IHdb

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%