Monday, Dec. 14 2009 @ 8:03AM
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Far too many films have copied Alien's premise in the stalest ways: take a space station or some other isolated structure, and then have a hideous creature devour a cast of mostly doomed stereotypes, with a determined woman sometimes leading the group. It's an idea that's fed video-store shelves and dead-time cable TV for two decades, and it's time to pluck out the more interesting Alien imitators. Never mind borderline titles like Species or forgotten chaff like The Intruder Within. This list is about the not-really-Alien films you'd remember, seldom in flattering ways. 10) Deepstar Six (1989)
How does one make an Alien knock-off stand out? For many filmmakers in the 1980s, the answer was simple: put it underwater. You'll get all the claustrophobia of space, but with a slightly different and significantly wetter stage. You can also throw in a Jaws reference by having the film's monster bite someone in half.
Unfortunately for Deepstar Six, several other films had the exact same idea in 1989, including Leviathan and James Cameron's The Abyss (the latter of which isn't even an Alien imitator). Deepstar didn't have the marketing or the cast to compete, though it does have Miguel Ferrer freaking out, jetting toward the surface in an escape craft, and then exploding from the ocean pressure. And Deepstar's still in second place there, since Robocop did a more memorable job of blowing up Miguel Ferrer.
The Creature: A muddy, scaly, fanged undersea horror that could've crawled out of the MST3K-ed Italian monster-movie classic Devil Fish.
The Heroines: The crew includes several prominent women, though the only one to make it out is Collins, who's pregnant with the other surviving crew member's child. Perhaps the Deepstar beast follows the same code of honor as the Predator.
9) Roots Search (1987)
Alien rip-offs were everywhere during the 1980s, even in the otherwise completely original field of anime. Roots Search, a direct-to-video dreg from Japan's bubble economy, starts when a space station picks up an unresponsive ship that, surprise of surprises, contains a dead crew and a mysterious, vagina-mouthed alien. The derelict's only survivor, Buzz, is taken aboard along with the apparently comatose creature, which then proceeds to psychically murder the space station's staff by preying on their guilty consciences.
Short and dreary, Roots Search makes this list only for its stubborn and baffling refusal to end properly. Once the crew is pared down to Buzz and the semi-psychic Moira (who are both apparently without sin), the two of them have a sudden hallucination involving 2001-esque intergalactic babies. Then they awaken to find that the space station has transformed into a giant alien uterus. Hand in hand, Buzz and Moira walk off into the pulsing confines of the now-organic station. And that's it. Movie's over. The end. Move along.
The Creature: A pale, moldy humanoid that might be creepy if it actually moved. Instead, it spends most of the film in a futuristic recliner.
The Heroine: Moira's a big-eyed anime girl with psychic abilities, which apparently do little aside from giving her strange visions. The film could've pitted her against the alien in a huge ESP throwdown, but that might've resulted in an ending of some kind.
8) Star Crystal (1986)
Many films that copy Alien also copy its dark, cramped visual style. Not so Star Crystal, which dresses up its Alien rips in well-lit studios and cheap mid-1980s polyester. A team of brown-suited astronauts discovers a strange, egg-shaped object on the surface of Mars, and it hatches to reveal a crystal and lots of slime. After the astronauts' space station goes silent, another team of investigators arrives there to find an alien on the rampage.
Through low-rent tentacle effects and blinking displays, the slime-creature murders the cast except for two bickering explorers. Then the monster reveals that it's actually a good alien named Gar, and that it didn't mean to kill anyone. After reading the Bible, the now-lovable beast makes friends with the two surprisingly trusting astronauts, and together they face another threat to their ship. If only Ridley Scott had thrown such a twist into the original Alien.
The Creature: A yellowish blob with an E.T.-like head and eyes, Gar resembles a glowing garden rock more than anything.
The Heroine: An investigator named Adrienne, who shows little critical thought in making friends with an alien that destroyed almost everyone around her.
7) The First Part of Lifeforce (1985)
Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce is mostly remembered for showing actress Mathilda May naked in almost every scene, but it's also a big, sloppy, wonderful clusterfuck of a film. The ending has bat-monsters turning London into a huge zombie riot of exploding buildings while May and the film's hero have hateful vampire sex inside a giant spaceship's tractor beam. Let's see Twilight top that.
Before all this schlocky hell breaks loose, Lifeforce recycles Alien's premise with blatant precision. And why shouldn't it, since Alien co-writer Dan O'Bannon was on script duty? It begins when a space expedition discovers an enormous ship lodged in the corona of Haley's Comet. Inside the bizarre, vaguely organic vessel, the astronauts find decaying batlike creatures along with three curiously well-preserved humans, one of whom is the completely naked May. A month later, the unresponsive shuttle drifts back to Earth, gutted by a fire that somehow left the three aliens alive. The only remaining crew member, a bland type named Tom Carlson, crash-lands in an escape pod and tells everyone the truth about the space vampires, but by then it's far too late: May has already started up her naked-bloodsucker journey, so she and Carlson hunt and screw each other for the rest of the movie.
The Creatures: Space vampires that look human 90 percent of the time. When killed, they turn into giant bat-beasts.
The (Anti-)Heroine: May's character is actually kind of boring, lacking a real name or personality. Still, she spiritually hijacks a doctor played by Patrick Stewart and almost has him making out with Carlson.
6) Lily C.A.T. (1987)
The anime industry's best Alien-inspired moments came with Cowboy Bebop's "Toys in the Attic" episode, but that's more of a parody than thievery. Lily C.A.T., on the other hand, is all-out plagiarism that wants to be taken seriously. In the near future, a ship full of the most boring people ever catches a mysterious strain of bacteria on its journey through space. Upon emerging from their cryogenic capsules, the crew is killed off in mostly tedious ways, all while the ship's computer, which is called "Mother" and looks just like the Mother computer terminal from Alien, tries to save itself and the robot cat that controls it.
Lily C.A.T. is a painfully unimaginative retread of Alien and John Carpenter's The Thing, though it becomes strangely funny whenever a cast member dies. That's when the remaining characters discuss the giant, murderous, ship-eating bacteria beast in perfectly calm conversations. Witness their reactions to the demise of an Australian detective who's either sporting a mustache or impeccably well-groomed nostril hair.
With a hokey 1990s English dub, the film reaches bizarre comedy as the alleged heroes discuss death, suicide, and hideous creatures as though they were a Taco Bell night crew counting up the registers. Maybe they've seen too many Alien rip-offs to be disturbed by a grotesque monster devouring their shipmates.
The Creature: A gooey, tentacled aberration that's part the Thing, part xenomorph, and part bacteria. It was designed by artist Yoshitaka Amano, now much more famous for Final Fantasy, Sandman: The Dream Hunters, and other, better things.
The Heroine: The only conspicuous woman in the film is Nancy, the blonde daughter of a high-up company executive. In contrast to the blasé reactions of the rest of the crew, she spends most of her time shrieking and sobbing in terror. Listen closely to her blubbering tirade above, and you'll learn that she went into space just to get back at a boyfriend-stealing rival. Vasquez, she ain't.
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70 comments
Comments
SpecterM91 said:
Good list, but I never really thought of Pitch Black as an Alien rip off.
Glass replied to SpecterM91:
Are you kidding? Pitch Black was a blatant Alien rip-off. Even more of an Aliens rip-off.
Mothcluster replied to Glass:
i would hardly call i blatant(especially not comparred to many others on the list), but pitch black certanly is the most notable on the list and is thus totally warranted to be the nr.1 of this list.
Evan Burr said:
If this list only went to 11 you could have included Critters 4 (1992). Bad ass!
ZADL said:
How did Rutger Hauer's Split Second avoid getting on this list? It should be number 1
1-7 said:
You forgot to mention Alien 3.
1-7 said:
You forgot to mention Alien 3.
joel wyatt said:
Y'know, seeing Deepstar 6 and Leviathan clips actually made me a little nostalgic: real actors, soundtracks, lighting.
They weren't good movies by any stretch of the imagination, but the producers clearly put a lot more love into their product than the made for Syfy schlock that passes for B-movies nowadays...
Monkey boy said:
If you're going to mention something as high profile as pitch black, and the list includes video games, you really should include metroid.
Ethan Kaye said:
You really shoulda included...you know what? It's a top 10 list. He picked 10 from a big field and I'm impressed. I don't care what he left out because, well, it's only a sample of 10.
Bill Binder replied to Ethan Kaye:
Ethan?
Hello, Nice to see you away from the IRC.
whbinder
Ethan Kaye replied to Bill Binder:
Ha!
Small, small world! Check out the daily lists this week, I should have one of them running in the next few days.
Man, small, small world.
JOE said:
Do Jason X and Hellraiser Bloodline count as they both feature their iconic villians stalking people in spaceships/stations.
Also, how could you leave out Creature with Klaus Kinsky and the dad from Ferris Bueller?
MattK said:
Lily C.A.T. was one of my early introductions to anime (part of Sci-Fi's showcase, back when it cost $100+ to get a tape imported over and were in local stores for roughly $30), and even then I knew it was a bad Alien ripoff. REALLY hated it. Glad to see I wasn't the only one.
Arcane replied to MattK:
Oh god was Lily CAT awful. It had ot be the most dreckiest piece of crap on Scifi back then, and it had the tired old Ragnarok one-guy-one-girl-escape ending most all their scifi movies had.
Jason said:
There was the Polymorph from Red Dwarf too, that certainly had Alien type qualities to it.
Thing I find weird now though is that some Alien merchandise is aimed at kids!
Cuddly Alien anyone?
nightcrawler666 replied to Jason:
Epideme is actually the better analog to the Alien idea from RD.
James said:
Is it just me or does the guy in the Leprechaun 4 preview picture look a bit like Tiger Woods?
JOE replied to James:
That would add a lot more subtext to a movie where the monster comes out of a guy's penis.
demoncat said:
nice choices for the list though do not know why pitch black is considered an alien rip off since cof is a whole different story and genre then aliens. and Lepercaun four just shows some movies do not know when to stop. and star crytstl had that film long gone from memory till i saw the list
BuncheB said:
What? No DIRTY PAIR: PROJECT EDEN? Or would that count more as an ALIENS ripoff?
Brent said:
Oh, Amanda Pays, how I miss thee. With a Leviathan mention here and the Max Headroom love last week, I'm getting nostalgiacally horny here.
What's next? A Mia Sara retrospective? I couldn't take that.
Peagreenboy said:
What about Lifeboat?
Is the Pitch Black scene the "It ain't her that's bleeding" scene? That's the most memorable... that and the Radha Mitchell cleavage shot.
Which really doesn't speak well of Pitch Black, to be honest.
Dukes said:
Cartmen: OUTLANDEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!!!!
WE HAVE YOUR WOMAN!!!
SHE STILL LIVES, OUTLANDER!
OOOOUT-lan-DEEEEEEEEER!!!!!!!!
HER BLOOD WAS FAIR!!!
Butters: Eric, just what in the heck are you talkin'about?
Cartmen: ...Butters, shut the hell up
(sorry I couldn't help myself)
GaryML said:
"Pitch Black" is basically a sci-fi remake of "Stagecoach" with Vin as the Ringo Kid and aliens instead of Apaches.
Hoogie said:
Outlander is the best "I'm at Blockbuster what the hell is this terrible looking blockbuster exclusive movie I must rent it." Then it actually turns out to be pretty cool.
Crabtree said:
I agree, as cheesy as it is, Outlander is just pure enjoyment.
TexasReed replied to Crabtree:
Those who've challenged the inclusion of Pitch Black (number 1? gimme a friggin' break; you just haven't watched many bad movies, bud) and Outlander are spot on. Nowhere close to Alien rip-offs.
Split Second? Yup.
Creature? Yup
Galaxy of Terror? Yup
This is one of the worst lists to show up on TR.
S Hester (UK) said:
The Star Crystal.....
Thanks for reminding me of a waste of 2 quid, I rented that abomination waaaaay back in 89 during my Summer Holiday, really wish I hadn't. A piece of crap.
Glad to see my favourite bit of trash Cinema Lifeforce get a mention, don't know what it is about that film (excluding the obvious...), it shouldn't work, but it does.
Killgorr said:
Wow, Roots Search, I didn't think anyone else saw that one... Anyone also ever notice how many similarities there are between that anime and Event Horizon?
Franklin said:
Bah! "Alien" itself is nothing but a rip-off of Mario Bava's 1969 film "Terrore Nello Spazio."
Peagreenboy replied to Franklin:
Don't forget It! The Terror From Beyond Space.
john said:
space truckers.
Franklin said:
Bah! I meant 1965. Not 1969.
Dave said:
How did you forget Galaxy of Terror?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxvajOyAaBo
Starring Sid Haig, Ray Walston and Robert Englung.
I mean look at the poster for fucks sake:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/b6/Galaxy_of_terror.jpg
This should be number 1
Gleeman said:
Patrick Stewart was in a movie like Lifeforce? Even more reason to watch it! :)
Outlander? WTF totally missed that one.
simon number nine said:
patrick stewarts acting in that is terrible!
he's only outdone in the ham stakes by the lead guy who completely loses it at one point.cant remember his name but he was in the stuntman with peter o toole
WetOREO said:
I did not read all of the comments, but you missed Roger Corman's wonderfully gory Galaxy of Terror. Alien-worm rape scene? Yes please!
MikeWaz said:
AAAAHH! Dude you seriously rule for even knowing DeepStar Six even exists! One of my parent's college buddies actually wrote that movie. When the nerdy hot chick is talking to the captain about the little kid drawing on his desk and he's all like "my son mikey made it." ... oh yeah. That's totally me cause he wrote it right when i was born.
For some reason in the movies i became black.
Evil Monkey Pope said:
You forgot the Brood from X-Men.
Vinnie V said:
Deep Blue Sea. Hyperintelligent sharks picking off the humans in a "space station" that floats on top of the water with three levels undersea.
TrapJaw said:
Ah, Lily C.A.T. . Back in the day when satellite tv meant that you actually had a ten foot dish in your backyard, there was a channel in the early 90's that only showed two things--fucked up anime and those shitty comedy/soft-core porno flicks (and the only commercials on the channel were those talk-to-a-lonely-lingerie-model 900 numbers).
Lily C.A.T. , Lensman, Wicked City, and Vampire Hunter D were the staples of that channel...beside once specific titty flick that featured a very pre-Deep Space Nine Terry Farrell, IIRC.
voodoojoe replied to TrapJaw:
I remember that channel. It was Network 1. It showed anime, reruns of Night Flight(!), random music videos, and softcore porn. You have no idea how happy it makes me to find someone else who remembers this station.
TrapJaw replied to voodoojoe:
Network One! Of course! How could I forget the Night Flight re-runs!
YOU have no idea how happy it makes me that someone not only remembers that channel, but the name of it! My buddies and I have all but given ourselves anuerisms trying to remember what it was called.
Mr Bumpy replied to TrapJaw:
I miss Night Flight. All I can find on the Interwebs are the 90's re-runs with that stupid Tom Juarez "narrating". Anyone know where I can find the originals?
Niilo said:
One word: INSEMINOID!!! One of the best WORST Alien rip-offs ever made. A cheesy low-budget UK-made alien sex romp!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084090/
You can't go wrong with names like Stephanie Beacham, Victoria Tennant and the fabulous Judy Geeson!!
If Alien is a BJ, Inseminoid is a full-on BONK-A-RAMA! :)
Cassandra Jade said:
Have to say, I loved Deep Star Six, I thought it was a great movie. As a kid, watching a guy n a wet suit get bitten in half was just awesome. True, it has a very alienesque feel, but I think it has taken a few steps on its own. Thanks for sharing this list.
ZeroCorpse said:
A list like this isn't complete without noting that Alien, while an awesome film, is still just a rip-off of Romero's Night of the Living Dead, which is, in turn, a rip-off of the Matheson classic "I Am Legend".
Monster outside the room. People in the room. Monster tries to break in, change people into monsters, leaving the last person to run away because the monster cannot be beaten.
Brian Hurrel replied to ZeroCorpse:
I Am Legend and Night of the Living Dead as basis for Alien...wow, I thought Life Force was a stretch, but this takes the first prize in most dubious connections between movies.
Chris said:
Hey, that guy voicing the bearded dude in Lily C.A.T. voiced Gary Kinnison (Kim Kinnison's father) in Lensman.
Mike Reynolds. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0584470/
CChaos said:
Interesting to see how many people know in the comments as well. It's a pretty big number of options to choose from and I think this was a pretty apt set.
Gods, Deepstar Six...so very long ago...
JediUnleashed said:
Lest we forget 'Star Trek: First Contact'?
Nega said:
1985's Creature didn't make the list, but some anime did?
Alan said:
Re: Leviathan - I'm pretty sure Rob Bottin did the effects in The Thing, not Stan Winston
FireThunder said:
"It was designed by artist Yoshitaka Amano, now much more famous for Final Fantasy, Sandman: The Dream Hunters, and other, better things."
This includes Vampire Hunter D. So awesome.
Anywho, another fun daily list!
RaeLogan said:
Aw, you didn't mention that one episode in that cartoon from France, Code Lyoko. In that one, the bad guy computer virus thing, XANA, takes contol of an animatronic alien suit that looks strikingly similar to the Xenomorph. The episode premise was that a film maker was making a horror film that sounds vaugely like the plot of Alien, and when the suit was contolled, it was turned real and started taking everyone down one by one... Right down to two of the main character kids getting strangled to death. But, since this show loves to do a go back in time and start over, one kid reset the time right before the next one was starting to die...
Geeze, that was a pretty episode. And somehow, it's rated Y7. Anyway, they had it right down to the alien design, which one kid actually comments on how that monster looks just like the one in the Alien movies, implying that the director was stealing the idea...
But, chances are, not many have seen that show. It ran on Cartoon Network in the US for a few years and dropped of the air for a long time. Bummer... I liked that show... It made parodies and references that were pretty amusing.
Arcane said:
You forgot Claudia Black in Pitch Black, aka Farscape's Aeryn Soun!
Eternally Devoid said:
No love for Forbidden World (Mutant, 1982)? A blatant Alien rip-off.
Rasmodeus said:
Funny that the Matrix would be mentioned in the list with Pitch Black, because Pitch Black has just as much in common with it as it does with Alien.
And oh yeah, every Sci-Fi movie with non-earthlike lifeforms are Alien ripoffs. Right? Sigh
Meatball Jones said:
Pitch Black reminded me of some of my Traveller RPG adventures me and my friends used to have during the 80s
Brian Hurrel replied to Meatball Jones:
Traveller Rules! All hail Strephon!
thingmaker said:
And how can we forget the finest low-budget Alien rip-off ever?
Forbidden World (1982)
As fine an example of explotation cinema as ever there was. Recycled footage from Battle Beyond the Stars, gratuitous sex, buckets of blood and a genuinely adequate cheapo version of the whole trapped-in-dark-corridors-with-an-alien-monster storyline. It also boasts a truly outrageous finale. You will not F***ing believe the destruction of the monster in this movie.
Sci-Fi Gene said:
While I sort of get your point about Pitch Black, and it's certainly notable and does reference Alien a lot, I actually appreciated watching a film about a non parasitic alien that refreshingly just ate people rather than bursting from their chests - surely, despite it's originality and brilliance in Alien, this is the most over-used alien cliche ever?
mokgohan said:
I just watched Clone Wars (Season 2, episode 7)- They should be giving royalties to Giegher for the Queen they just used. By far the most blatent rip-off I've seen. Wait a second... did Giegher create the queen? It didn't show up until Aliens so maybe he didn't... Maybe Cameron should be getting the royalty cheques. Lucasfilm probably bought the rights anyway.
Brian Hurrel replied to mokgohan:
Actually, Cameron did not use Geiger on the film "Aliens", though the Queen was obviously designed along the same lines as Geiger's original creatures.
Brian Hurrel said:
Rip-off, huh? I guess no one remembers a little movie called "It! The Terror from Beyond Space"
A spaceship crew inadvertently picks up a stowaway, a large, ugly, and very dangerous humanoid creature that begins to kill the crew off one by one, usually when they are alone in the dark corridors of the ship. At one point it even uses air shafts to hide and move around.
That was in 1958.
Brian Hurrel said:
Also, I'm a little confused. How does "Outlander" PLUNDER "The 13th Warrior".
The latter is based on a Michael Crighton book, "Eaters of the Dead", which is a "realistic" retelling of Beowulf.
"Outlander" is a science-fiction themed retelling of Beowulf.
Both movies are clearly based on Beowulf.
Beowulf dates back to at least the 9th Century.
Brian Hurrel said:
Ooh, ooh, Mr. Kotter! What about the Ixtl from A.E. Van Vogt's "The Voyage of the Space Beagle"!
The Ixtl gets loose aboard the ship and starts killing people. And according to Barlowe's Guide to ETs, it reproduces by "laying eggs in the body cavity of a living host. Within six hours of implantation the eggs hatch, and the young Ixtl eat their way out of the host body..."
1950.
And you know what? Who gives a flying fart? Any real SF fan knows that ideas and themes are constantly recurring and being given a new twist. Yes, some of these films are outright unimaginative rip-offs, but to say that any movie featuring a deadly alien preying on humans is a rip off of Alien is pointless. Some of the comparisons are pretty damned weak.
Oh, hey guys! That movie "Apollo 13"? Total rip-off of H.G. Wells' "First Men in the Moon."
I really dislike lists like these, and generally don't bother commenting on things I don't like online, but after the whole "Avatar Ripped Off 327 (and counting) Movies and Science-Fiction Stories!" cacaphony, I feel compelled to try to dispel this sort of thing.
Also, does the term, "Variation on a Theme" have any meaning here?
Sigh...
