didn't have enough blood in it!

TRIVIA:   The piranha were done by attaching rubber puppet fish to sticks.

TRIVIA:   A "bobbing corpse" that appears in the climactic piranha attack was modeled after Rob Bottin.

Top:   Rob Bottin applies blood effects;   Above:   The cast with

director Joe Dante (second from right)

With Piranha's release so close to Jaws 2, Universal Pictures had considered an injunction against the film for spoofing Jaws. However, Steven Spielberg saw the movie in advance and loved it and convinced Universal to drop the lawsuit (Speilberg would later produce five films with Joe Dante; Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), Gremlins (1984) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), Innerspace (1987) and Small Soldiers (1998)). Piranha would go to become one of New World Pictures' biggest hits, making over $16 million at the box office! Piranha was followed by a sequel, Piranha II: The Spawning, marking the directorial debut of Avatar director James Cameron, and two remakes; Piranha (1995) was a direct to television movie starring William Katt and Alexandra Paul (produced by Roger Corman and even used footage from the original movie!), and Piranha 3-D (2010), directed by Alexandre Aja, fresh off a previous remake, The Hills Have Eyes (2008).

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   72%

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 2nd

"FRIGHT NIGHT" released in 1985

When Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) discovers a vampire has just moved in next door, he turns to famed TV-host "Vampire Killer" Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) to help him destroy the monster before he and friends are turned into vampires themselves in writer/director Tom Holland's cult 80's vampire movie, Fright Night!

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When the mysterious Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) moves next door, his neighbor Charley Brewster (Ragsdale) begins to witness strange things; Dandrige and his roommate carrying a coffin down into the basement, a sudden scream from the house in the middle of the night, and news reports of a number of missing girls in the area (one of whom Charley saw entering Dandrige's house the night before). Spying on the house one night, Charley actually sees Dandrige standing by the window and change into a vampire in front of him. Knowing he is in danger from Dandrige now that he knows his secret, Charley first turns to the police for help, but they don't believe him. Niether does his girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) or his best friend "Evil" Ed Thompson (Stephen Geoffreys). After narrowly surviving an attack from Dandrige, Charley, in desperation, turns to TV's "Fright Night" host, Peter Vincent (McDowall) - famed for his starring roles in countless vampire movies of the 60's and 70's, and is known as the great "Vampire Killer" - for help. Vincent dismisses Charley's claims like everyone else, but is later persuaded to investigate when Amy and Evil offer him money. Never actually intending to find anything, Vincent is terrified when he discovers that Dandrige is in fact a vampire when he has no reflection in his mirror! Later that night, Dandrige attacks Evil in an alleyway (turning him into a vampire) and abducts Amy from a nightclub. Charley returns to the now-believing Vincent and convinces him to become a real "vampire killer" to help him rescue Amy from Dandrige before she too is turned into a blood sucking monster!

Evil Ed Thompson: [laughing hysterically] Oh, you're so COOL, Brewster!

Top:   Charley Brewster (William Ragsdale) believes his next door neighbor

is a vampire;   Above:   Jerry Dandrige (Chris Sarandon) confronts Charley in his bedroom

While writing the script for Cloak & Dagger (1984), Tom Holland amused himself when he conceived the idea of a horror-movie fan becoming convinced that his next door neighbor was a vampire. The story percolated in his mind for a year and finally one day while discussing it with John Byers, then the head of the story department at Columbia Pictures, he finally figured out what the boy would do. In that era, many local TV affiliates in the United States had horror hosts (perhaps the most famous was the nationally syndicated Elvira), so Holland decided it would be natural for the boy to seek aid from his local host. Holland stated in 2011 that "The minute I had Peter Vincent, I had the story. Charley Brewster was the engine, but Peter Vincent was the heart". Holland wrote the film for himself to direct, in part because he was so disheartened by the film that was ultimately made from his previous screenplay, Scream for Help (1984).

Peter Vincent: I have just been fired because nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. Apparently all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.

Top:   Renowned actor Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowall) investigates

Charley's claims;   Above:   Charley's girlfriend Amy (Amanda Bearse) and 

best friend "Evil"Ed don't believe his story.

The Peter Vincent character was named after horror icons Peter Cushing and Vincent Price, and Holland specifically wrote the part for Price, but the veteran actor refused the role as he had already been typecast in the horror genre and wanted to distance himself from horror movies. Guy McElwaine, then the head of Columbia Pictures, suggested Roddy McDowall for the part. Holland and McDowall would eventually build a lasting friendship, and McDowall once invited Holland to a dinner party where he introduced him to Vincent Price, who was flattered that the part was an homage to him and commented that the film "was wonderful and he thought Roddy did a wonderful job." Casting director Jackie Burch remembered William Ragsdale from his audition for the role of Rocky Dennis in Mask, and thought he'd be right to portray Charley Brewster. Ragsdale auditioned several times and ultimately received the news that he'd landed the part on Halloween night 1984 (beating other actors for the role, including Charlie Sheen). Burch would also suggest Stephen Geoffreys for the role of Evil Ed after his audition for Anthony Michael Hall's role in Weird Science. The most difficult role to cast was Amy Peterson. "There wasn't the perfect girl-next-door until [Amanda Bearse] walked in," Holland commented to Dread Central in 2011.

[Jerry confronts Charley and Peter Vincent]
Jerry Dandridge: Welcome... to... Fright Night! [smiling] For real!

Top:   Dandrige introduces himself;  

  Above:   Jerry Dandridge: [crushing Peter's crucifix] You have to have faith for this to work 

on me, Mr. Vincent.

Initially Chris Sarandon was not interested in starring in another horror movie, and, like Price, was worried about being typecast as a villain (his hesitation may also be contributed to the horrible experience he'd had making The Sentinel (1977)), but the script resonated with him because the story was deeper than just an average monster movie. Although he liked the screenplay, Sarandon was still leery of working with a first-time director, so he flew to L.A. to meet Tom Holland and producer Herb Jaffe, where he and Holland had an immediate rapport and accepted the role of vampire Jerry Dandrige. He and Holland would also go on to make several more films together afterwards. Once his cast was in place, Holland got input from each of the actors and made numerous revisions to the script. Some were slight and others were major - such as the ending which originally featured Peter Vincent transforming into a vampire as he returned to host Fright Night. As originally written, Jerry Dandrige was more villainous, so Sarandon tried to find various ways to humanize the vampire, including suggesting the implication that the Amy character was the reincarnation of his long-lost love. Sarandon would also come up with the idea that Dandrige would always be eating fruit after discovering that the bulk of the world's bat population are Frugivores, so he concluded, "Jerry had a lot of fruit bat in his DNA."

[Jerry removes his arm from his eyes and looks down at Billy's body at the bottom of the steps]
Jerry Dandrige: Do you?
[Jerry smiles and retreats; Charley and Peter are confused]
Charley Brewster: What did he mean by that?
Peter Vincent: Nothing! He was just bluffing.
[Behind them, Billy rises... from the dead!]

Top:   Peter Vincent joins Charley in rescuing Amy;

Above:   Bat attack!

At the time of production, Fright Night was Columbia's lowest-budgeted film and they did not have high expectations for it, so they were focusing all of their attention on the John Travolta/Jamie Lee Curtis film Perfect, which they were certain was going to be a blockbuster (it was not), and left Holland pretty much alone to make the film without any studio interference. Much of the film's $9.5 million dollar budget was spent on special effects and it would be the first vampire film to spend one million dollars on special effects. While fending off a bat with a bone for the climax of the film, Roddy McDowall accidentally cracked the puppet's skull. The crew scrambled to fix the bat so they could continue shooting, but such extensive damage occurred that it took two days to properly reassemble, so they had to temporarily delay filming further close-ups of the creature. The crew also used a rejected ghost model from Ghostbusters (the original puppet that was created for the ghost librarian's monstrous visageto), commenting that it resembled the vampire bat that they'd created, so they re-purposed and utilized it for the vampire's fiery destruction. While blocking a scare scene, Holland asked visual effects man Randall William Cook if he could devise a "shark mouth" for one of the vampires. There was neither time nor money left in the budget to create an elaborate prosthetic, but Cook agreed to concoct a rig over a weekend with the proviso that it would only be seen on-screen for a few seconds. In an attempt to produce an authentic reaction of fright when Charley sees Amy as a vampire for the first time, Ragsdale did not see the stunt actress in makeup prior to shooting the scene. Ultimately the crudely made mouthpiece was not only featured extensively in the film, it was also utilized in the movie's famous poster art!

Peter Vincent: I am Peter Vincent... Vampire Killer!

Top:   Amy succumbs to the vampire bite and attacks Charley!;

Above:   Dandrige runs out of time as the sun dawns behind him!

Due to Columbia's lack of faith in Fright Night, it's widest release was 1,545 theaters and but the film grossed $6,118,543 on it's opening weekend. It would eventually gross nearly $25 million at the box office and became the second highest-grossing horror film of 1985, surpassed only by A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge. Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "Fright Night is not a distinguished movie, but it has a lot of fun being undistinguished". Variety praised Sarandon's performance, citing that he "is terrific as the vampire, quite affable and debonair until his fingernails start to grow and his eyes get that glow".

TRIVIA:   According to Chris Sarandon, he wanted Jerry to whistle "Whistle While You Work" rather than "Strangers in the Night" when first confronting Charley, but Disney would not give their permission to use the song.

Top and Above:   Debut writer/director Tom Holland (center) on set.

After the critical and financial success of Fright Night, producer Herb Jaffe, who had retained the screen rights to the characters, pushed for a sequel to be made. Although he was unhappy that the budget was drastically slashed, Holland was interested in returning but he and Sarandon were both tied up making Child's Play and could not commit to the film. Stephen Geoffreys was approached to reprise the role of Evil Ed but opted to take the lead role in Robert Englund's directorial debut 976-EVIL instead, and Amanda Bearse was busy shooting the TV show Married...with Children. In the end, only Ragsdale and McDowall would reprise their roles for Fright Night Part 2, which attained an extremely limited theatrical distribution before being dumped on home video by Carolco's subsidiary, Live Entertainment. Despite rumors of a Fright Night 3, nothing eventuated until 2009 when DreamWorks Pictures announced they were remaking the original Fright Night with Anton Yelchin, Imogen Potts, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse filling in for the roles of Charley Brewster, Amy and Evil Ed respectively, with Colin Farrell playing a very different vampire Jerry Dandrige - no longer the lovelorn vampire, he's described by Evil Ed in the movie as "the fucking shark from Jaws". Chris Sarandon would cameo in the remake as a passing motorist who is killed by Dandrige in the middle of the road. Released in 2011, the new Fright Night was actually well received as a movie in it's own right without diminishing the appeal of the original.

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   91%

ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - August 1st

"FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VI: 

JASON LIVES" released in 1986

With fan disappointment over the direction the Friday the 13th series was going with Part V: A New Beginning, Paramount Pictures demanded they bring back the series villain, Jason Voorhees, for the franchise's next outing. But since Jason was killed at the end of Part IV: The Final Chapter, producer Frank Mancuso Jr. turned to writer/director Tom McLoughlin to find a way to resurrect Camp Crystal Lake's infamous mass-murderer for Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives!

Watch the Friday the 13th part VI: Jason Lives trailer below!

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Years have passed since Crystal Lake had been renamed to Forest Green, but Tommy Jarvis (Thom Mathews) is still haunted by his past encounters with Jason Vorhees (played by both C. J. Graham and Dan Bradley). Determined to destroy Jason's remains once and for all, Tommy and his friend Allen (Ron Palillo) drive to the cemetery and dig up his grave. In a fit of rage, Tommy repeatedly drives a metal fence post into Jason's body before dousing it in petrol. Before Tommy can burn the body, lightning strikes the metal pole in his chest and resurrects Jason! Witnessing Jason kill Allen, Tommy flees to the Sheriff station to get help. Refusing to believe Jason has risen from the grave, Sheriff Mike Garris (David Kagen) tries to escort Tommy out of town, but ends up arresting him after chasing Tommy back to the cemetary to find the grave already filled in by the alcoholic gravedigger Martin (Bob Larkin). During this time Jason is making his way through the woods to return to Crystal Lake (killing a group of corporate executives participating in a paintball game as he passes) where kids have already arrived for the summer, greeted by the lead counselor - and the Sheriff's daughter - Megan (Jennifer Cooke) and her friends; Sissy (Renée Jones), Cort (Tom Fridley), Nikki (Darcy DeMoss), and Paula (Kerry Noonan). With Jason getting ever closer to Camp Forest Green, Tommy escapes from prison with the aid of Megan (who has developed a crush on him) and attempts to lure Jason into a trap where Tommy hopes he can imprison Jason at the bottom of the lake where he drowned as a child!

[driving to Jason's grave]
Allen Hawes: You just have to see that Jason's dead, right? Seeing his corpse ain't gonna stop your hallucinations!
Tommy Jarvis: Seeing it won't, but destroying it will. Jason belongs in Hell - and I'm gonna see to it that he gets there.

Top and Above:   Tommy (Thom Mathews) accidentally 

resurrects Jason!

With Friday the 13th: A New Beginning receiving some of the worst reviews of the series, to prevent further alienating the fans (and thus potentially endangering the series), the producers decided to take the series in a new direction - namely to bring Jason Vorhees back to the screen. To achieve this, producer Frank Mancuso Jr. turned to director Tom McLoughlin. McLoughlin had already directed one successful horror film, One Dark Night (1983), but was mostly known for shopping comedy sciprts round Hollywood, a dichotomy that appealed to Mancuso Jr. The director was given free rein on how he would present the story, with the only condition being that he bring back Jason and make him the film's villain. Inspired by the Universal monster movies of the 50's, McLoughlin disregarded the idea presented in Part 2 that Jason had survived his drowning and retconned the ending of the fifth film, where Tommy Jarvis was a serial killer. He  also incorporated postmodern meta-humor into the movie; when Jason is first encountered in the woods near Crystal Lake, the character of Lizbeth comments that she and Darren should flee because she knows about proper conduct to survive a horror movie. McLoughlin would further satirize the franchise itself, as Martin the gravedigger comments on Jason's exhumation, "Why'd they have to go and dig up Jason?" before breaking the fourth wall and addressing the camera with the observation, "Some folks sure got a strange idea of entertainment."

Deputy Rick: Mike, over here!
Deputy Rick: [Garris arrives and Rick points to the ground, where they see arms and legs of a paintball player] I'll order up some body bags.
Sheriff Garris: [referring to Tommy] Our boy sure wants us to believe his story.
Deputy Rick: Well, he picked the right day to pull this shit.
Sheriff Garris: What do you mean?
Deputy Rick: Happy Friday the 13th.

Top:   Sheriff's daughter Megan (Jennifer Cooke) is only 

one who believes Tommy's story about Jason;

Above:   Jason runs into some paintball players in the woods

The decision to retcon the events of Part V resulted in many members of that film's cast—whose characters had survived—having their contracts to return for a sequel terminated, and although Mancuso Jr. retained control over the film's casting, he deferred to McLoughlin's judgment, with the only rule being that the final girl had to be a "very attractive blonde". McLoughlin immediately cast two popular television actors in Jason Lives;  Jennifer Cooke from the television series V was choosen to play Megan, and television veteran, Ron Palillo (famous for the role of Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter) plays Tommy's doomed sidekick Allen Hawes. After becoming a born again Christian, John Shepherd, who starred as Tommy in A New Beginning, did not want to reprise the role, and it went to Thom Mathews instead (though apparently McLoughlin was not aware of Mathew's work in the horror comedy Return of the Living Dead at the time). Other cast members were culled from actors whom McLoughlin had directed before, including his wife Nancy who plays the doomed counselor Lizbeth who Jason kills along with the character Darren (Tony Goldwyn acting in his first feature role).

[Rick draws for his gun and points it at Tommy's head]
Deputy Rick: Freeze it, psycho.
Sheriff Garris: Now see what you've done. You made my deputy draw his revolver. He's been dying to try out his mail-order laser scope.
Deputy Rick: Wherever the red dot goes, you bang.

Top and Above:   Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) refuses to

believe Jason has returned... until he sees him in person!

In keeping with the series' tradition, the role of Jason was given to a stuntman, in this case Dan Bradley. However, after the first day of filming, Mancuso Jr. decided that he disliked Bradley's performance onscreen as Jason and after filming the scenes in which Jason kills the paintball playing executives, replaced him with C. J. Graham. Graham, who stood 6'3 and weighed 250 lbs, was usually asked to play Jason for the finale of a magician's stage show at a local resturaunt where he was spotted by Jason Lives' special effects coordinator, Martin Becker, was in the audience for one such show Becker recommended Graham to Mancuso Jr. and  McLoughlin who were impressed with Graham's presence, and he was hired to film the remainder of Jason's scenes. Jason Lives marks a number of firsts for the series; the only time in the series, other than prologues and flashbacks, that there are actually children at the summer camp and, even though it does include a sex scene, there is no nudity int he entire film.

The scenes involving the police department and town were filmed in Covington, Georgia while the camp scenes were filmed at Camp Daniel Morgan outside the city limits of Covington. The climactic scene in which Megan kills Jason with the outboard motor was actually filmed in 3 different locations: the underwater shots were filmed in a temperature-controlled tank in Los Angeles, the above water shots were filmed in the murky Georgia lake on location, and the shots of the motor actually cutting Jason's mask/neck were filmed in Tom McLoughlin's father's swimming pool, actually ruining the pool filter in the process being jammed by gore churned into the water when Jason is hit with the boat propeller.

Tommy Jarvis: The only way to kill Jason is to send him back to his original resting place where he drowned in 1957.
Megan: Lake Forest Green?
Tommy Jarvis: Crystal Lake.

Top:   The doomed camp counselor's Paula (Kerry Noonan), 

Sissy (Renée Jones), and Cort (Tom Fridley);   Above:   Tommy tries to trap Jason in lake!

In a contrast to the series' other entries, which had to be edited for violence in order to avoid an "X" rating, the film's producers requested that McLaughlin add additional gore, violence, and murders to the film. Jason Lives already contained 13 killings as an in-joke, but, in order to appease the studio, McLaughlin had to add an additional three killings; Martin the gravedigger, and the recently engaged couple on a nighttime picnic. Additionally, McLaughlin was made to extend Sissy's death, adding the shots of Jason dragging her to the ground and twisting her head off; as originally filmed, Sissy was simply pulled out of the cabin window, and wasn't seen again until Megan finds her head in the squad car. McLaughlin also found himself in contention with the producers over how the film should end. The original script contained material that alluded to Jason's father, which, to date, remains the closest the series has ever come to shedding some light on the mysterious character. In the script, Pamela's headstone is next to Jason's, a reference to the fact that someone paid to have Jason buried, explaining why he was not cremated as the Mayor said in A New Beginning. As well as this, there is a final scene in which Jason's father visits his son's grave, seemingly aware of the fact that Jason is not inside it. These scenes were never filmed, but made it into the film's novelization. The studio did not want the responsibility of having to introduce Elias' backstory, with McLoughlin ultimately shooting three endings; In one ending, Jason's mask floats to the surface of Crystal Lake, having become detached during his struggle with Megan. In another, Deputy Cologne was seen trying to reach the jail cell keys after having been locked in by Tommy and Megan; the door to the police station opens and the film abruptly ends, indicating that Jason had managed to get free. Finally, the producers wanted to explicitly show onscreen that he was still capable of returning for a sequel, and the current ending showing a closeup of Jason's open, twitching eye was used.

TRIVIA:   McLoughlin said in an interview that he keeps the Jason Voorhees tombstone from Jason Lives in his backyard, and people have often mistaken it for an actual tombstone!

TRIVIA:   McLoughlin was actually offered the chance to direct Scream in the mid-90s, with Kevin Williamson admitting that the fantastically self-aware Part VI was an influential film for him on his path to eventually writing Scream.

Top:   Writer/Director Tom McLoughlin behind the camera;

Above:   On set filming the movie's climatic lake scene

Jason Lives was the most expensive Friday the 13th to date at $3 million, but ultimately grossed less than previous films in the series (Jason Lives grossed $19,472,057, marking the first time that a Friday the 13th installment did not gross over $20,000,000 and beginning the general decline in box office returns). It did however receive moderate reviews on its release, with Ken Hanke of Mountain Xpress writing that it "may not be exactly a good movie in the strict sense, but it's easily the best in the series". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune called it the least offensive film of the most offensive film series ever, and  Variety wrote called the film predictable but "reasonably slick." But what mattered most was the favorable fan reaction, who loved that Jason was now back and the series had introduced a new supernatural element to Jason - he was always an unstoppable killing machine, but now it would seem he'd be impossible to kill now too!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   52%