bluefire579 said:
Brian Earl Spilner said:
Still the scariest alien moment of all time, imho.
That one's good, but I'd give the edge to the ventilation scene in Alien.
Definitely in for this one
For me, Signs had a couple of moments that did a number on me - the one in this embedded video and the first time they see it standing at the peak of the barn roof. At the time, the house I owned had a window that looked onto a neighbor's house, with a tall pitched roof that just reminded me of that scene.
As for scariest alien moment, Signs does not even rate. Alien is the one and only movie that fits that bill. But reading some of these posts, I see something in common. I can see how Fire in the Sky would mess someone up at age 12, but I was in my 20s when it came out. No real issue with me on that one. I was, however, 12 when my dad took me to see Alien. He thought it was going to be another science fiction movie like Star Wars; I remember knowing it would be a monster movie but more along the lines of a giant monster flick, like Godzilla.
I watched the majority of that movie through my fingers over my face. The air shaft sequence was the scariest sequence, but I will talk a bit about the other sequence that scared the crap out of me. When Harry Dean Stanton goes to get the cat, and the now full-grown alien drops down onto him from the air duct to take him away, I had been clenching my need to urinate. Seemed as good a time as any to go after that. We were at the old Palms Twin in Sugar Land, TX (old building at the time, right across from the Imperial Sugar plant, now gone); when I walked into the restroom, there was a gaping hole in the ceiling. One of the tiles was gone. Whatever. I just knew something was gonna come through that hole while I was taking a leak. I never peed so fast in my life.
Alien had almost as big an impact on my life as did Star Wars, although for different reasons. I had all kinds of nightmares over the next year or so. Didn't always sleep soundly. I've seen it described as The Exorcist in space, which for me is a pretty good description. I saw it again as a fish at A&M at Rudder Theater. No impact of it then, but then again, I'd seen it several times when it finally aired on HBO (2-3 years after its theatrical run for some reason). Yet over the years, I found myself continuing to have my sleep interrupted by a dream featuring either a big slimy monster or some environment that looked like it belonged in that movie. When Aliens came out, I had a bit of a flashback to those feelings of trepidation that I would get any time I saw photos from the interior of the Nostromo, when the Marines opened the doors and we see the long corridor where Hudson says someone must have bagged one of Ripley's bad guys.
Alien also was the cause of the worst financial decision I have ever made. In a doctors waiting room, I read some entertainment magazine in the early 90s about the movie Alien on some technology called laser disc that included all kinds of outtakes, extra footage, interviews, designs, etc, that I had to see. So I bought the player and the disc set ( which started a fairly brief period where I would spend roughy $6K on laser discs, including Alien and the original versions of the Star Wars OT). All as valuable as paper weights these days. Oh well, lessons learned.
As for Nope, I will definitely plan to see that one. But no alien movie will ever come close to Alien.
