A Starter Guide to Space Horror
“Afterthoughts” is a new Fear of God blog series featuring co-hosts and guests further unpacking thoughts, themes, and ideas that keep them up at night from the conversations and content covered on the show. This entry is by FoG Continuity Guru, Steven Beckley, and is a follow-up to this past week’s episode featuring Event Horizon. Enjoy, then, the latest entry in this new chapter of The Fear of God…
I’m a film lover who is fascinated by science fiction and space travel.
The space sci-fi sub-genre became one of my major in-roads to appreciating the horror genre, writ large. In space there is an always ever-present horror, because the deadly danger of the vacuum of space is always just beyond the bulkhead walls of the craft. That makes it perhaps the most confined space of all, with limited places to hide. And then there’s the danger of strange unknown planets on which the ships land...or crash.
In fact, I used to have sci-fi dreams at night, which were a first person account of being chased around or having to sneak around on a darkened spacecraft, being pursued by someone or some...thing. My earliest exposure to the sub-genre of space-horror was probably Alien or Aliens (I honestly can’t remember which one I saw first). It was either that or an episode of a Star Trek or Star-Trek-like tv show that incorporated suspense and horror on board a spaceship for all or part of an episode. It’s amazing how much these films and tv shows cross-pollinate each other with story ideas, tone and setting. But as long as a film weaves it together differently, adds something new, or somehow makes it look and sound new and different, I’m on board for the ride.
Since, like Reed Lackey, I am the listicle type, here for you now is just a starter guide of ten more space horror films beyond Event Horizon. It’s a little list of some recommended favorites that come to mind for me. The common thread is space travel and/or a strange, hostile, foreign planet being ever-present for all or most of the film.
Let us know your thoughts on these and if there are more “space horror” that you would recommend.
FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)
This is an essential and influential early color sci-fi classic with stunning production design and an innovative electronic music score. In the distant future, a flying saucer-shaped spacecraft, manned by a crew of regimented men approaches Altair IV, a planet where Earth had long ago lost contact with one of its colonies. The crew, led by a young Leslie Nielsen, are warned by a transmission not to land, but they land anyway. They discover a lone scientist, Dr. Morbius, his daughter, and their robot servant, Robbie. Morbius, who is very intelligent but also kind of pompous, harbors deeply hidden secrets of the fate of the colonists and a long-dead advanced culture that existed on the planet. Some of these secrets pose imminent monstrous dangers. After seeing Event Horizon so recently, I can’t help but see some of Forbidden Planet in that movie. As if the ship Event Horizon was a “Forbidden” ship just like the planet in Forbidden Planet, and Dr. Morbius is this movie’s Dr. Weir.
PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES (1965)
This is another movie about the crew of a spacecraft that is operated similar to a navy sub, or like the starship Enterprise, though this was made a year prior to Star Trek’s debut. The ship is en route to a mysterious planet where another ship of their agency has landed ahead of them. As they are nearing the planet a few of the crew appear to go mad, try to fight and kill others of the crew, and then sabotage the ship. Strange behavior like this continues once they land and begin to explore the planet. They find the crew of the other ship dead, presumably having killed each other; as well as giant skeletons of long dead aliens aboard a derelict spacecraft. They also discover dead crew members coming back to life (but with new alien personalities) and attacking the living. Many see this as an obvious inspiration to Alien, but on my recent re-watch I also detected similar themes as John Carpenter’s The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Acting is a little wooden, but the production design and costumes are a lot of fun to look at - which is no surprise coming from director Mario Bava.
QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966)
Queen of Blood is worth a watch even with its overly complicated, highly exposition-laden first half, which features a lot of technobabble from the space agency administrator/scientist character played by Basil Rathbone. But the film gets really interesting in the second half and then ends really ominously, making a dark comment on the dangers of systems thinking in society (The props used in the ending made me think of the ending of Alien: Covenant).The “monster” of the film is a green-skinned alien that is rescued from a crash of her spacecraft on a moon of Mars. On the return trip to Earth it is discovered that she feeds on the blood of the men on the ship, draining them to death one by one after putting them in a calming trance! Queen of Blood stars John Saxon (one of my favorites, later seen in Enter the Dragon, Black Christmas, and Nightmare on Elm Street) and Dennis Hopper, who was previously seen in director Curtis Harrington’s earlier film Night Tide.
ALIEN (1979)
Still a benchmark in space horror, the original Alien (discussed in depth in Fear of God Episode #39) owes a lot to some films that preceded it (the aforementioned Planet of the Vampires and Queen of Blood; 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running), and I believe it is hugely influential to a majority of space sci-fi that followed, as well as many non-space horror films. Any movie where people are trapped somewhere with a creature or killer who is hunting them down one by one owes something to Alien. The H.R. Giger sets and creature (xenomorph) design are so one-of-a-kind and Ridley Scott and crew recreated them so masterfully with practical effects, they still make my skin crawl after multiple viewings. I enjoy most of the sequels because of the thrills and xenomorph aesthetic, even though the scripts and stories are of varying quality. In addition to the xenomorph alien, each sequel also involved an android character, and thus also explored the nature of humanity vs. artificial intelligence. The “prequels” Prometheus and Alien: Covenant (covered in Fear of God Episode #206) went the route of exploring the origins of life, the nature of scientific endeavors of man, and elevating the A.I./android factor in the story. I for one hope new franchise-owners Disney greenlight a direct sequel to complete that trilogy.
LIFE (2017)
Despite its mundane title and being written off by many as an Alien rip-off, I still remember it affecting me to the point of squirming in my seat. It takes place on the Earth’s International Space Station where a group of scientists (including Ryan Reynolds, Rebecca Ferguson, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hiroyuki Sanada) are experimenting on a microscopic specimen returned from Mars. Well, the specimen just so happens to be an intelligent life form that is very hungry, and very eager to find its way to earth; and the only way for it to do this is to grow bigger and smarter by eating each crew member one by one and, spoiler alert, attempt to follow one of the “final girls” into an escape pod. I actually liked the viscous creature design and situations of peril. To me, the ominous ending is reminiscent of Queen of Blood or Planet of the Vampires.
PITCH BLACK (2000)
This is the story of a deep space transport vessel with a rag-tag group of passengers who are awakened from sleep as their ship is crashing on a barren planet. The planet they crash on is bathed in bright light from three different colored suns. They soon discover that an eclipse is about to occur and that normally subterranean light-sensitive man-eating creatures will have free reign once darkness falls. One man has the special set of skills (and surgically enhanced eyes) to guide them to safety: Riddick (Vin Diesel). A few of the characters struggle with the sins of their past and try to hide their true selves from their traveling companions, but Riddick is the textbook cool as ice anti-hero, who does not appear to be ashamed of himself in the slightest.
STARSHIP TROOPERS (1997)
This late-90’s futuristic war satire is from Paul Verhoeven, the same director as Total Recall and Robocop, and falls right between Showgirls and Hollow Man in his filmography. So, naturally, it’s an action movie but there’s also plenty of gross-out horror, “war is hell” surprise blood, guts, death and dismemberment, and gratuitous nudity. The age, good looks, and maturity level of the main characters make this a kind of “90210 in space,” which is what the filmmakers were intending. We follow Johnny Rico and his high school friends from high school graduation to their placement in the armed forces (infantry boot camp, pilot school, or officer training) in the war against the “bugs” from across the galaxy. In 1997 I thought these CGI rendered bugs were amazing. I had to go see this movie from the moment I saw the herds of “grasshoppers” in the trailer. The most interesting parts today are the propaganda film segments…”Do you want to know more?”
ENEMY MINE (1985)
More of a straightforward (non-satirical) anti-war story, Wolfgang Peterson’s directorial follow-up to The Neverending Story tells the tale of two members of warring races in an interstellar conflict who become reluctant friends when their fighter spacecraft crash and they are marooned together on a hostile planet. Peterson shows us a planet of harsh and fantastic dangers and presents themes of anti-xenophobia. A roller coaster of emotional moments and conflicts with human and inhuman villains leads to a hopeful ending. Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. (in heavy makeup) give great performances as the two leads.
PANDORUM (2009)
Pandorum takes place in the distant future when the Earth is no longer habitable. A few individuals wake up on board a giant deep space “earth ark” vessel where, you guessed it, something has gone wrong. While en route to a new habitable planet to colonize as a new home for humanity, many people are found to be missing (abandoned ship?) and others have broken out of their stasis pods and were the seeds of a new evolution that took place on the ship. New strange human/inhuman creatures are lurking around, and posing danger to our protagonists. Think “The Descent” but in space. The title Pandorum refers to a “space madness” syndrome that develops in occupants of the ship, creating a situation of possibly unreliable protagonists. Paul W. S. Anderson, director of Event Horizon, was one of the producers of Pandorum. Dennis Quaid appears in this one too, and it also stars Ben Foster (Hell or High Water), Antje Traue (Man of Steel, Dark), and Norman Reedus (The Walking Dead).
SUNSHINE (2007)
Danny Boyle’s space-horror film presents another doomed Earth situation but in this version it is the sun that is dying. The Earth’s governments pool their resources to send a group of astronauts and scientists to “restart” the sun with a giant bomb aboard the Icarus II spacecraft. They are actually the second attempt (and last hope for mankind) as the Icarus I went missing and was never heard from again. The Icarus ship design and spacesuits are very “cool”, pun intended, as they are meant to keep the habitat sections of the ship and the crew as shaded as possible from the sun which they are perpetually facing. Directed by Boyle (28 Days Later) and written by Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Annihilation), Sunshine has an all-star cast including Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeoh, Rose Byrne, Chris Evans, Cliff Curtis, Benedict Wong, Mark Strong, and Hiroyuki Sanada. In my mind the film becomes a horror movie when an away team from Icarus II explore the re-discovered and derelict Icarus I, and we, the viewers, think that the carefully considered decision to take that detour may not have been the best in hindsight. The exploration of a re-discovered missing ship is not the only similarity to Event Horizon, as a Dr. Weir-like psychotic character appears with a mind on sabotaging the mission in the name of his own chaotic zealotry.
Let us know in the comments or in the Facebook group any I may have forgotten.
