On this last day in January, I thought I’d post a movie list as cold and bleak as a winter day.
I recently saw Robert Egger’s retelling of Nosferatu in the theaters. Anyone familiar with Eggers work, in particular 2015’s The VVitch, knows that the director pays meticulous attention to detail and pulls no punches in getting his period films to look, sound and feel authentic to period of time the story is set in. I highly recommend Nosferatu for anyone into gothic victorian horror and lovers of the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.
Victorian Horror films are some of my favorite types of horror because the atmosphere is filled with such dark despair, viewers want to wrap themselves in a blanket just to watch the movie. This is in no means a comprehensive list, but it’s a darn good start!
There have been a lot deaths in the past 45 years, between 7 movies in the Alien franchise. I excluded the two vs. The Predator due to time constraints, but it feels like those movies should have their own list anyway.
It may seem a bit morbid to cheer on death scenes, but who doesn’t love a great villain, or a great hero, depending where your love for the Xenomorphs lie. Besides, some knucklehead characters definitely deserved to have their faces melted off.
Every fan has their favorites, but these are my picks for most memorable deaths in th Alien Franchise:
10. Ripley (Alien 3)
Picking up immediately after the sequel, Alien 3 starts out with the tragic demise of survivors Newt and Hicks by a stowaway chestburster. Ripley survives, but the ship crash lands on Fiorina 161, a planet housing a penal colony for violent male criminals. The alien, now a quadrapedal runner continues its rampage after the stowaway chestburster morphs with a dog named Spike. At some point, Ripley realizes the reason she’s been surviving all these attacks is because she’s hosting a queen alien embryo, something that apparently happened during thrilling finale fight with the Queen Mother in Aliens.
Faced with a grave choice, Ripley eventually chooses to throw herself into the furnace to end the Queen’s hopes in keeping her species alive. It’s the kind of sacrifice we expect from one of cinema’s greatest heroines, but it was still sad and shocking to let Ripley go after cheering her on for three whole movies.
9. Engineers (Alien: Covenant)
Alien Covenant saw the return of Alien creator and Director Ridley Scott who expanded the Xenomorph universe and attempted to answer the burning questions left by Promethesus. In a brief flashback scene, we see the synth David, who now believes himself a god, in pursuit of the perfect organism, unleash the terrible black goo on the unsuspecting engineers, wiping out the entire colony in mere seconds. If this isn’t an indicator that AI can’t be trusted, I don’t know what is.
Michael Fassbender as synthetic android David 8 with a god complex.
8. Ripley7 and the clones (Alien: Resurrection)
Set 200 years after Alien 3, Ripley is back, but this time as a cloned human-Xenomorph hybrid named Ripley8. Turns out the military has been doing experiments with Ripley’s blood and Xenomorph DNA in its lifelong search to create the perfect super soldier. Sadly, it took 8 interations before getting a decent clone of the original Ripley, and who knows how many failures.
Ripley8 comes across the ship lab and can barely control her emotions when viewing some of those failed abominations that came before her. She finds a badly disfigured mutant hybrid Ripley7 still alive but begging to be killed. Someone hands Ripley8 a flamethrower and she destroys every tortured creature in the entire room, providing the only decent scene in the entire movie. Well, at least until evil Dr. Wren loses his head (see best death #3).
7. Ovomorphs (Aliens)
After losing the protection of the space marines, Ripley and the lone colonist survivor Newt are on the run trying to escape. A wrong turn leads Ripley right smack into the Hive Monarch, the Queen Mother, and a brood of freshly laid eggs. Ripley blasts the flamethrower over the tops of the eggs as a warning, scaring the Queen Mother into telepathically communicating with the other grown Xenomorphs to back off and let them go, however, just as Ripley and Newt are in the clear, a pod opens. Knowing full well what comes next, Ripley uses the flamethrower to destroy the entire nest, infuriating the Queen Mother, and setting up one of greatest showdowns in cinema history.
6. Kay (Alien: Romulus)
Set after the events of first Alien film, Weyland-Yutani finds the wreckage of the Nostromo and collects a Xenomorph cocoon. Months later, a group of space miners led by Rain (inspired by Ripley heroine) who is shepparded over by a synth named Andy. The miners decide to improve their lives by raiding what they think is an empty space station, except it’s not. It’s filled all kinds of aliens, from facehuggers to warrior Xenomorphs, and while the crew manages to snag a good haul, no one is gonna collect a big payday if they don’t escape the ship. One by one, the miners are picked off.
Cailee Spaeny picks up the reins in Alien reboot.
After surviving an attack, a pregnant miner named Kay, against Andy android’s advice, chooses to inject herself with mysterious black goo, hoping it will only heal her wounds, but this black goo is actually filled with Queen alien DNA! Now, anyone who saw Alien: Covenant knows this is gonna get bad. Kay gives birth to the stuff of nightmares and this creature wastes no time trying to get a little protein from mama. I dont want to spoil anymore. Just know that motherhood is a killer.
5. Thomas Murphy (Alien 3)
A planet dedicated to violent inmates, sounds like a dream (that’s sarcasm, kids). With a demanding movie studio hellbent on capitalizing off the success of the action packed Aliens, young budding Director David Fincher only had to produce enough blood, guts, and acid baths to repeat box office numbers. Unfortunately that led to Fincher completely disavowing his own film and he might not have it wrong. Alien 3 is pretty abysmal and one of the most openly talked about problematic movie shoots in history. One of most glaring problems was the characters were all unredeemable bad guys, totally unlikable, uninteresting, and completely expendable. To no one’s surprise, the Xenomorphs become every bit the heroes that Ripley was.
Luckily, the movie did have some entertaining deaths, like when inmate Thomas Murphy looks for his missing dog Spike down a dark hole. Spike is a goner, and the inmate gets a face full of acid from fidomorph, but that’s not what kills him. Gravity sucks the man down into one of those giant industrial fans, and viola, memorable death scene #5.
4. Ledward (Alien: Covenant)
After touching down on Origae-6, Security detail Ledward joins the expeditionary team to investigate their surroundings. It doesnt take long before Ledward gets exposed to black fungal spores and immediately fall ill.
Back in medbay, we learn those spores bore an alien organism that has been growing inside of Ledward, but instead of exiting through the chest like a normal chestburster, this alien came out Ledward’s back! It was particularly gruesome and shocking death, if nothing else because it changed 3 decades worth of knowledge about chestbursters. I guess we do learn something new every day.
ALIEN: COVENANT
3. Purvis/Dr. Wren (Alien: Resurrection)
In each Alien movie, there’s always at least one jerk, human or synth, who truly deserves a gory, nasty end of life, and in the 4th installment of Alien franchise, that jerk is Dr. Mason Wren, a manical military scientist who mixed Ripley’s DNA with Xenomorph DNA and tortured his subjects for years. While attempting to escape the Xenomorphs, Wren takes another crew member Call hostage, just as Purvis, one of Wren’s recent test subjects, realizes his own end is nye because he’s been impregnated by a facehugger. Purvis attacks Dr. Wren in a frenzy and when the chest burster arrives, let’s just say we get a two for one and it felt like justice was served.
2. Ash (Alien)
When fellow crew member Ash attacks and sabotages Ripley’s efforts to kill the alien, Parker steps in, fights and decapitates him. Only then do they realize Ash is really a synth! The betrayal runs deeper than that though, after reconnecting the head to get some answers, Ripley and Parker learn Ash has been directed by their evil employer Weyland-Yutani Corporation to bring back the alien organism for study, even if it means sacrificing the crew. As they leave, Parker takes a flamethrower to Ash for good measure, ensuring the robot doesn’t interfere with their escape plan, and honestly, it’s one of the most satisfying deaths in the entire franchise.
1. Kane (Alien)
One of cinema’s most shocking moments was the death of Kane, Commander of the ill-fated USCSS Nostromo, after being impregnated by an alien organism, now affectionately known as a facehugger. Up until that moment, we were just an innocent unsuspecting audience watching some unlucky space crew eat dinner, after answering a distress call from a derelict spaceship and finding nothing but creepiness. The emergence of new parasitic creature chest bursting into our consciousness totally rocked our world.
Even today, some 45 years later, that scene still terrifies new audiences. Chestburster deaths have been included in every film since and it never gets old; it’s never not a gory surprise and that’s why the very first death in Alien, is the most memorable death in the entire franchise.
Speaking of mutations, a recent bout with Covid has been keeping me down, so I wasn’t able to write a proper movie post this month. I may still sneak one in.
Just trust me, this is a great list of the best mutant monster movies you’ll find on streaming.👾🕷☢️
Originally, my monthly theme was March Madness, but I didn’t like the story. However, I already put together a list of my fave spooky movies about going insane. Is it all in their heads or is something more sinister afoot? Gotta watch to find out. In keeping with the theme of March Mischief, I’m totally posting a March Madness movie list!🤪😄
Hammer Film’s first incursion into the Frankenstein mythos, Curse of Frankenstein, spawned several sequels, all of them starring soon-to-be horror icon Peter Cushing as Victor Frankenstein. Directed by Terence Fisher, in what would be the first of many films that Fisher would make for Hammer Films, the film also starred a young Christopher Lee, playing the Monster, before he would go on to don Dracula’s cape for the next three decades.
Universal Films fought vehemently to protect their own Frankenstein film and its rights, which reflected heavily on many decisions Hammer made during filming. Make-up artist Phil Leaky created a brand-new look for the monster, and several key scenes from the novel were cut due to a limited budget. Despite its limitations, Curse of Frankenstein impressed many with its art direction, costuming, camera work, and the stellar cast, which also included English actor Hazel Court, (just starting out in her lengthy career as a horror queen), and Scottish stage and TV actor Robert Urquhart.
This story revolves around Frankenstein himself, rather than his creature, choosing to show the Baron as a more ambitious, egotistical and ruthless man; at the start of the story, he awaits execution for several murders. Hammer’s version of Dr. Frankenstein is a villainous man, willing to commit crimes, set up a man’s accidental death, aka murder, to obtain the parts he needs to create his creature, and even use the poor creature to kill opponents standing in the way of greatness. Since, the brain was damaged, it becomes apparent quickly that the monster has little intelligence and is too far too violent to control, thus, Frankenstein is forced to destroy his greatest creation. With the evidence gone, fate comes down to his younger associate Dr. Paul Krempe, the only witness to the experiments.
Colin Clive may have had the most memorable line in horror history, but it was Peter Cushing who was highly praised for the truly unforgettable performance of Victor Frankenstein, for fleshing out the character that audiences deemed charming and intriguing, in spite of his villainy. It was Cushing that helped inspire the mad scientist archetype and motivated Hammer to continue his story all the way into the 70s.
Curse of Frankenstein was Hammer’s first color film and considered by many to be the first truly gory film. The deep red blood and guts appeared gorier on screen than any other horror film of its time, causing a bit of uproar and scathing reviews. It even received an X rating for a time, when it opened at the London Pavilion in 1957. Despite receiving the lukewarm reviews from critics, audiences seemed to really like the film, grossing nearly $8 million, thus, putting Hammer Films squarely on the map.
The full moon has risen and transformed the Wolfman.
Frankenstein’s monster is alive and looking for a Woman.
Dracula’s magnetic gaze will leave you entranced.
The Mummy has risen and wants his soulmate to dance.
The Invisible Man has lost his left shoe.
It was found by the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
King Kong terrorizes the Empire State Tower.
Godzilla rampages Tokyo with his atomic powers.
The Blob crashed landed from outer space.
The Living Dead will eat your face.
I grew up at the theater, watching double features.
That’s why I love all monsters, madmen, and creatures.
Halloween Horror Haiku 
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