In case you haven’t noticed, aliens are a tad bit popular in movies. Since they became explosively popular in the 1950s, roughly three million films have been made in which the smart-ass human race is terrorized by creatures from beyond the stars. In fact, I’d argue that the fear of invasion is just as strong today as it was back then, and recent flicks like Spielberg’s War of the Worlds and upcoming films like Peter Berg’s Battleship serve as a reminder that we love the concept of getting our poop tossed by Martians.

It’s one thing to get stalked by a lone alien presence, however, and another to face a full-fledged invasion. What you’re about to see on this list of the Top 9 Alien Attacks isn’t your average  Austrian-being-hunted-by-Rastafarian adventure, but larger scale invasions of the planet Earth.

9. Kaihoro’s Gone Bonkers — Bad Taste

Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson’s first output Bad Taste took four years to flesh out, but the effort was worth it — the film presents one of the most bizarre depictions of alien infiltration ever put on cinema. No-name actors in the Astro Investigation and Defence Service (AIDS) must stave off space aliens that take human shape in order to harvest our bodies for a delicious green vomit concoction in interstellar fast food chains. What more could you ask for?

Bad Taste might not be one of the better-known entries on this list (and certainly not a great film) but it stands the test of time for being one of the most bizarre and horribly implemented alien plans. These guys take the form of humans and appear to be completely incapable of driving the human body effectively, eventually just giving up and turning into crappy costumes baked in Jackson’s oven.

The whole thing is nuts. And when a sheep explodes, you know your planet is up a creek.

8. Say Goodbye to Barry — Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Alright, so this is a bit of a cheat: anyone who has seen Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind knows that the race of aliens in the film is one of benevolence. However, that doesn’t hamper the fact that when our young (almost devoid of dialogue) character Barry is taken from his home by violent and beautiful lights, we have no idea what their intentions are.

The scene, in which all of Barry’s toys are awakened by the electrical activity of the ships along with creepy kiddie music, is one of the most terrifyingly effective in Spielberg’s long and diverse career. Coupled with a haunting orchestral score by John Williams, no image from this science fiction classic sticks in one’s memory quite like this one.

7. Flaming Livestock — Mars Attacks

Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks is a huge sloppy turd of a film that’s really all over the place, trying to cram too many stories and celebrities into a two-hour timespan. But that doesn’t stop it from having one of the most unsettling openings ever, in which a few farmers witness a stampede of flaming cattle that have been seared by rays from flying saucers. In an unexpectedly dark comedy, it’s the only moment that really haunts the mind. Even though the 1950s throwback fails to impress, I haven’t been able to shake the creepy image from my mind since I watched the film years ago.

6. The Five Cent Cemetery — Plan 9 From Outer Space

Ed Wood’s Plan 9 From Outer Space has definitely been dethroned as the worst film of all time by idiots like Uwe Boll, but it’s still an idiot-savant classic for featuring one of the most inane and poorly executed invasion schemes ever. Aliens inhabit the corpses of a giant wrestler — excuse me, police officer — and a busty vampire chica for the sake of moseying around even stupider characters in a cemetery.

If you’ve seen Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, you know how cheap this cemetery set is — Tor and Vampira brush past trees and paper mache headstones that seem to have the weight of a feather, moving astroturf grass with each lumbering step. It’s not the most threatening alien invasion we’ve faced in motion picture history, but it sure was the most unintentionally hilarious.

5. The Blank Stare Bunch — Invasion of the Body Snatchers

We have a tie here — both the 1956 and 1978 versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers are great in their own right. The latter is helped by killer performances by Donald Sutherland and the ever-great Jeff Goldblum, the former for the wonderful Kevin McCarthy and a haunting final speech. Both depict a scenario in which mankind is completely doomed, with a race of beings that mirrors a Communist threat by way of infiltrating our lives without notice or warning.

It might be the most uncompromising and fatalistic entry on this list, and the original ranks alongside George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead for being a film that is as important as a time capsule for American phobia and dread as it is for just being a damn fine work of art.

4. I’m From Buenos Aires, and I Say Kill ‘Em All — Starship Troopers

Unfairly slammed by critics during its release and still misunderstood by audiences, Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers is an excellent piece of satire and simply one of my favorite films of all time. While it’s a crappy adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s book, it manages to take a concept and stretch it to the limits of 90210-meets­-Total Recall insanity.

It also has one of the sweetest depictions of an alien attack, period. These aliens are more like interstellar insects, whose refuse — basically asteroid poop — is mistaken as a deliberate attack by humanity, unleashing a gory war and Michael Ironside exclamations. In an oddly resonant scene, an entire city is reduced to flaming rubble on television screens as a boot camp full of soldiers looks on and cries out for vengeance. “The only good bug is a dead bug,” one ashen schlub explains.

It’d be absurd if it wasn’t true.

3. Peel That Malamute Like a Banana — The Thing

I take my comment about Invasion of the Body Snatchers back already — if that film’s fatalistic, John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing from Another World is a vision of hell on ice. From minute one, a haunting script, oppressive cinematography and a minimalistic score by Carpenter and Ennio Morricone tell us that nobody will leave this film a happy camper.

Like the creeps in Body Snatchers only more effective, the “thing” is a perfect imitation of human beings, which can theoretically spread undetected throughout the population of the Earth in a matter of weeks. When it gets found out, however, its ugly side comes out, as evidenced by the poor dog that gets his face split open into quadrants and tentacles jutting out of its spine.

The Thing makes me feel like taking a long, cleansing shower. Yeesh.

2. Kane’s Sick/Check Those Corners — Alien/Aliens

The best alien attacks might be racked up in — get this — the Alien franchise. Between two great films, one mediocre-to-good film, and one abysmal piece of crap, the science fiction franchise developed a species that was horrifying because of just how unrelateable it was. From its reproductive cycle to its appearance to its hive-mind functionality, the Alien was always more terrifying than Stan Winston’s Predator.

While the most memorable alien attack in the franchise has to be the original chestburster from Ridley Scott’s Alien — an event so unpredictable and biologically frightening to males that it still makes my stomach churn — the initial ambush on Apone’s squad in James Cameron’s Aliens ranks up there as well. The way the beasties blend in perfectly to their hive environment only to drag well-trained marines into the abyss leaves you tense for the rest of the running time.

1. The White House Gets Decimated — Independence Day

For many like myself, the image of a looming blackish-grey disk firing a blue beam into the bodies of our national landmarks is the defining icon of alien invasion. Regardless of what you think of Roland Emmerich as a director, Independence Day captures the widespread effects of alien attacks with more bravado than any other film in the modern era.

Seeing the White House being blown to smithereens lobbies humanity against a common enemy — another tenet of any good alien invasion flick. Oh, and Jeff Goldblum is here too. So there’s no chance in hell I’d leave it out.

Share

Save