![]() ![]() Most of the movie involves the thudding claustrophobia of being trapped deep in space inside a ship where a terrifying alien life form threatens to kill everything onboard. Hours later, in what would become the film’s most memorable scene, a more fully formed version of the parasite bursts forth from the man’s chest, killing him as it escapes. When one of the team members approaches an egg, a parasite inside it attacks him. The plot involves members of a space crew who discover an abandoned spaceship and decide to explore inside, where they find a chamber containing thousands of eggs. The most iconic of all the space horror movies as well as the most influential, Alienwas produced in the late 1970s after the unexpected blockbuster success of Star Wars made Hollywood more receptive to films involving space travel. Bava’s ability to use lighting and optical effects to give this low-budget production a grander feel than it otherwise would have had is highly impressive.” Alien (1979) Alien is a prime example of a cosmic horror movie. The Bloody Pit of Horror praised Bava’s deftness at creating a visually striking alternate universe on a shoestring: “Aura is a dark, desolate, densely misty place with bubbling pits, flashes of red, green and blue lights illuminating the sky and all kinds of strange rock formations off in the horizon. Released in Italy as Terrore nello spazio ( Terror in Space), the film went through fifteen working titles before American International Pictures decided on Planet of the Vampires among the alternate titles were Demon Planet, The Haunted Planet, The Haunted World, The Outlawed Planet, Planet of Blood, The Planet of Terror, and Space Mutants. Italian director Mario Bava, who would go on to claim his greatest fame in giallo horror movies, helmed this tale of two spaceships that land one shortly after the other on a remote planet named Aura, only to realize the planet harbors some parasitic life form that forces everyone who’s exposed to it to fight one another to death. ![]() Old Space Horror Movies Planet Of The Vampires (1965) Astronauts encounter a phantom life form that makes people kill one another. Here are 25 films that exemplify the boundlessly claustrophobic anxiety of space horror, a nightmare that none of us has ever known but yet all of us are somehow able to imagine. Event Horizon (1997) is one of the best horror films from the 1990s and perhaps the best space horror movie of all time. Although landmark films such as 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey popularized the innate terror of having things go helplessly awry while you’re drifting listlessly among the stars, space terror was also the central theme in rock and roll hits of the era such as David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” (1969) and Elton John’s “Rocket Man” (1972). What was known as the “Space Race” between the United States and the communist Soviet Union mostly took place between the late 1950s and the mid-1970s, during a time when space travel and astronauts occupied much more of the popular imagination than they currently do. Still from Saturn 3 (1980), a British space horror movie that is so bad it is good. There’s a cruel paradox there-the vast and endless patches of darkness surrounding the spaceship make it feel that much more like a coffin. Many horror movies thrive on isolation and claustrophobia, and what makes space horror so much more compelling is that you’re suffocated inside a cramped and tiny spaceship in the midst of more space than the human mind is capable of conceiving. Europa Report (2013) is a mix of thriller and horror set in space. ![]() ![]() Helplessness is at the core of all terror, and there is nothing more possibly helpless than being stranded endless light years from home either on a malfunctioning ship or at the mercy of a murderous space monster or parasite. ![]()
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