What's your favorite movie involving aliens?

The Hidden
Coneheads
Galaxy Quest
I Come in Peace
but then again - "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" might be a keeeeeper...

(this is what happens when you run out of coffee...)
 
A L I E N
ALIENS

I probably wouldn't even be interested in film if it hadn't been for the first two Alien films. I saw Aliens first actually, on TV so it was edited for content. It was still awesome, even though a lot of Bill Paxton's profane outbursts were obviously dubbed with less offensive vocabulary. About a month or two later, I saw the original Alien on the TV, also edited for content (this was before cable was prominent, all that was available back in the 80's was maybe HBO and Showtime if I remember. Not many people had cable really back then. Alien had me gripping the armrests on the chair in the living room. During commercial breaks I would loose my grip on the chair, finding my palms sweating and my heart racing. Perhaps the commercial breaks were a good thing for that first viewing?

Anyways, Alien and Aliens were like my Star Wars. They got me thinking of all the cool stuff that goes on behind the camera, and started my quest to find out more about how movies were made. I started collecting the Dark Horse Aliens comics that preceded the controversial Alien³. In the back of one of the issues, they had a whole article about H.R. Giger with some of his artwork. That turned me onto Giger's disturbing but beautiful airbrushed work centering on biomechanics (I was probably too young to be seeing some of that stuff at the time).

Those two films started me on the path towards my love for film, science fiction, and got me interested in Giger, which lead me to investigate surreal art and I was exposed to some other brilliant bet perhaps disturbed artists along way.

As for other alien films, I love both the original 1956 INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and the 1978 remake with Donald Sutherland. The whole idea of plantlike alien pods assimilating us is really frightening and very "alien" in terms of the biology. What I loved about the Body Snatchers was that they were no man in suits type of aliens. We were the suits! THE THING is another favorite for this reason as well. The alien pods and the shape-shifting "thing" feel like kindred alien spirits. With them and the biomechanoid creature of the Alien saga, I guess I really like my extraterrestrials to be Lovecraftian in nature.

We also can't forget 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. The Monolith is one of the great alien entities of science fiction cinema.

I also have to give some praise to both TOTAL RECALL (with its ancient Martian reactor technology and mutants), and STARSHIP TROOPERS. These are two films I can always watch and just have a blast.
 
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I remember seeing 'Aliens' and thinking this is the first time that I felt the terror of the characters as I watched. That led me to Giger's work, which probably made my parents think I was crazy that and the music of Bauhaus. All the things that warped my young impressionable mind. :)
 
Alien. A pretty simple choice for number one, actually. Another one, not sure if I've got the name right (and I'm too lazy to goggle it right now) but the "To Serve Man" episode from the original Twilight Zone.
 
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