March 11, 2025 • 51 mins
Abby and Alan continue to discuss the vast history of space horror in film, with a focus on one of the most famous horror franchises of all time, Alien.
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
Sources
- A New Yorker article by Adam Gopnik: The War Inside H.G. Wells from 2021
- New York Times Article by Mekado Murphy: How ‘Alien’ Spawned So Many Others from 2017
- ArtNet.com article by Tim Brinkhof: As Seen on ‘Alien’: H.R. Giger’s Biomorphic Nightmare
- War of the Worlds Radio Broadcast transcripts by HG Wells.
- New Yorker Article by Dan Chiasson from 2018: “2001: A Space Odyssey”: What It Means, and How It Was Made
- PublicBooks.com article by Eleanor Johnson: Speaking the Monster: Ecofeminism in “Alien” and “Aliens”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I am Abbey Brenker sitting herewith Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And today we are picking up our conversation
around space horror and reallygetting into, I would say, one
of the most iconic, not evenjust space horror, but film
franchises of all time, and ofcourse I'm talking about Alien.
But let's take a step back.
Why I love Alien.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I know I know, I know , I know I'm stopping you.
We got to talk about alien.
Okay, I just want to, so good.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I agree, and I'm going to let you have tons of
airtime in this episode.
There's one thing I want to saymake it quick which is that last
episode we we went through allthe sources, which are going to
be in the description of thispodcast as well, so you can see
the sources that we've used forthe research that is being
presented today.
But also we spent a lot of timelast episode categorizing
(01:12):
different space horror films.
Right, so the first categoryare aliens on Earth or
extraterrestrial things on Earthin a sort of calm way here to
communicate with us.
The second category was similarbut different in that it was
alien invasion.
And then we got into spacehorror truly like horror set in
(01:33):
space, with 2001, a SpaceOdyssey.
So now it is time to talk aboutone of the most iconic space
horror, but film franchises,horror franchises of all time
Alien.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
OK, take it away, Abby.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Alien was released in 1979.
The film was directed by RidleyScott and stars Sigourney
Weaver as Ripley.
Alien is such an excellentexample of space horror for many
reasons, but one of them beingthat it exemplifies so many
different elements of thesubgenre, so I'm going to kind
of break it down that way.
For instance, one of the thingsthat is, I think, most
(02:06):
terrifying organically aboutspace is this idea and fear of
isolation.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, you can't breathe in space.
It's a fact.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Sure, and that's part of it right, there's danger
everywhere, there's unknowneverywhere.
It's kind of like ocean horrorin that way deep sea horror, but
also there's this again oceanhorror in that way, deep sea
horror, but also there's thisagain fear of isolation
helplessness in this greatexpanse this great void.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Isn't it interesting that in this great expanse and
void, the number one horrormechanic in space horror is
claustrophobia.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, a thousand percent, because what you're
talking about, right, like notbeing able to breathe, but also
in a lot of this horror, it's onsmall ships with tight
corridors and people die andyou're alone and you know, and
it's just so ripe with thingsthat could go wrong.
If you panic and open a window,you're dead.
(03:00):
In so many other films but afew examples Event Horizon from
1997, sunshine from 2007, theCloverfield Paradox from 2018,
moon from 2009, the Martian from2015, gravity from 2013, and,
(03:23):
of course, 2001, a Space Odysseyfrom 1968.
What's really cool aboutscience fiction and space horror
, in my opinion, is that oftenthe creators will take a really
basic human emotion or fearagain, like desolation,
abandonment, isolation somethingthat many people can relate to
and transpose that fear onto asituation that we likely are
totally unfamiliar with, likebeing on a space station or
another planet.
But because we have an inherentfear of isolation, right or
(03:46):
claustrophobia or whatever it is, we have an inherent
appreciation for the totalvastness of space and we have
this inherent appreciation forthe total vastness of space in
the unknown.
Suddenly that isolation feelstotally all-consuming and
horrifying and relatable.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Gosh, if I had a nickel for every time I felt
desolated.
You really lumped some moviesin there that are quite
different.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
But don't you think they all explore the themes of
isolation?
The theme of isolation yes,that's the sentence that I said.
Yes, but that's yeah sure, herewe go, pick it apart now.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
But that's any movie on a spaceship where shit goes
wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Okay, floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Let him cook man.
So are we talking about alien?
Are we talking about theseother movies?
You got you.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You got to keep me on the rails here now we're
talking about alien, but ifthere's anything you want to say
about those movies, now is thetime okay, the other movies?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
yeah, let's.
Let's start with sunshine.
Okay, it's such a big film whenyou think about it, just the
idea of the sun is going out.
There's an expedition that issending a nuclear payload into
the sun to restart the fusionprocess.
(04:56):
Humanity has sent one previousexpedition and it just they lost
track with it and they've sincescrapped together Earth's very
last resources to send one finalone.
In this case you don't havejust the well-being of the crew,
which of course, is paramountbecause, like, they're the
protagonists, but if this fails,earth will die and it's going
(05:20):
to be like a very slow nuclearwinter type death because you
know they'll just freeze, whichis really like horrific.
I love that movie.
I also love Cillian Murphy, oneof my favorite actors of all
time.
I wish he did more stuffoutside of like losing him for
like 30 years to Peaky Blinders.
Just put him in more horror.
(05:42):
He's so freaking good.
He's so good, he really is, andwhat a handsome guy.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, he's pretty hot .
I also do want to talk brieflyabout the Martian, because we
actually ended up explaining theplot of the Martian to your mom
recently for, I would say, agood 40 minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I mean that's being generous.
It took a lot longer.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
You were trying to make a point about potatoes and
somehow we ended up talkingabout the martian she just
didn't understand the conceptthat you could take a piece of a
potato and grow more potatoesplant it and grow more potatoes
and so she didn't believe mewhen I talked about it like
scientifically, about how peopleactually grow potatoes.
So alan was like you know what?
You know what's going toconvince her and break through
(06:24):
Talking about the Martian sheloves.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Matt Damon, another handsome guy.
This seems like a slam dunk.
This was a perfect example ofspace horror through kind of
like a comedic lens, you know,because this is all about the
tone of the writing.
Right, I've seen the movie, butI love the book more.
(06:47):
In the book, you know, it's allthese like little micro
chapters, because it's just thejournal of Mark Watney.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And it's all about that.
Call down.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's an epistolary novel.
Very good, and it is.
I learned that from you becauseyou're so smart and it's just
about the domineering, about thedomineering spirit of man.
But on the flip side, thiscould have 100% just been a
horror novel.
Right Of this man venting hisfears and insecurities as he
(07:17):
slowly succumbs to death.
And that's what the Martian is.
But he's slowly succumbing todeath, but instead he's dealing
with like an upbeat can do,attitude of like well, how do I
live for the next three days?
Maybe I'll do this.
Okay, cool, we got throughthree days.
Now how do I live for the nextI don't know 600?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Let's try this instead well, I'll say the tone
of it too, and it's not reallyhorror, but the tone of the
martian is sort of what makes itso charming and stand out.
You know, the story itselfisn't revolutionary and I I love
that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I love that it takes what you expect from these
situations and instead of givingyou like some kind of like
cheeky toning, tongue-in-cheekcharacter who's a badass or
whatever, it gives you kind oflike a goofy guy, you know I
want to give you know, a roundof applause to andy weir, the,
the author of the martian, andhonestly all of his works,
(08:14):
because he basically takes acharacter, puts them into these
impossible situations and thenjust removes the fear and
replaces it with science rightso, uh, the other huge andy weir
novel is project hill mary oh,I've never heard of that oh,
it's so, so good.
I'm not gonna say a thing aboutthe novel because everyone
(08:35):
should just read it, okay it'sso, so good, uh, but another
doomsday scenario.
And the character deals withthese mind-shattering scenarios
with science, where it's like,well, I don't have no idea what
to do in the situation.
But one plus one still equalstwo.
(08:55):
So you know, let's see what wecan do with math speaking of
matt damon, do you thinkinterstellar is space horror?
We talked about this duringpart one of the series Space
horror is a very gray area withscience fiction and interstellar
.
No, I wouldn't classify that ashorror, but there's certainly
(09:18):
horrific elements.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I, yeah, I agree, but there's moments in that movie
where you're understanding, notto use a pun, but the gravity of
what's happening in a situationLike to me black holes, like
there's nothing more horrifying,you know, and Than a black hole
.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Really why.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
It's just such an unconquerable enemy.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Why an enemy?
It's a force of nature.
Right, but if you are in, asituation, do you say a tsunami
is an enemy?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, the natural disaster Like a tsunami, is also
like a thing like a black hole,is like minding its own
business.
It's never going to be the caseunless the whole of Earth is
sucked into a black hole in mylifetime that I'm going to have
to deal with it or think aboutit.
Based on right.
It's this very like basicconcept of this portal, this
vortex of destruction that isslow and unstoppable and sucks
(10:19):
anything into its path, into itand there's no way out and you
get spaghettified right if yougo close to it and it's just,
it's impossible, it's animpossibility to avoid if you're
in its way it will always winah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Is there any definitive black hole horror
movies?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
well, there are a few that come up.
One is high life starringrobert pattinson, and then event
horizon, a few things calledblack hole, but I can't vouch
for, uh, for those movies well,event horizon is unofficial or
hammer 40k lore is it?
Yes, that's interesting inevent horizon.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
They use a black hole effectively to travel to, to
breach dimensions, and thatdimension being the warp.
There's warhammer 40k peoplethat understand this better, but
they effectively breach intoanother dimension.
That dimension is hell or thethe hell equivalent sure and so
(11:20):
these like demon forces startbecause equivalent exchange.
Right, we're sending energyinto that dimension, so energy
has to come into ours.
All this demonic energy mindwarping stuff, physical entities
is taking manifest in ourdimension because of physics and
shit fascinating.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, have you heard recordings of the sounds of a
black hole?
No I think if you had heardthat, you would also associate
them as the wildest, most scaryenemy.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It would make sense that it's loud.
Do you understand?
Okay, how much?
What organization had an internthat was willing to go to a
black hole with a microphone torecord that?
Nasa, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
They didn't go to the black hole.
They picked up on the soundwaves coming from space.
You're a sound engineer.
They picked up on the soundwaves coming from space.
You're a sound engineer, youunderstand this.
There's no sound in space, what, of course, there is.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
What, how Sound, is the vibration of molecules?
There's molecules in space, notenough to touch each other.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
No sure, there's a certain amount of hydrogen atoms
, but they're not close enoughto interact with each other.
There is no sound in space.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Are you talking about this like the word space, as in
like distance?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
What?
No?
Space is a vacuum.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I'm talking about outer space.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Outer space is a vacuum.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
There's sound in outer space If you clap your
hands in space.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You could not hear it .
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So all the space horror movies where people are
talking, that's people go tospace not hear it.
So all the space horror movieswhere people are talking.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
That's people go to space.
They don't talk on spacestations, they're talking in?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I know that they do.
I've heard recordings of theastronauts inside space stations
.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
They have atmosphere, sound, travels through air.
Right there's no air in spacethere's sound in space there is
no sound in space.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
How did they get this recording then?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So a few different ways.
One is that they either used oh.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
NASA released new audio approximating the sound of
a black hole at the center ofthe Perseus galaxy cluster.
Experts discovered it had apitch of over quote million
billion times deeper than thelimits of human hearing, making
it too deep to be heard.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The bottom threshold of human hearing is 20 hertz
like, so this was a millionbillion times deeper a million
billion.
When you think of like whalesright, they sound kind of goofy
yeah but that's because you'reonly hearing a very small
fraction of what they'reactually saying their whole
range.
The vast majority of it issubharmonics.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Can they approximate that?
Because that would be cool tohear.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Well, sure, but then all they do is they pitch, shift
it up and into the threshold ofhuman hearing.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
What do you think about the movie Gravity?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I've only seen it once.
I think Sandra Bullock isincredible.
Yeah, I think she was best inMiss Congeniality, sure, but
Gravity is very good.
It's a very good film.
It really encapsulates thehelplessness of being a
Earth-originating Simeon-likebeing and then being thrust into
(14:30):
a zero-gravity environment thathas to breathe through a suit.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
You know, like we were never supposed to be in
space, yet here we are.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I also think it takes a really strong actor to be
able to carry a movie like thatwhen you're alone for the
majority of the film, and shedoes a really good job.
My one complaint is the amountof like little grunts she makes.
But that was.
You know, that wasn't herchoice.
Anyway, alan, let's talk aboutAlien.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Whose choice was it?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
The director's.
I assume Sanjay wants the grunt.
Another common space horrorelement that we see in Alien is
an enemy, in this case theultimate predator the Xenomorph.
The Xenomorph is an apexpredator, impossibly strong and
intelligent, and throughout thefranchise the audience becomes
experts on the life cycle ofthis creature, from eggs to
(15:23):
facehugger, to chestburster andfinally the adult Xenomorph.
An adult Xenomorph has a spinyexoskeleton body that acts as
armor and makes it againincredibly strong and
impenetrable.
It's outfitted with acid bloodand a secondary inner jaw that
allows it to bite through ahuman skull.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That's his little mouth.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
For me, the xenomorph , in all of its phases, triggers
an instinctual fear.
I may not often encounteraliens, but I do encounter
horrible bugs and other earthlycreatures that are unpleasant.
This is obviously drawing onthose fears, right?
The Xenomorph was designed byHR Geiger.
Geiger was a Swiss surrealistartist.
He was known for what theinternet calls a dark
(16:07):
biomechanical aesthetic.
His work has influenced manydifferent elements of horror and
science fiction aesthetics.
The filmmakers knew howimportant the design of the
xenomorph was to the movie.
Producer Walter Hill even saidthat the success of the movie
depended on the creature design.
Quoting from the Artnetcomarticle by Tim Brinkhoff.
(16:27):
Quote the xenomorph has becomeso iconic that it is difficult
to imagine it looking anydifferent from what we ended up
seeing on screen.
That said, scott's teamactually cycled through a number
of designs before settling onthe final version.
One of the first iterations,designed by American-Australian
artist Ron Cobb, who previouslyworked on Star Wars Episode IV,
(16:49):
a New Hope from 1977, apparentlyresembled a massive four-legged
crab.
Dissatisfied with this design,scott turned to a different
artist named HR Giger.
Born in Switzerland, giger wasknown for his paintings of
demonic biomechanical creatures,drawn in a style so unique that
it was given rise to the termGiger-esque.
(17:10):
When Scott stumbled across theartist Necronomicon, a 1977
coffee table compendium of hisgreatest work, the director was
so impressed that he decided tobring him onto the project, end
quote.
And if you do look up Geiger'sNecronom 4 artwork, the piece
that directly inspired thedesign of the xenomorph, you see
how truly similar it is thedesign of the xenomorph.
(17:32):
You see how truly similar it is.
Even though Geiger was a 2Dartist, he took on the task of
translating his designs and hisart into the 3D creature.
Famously, he used condoms forthe creature's lips and put a
real human skull into the headto perfect the anatomy of his
design.
The Artnetcom article makes agreat point about Geiger's lack
of recognition for his work onAlien.
(17:54):
He did win an Academy Award forvisual effects, but every
single expansion of thefranchise takes his work and
uses it or iterates on it freely.
The Xenomorph is the ultimatepredator in terms of look,
strength, skills and tools Ahorrifying, unrelenting and
visceral enemy, someone saysimilar to a black hole so the
(18:14):
xenomorph is one of my favoritehorror movie villains, simply
because they're so freaking cool.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
The xenomorph that we're all familiar with from the
hr geiger drawings, which, ifyou look up, are incredibly
sexual, very phallic.
I mean not just that, just likethey're they're phallic, but
they're also effeminate, like,it's just a very sleek.
It just it.
Just it oozes power and like.
(18:44):
But that's the point.
And so you learn later on inthe alien mythos, you know,
these are engineered beings.
This is not just some likealien species, right, that, you
know, is invading, right, it'snot that at all right, this is
the absolute pinnacle of geneticengineering to make the
(19:09):
ultimate killing machine.
One of the things that helpswith hunting is having this like
sexual sleekness.
It's, it's just like this extralayer of disarmament, of
superiority, you know is thatyour?
Speaker 1 (19:24):
my interpretation is almost like.
It's just like a stripped downbeing right.
It's not a being that has shamearound any of these things and
it just is, in its nature, right.
It is a being that reproduces acertain way, it is a being that
hunts a certain way, and itjust doesn't have any pretense
about that I I think you hitsaid the perfect word like it's
(19:46):
all the the being is all aboutreproduction.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It's its sole purpose is reproduction, right, right,
which I mean is true about mostorganisms everywhere, sure, but
you know, this is theencapsulation of the idea, and
when you have an artist behindit, of course they're going to
kind of go hand in hand.
I also love how the xenomorphchanges the appearance based off
(20:10):
the seed species.
For Alien 1 and two we see thesame type of xenomorph.
And that's because it is a, forlack of a better term.
It's a xenomorph egg that youknow becomes the little
facehugger thing and thenlatches onto a human and then we
(20:32):
see the full developedxenomorph based off gestating
inside of a human.
It's in the later series, 3 andonwards, when we see the full
swath of xenomorphs.
They kind of like pick andchoose different bits of genetic
code based off what is the mostsuperior bit of the seed
(20:54):
organism right in alien 3 itinfects a doberman and then you
get this quadruped xenomorph.
That's super fast, super strongand becomes the the ultimate
thing.
And it based off of what afucking dog.
You'd think a human would be asuperior hunter.
(21:15):
But all the intelligence comesfrom the xenomorph right.
But it just takes certainphysical attributes from, from
the dog.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's kind of cool, yeah, very interesting.
So another and you hinted atthis earlier, alan but another
major theme in space horror, asdemonstrated by Alien, is
claustrophobia.
So we see it in Alien and inthe whole franchise, but we also
see it in found footage spacehorror movie Apollo 18 from
(21:43):
2011,.
Event Horizon, the Last Day onMars from 2013,.
400 Days from 2015,.
And the Silent Sea from 2021.
In addition to other horrorelements that push Alien over
the edge from pure sciencefiction to space horror, like
extreme body horror for one,alien also plays with feminism
(22:03):
in a huge way.
Not only is Ripley one of themost iconic female action heroes
of all time, the movie playswith gender in a few fascinating
different ways.
Ripley was originally writtenas a male character.
The original script featured asix-person all-male crew.
The Ripley character wasoriginally called Martin Robbie.
Ripley is strong mentally andphysically.
(22:25):
She's crafty and resourcefuland brave, and beyond that, her
character breaks withtraditional gender stereotypes
in a delightful way.
She wants to follow quarantineprotocol instead of bringing
Kane back on board afterinfection.
Right, she's cool, she'slogical, she's intellectual.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Oh, a woman that wants to follow the rules, huh.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
There are also some feminist reads that the
xenomorph queen is a symbol offeminism.
In the franchise I'm quotingfrom the Public Books article by
Eleanor Johnson, quote In anincredible moment of
interspecies communication, thealien mother looks at Ripley,
sees that she too is trying toprotect her child, and so the
alien mother signals to herdaughters to back off and she
(23:06):
lets Ripley pass.
There is a flickering moment ofinterspecies recognition when
the alien mother decides thatshe will not attack.
All xenomorphs are female.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
They reproduce, they proliferate and they need some
exterior genetic material tomake that so.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yes, absolutely.
I believe that is the case.
Picking up the quote again Fora flickering moment, the monster
becomes human.
But the film cannot toleratethat level of radicalism.
As soon as she and Newt arealmost out, ripley sees an egg
opening and she decides to torchthe entire nest.
The film thus scuttles thepossibility of interspecies
understanding.
The mother alien becomes ahorrifying predator again and
(23:54):
for the rest of the film.
And then skipping ahead alittle bit here, we're talking
about aliens, by the way.
Yes, skipping ahead a little bithere and this may be the alien
movie's signature move to modelhow patriarchal culture
distracts people fromcapitalism's parasitism by
designating women whetherwitches, prostitutes, midwives,
priestesses, political activists, those who want to terminate
(24:16):
pregnancies or protectivemothers as the real threat to
the status quo.
End quote.
Alien was so successful that itinspired five main sequels and
or prequels and spinoffs, butmore so.
Alien was one of the mostsuccessful space, horror and
science fiction movies ever made.
Not only did it bring thisgenre to way more people than
had previously experienced it,it also influenced so many
(24:40):
movies since its initial release.
With a budget of $11 million,it went on to make $184 million
globally.
Adjusted for inflation, that'sabout $700 million in 2025 money
.
It's one of the highestgrossing films of 1979, proving
that sci-fi horror could be ablockbuster genre.
Alien currently holds a 98%rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
(25:03):
Roger Ebert called it quote oneof the scariest movies ever
made.
End quote.
Aliens was released in 1986.
It also stars Sigourney Weaver,along with Carrie Henn and Bill
Paxton.
Aliens was directed by noneother than James Cameron and
Alan.
Tell us.
Tell us about the rest of theAlien franchise, please.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh geez, here we go.
So the original Alien wasindeed a pinnacle of science
fiction films in general, butit's a really small story.
It's ripley on a ship.
They investigate lv 426 andthey gets, they encounter some
(25:43):
eggs and they bring it back andit's bad.
All all these things right, butit's all about ripley on the
ship, well, with the rest of thecrew, for a very limited amount
of time, but it's a veryself-contained story of Ripley
surviving on a ship against asingle alien.
It's a small, containedenvironment rife with horror,
(26:07):
and it kind of wrote the book onhow to do horror movie villains
.
Well, you don't show thevillain, you let the audience
interpret what you think theylook like.
You show them absolutely.
It's like jaws, you know.
You show it absolutelyminimally, only when you have to
, and you let fear do the restof the work.
(26:28):
Also, ripley besides, just, youknow, being a final girl was a
perfect example of you're smart.
You don't do all the dumb shitthat everyone else is doing in
these slasher movies ripley islike the perfect final girl.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I just want to say that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
She makes great decisions.
She's up against impossibleodds.
This isn't Michael Myers, whowalks really slow and, you know,
maybe pops out of the closetand you can beat by poking a
clothes hanger in his eye.
You know, this is a xenomorphthat is mostly bulletproof.
(27:12):
You can't even use blades onhim because you'll burn to death
from his acid blood.
You have to be insanely smartand Ripley really wrote the book
on how to be a smart womanprotagonist and it's really cool
.
Then you move on to alienswhere so an alien?
On to aliens where so an alien.
(27:36):
The xenomorph had all theweapons and ripley had nothing.
In aliens the humans have allthe guns right and the aliens
have whatever right and it'skind of a slaughter in the on
the uh humans side and it's it'smore of an action movie.
They transitioned perfectlyfrom a horror movie to a sci-fi
action movie and that is one ofthe reasons why the franchise
(27:58):
really kicked off was becausethey went immediately for a
broader audience why, like?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
what do you think is the difference in tone that
makes alien horror and aliensshift into action, sci-fi?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
in the first one, ripley was helpless.
Did she even have aflamethrower?
In the first one, I remember.
But it's her versus one alienwith no guns.
She had nothing.
Everything she had wasimprovised.
And then in aliens she comeswith a team of marines and she
is the consultant and she saidokay, if you're to fight the
(28:32):
xenomorphs, this is what youneed, all these fucking guns,
everything that you think youneed.
Double it.
And they fought.
They actually listened.
It's a action movie.
But also when they get there,the stakes that everyone
prepared for were tripled.
So they were still kind ofoverwhelmed.
And you know they they do okay,but it is an action movie and
(28:56):
it's just the greatest battle.
At the end, with ripley and thefucking uh mech fighting the
xenomorph queen, you know, withher, her cargo loader punching
it into the airlock, it's socool what about the other films
in the franchise?
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I mean, I I have personally seen alien romulus,
but I know we're not there yet.
I know there's some.
We're not there yet, there'ssome films.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Next comes alien three, okay, and, and then that
is ripley on a penal colony andthat is kind of like.
In the first one, the xenomorphhad the upper, they had the
advantage.
The second one, the human hadthe advantage.
And the second one, the humanhad the advantage, and the third
one, everyone has the advantage.
But it's kind of dumb.
Okay, it's, it's a cool idea.
(29:41):
They crash land on a penalcolony.
There's a lot that goes on.
This was supposed to be the endof the franchise we love a good
trilogy yep, but money talksright, sure, and the franchise
makes too much money.
Enter alien 4 resurrection.
Guess what ripley's back.
So mild spoiler for alien 3fast forward 30 seconds if you
(30:04):
don't listen to this.
But the end of alien 3.
She is infected by xenomorph,so she is going to, you know,
chest burst out right.
Instead she commits suicide.
She jumps into a giant vat ofmolten steel like terminator
just like terminator, but theyresurrect her with dna and after
(30:26):
many, many failed attempts,they resurrect her and the
xenomorph inside her oh becausethey're trying to bring the
xenomorph back, because it's allabout biological warfare.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
So now, is she in every movie.
Sigourney weaver in all of themovies no, oh so yeah, she comes
back.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
They extract the xenomorph from her through
surgery.
She also is like part xenomorphbecause it was like a cloning
thing.
Okay, it's kind of weird youknow she's not a human that was
like part xenomorph because itwas like a cloning thing.
It's kind of weird, sure.
You know she's not a human thatwas infected with xenomorph.
She was a human that was bredwith xenomorph DNA.
So she's kind of like you knowsuperpowers.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
She's got superpowers .
It's a bad movie but it'sreally fun.
You should all watch it.
Okay, but it's bad.
After Alien Resurrection, whichwas the equivalent of Halloween
H2O okay, yep, you know, notHalloween Resurrection, no,
halloween H2O.
Okay it's.
It's cool, it's really cool,but it kind of jumps the shark,
sure, then you move into thenext era of the franchise, uh,
(31:25):
which is Prometheus.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I saw Prometheus in theaters.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Prometheus is a horrible movie the first time
you watch it.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I agree.
I was like am I an idiot?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
you're not an idiot.
You're only an idiot becauseyou didn't watch the two-hour
youtube explanation of whatyou're actually watching right
now.
Had you watched some guy onyoutube tell you everything
that's going on, everythingabout the engineers and whatnot
and what everything means andeverything I watched?
I watched prometheus.
I thought it was boring as hell, it made no sense.
(31:56):
And then I watched my youtubeexplanation, which was longer
than the Prometheus movie, andthen I went back and rewatched
Prometheus.
I'm like, wow, the perfect film.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
You know what, though ?
There's art that I will workfor, but blockbuster movies not
art that I'm going to work for.
You got to make me, you got tobring me along on the ride.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I'll give.
I'll give them this.
After I watched the mythos, I'mlike you know what?
Speaker 1 (32:22):
fuck yeah why does it make you think it's the perfect
movie?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
it's not the perfect movie, but it's a very cool
amount of world building sure,because I've heard this before
from bros.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
a lot of bros say prometheus is the the perfect
movie?
And I'm like, even in a perfectworld where this movie is
accessible, why is it perfect?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Nothing about this movie is accessible.
You have to access it on yourown.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, I'm not going to do that for a movie that
plays in a major theater, in anAMC.
Yeah, I mean OK.
So then what happens afterPrometheus?
After Prometheus but Prometheusis a prequel.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Prometheus is a prequel, yeah.
And then we move on to Covenant, and in Covenant it's just more
cool alien shenanigans.
We have the absolute coolestdroid played by Michael
Fassbender.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he's justso cool.
I'm sorry.
(33:22):
Like Michael Fassassbender,he's a fantastic actor.
Yeah, he makes a wonderfulmagneto and he makes an even
better robot.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
you put them together whoa, yeah, wow, I want to see
that, but no, he's, it's soencapsulating.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Alien Covenant is not a great movie on its own, it's
not even good, but as part of agreater whole it's a pinnacle
piece because it really expandscertain aspects of the franchise
.
And you really learn thesethings once you keep moving
forward.
(33:57):
And I hate having to say thatyou need to see the entire thing
to appreciate it, because thatreally doesn't make for a good
film, right.
But when you watch all thesethings back to back, you're like
this makes so much sense surebut the fact that these things
come out like seven years apart,you're like oh, fuck yourself,
right.
But then, after that comesromulus and I.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I can jump in here.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Romulus stars Rain, it's her name and it's excellent
.
I knew very little at the timewhen I saw Romulus.
I'd seen Alien a long time agoand Prometheus and that was it
and I thought it stood alone.
And I know some diehard fansthought it was horrible, laughed
out loud at it, but I thoughtit was a fun film.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I have no major issues with romulus, it's super
fun anytime you have a droidthat is kind of an anti-hero,
it's, it's an, it's an, I'm onboard yeah it's, it's
interesting I also like that themain dynamics in romulus are
friendship and like siblings andnot everything is romantic.
I thought that was kind ofrefreshing and cool I think that
(34:59):
is a cornerstone of the Alienfranchise though, is that you
have relationships with womenthat have nothing to do with
romance.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Feminism strikes again.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Which, for some crazy reason, is unique to the Alien
franchise.
I want to say that one of thebest told stories in the Alien
franchise is actually from oneof their video games called
Alien Isolation.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And you play as Eleanor Ripley's daughter.
This actually takes placebetween Alien and Aliens, when
Ripley is technically in stasisin between planets because she
takes jonesy the cat, you knowinto her little pod and she goes
to sleep.
There's like 50 years that goby and she has a daughter and
(35:46):
after like 10 years or so, thedaughter becomes old enough.
That's like I'm gonna go findmy mom and she starts finding
all the clues to like what thefuck happened in the stromo.
And then she ends up going tothis space station and there's a
bunch of bad shit, isn't that?
When Romulus takes place too,romulus takes.
Yes, romulus also takes placeduring the same time period.
(36:09):
Yeah, and fun fact aboutRomulus is that you can actually
see Ripley's ship moored in thebackground of one of the shots.
That's cool.
So, like you know, I mean,they're not looking for Ripley,
they don't know anything aboutit, right, but she's there.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Meanwhile, her daughter is like, clearly
looking for her mother buthaving to deal with rogue,
droids, xenomorphs, all thesethings, but she has, like, all
the strength of her motherbecause you know same genes.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Mixed with all these things, but she has, like, all
the strength of her motherbecause, you know, same genes.
Yeah, mixed with it's a videogame.
So like the stakes are so muchhigher.
Cool, that's very fun.
And in the game the xenomorphis immortal.
You cannot kill the xenomorphit's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
We'll take a bow, alan.
Thank you for your alien recapyou're welcome.
And if we're talking aboutalien, we should also mention a
film that influenced it, a filmcalled called it the Terror from
Beyond Space, from 1958.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Not Stephen King's, it no.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
It, the Terror from Beyond Space.
The film was directed by EdwardL Kahn and written by Jerome
Bixby.
It tells the story of thesecond time a spacecraft from
Earth is able to make it to Mars.
The second expedition islooking to investigate what
happened to the first crew,which they discovered crashed
into the planet.
They find only one survivor onboard.
(37:27):
But there are similaritiesbetween it the terror from
beyond space and Alien in theform of an alien stalking and
terrorizing humans.
But that wasn't the only filmthat influenced Alien.
Quoting from the New York Timesarticle by Mikado Murphy, quote
even with its high-tech visualeffects and intricate sets,
alien is fundamentally a horrormovie about crew members getting
(37:49):
picked off one by one.
Mr Scott said that when hefirst read the Alien script by
Dan O'Bannon, quote, it wasfrankly what I would call a very
well-written B-movie, and wecarried it out in an A-way with
a terrific cast and a fantasticmonster.
Those B-movie undertones werewhat emerged in the low-budget
(38:10):
alien knockoffs that came after,like Galaxy of Terror from 1981
, and perhaps best known forsexual assaults committed by a
giant worm.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
We watched Galaxy of Terror, holy fuck.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And Dark Universe from 1993, which features Joe
Estevez and a poorly mademonster, end quote.
I do not think that I watchedGalaxy of Terror.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
You did.
You were right next to me.
Galaxy of Terror I really don'tknow what to say about this
movie.
It seemingly checks every boxthat I want in a movie while
simultaneously satisfying none.
It's a psychological horror,sci-fi fantasy where everyone's
like greatest fears are comingto life.
(38:49):
Like that was a really, reallyweird, disturbing movie that was
overly graphic.
I didn't like it.
I didn't like it at all.
Also, the effects were badwhile simultaneously incredibly
graphic.
I can't explain it.
Okay, two thumbs down over here,no, but like two thumbs really
(39:10):
up, that plummet down I don'tknow.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's okay, you're getting emotional, I don't want
to talk about it.
In general.
The 1990s saw an influx inspace horror movies, including
Event Horizon, again from 97,spear from 98, species from 95,
and, of course, jason X from2001.
Have you seen Species?
Nope.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Do you know the premise?
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Tell us the premise of Species, Alan.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
The premise is that a species wants to mate, so they
become a sexy thing and seduceYikes, and it's a long-running
franchise.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Understood.
Obviously, these run thespectrum between silly and
serious, and I wonder if thiscan partially be explained by a
growing interest in sciencefiction and also the
advancements in CGI and otherspecial effects that allowed for
space horror movies to beproduced in better quality.
This is also something that cameup a bit in our AI series that
(40:10):
certain filmmakers wereliterally waiting for effects to
be good enough to make scriptsthat they already had to make,
scripts that they already had.
Quoting again from the New YorkTimes article by Murphy, quote
the horror in space premise hasalso been executed with more
creativity and bigger budgets.
There was Event Horizon, inwhich the crew, including
Lawrence Fishburne, wastormented by hallucinations and
(40:31):
Doom, with Dwayne Johnson from2005, in which the crew was done
in by mutated Martians, marsand attacks also factored this
year into life, in which crewmembers like Ryan Reynolds were
taken down by an organism theyfound on the Red Planet.
And the horror space conceptconverged in a more outrageous
way in Jason X, the 2001 entryin the Friday, the 13th
(40:54):
franchise that sent the film'skiller title into space along
with androids.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
End quote I'm so glad you brought up doom, because
it's a very unique doom, notdune doom.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yes, d-o-o-m.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I'm just saying it for the audience doom due to
scientific experiments intoextra dimensional travel.
They open a rift on mars intoanother dimension and once again
, just like Event Horizon, therift they open is into hell,
which you know that's pretty bad.
And then one guy says, oh, Igot to take care of this.
(41:28):
And then he just cocks hisshotgun and goes to town.
And that is the entire premiseof Doom, of one guy fucking up
all of hell Dang.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
that's pretty rock and roll.
It's pretty cool.
Another concept that I love,which I was first pointed to in
Murphy's New York Times article,is the space heroine Final Girl
.
Obviously, Ripley is the mosticonic example of this, but she
isn't the only one.
Quoting one more time fromMurphy's words, quote horror
films thrive on the concept ofthe final girl, the last one
(42:04):
left standing to fend off themaniacal killer.
But Sigourney Weaver, as Ripleyin the Alien films, made the
transition from survivor tofull-blown sci-fi action hero.
She paved the way for otherleading women in space, from
Jodie Foster in Contact toSandra Bullock in Gravity Within
the Alien universe.
Noomi Rapace took the heroicreins in Prometheus.
I mean, they took from the best.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
You're never going to beat Ripley.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
I feel like Ripley has like Sarah Connor vibes.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
She 100% has Sarah Connor vibes.
Well sorry, sarah Connor isinsane.
She's insane in all the rightways, sure, but she is insane,
sure, where her paranoia is offthe charts.
And because of that sheprepares her son, you know, for
(42:58):
who knows what might come rightin this case, ripley has
everything right in front of her, but no one believes her, so
she's left to, kind of like,deal with this on her own right.
Not too dissimilar from SarahConnor, but you know, it's a she
kind of makes more of aself-fulfilling prophecy yeah,
fair enough, and I do want totake a moment.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
I know this is controversial for Contact.
I know it's not pure horror,but it remains one of my
favorite films of all time andfor me there's like real heart
in Contact.
Right, it's a love story.
It's a story about family.
It's a father and a daughter.
It's a story about grief andloss.
It's a story about grief andloss, but it's also a story
(43:38):
about a woman working in a man'sfields and it is terrifying on
that level alone.
But on other levels.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Women working in men's fields is horrifying.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
But there's these moments, like, for example, when
Jodie Foster is walking intothis machine, where the
situation is so unnervingbecause A people don't want her
to be there so much that they'reblowing the shit up, or they
don't want it to happen ingeneral.
They don't want her to do bethe one to do it.
They pick someone else first,even though she deserved it, and
(44:10):
then she finally gets thismoment of this thing that she's
been fighting for and deserves.
But what it is is is thismachine that's so unknown and
there's just something about thesituation of that that's so.
She's so brave, right, andwhatever.
But the movie sort of takesthese turns right.
It starts as kind of thiswholesome drama movie about like
(44:32):
a father and a daughter, andthen it takes another turn where
we realize, okay, she's ascientist and she's dealing with
all these satellites, but thenboom, there's contact, right.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
It's so interesting that you say that because you
know we've seen so many movieswhere the man just goes against
all the rules and does you knowwhat he thinks is right and it's
corny.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
But then when the woman does it, you're like, wow,
she's so brave.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Well, because she doesn't have that liberty
generally right.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I'm not criticizing this.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
It's like I'm—.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
You're pointing out the difference in the reception
of those actions.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Also, it's more of just like a difference in the
writing.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
You know, generally when someone is writing the man
doing it, it's from like anaction movie, when it's a horror
movie, it's the woman, isn't?
That crazy Sure.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
The second turn I think contact makes is when the
machine is actually built and wesee it for the first time.
I don't know about you, but theimagery of that moment again,
when I saw this movie howeverold I was right, I was quite
young Four the imagery, though,of that machine, like, will
stick with you forever.
It is so alienoid and bizarreand impressive that it's kind of
(45:54):
like this movie started offwith a guy and his daughter and
a ham radio.
And here we are under this,like billionaire's waterfall,
right, like it really has somestrange twists and turns in it,
and then, of course, right whenshe goes on her journey, it's
it's a whole nother thing, but Ijust wanted to to talk about it
because it holds a dear placein my heart and I think again,
(46:15):
really the cool thing aboutspace horror is that so much of
it can be situational in a waythat science fiction isn't right
.
Star Wars is not horror, it'sscience fiction, it's action,
but it's not really horror.
It has dark moments, but evendark moments when you have Darth
Vader or other things, comparedto the impending vacuum of a
(46:35):
black hole, it seems light andsilly.
Right, it's not horror.
Pending vacuum of a black hole.
It seems light and silly.
Right, it's not horror.
So it's been cool as anexercise to try to parse out the
difference between those things.
And again, it's a very thinline and it really doesn't truly
matter at the scheme of things,but it's been a fun kind of
thought exercise.
Okay, alan, this is your finalmoment.
What space horror films did wemiss?
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Well, I mean, as we talked about in the very
beginning of the episode, it'slike such a broad genre that
there's so much stuff we haven'ttalked about.
But the main thing that jumpsto mind that we have not
discussed is dead space, whichthere are some films, uh, but it
started as a video gamefranchise and the premise of
(47:19):
Dead Space is that humanity, farinto the distant future, space
travel, has become a thing wherewe're traveling to distant
galaxies and in all this timehumanity has never encountered
another species.
As far as humans know, they arethe only ones in the universe,
(47:42):
which is already kind of aunique concept it's kind of
scary, even if you think of itthat way but then, all of a
sudden, they discover the marker, which is a giant crayola, a
giant alien artifact.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Uh-huh right, yeah, weird what do you mean, artifact
?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
like a rune giant, giant, fucking monolith looking
thing okay like a stonesculpture?
Speaker 1 (48:10):
why are alien artifacts always look like ruins
from indiana jones?
Speaker 2 (48:14):
it doesn't at all actually.
It's all twisty like, kind oflike a horn, what is?
Speaker 1 (48:18):
the substance that it's made of, tower, I don't
know, I didn't test all.
Actually it's all twisty likekind of like a horn.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
What is the substance that it's made of Tower?
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I didn't test it, but what does it look like?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
It looks like a giant spirally tower of horn.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Like ivory.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Black with, like, red stripes.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
And then this thing, once it was touched by organic
material, activates, and theneverything that is dead
reanimates, but in a way thatit's like that's how it
reproduces, through necroticmaterial.
So this species exists byreproducing through other
(48:57):
species dying.
That's pretty rock and roll sothese, these things are called
necromorphs.
All they want to do is killother things, because that's how
they reproduce.
It's pretty fucked up yeah likeit completely wipes out a space
station.
All the people, all theinhabitants become these like
(49:17):
weird warp necromorph things.
One of the most terrifyingthings are the babies, because
all of a sudden you have theselike weird baby looking
murderous things and it's anentire franchise so full of lore
and it's so horrific.
Also, they're mostly immortalbecause you know they're dead.
(49:39):
The only way to actually killthem is to completely dismember
them so they can't move anymore.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Fascinating.
I'm surprised you haven'ttalked at length about hell
divers on this series.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
What would that have to do with space horror?
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Isn't hell divers in space?
Are we going to differentplanets?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
No, it has very much to do with space, but that's all
about space democracy I thinkit's pretty scary.
You're constantly under attackyou are, but you're, you're
trying to, you're spreadingdemocracy to these cats.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
You know, so you're a colonizer socialist swines I
understand.
Anyway, on that note, thatbrings us to be the end of our
history exploration of spacehorror.
But the good news is that theride is not over yet.
We have two space horror storyepisodes because we got so many
(50:28):
incredible submissions fromwriters.
So we have two upcomingepisodes featuring those really
great stories for you guys andI'm really thrilled to be able
to share them because, again,they're very impressive and
scary and great, and we've gotsome awesome voice actors paired
with those, so I'm super, superexcited about that.
In the meantime, I hopeeverybody's hanging in, doing
(50:49):
okay.
Stay safe, stay spooky andwatch out for black holes.
Bye.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
Bye.
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Lunatics Radio Hourpodcast.
I am Abbey Brenker sitting herewith Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
And today we are picking up our conversation
around space horror and reallygetting into, I would say, one
of the most iconic, not evenjust space horror, but film
franchises of all time, and ofcourse I'm talking about Alien.
But let's take a step back.
Why I love Alien.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
I know I know, I know , I know I'm stopping you.
We got to talk about alien.
Okay, I just want to, so good.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
I agree, and I'm going to let you have tons of
airtime in this episode.
There's one thing I want to saymake it quick which is that last
episode we we went through allthe sources, which are going to
be in the description of thispodcast as well, so you can see
the sources that we've used forthe research that is being
presented today.
But also we spent a lot of timelast episode categorizing
(01:12):
different space horror films.
Right, so the first categoryare aliens on Earth or
extraterrestrial things on Earthin a sort of calm way here to
communicate with us.
The second category was similarbut different in that it was
alien invasion.
And then we got into spacehorror truly like horror set in
(01:33):
space, with 2001, a SpaceOdyssey.
So now it is time to talk aboutone of the most iconic space
horror, but film franchises,horror franchises of all time
Alien.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
OK, take it away, Abby.
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Alien was released in 1979.
The film was directed by RidleyScott and stars Sigourney
Weaver as Ripley.
Alien is such an excellentexample of space horror for many
reasons, but one of them beingthat it exemplifies so many
different elements of thesubgenre, so I'm going to kind
of break it down that way.
For instance, one of the thingsthat is, I think, most
(02:06):
terrifying organically aboutspace is this idea and fear of
isolation.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, you can't breathe in space.
It's a fact.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Sure, and that's part of it right, there's danger
everywhere, there's unknowneverywhere.
It's kind of like ocean horrorin that way deep sea horror, but
also there's this again oceanhorror in that way, deep sea
horror, but also there's thisagain fear of isolation
helplessness in this greatexpanse this great void.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Isn't it interesting that in this great expanse and
void, the number one horrormechanic in space horror is
claustrophobia.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, a thousand percent, because what you're
talking about, right, like notbeing able to breathe, but also
in a lot of this horror, it's onsmall ships with tight
corridors and people die andyou're alone and you know, and
it's just so ripe with thingsthat could go wrong.
If you panic and open a window,you're dead.
(03:00):
In so many other films but afew examples Event Horizon from
1997, sunshine from 2007, theCloverfield Paradox from 2018,
moon from 2009, the Martian from2015, gravity from 2013, and,
(03:23):
of course, 2001, a Space Odysseyfrom 1968.
What's really cool aboutscience fiction and space horror
, in my opinion, is that oftenthe creators will take a really
basic human emotion or fearagain, like desolation,
abandonment, isolation somethingthat many people can relate to
and transpose that fear onto asituation that we likely are
totally unfamiliar with, likebeing on a space station or
another planet.
But because we have an inherentfear of isolation, right or
(03:46):
claustrophobia or whatever it is, we have an inherent
appreciation for the totalvastness of space and we have
this inherent appreciation forthe total vastness of space in
the unknown.
Suddenly that isolation feelstotally all-consuming and
horrifying and relatable.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Gosh, if I had a nickel for every time I felt
desolated.
You really lumped some moviesin there that are quite
different.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
But don't you think they all explore the themes of
isolation?
The theme of isolation yes,that's the sentence that I said.
Yes, but that's yeah sure, herewe go, pick it apart now.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
But that's any movie on a spaceship where shit goes
wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Okay, floor is yours.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Let him cook man.
So are we talking about alien?
Are we talking about theseother movies?
You got you.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
You got to keep me on the rails here now we're
talking about alien, but ifthere's anything you want to say
about those movies, now is thetime okay, the other movies?
Speaker 2 (04:35):
yeah, let's.
Let's start with sunshine.
Okay, it's such a big film whenyou think about it, just the
idea of the sun is going out.
There's an expedition that issending a nuclear payload into
the sun to restart the fusionprocess.
(04:56):
Humanity has sent one previousexpedition and it just they lost
track with it and they've sincescrapped together Earth's very
last resources to send one finalone.
In this case you don't havejust the well-being of the crew,
which of course, is paramountbecause, like, they're the
protagonists, but if this fails,earth will die and it's going
(05:20):
to be like a very slow nuclearwinter type death because you
know they'll just freeze, whichis really like horrific.
I love that movie.
I also love Cillian Murphy, oneof my favorite actors of all
time.
I wish he did more stuffoutside of like losing him for
like 30 years to Peaky Blinders.
Just put him in more horror.
(05:42):
He's so freaking good.
He's so good, he really is, andwhat a handsome guy.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Yeah, he's pretty hot .
I also do want to talk brieflyabout the Martian, because we
actually ended up explaining theplot of the Martian to your mom
recently for, I would say, agood 40 minutes.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
I mean that's being generous.
It took a lot longer.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
You were trying to make a point about potatoes and
somehow we ended up talkingabout the martian she just
didn't understand the conceptthat you could take a piece of a
potato and grow more potatoesplant it and grow more potatoes
and so she didn't believe mewhen I talked about it like
scientifically, about how peopleactually grow potatoes.
So alan was like you know what?
You know what's going toconvince her and break through
(06:24):
Talking about the Martian sheloves.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Matt Damon, another handsome guy.
This seems like a slam dunk.
This was a perfect example ofspace horror through kind of
like a comedic lens, you know,because this is all about the
tone of the writing.
Right, I've seen the movie, butI love the book more.
(06:47):
In the book, you know, it's allthese like little micro
chapters, because it's just thejournal of Mark Watney.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
And it's all about that.
Call down.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
That's an epistolary novel.
Very good, and it is.
I learned that from you becauseyou're so smart and it's just
about the domineering, about thedomineering spirit of man.
But on the flip side, thiscould have 100% just been a
horror novel.
Right Of this man venting hisfears and insecurities as he
(07:17):
slowly succumbs to death.
And that's what the Martian is.
But he's slowly succumbing todeath, but instead he's dealing
with like an upbeat can do,attitude of like well, how do I
live for the next three days?
Maybe I'll do this.
Okay, cool, we got throughthree days.
Now how do I live for the nextI don't know 600?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Let's try this instead well, I'll say the tone
of it too, and it's not reallyhorror, but the tone of the
martian is sort of what makes itso charming and stand out.
You know, the story itselfisn't revolutionary and I I love
that.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
I love that it takes what you expect from these
situations and instead of givingyou like some kind of like
cheeky toning, tongue-in-cheekcharacter who's a badass or
whatever, it gives you kind oflike a goofy guy, you know I
want to give you know, a roundof applause to andy weir, the,
the author of the martian, andhonestly all of his works,
(08:14):
because he basically takes acharacter, puts them into these
impossible situations and thenjust removes the fear and
replaces it with science rightso, uh, the other huge andy weir
novel is project hill mary oh,I've never heard of that oh,
it's so, so good.
I'm not gonna say a thing aboutthe novel because everyone
(08:35):
should just read it, okay it'sso, so good, uh, but another
doomsday scenario.
And the character deals withthese mind-shattering scenarios
with science, where it's like,well, I don't have no idea what
to do in the situation.
But one plus one still equalstwo.
(08:55):
So you know, let's see what wecan do with math speaking of
matt damon, do you thinkinterstellar is space horror?
We talked about this duringpart one of the series Space
horror is a very gray area withscience fiction and interstellar
.
No, I wouldn't classify that ashorror, but there's certainly
(09:18):
horrific elements.
Speaker 1 (09:19):
I, yeah, I agree, but there's moments in that movie
where you're understanding, notto use a pun, but the gravity of
what's happening in a situationLike to me black holes, like
there's nothing more horrifying,you know, and Than a black hole
.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
Really why.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
It's just such an unconquerable enemy.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Why an enemy?
It's a force of nature.
Right, but if you are in, asituation, do you say a tsunami
is an enemy?
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Yeah, the natural disaster Like a tsunami, is also
like a thing like a black hole,is like minding its own
business.
It's never going to be the caseunless the whole of Earth is
sucked into a black hole in mylifetime that I'm going to have
to deal with it or think aboutit.
Based on right.
It's this very like basicconcept of this portal, this
vortex of destruction that isslow and unstoppable and sucks
(10:19):
anything into its path, into itand there's no way out and you
get spaghettified right if yougo close to it and it's just,
it's impossible, it's animpossibility to avoid if you're
in its way it will always winah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Is there any definitive black hole horror
movies?
Speaker 1 (10:38):
well, there are a few that come up.
One is high life starringrobert pattinson, and then event
horizon, a few things calledblack hole, but I can't vouch
for, uh, for those movies well,event horizon is unofficial or
hammer 40k lore is it?
Yes, that's interesting inevent horizon.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
They use a black hole effectively to travel to, to
breach dimensions, and thatdimension being the warp.
There's warhammer 40k peoplethat understand this better, but
they effectively breach intoanother dimension.
That dimension is hell or thethe hell equivalent sure and so
(11:20):
these like demon forces startbecause equivalent exchange.
Right, we're sending energyinto that dimension, so energy
has to come into ours.
All this demonic energy mindwarping stuff, physical entities
is taking manifest in ourdimension because of physics and
shit fascinating.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Yeah, have you heard recordings of the sounds of a
black hole?
No I think if you had heardthat, you would also associate
them as the wildest, most scaryenemy.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It would make sense that it's loud.
Do you understand?
Okay, how much?
What organization had an internthat was willing to go to a
black hole with a microphone torecord that?
Nasa, that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
They didn't go to the black hole.
They picked up on the soundwaves coming from space.
You're a sound engineer.
They picked up on the soundwaves coming from space.
You're a sound engineer, youunderstand this.
There's no sound in space, what, of course, there is.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
What, how Sound, is the vibration of molecules?
There's molecules in space, notenough to touch each other.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
No sure, there's a certain amount of hydrogen atoms
, but they're not close enoughto interact with each other.
There is no sound in space.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Are you talking about this like the word space, as in
like distance?
Speaker 2 (12:39):
What?
No?
Space is a vacuum.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I'm talking about outer space.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
Outer space is a vacuum.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
There's sound in outer space If you clap your
hands in space.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
You could not hear it .
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So all the space horror movies where people are
talking, that's people go tospace not hear it.
So all the space horror movieswhere people are talking.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
That's people go to space.
They don't talk on spacestations, they're talking in?
Speaker 1 (12:55):
I know that they do.
I've heard recordings of theastronauts inside space stations
.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
They have atmosphere, sound, travels through air.
Right there's no air in spacethere's sound in space there is
no sound in space.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
How did they get this recording then?
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So a few different ways.
One is that they either used oh.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
NASA released new audio approximating the sound of
a black hole at the center ofthe Perseus galaxy cluster.
Experts discovered it had apitch of over quote million
billion times deeper than thelimits of human hearing, making
it too deep to be heard.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The bottom threshold of human hearing is 20 hertz
like, so this was a millionbillion times deeper a million
billion.
When you think of like whalesright, they sound kind of goofy
yeah but that's because you'reonly hearing a very small
fraction of what they'reactually saying their whole
range.
The vast majority of it issubharmonics.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Can they approximate that?
Because that would be cool tohear.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Well, sure, but then all they do is they pitch, shift
it up and into the threshold ofhuman hearing.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
What do you think about the movie Gravity?
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I've only seen it once.
I think Sandra Bullock isincredible.
Yeah, I think she was best inMiss Congeniality, sure, but
Gravity is very good.
It's a very good film.
It really encapsulates thehelplessness of being a
Earth-originating Simeon-likebeing and then being thrust into
(14:30):
a zero-gravity environment thathas to breathe through a suit.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
You know, like we were never supposed to be in
space, yet here we are.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
I also think it takes a really strong actor to be
able to carry a movie like thatwhen you're alone for the
majority of the film, and shedoes a really good job.
My one complaint is the amountof like little grunts she makes.
But that was.
You know, that wasn't herchoice.
Anyway, alan, let's talk aboutAlien.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Whose choice was it?
Speaker 1 (15:00):
The director's.
I assume Sanjay wants the grunt.
Another common space horrorelement that we see in Alien is
an enemy, in this case theultimate predator the Xenomorph.
The Xenomorph is an apexpredator, impossibly strong and
intelligent, and throughout thefranchise the audience becomes
experts on the life cycle ofthis creature, from eggs to
(15:23):
facehugger, to chestburster andfinally the adult Xenomorph.
An adult Xenomorph has a spinyexoskeleton body that acts as
armor and makes it againincredibly strong and
impenetrable.
It's outfitted with acid bloodand a secondary inner jaw that
allows it to bite through ahuman skull.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
That's his little mouth.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
For me, the xenomorph , in all of its phases, triggers
an instinctual fear.
I may not often encounteraliens, but I do encounter
horrible bugs and other earthlycreatures that are unpleasant.
This is obviously drawing onthose fears, right?
The Xenomorph was designed byHR Geiger.
Geiger was a Swiss surrealistartist.
He was known for what theinternet calls a dark
(16:07):
biomechanical aesthetic.
His work has influenced manydifferent elements of horror and
science fiction aesthetics.
The filmmakers knew howimportant the design of the
xenomorph was to the movie.
Producer Walter Hill even saidthat the success of the movie
depended on the creature design.
Quoting from the Artnetcomarticle by Tim Brinkhoff.
(16:27):
Quote the xenomorph has becomeso iconic that it is difficult
to imagine it looking anydifferent from what we ended up
seeing on screen.
That said, scott's teamactually cycled through a number
of designs before settling onthe final version.
One of the first iterations,designed by American-Australian
artist Ron Cobb, who previouslyworked on Star Wars Episode IV,
(16:49):
a New Hope from 1977, apparentlyresembled a massive four-legged
crab.
Dissatisfied with this design,scott turned to a different
artist named HR Giger.
Born in Switzerland, giger wasknown for his paintings of
demonic biomechanical creatures,drawn in a style so unique that
it was given rise to the termGiger-esque.
(17:10):
When Scott stumbled across theartist Necronomicon, a 1977
coffee table compendium of hisgreatest work, the director was
so impressed that he decided tobring him onto the project, end
quote.
And if you do look up Geiger'sNecronom 4 artwork, the piece
that directly inspired thedesign of the xenomorph, you see
how truly similar it is thedesign of the xenomorph.
(17:32):
You see how truly similar it is.
Even though Geiger was a 2Dartist, he took on the task of
translating his designs and hisart into the 3D creature.
Famously, he used condoms forthe creature's lips and put a
real human skull into the headto perfect the anatomy of his
design.
The Artnetcom article makes agreat point about Geiger's lack
of recognition for his work onAlien.
(17:54):
He did win an Academy Award forvisual effects, but every
single expansion of thefranchise takes his work and
uses it or iterates on it freely.
The Xenomorph is the ultimatepredator in terms of look,
strength, skills and tools Ahorrifying, unrelenting and
visceral enemy, someone saysimilar to a black hole so the
(18:14):
xenomorph is one of my favoritehorror movie villains, simply
because they're so freaking cool.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
The xenomorph that we're all familiar with from the
hr geiger drawings, which, ifyou look up, are incredibly
sexual, very phallic.
I mean not just that, just likethey're they're phallic, but
they're also effeminate, like,it's just a very sleek.
It just it.
Just it oozes power and like.
(18:44):
But that's the point.
And so you learn later on inthe alien mythos, you know,
these are engineered beings.
This is not just some likealien species, right, that, you
know, is invading, right, it'snot that at all right, this is
the absolute pinnacle of geneticengineering to make the
(19:09):
ultimate killing machine.
One of the things that helpswith hunting is having this like
sexual sleekness.
It's, it's just like this extralayer of disarmament, of
superiority, you know is thatyour?
Speaker 1 (19:24):
my interpretation is almost like.
It's just like a stripped downbeing right.
It's not a being that has shamearound any of these things and
it just is, in its nature, right.
It is a being that reproduces acertain way, it is a being that
hunts a certain way, and itjust doesn't have any pretense
about that I I think you hitsaid the perfect word like it's
(19:46):
all the the being is all aboutreproduction.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
It's its sole purpose is reproduction, right, right,
which I mean is true about mostorganisms everywhere, sure, but
you know, this is theencapsulation of the idea, and
when you have an artist behindit, of course they're going to
kind of go hand in hand.
I also love how the xenomorphchanges the appearance based off
(20:10):
the seed species.
For Alien 1 and two we see thesame type of xenomorph.
And that's because it is a, forlack of a better term.
It's a xenomorph egg that youknow becomes the little
facehugger thing and thenlatches onto a human and then we
(20:32):
see the full developedxenomorph based off gestating
inside of a human.
It's in the later series, 3 andonwards, when we see the full
swath of xenomorphs.
They kind of like pick andchoose different bits of genetic
code based off what is the mostsuperior bit of the seed
(20:54):
organism right in alien 3 itinfects a doberman and then you
get this quadruped xenomorph.
That's super fast, super strongand becomes the the ultimate
thing.
And it based off of what afucking dog.
You'd think a human would be asuperior hunter.
(21:15):
But all the intelligence comesfrom the xenomorph right.
But it just takes certainphysical attributes from, from
the dog.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
It's kind of cool, yeah, very interesting.
So another and you hinted atthis earlier, alan but another
major theme in space horror, asdemonstrated by Alien, is
claustrophobia.
So we see it in Alien and inthe whole franchise, but we also
see it in found footage spacehorror movie Apollo 18 from
(21:43):
2011,.
Event Horizon, the Last Day onMars from 2013,.
400 Days from 2015,.
And the Silent Sea from 2021.
In addition to other horrorelements that push Alien over
the edge from pure sciencefiction to space horror, like
extreme body horror for one,alien also plays with feminism
(22:03):
in a huge way.
Not only is Ripley one of themost iconic female action heroes
of all time, the movie playswith gender in a few fascinating
different ways.
Ripley was originally writtenas a male character.
The original script featured asix-person all-male crew.
The Ripley character wasoriginally called Martin Robbie.
Ripley is strong mentally andphysically.
(22:25):
She's crafty and resourcefuland brave, and beyond that, her
character breaks withtraditional gender stereotypes
in a delightful way.
She wants to follow quarantineprotocol instead of bringing
Kane back on board afterinfection.
Right, she's cool, she'slogical, she's intellectual.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Oh, a woman that wants to follow the rules, huh.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
There are also some feminist reads that the
xenomorph queen is a symbol offeminism.
In the franchise I'm quotingfrom the Public Books article by
Eleanor Johnson, quote In anincredible moment of
interspecies communication, thealien mother looks at Ripley,
sees that she too is trying toprotect her child, and so the
alien mother signals to herdaughters to back off and she
(23:06):
lets Ripley pass.
There is a flickering moment ofinterspecies recognition when
the alien mother decides thatshe will not attack.
All xenomorphs are female.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
They reproduce, they proliferate and they need some
exterior genetic material tomake that so.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Yes, absolutely.
I believe that is the case.
Picking up the quote again Fora flickering moment, the monster
becomes human.
But the film cannot toleratethat level of radicalism.
As soon as she and Newt arealmost out, ripley sees an egg
opening and she decides to torchthe entire nest.
The film thus scuttles thepossibility of interspecies
understanding.
The mother alien becomes ahorrifying predator again and
(23:54):
for the rest of the film.
And then skipping ahead alittle bit here, we're talking
about aliens, by the way.
Yes, skipping ahead a little bithere and this may be the alien
movie's signature move to modelhow patriarchal culture
distracts people fromcapitalism's parasitism by
designating women whetherwitches, prostitutes, midwives,
priestesses, political activists, those who want to terminate
(24:16):
pregnancies or protectivemothers as the real threat to
the status quo.
End quote.
Alien was so successful that itinspired five main sequels and
or prequels and spinoffs, butmore so.
Alien was one of the mostsuccessful space, horror and
science fiction movies ever made.
Not only did it bring thisgenre to way more people than
had previously experienced it,it also influenced so many
(24:40):
movies since its initial release.
With a budget of $11 million,it went on to make $184 million
globally.
Adjusted for inflation, that'sabout $700 million in 2025 money
.
It's one of the highestgrossing films of 1979, proving
that sci-fi horror could be ablockbuster genre.
Alien currently holds a 98%rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
(25:03):
Roger Ebert called it quote oneof the scariest movies ever
made.
End quote.
Aliens was released in 1986.
It also stars Sigourney Weaver,along with Carrie Henn and Bill
Paxton.
Aliens was directed by noneother than James Cameron and
Alan.
Tell us.
Tell us about the rest of theAlien franchise, please.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Oh geez, here we go.
So the original Alien wasindeed a pinnacle of science
fiction films in general, butit's a really small story.
It's ripley on a ship.
They investigate lv 426 andthey gets, they encounter some
(25:43):
eggs and they bring it back andit's bad.
All all these things right, butit's all about ripley on the
ship, well, with the rest of thecrew, for a very limited amount
of time, but it's a veryself-contained story of Ripley
surviving on a ship against asingle alien.
It's a small, containedenvironment rife with horror,
(26:07):
and it kind of wrote the book onhow to do horror movie villains
.
Well, you don't show thevillain, you let the audience
interpret what you think theylook like.
You show them absolutely.
It's like jaws, you know.
You show it absolutelyminimally, only when you have to
, and you let fear do the restof the work.
(26:28):
Also, ripley besides, just, youknow, being a final girl was a
perfect example of you're smart.
You don't do all the dumb shitthat everyone else is doing in
these slasher movies ripley islike the perfect final girl.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
I just want to say that.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
She makes great decisions.
She's up against impossibleodds.
This isn't Michael Myers, whowalks really slow and, you know,
maybe pops out of the closetand you can beat by poking a
clothes hanger in his eye.
You know, this is a xenomorphthat is mostly bulletproof.
(27:12):
You can't even use blades onhim because you'll burn to death
from his acid blood.
You have to be insanely smartand Ripley really wrote the book
on how to be a smart womanprotagonist and it's really cool
.
Then you move on to alienswhere so an alien?
On to aliens where so an alien.
(27:36):
The xenomorph had all theweapons and ripley had nothing.
In aliens the humans have allthe guns right and the aliens
have whatever right and it'skind of a slaughter in the on
the uh humans side and it's it'smore of an action movie.
They transitioned perfectlyfrom a horror movie to a sci-fi
action movie and that is one ofthe reasons why the franchise
(27:58):
really kicked off was becausethey went immediately for a
broader audience why, like?
Speaker 1 (28:05):
what do you think is the difference in tone that
makes alien horror and aliensshift into action, sci-fi?
Speaker 2 (28:12):
in the first one, ripley was helpless.
Did she even have aflamethrower?
In the first one, I remember.
But it's her versus one alienwith no guns.
She had nothing.
Everything she had wasimprovised.
And then in aliens she comeswith a team of marines and she
is the consultant and she saidokay, if you're to fight the
(28:32):
xenomorphs, this is what youneed, all these fucking guns,
everything that you think youneed.
Double it.
And they fought.
They actually listened.
It's a action movie.
But also when they get there,the stakes that everyone
prepared for were tripled.
So they were still kind ofoverwhelmed.
And you know they they do okay,but it is an action movie and
(28:56):
it's just the greatest battle.
At the end, with ripley and thefucking uh mech fighting the
xenomorph queen, you know, withher, her cargo loader punching
it into the airlock, it's socool what about the other films
in the franchise?
Speaker 1 (29:12):
I mean, I I have personally seen alien romulus,
but I know we're not there yet.
I know there's some.
We're not there yet, there'ssome films.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Next comes alien three, okay, and, and then that
is ripley on a penal colony andthat is kind of like.
In the first one, the xenomorphhad the upper, they had the
advantage.
The second one, the human hadthe advantage.
And the second one, the humanhad the advantage, and the third
one, everyone has the advantage.
But it's kind of dumb.
Okay, it's, it's a cool idea.
(29:41):
They crash land on a penalcolony.
There's a lot that goes on.
This was supposed to be the endof the franchise we love a good
trilogy yep, but money talksright, sure, and the franchise
makes too much money.
Enter alien 4 resurrection.
Guess what ripley's back.
So mild spoiler for alien 3fast forward 30 seconds if you
(30:04):
don't listen to this.
But the end of alien 3.
She is infected by xenomorph,so she is going to, you know,
chest burst out right.
Instead she commits suicide.
She jumps into a giant vat ofmolten steel like terminator
just like terminator, but theyresurrect her with dna and after
(30:26):
many, many failed attempts,they resurrect her and the
xenomorph inside her oh becausethey're trying to bring the
xenomorph back, because it's allabout biological warfare.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
So now, is she in every movie.
Sigourney weaver in all of themovies no, oh so yeah, she comes
back.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
They extract the xenomorph from her through
surgery.
She also is like part xenomorphbecause it was like a cloning
thing.
Okay, it's kind of weird youknow she's not a human that was
like part xenomorph because itwas like a cloning thing.
It's kind of weird, sure.
You know she's not a human thatwas infected with xenomorph.
She was a human that was bredwith xenomorph DNA.
So she's kind of like you knowsuperpowers.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:02):
She's got superpowers .
It's a bad movie but it'sreally fun.
You should all watch it.
Okay, but it's bad.
After Alien Resurrection, whichwas the equivalent of Halloween
H2O okay, yep, you know, notHalloween Resurrection, no,
halloween H2O.
Okay it's.
It's cool, it's really cool,but it kind of jumps the shark,
sure, then you move into thenext era of the franchise, uh,
(31:25):
which is Prometheus.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
I saw Prometheus in theaters.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Prometheus is a horrible movie the first time
you watch it.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
I agree.
I was like am I an idiot?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
you're not an idiot.
You're only an idiot becauseyou didn't watch the two-hour
youtube explanation of whatyou're actually watching right
now.
Had you watched some guy onyoutube tell you everything
that's going on, everythingabout the engineers and whatnot
and what everything means andeverything I watched?
I watched prometheus.
I thought it was boring as hell, it made no sense.
(31:56):
And then I watched my youtubeexplanation, which was longer
than the Prometheus movie, andthen I went back and rewatched
Prometheus.
I'm like, wow, the perfect film.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
You know what, though ?
There's art that I will workfor, but blockbuster movies not
art that I'm going to work for.
You got to make me, you got tobring me along on the ride.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I'll give.
I'll give them this.
After I watched the mythos, I'mlike you know what?
Speaker 1 (32:22):
fuck yeah why does it make you think it's the perfect
movie?
Speaker 2 (32:26):
it's not the perfect movie, but it's a very cool
amount of world building sure,because I've heard this before
from bros.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
a lot of bros say prometheus is the the perfect
movie?
And I'm like, even in a perfectworld where this movie is
accessible, why is it perfect?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Nothing about this movie is accessible.
You have to access it on yourown.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, I'm not going to do that for a movie that
plays in a major theater, in anAMC.
Yeah, I mean OK.
So then what happens afterPrometheus?
After Prometheus but Prometheusis a prequel.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
Prometheus is a prequel, yeah.
And then we move on to Covenant, and in Covenant it's just more
cool alien shenanigans.
We have the absolute coolestdroid played by Michael
Fassbender.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he's justso cool.
I'm sorry.
(33:22):
Like Michael Fassassbender,he's a fantastic actor.
Yeah, he makes a wonderfulmagneto and he makes an even
better robot.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
you put them together whoa, yeah, wow, I want to see
that, but no, he's, it's soencapsulating.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Alien Covenant is not a great movie on its own, it's
not even good, but as part of agreater whole it's a pinnacle
piece because it really expandscertain aspects of the franchise
.
And you really learn thesethings once you keep moving
forward.
(33:57):
And I hate having to say thatyou need to see the entire thing
to appreciate it, because thatreally doesn't make for a good
film, right.
But when you watch all thesethings back to back, you're like
this makes so much sense surebut the fact that these things
come out like seven years apart,you're like oh, fuck yourself,
right.
But then, after that comesromulus and I.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
I can jump in here.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (34:19):
Romulus stars Rain, it's her name and it's excellent
.
I knew very little at the timewhen I saw Romulus.
I'd seen Alien a long time agoand Prometheus and that was it
and I thought it stood alone.
And I know some diehard fansthought it was horrible, laughed
out loud at it, but I thoughtit was a fun film.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
I have no major issues with romulus, it's super
fun anytime you have a droidthat is kind of an anti-hero,
it's, it's an, it's an, I'm onboard yeah it's, it's
interesting I also like that themain dynamics in romulus are
friendship and like siblings andnot everything is romantic.
I thought that was kind ofrefreshing and cool I think that
(34:59):
is a cornerstone of the Alienfranchise though, is that you
have relationships with womenthat have nothing to do with
romance.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
Feminism strikes again.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Which, for some crazy reason, is unique to the Alien
franchise.
I want to say that one of thebest told stories in the Alien
franchise is actually from oneof their video games called
Alien Isolation.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
And you play as Eleanor Ripley's daughter.
This actually takes placebetween Alien and Aliens, when
Ripley is technically in stasisin between planets because she
takes jonesy the cat, you knowinto her little pod and she goes
to sleep.
There's like 50 years that goby and she has a daughter and
(35:46):
after like 10 years or so, thedaughter becomes old enough.
That's like I'm gonna go findmy mom and she starts finding
all the clues to like what thefuck happened in the stromo.
And then she ends up going tothis space station and there's a
bunch of bad shit, isn't that?
When Romulus takes place too,romulus takes.
Yes, romulus also takes placeduring the same time period.
(36:09):
Yeah, and fun fact aboutRomulus is that you can actually
see Ripley's ship moored in thebackground of one of the shots.
That's cool.
So, like you know, I mean,they're not looking for Ripley,
they don't know anything aboutit, right, but she's there.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Meanwhile, her daughter is like, clearly
looking for her mother buthaving to deal with rogue,
droids, xenomorphs, all thesethings, but she has, like, all
the strength of her motherbecause you know same genes.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Mixed with all these things, but she has, like, all
the strength of her motherbecause, you know, same genes.
Yeah, mixed with it's a videogame.
So like the stakes are so muchhigher.
Cool, that's very fun.
And in the game the xenomorphis immortal.
You cannot kill the xenomorphit's kind of cool.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
We'll take a bow, alan.
Thank you for your alien recapyou're welcome.
And if we're talking aboutalien, we should also mention a
film that influenced it, a filmcalled called it the Terror from
Beyond Space, from 1958.
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Not Stephen King's, it no.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
It, the Terror from Beyond Space.
The film was directed by EdwardL Kahn and written by Jerome
Bixby.
It tells the story of thesecond time a spacecraft from
Earth is able to make it to Mars.
The second expedition islooking to investigate what
happened to the first crew,which they discovered crashed
into the planet.
They find only one survivor onboard.
(37:27):
But there are similaritiesbetween it the terror from
beyond space and Alien in theform of an alien stalking and
terrorizing humans.
But that wasn't the only filmthat influenced Alien.
Quoting from the New York Timesarticle by Mikado Murphy, quote
even with its high-tech visualeffects and intricate sets,
alien is fundamentally a horrormovie about crew members getting
(37:49):
picked off one by one.
Mr Scott said that when hefirst read the Alien script by
Dan O'Bannon, quote, it wasfrankly what I would call a very
well-written B-movie, and wecarried it out in an A-way with
a terrific cast and a fantasticmonster.
Those B-movie undertones werewhat emerged in the low-budget
(38:10):
alien knockoffs that came after,like Galaxy of Terror from 1981
, and perhaps best known forsexual assaults committed by a
giant worm.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
We watched Galaxy of Terror, holy fuck.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And Dark Universe from 1993, which features Joe
Estevez and a poorly mademonster, end quote.
I do not think that I watchedGalaxy of Terror.
Speaker 2 (38:29):
You did.
You were right next to me.
Galaxy of Terror I really don'tknow what to say about this
movie.
It seemingly checks every boxthat I want in a movie while
simultaneously satisfying none.
It's a psychological horror,sci-fi fantasy where everyone's
like greatest fears are comingto life.
(38:49):
Like that was a really, reallyweird, disturbing movie that was
overly graphic.
I didn't like it.
I didn't like it at all.
Also, the effects were badwhile simultaneously incredibly
graphic.
I can't explain it.
Okay, two thumbs down over here,no, but like two thumbs really
(39:10):
up, that plummet down I don'tknow.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
It's okay, you're getting emotional, I don't want
to talk about it.
In general.
The 1990s saw an influx inspace horror movies, including
Event Horizon, again from 97,spear from 98, species from 95,
and, of course, jason X from2001.
Have you seen Species?
Nope.
Speaker 2 (39:32):
Do you know the premise?
Speaker 1 (39:34):
Tell us the premise of Species, Alan.
Speaker 2 (39:36):
The premise is that a species wants to mate, so they
become a sexy thing and seduceYikes, and it's a long-running
franchise.
Speaker 1 (39:49):
Understood.
Obviously, these run thespectrum between silly and
serious, and I wonder if thiscan partially be explained by a
growing interest in sciencefiction and also the
advancements in CGI and otherspecial effects that allowed for
space horror movies to beproduced in better quality.
This is also something that cameup a bit in our AI series that
(40:10):
certain filmmakers wereliterally waiting for effects to
be good enough to make scriptsthat they already had to make,
scripts that they already had.
Quoting again from the New YorkTimes article by Murphy, quote
the horror in space premise hasalso been executed with more
creativity and bigger budgets.
There was Event Horizon, inwhich the crew, including
Lawrence Fishburne, wastormented by hallucinations and
(40:31):
Doom, with Dwayne Johnson from2005, in which the crew was done
in by mutated Martians, marsand attacks also factored this
year into life, in which crewmembers like Ryan Reynolds were
taken down by an organism theyfound on the Red Planet.
And the horror space conceptconverged in a more outrageous
way in Jason X, the 2001 entryin the Friday, the 13th
(40:54):
franchise that sent the film'skiller title into space along
with androids.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
End quote I'm so glad you brought up doom, because
it's a very unique doom, notdune doom.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
Yes, d-o-o-m.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
I'm just saying it for the audience doom due to
scientific experiments intoextra dimensional travel.
They open a rift on mars intoanother dimension and once again
, just like Event Horizon, therift they open is into hell,
which you know that's pretty bad.
And then one guy says, oh, Igot to take care of this.
(41:28):
And then he just cocks hisshotgun and goes to town.
And that is the entire premiseof Doom, of one guy fucking up
all of hell Dang.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
that's pretty rock and roll.
It's pretty cool.
Another concept that I love,which I was first pointed to in
Murphy's New York Times article,is the space heroine Final Girl
.
Obviously, Ripley is the mosticonic example of this, but she
isn't the only one.
Quoting one more time fromMurphy's words, quote horror
films thrive on the concept ofthe final girl, the last one
(42:04):
left standing to fend off themaniacal killer.
But Sigourney Weaver, as Ripleyin the Alien films, made the
transition from survivor tofull-blown sci-fi action hero.
She paved the way for otherleading women in space, from
Jodie Foster in Contact toSandra Bullock in Gravity Within
the Alien universe.
Noomi Rapace took the heroicreins in Prometheus.
I mean, they took from the best.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
You're never going to beat Ripley.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
I feel like Ripley has like Sarah Connor vibes.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
She 100% has Sarah Connor vibes.
Well sorry, sarah Connor isinsane.
She's insane in all the rightways, sure, but she is insane,
sure, where her paranoia is offthe charts.
And because of that sheprepares her son, you know, for
(42:58):
who knows what might come rightin this case, ripley has
everything right in front of her, but no one believes her, so
she's left to, kind of like,deal with this on her own right.
Not too dissimilar from SarahConnor, but you know, it's a she
kind of makes more of aself-fulfilling prophecy yeah,
fair enough, and I do want totake a moment.
Speaker 1 (43:17):
I know this is controversial for Contact.
I know it's not pure horror,but it remains one of my
favorite films of all time andfor me there's like real heart
in Contact.
Right, it's a love story.
It's a story about family.
It's a father and a daughter.
It's a story about grief andloss.
It's a story about grief andloss, but it's also a story
(43:38):
about a woman working in a man'sfields and it is terrifying on
that level alone.
But on other levels.
Speaker 2 (43:45):
Women working in men's fields is horrifying.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
But there's these moments, like, for example, when
Jodie Foster is walking intothis machine, where the
situation is so unnervingbecause A people don't want her
to be there so much that they'reblowing the shit up, or they
don't want it to happen ingeneral.
They don't want her to do bethe one to do it.
They pick someone else first,even though she deserved it, and
(44:10):
then she finally gets thismoment of this thing that she's
been fighting for and deserves.
But what it is is is thismachine that's so unknown and
there's just something about thesituation of that that's so.
She's so brave, right, andwhatever.
But the movie sort of takesthese turns right.
It starts as kind of thiswholesome drama movie about like
(44:32):
a father and a daughter, andthen it takes another turn where
we realize, okay, she's ascientist and she's dealing with
all these satellites, but thenboom, there's contact, right.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
It's so interesting that you say that because you
know we've seen so many movieswhere the man just goes against
all the rules and does you knowwhat he thinks is right and it's
corny.
Speaker 1 (44:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
But then when the woman does it, you're like, wow,
she's so brave.
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Well, because she doesn't have that liberty
generally right.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
I'm not criticizing this.
Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
It's like I'm—.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
You're pointing out the difference in the reception
of those actions.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Also, it's more of just like a difference in the
writing.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
You know, generally when someone is writing the man
doing it, it's from like anaction movie, when it's a horror
movie, it's the woman, isn't?
That crazy Sure.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
The second turn I think contact makes is when the
machine is actually built and wesee it for the first time.
I don't know about you, but theimagery of that moment again,
when I saw this movie howeverold I was right, I was quite
young Four the imagery, though,of that machine, like, will
stick with you forever.
It is so alienoid and bizarreand impressive that it's kind of
(45:54):
like this movie started offwith a guy and his daughter and
a ham radio.
And here we are under this,like billionaire's waterfall,
right, like it really has somestrange twists and turns in it,
and then, of course, right whenshe goes on her journey, it's
it's a whole nother thing, but Ijust wanted to to talk about it
because it holds a dear placein my heart and I think again,
(46:15):
really the cool thing aboutspace horror is that so much of
it can be situational in a waythat science fiction isn't right
.
Star Wars is not horror, it'sscience fiction, it's action,
but it's not really horror.
It has dark moments, but evendark moments when you have Darth
Vader or other things, comparedto the impending vacuum of a
(46:35):
black hole, it seems light andsilly.
Right, it's not horror.
Pending vacuum of a black hole.
It seems light and silly.
Right, it's not horror.
So it's been cool as anexercise to try to parse out the
difference between those things.
And again, it's a very thinline and it really doesn't truly
matter at the scheme of things,but it's been a fun kind of
thought exercise.
Okay, alan, this is your finalmoment.
What space horror films did wemiss?
Speaker 2 (46:55):
Well, I mean, as we talked about in the very
beginning of the episode, it'slike such a broad genre that
there's so much stuff we haven'ttalked about.
But the main thing that jumpsto mind that we have not
discussed is dead space, whichthere are some films, uh, but it
started as a video gamefranchise and the premise of
(47:19):
Dead Space is that humanity, farinto the distant future, space
travel, has become a thing wherewe're traveling to distant
galaxies and in all this timehumanity has never encountered
another species.
As far as humans know, they arethe only ones in the universe,
(47:42):
which is already kind of aunique concept it's kind of
scary, even if you think of itthat way but then, all of a
sudden, they discover the marker, which is a giant crayola, a
giant alien artifact.
Speaker 1 (47:59):
Uh-huh right, yeah, weird what do you mean, artifact
?
Speaker 2 (48:04):
like a rune giant, giant, fucking monolith looking
thing okay like a stonesculpture?
Speaker 1 (48:10):
why are alien artifacts always look like ruins
from indiana jones?
Speaker 2 (48:14):
it doesn't at all actually.
It's all twisty like, kind oflike a horn, what is?
Speaker 1 (48:18):
the substance that it's made of, tower, I don't
know, I didn't test all.
Actually it's all twisty likekind of like a horn.
Speaker 2 (48:20):
What is the substance that it's made of Tower?
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
I didn't test it, but what does it look like?
Speaker 2 (48:23):
It looks like a giant spirally tower of horn.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
Like ivory.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
Black with, like, red stripes.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (48:32):
And then this thing, once it was touched by organic
material, activates, and theneverything that is dead
reanimates, but in a way thatit's like that's how it
reproduces, through necroticmaterial.
So this species exists byreproducing through other
(48:57):
species dying.
That's pretty rock and roll sothese, these things are called
necromorphs.
All they want to do is killother things, because that's how
they reproduce.
It's pretty fucked up yeah likeit completely wipes out a space
station.
All the people, all theinhabitants become these like
(49:17):
weird warp necromorph things.
One of the most terrifyingthings are the babies, because
all of a sudden you have theselike weird baby looking
murderous things and it's anentire franchise so full of lore
and it's so horrific.
Also, they're mostly immortalbecause you know they're dead.
(49:39):
The only way to actually killthem is to completely dismember
them so they can't move anymore.
Speaker 1 (49:46):
Fascinating.
I'm surprised you haven'ttalked at length about hell
divers on this series.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
What would that have to do with space horror?
Speaker 1 (49:53):
Isn't hell divers in space?
Are we going to differentplanets?
Speaker 2 (49:56):
No, it has very much to do with space, but that's all
about space democracy I thinkit's pretty scary.
You're constantly under attackyou are, but you're, you're
trying to, you're spreadingdemocracy to these cats.
Speaker 1 (50:07):
You know, so you're a colonizer socialist swines I
understand.
Anyway, on that note, thatbrings us to be the end of our
history exploration of spacehorror.
But the good news is that theride is not over yet.
We have two space horror storyepisodes because we got so many
(50:28):
incredible submissions fromwriters.
So we have two upcomingepisodes featuring those really
great stories for you guys andI'm really thrilled to be able
to share them because, again,they're very impressive and
scary and great, and we've gotsome awesome voice actors paired
with those, so I'm super, superexcited about that.
In the meantime, I hopeeverybody's hanging in, doing
(50:49):
okay.
Stay safe, stay spooky andwatch out for black holes.
Bye.
Speaker 2 (50:53):
Bye.
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