The Ghoulish Plot: Somewhere in the future, when science has created a utopia in which people in pressurized spaceships are allowed to smoke like chimneys, the 7-person crew of the Nostromo ride through space in a suspended animation on their way back to Earth. Their ship begins getting a random distress call from an unknown source, kind of like a booty call from a rando in space. 

The crew heads to the signal to investigate and finds a large spaceship unlike anything they’ve seen before, and inside a large skeleton whose chest was blown up from the inside. Since that seems like a cool way to die, they keep looking around and sure enough, find some weird eggs with spider creatures inside and poke at them long enough for one of them to jump out and attach itself to John Hurt’s face. 

They take him back to their ship and after a few days, the spider creature climbs off of his face, just long enough for him to start eating some crappy noodles and he then gets to experience the joy of motherhood as a creature then makes a hasty retreat out of his chest. 

The crew begins hunting for the creature, but find it is growing astronomically fast and is a fan of killing everything it comes across. It also has acid for blood and a bit of a drooling issue, leading us to believe it really is running away from its own insecurities. Love yourself so others can love you, Alien! 

One-by-one the crew is killed off, until the Captain bites it and Ripley takes control of the ship, at which point she learns that picking up this deadly creature was the company’s plan all along and she and her coworkers are considered expendable. She and the remaining crew hatch a plan to escape and blow up the ship, but the Alien might just be too smart for that, but it also might wait long enough for Sigourney Weaver to strip down to her underwear. 

The Scariest Part Of The Movie: That this is basically a workplace horror movie. Think about being in the toughest and scariest situation in your life, then think about trying to get through it with Linda from Accounting. “Maybe send it 33 emails all marked ‘Urgent,’ Linda?” 

Our Hero’s Downfall: Trusting her company to do the right thing. Profit margins, bitches! 

Could It Happen: If vicious acid-bleeding death machines exist out there in space, some company will find a way to make a mess with it and then require you to spend two hours on hold with customer service to request assistance in getting rid of the acid-bleeding death machine. 

Spookiness Factor: 8 out of 10. This movie is dark, spooky and still looks shockingly great for being made in 1979, despite the old computer screens and insistence that the future would involve lots of blinking lights. It’s one of Ridley Scott’s masterpieces, which is why he won’t leave it alone and keeps making crappy Prometheus movies. 

Find the 2014 Cinema of Spookeries Archive HERE.