Feel free to share your top five list or discuss his picks in the comments.
This list is going to be arbitrary as hell since I'm doing it from memory. And, because I like a challenge, I'm going to limit myself to only films that are both Sci-Fi and Horror.
- Leprechaun IV: This is basically an Alien parody, only the monster is replaced by Warwick Davis. Oh yeah, and he infiltrates the crew by going up a man's urine stream and hiding in his penis.
- Sunshine: All right, this is kind of a cheat. Sunshine is actually basically really good Sci Fi, like if you edited out all the crappier bits of Supernova and spliced in a few of the not insane (in a largely excellent way) bits from Event Horizon, with conflict derived from character and crises arising organically from environment and the plot. Then it all turns into a horror, slasher film at the end, which is terrible. Just rewatch Leprechaun IV again, and pretend that movie is the real ending to Sunshine. Or failing that, that the movie gets an ending deserving of itself, something along the lines of the Death of All Puppies (TM).
- Alien: Okay, I really wanted Aliens, because to me it's a much better film, since it strayed in an intentional and intelligent way from the kind of cliched formula of its predecessor. But the original wasn’t really just a slasher film in space. It was psychological, and claustrophobic. And for some reason the heroine does the climactic scene in her underpants. And even with dated special effects, it's still craploads better than Prometheus.
- Event Horizon: This movie scared the crap out of me, even if it's climax, as far as I can remember, basically involves Sam Neil in (bad) Emperor Palpatine makeup. And hey, it has Larry Fishburne in it- who you might remember from Nightmare on Elm Street 3 (not another word about that one, though). I may only have added this to the list because without it (and to a lesser extent Alien above and the next entry below) we would never have gotten the incredible Dead Space game. Seriously. Quit reading this, and go play it. You'll never want to live in the future again.
- The Thing: Not the remake, since I haven't seen it. But the Kurt Russel version. This one might also be a cheat, in that the only thing really Sci Fi about it is that the Thing comes from space. I think. Otherwise it's happening in an arctic research station and is otherwise played pretty straight. But, to make up for my sin, I'll also add (free of charge) it's much stupider rip-off, called "Unknown Origin" because it was the second most vague title anybody could imagine after "The Thing" (though it's known on IMDB as "The Alien Within"). And that one definitely happens in some kind of sci-fi underwater research station (though the effects are bad enough I kind of thought it was supposed to be in space). Produced by Roger Corman, and with Roddy McDowal in it. It's on Netflix. Please don't spend money on it, otherwise.
Honorable Mentions
- Jack Frost: Not sci-fi (unless you count the fact that the monster is a convict mutated into a snowman by science). But wonderfully campy horror. Drink, and pair it with Monkey ShinesMonkey Shines, similarly disqualified (though the monkey is injected with some science, which possibly makes it kind of psychic).
- Hands of Steel: (not horrific, other than in its production values) It's like if you grafted the trappings of Robocop (with some stolen elements from Terminator) onto the (now cybernetic) skeleton of Stallone's arm-wrestling movie Over The Top, only instead of the obnoxious kid there's a blonde bartender. It is the second most 80s thing I've been through in a long time (after the maybe even better Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon game, which is excellent).
I would like to thank Mr. Wilson for taking the time to stop by and entertain us with his list of top five Sci-fi/horror movies. Be sure to check out his newest book "The Necromancer's Gambit" now on Amazon Kindle.
The Necromancer's Gambit
Knight, the sheriff of the local magical government, or “the Gambit,” is called to recover a mutilated body, tainted with magic and dumped at a popular haunt. When the corpse is identified as a close associate of the Gambit, he suspects a larger conspiracy threatening the fragile peace amongst the city's magic-wielding factions. As more bodies fall, Knight finds himself fighting for the lives of those he cares about.
