I’ve got a good memory, but it’s short. Shout out to my dad for that gem.
That’s the thing about movies; unless a flick is groundbreaking or outrageous or a
blockbuster mega-hit, they get forgotten pretty quick.
This can be both good and bad. Let’s start with the bad news: falling into obscurity
means, well, the movie is obscure! Less people watch it! It’s remembered less!
BUT! This can make for some excellent hidden gem viewing. Re-discovering a movie that has
disappeared from the public’s memory-at-large is a blast and a half, to say the least.
Especially if it’s a lesser-known horror sci-fi gem, because honestly? The more obscure
a sci-fi horror is, the better it’s likely to be.
Big budget blockbusters need not apply, y’all try too hard to explain everything and shoehorn
expensive special effects in. If you made a movie for multi-millions and faded into
obscurity, it’s probably for good reason. Hello horror heads, and welcome back to the
scariest channel on YouTube: Top5ScaryVideos. I’m your horror host, Keegan Hughes, and
today we’re gonna be counting down the Top 5 Scary Forgotten Sci Fi Horror Movies!
Grab your clunky-yet-technologically-advanced weaponry, because this is gonna get messy.
Before we get started, make sure to give this video a big thumbs up, and subscribe for more
alienated aliens! Perfect, let’s get going.
NUMBER FIVE: WES CRAVEN’S SWAMP THING Wes Craven did a Swamp Thing?
Two years before Nightmare? Huh! Who knew! It’s one hell of a flick, too.
Of course, it follows the classic Swamp Man story: you know, there’s a hunky scientist
working on some sort of secret formula, gets accosted by a paramilitary force, accidentally
uses the experimental stuff on himself, and turns into a beast.
More hulky than hunky at that point. This version of the eponymous DC bog beast
is just full of camp and goofy fun. When you boil it down to the bare essentials,
it is just a rubber suit monster movie, but it’s done with such heart, it’s hard to
ignore! Plus, it hits on three different levels; we’ve
got the monster movie, we’ve got the mad scientist movie, we’ve got the transformation
beat. There’s something for everyone!
Speaking of something for everyone, this movie also has all sorts of moods.
At times it can be peaceful and poetic, channeling the gentle soul of a certain Frankenstein’s
monster, while at other times it can be a vicious and brutal gore-fest.
The balance it strikes between these two things is surprisingly, well, balanced!
It helps that the titular THING is relatively good humoured through all the nonsense.
Finding beauty in the swamp, claiming it only hurts when he laughs, it’s a lovely departure
from the grimdark tone some similar movies may try to hit.
Oh, and Adrienne Barbeau is in it too! Hard to miss when casting her in a classic horror,
eh? If you’re in the mood for something equally
goofy and gory, take Swamp Thing for a spin. Plus it’s always interesting to watch pre-Nightmare
Wes Craven flicks and see the similarities and differences.
NUMBER FOUR: THE ARRIVAL This movie is exactly as many years old as
me, and has nothing to do with Denis Villeneuve’s language-based meditation on motherhood.
The Arrival is indeed a first-contact alien movie, but it takes a much sillier approach,
and stars none other than a very sweaty Charlie Sheen.
I wonder what he has to say about all the tiger-blood related news headlining Netflix
these days. Returning to the topic at hand, The Arrival
has a whole lot go right for it, even if it can be pretty cheesy at times.
It’s the classic 90’s sci-fi thriller, complete with a wise-cracking little kid and
some questionable cultural costuming! It’s likely that the main reason this one
isn’t as well remembered as it could be is that it was up against Independence Day
during its theatrical run. Yeah, this opened a couple weeks ahead of
the Will Smith - Jeff Goldblum doomsday disasterpiece, which seems to have all but erased it from
our collective consciousness. The Arrival has Sheen play a radio astronomer,
who comes across a signal from another world. This, for whatever reason, leads to him being
immediately canned and searching for signals out of his attic.
While continuing his search from the comfort of home, he stumbles upon some real top-secret
stuff, but has a great deal of difficulty convincing anyone of anything.
Ah, the classic Man Who Knew Too Much. From here we enter a world of deceit, and
the movie gets both intense and goofy. For every scene where our hero narrowly escapes
death by some wild assassination attempt, there is one where Charlie Sheen dresses up
as a Mexican security guard, or has black-hole grenades lobbed at him and his possessions.
And even if they do look kinda funky, the aliens with backwards legs are an image I
can’t seem to get out of my head. Inverse knees, man.
In the end, The Arrival is also a sort of commentary on global warming, which was a
caveat I wasn’t expecting. But truly, what is scarier than the world
heating up to unliveable temperatures so that an alien race can comfortably take over? Well,
maybe that scenario, but without the aliens, because then it would be for nothing!
NUMBER THREE: SCREAMERS Not just a banger of a tune by Sleepy Dog!
It’s also a paranoid, muddy, strip-mining nightmare based on a story by Phillip K. Dick!
We’re dropped into a futuristic world in which a war is being fought between a mining
company and a union! Not so unrealistic yet, hey?
The New Economic Bloc has sent a bunch of grizzled dudes to mine a miraculous material
that solves all of Earth’s energy issues. However, this stuff is also mad deadly, and
the miners are tired of literally perishing in the name of profit.
So the Alliance, a fun name for the union, designs some artificially intelligent, self-replicating,
screaming robots called AUTONOMOUS MOBILE SWORDS.
Oh hell yeah. So these insane robot things go around mucking
NEB folks, until they table some peace talks. PSYCH. Peace talks were ruse. Not that it
matters now, because in a stunning twist of fate that nobody could have seen coming, the
AUTONOMOUS MOBILE SWORDS have become the new common enemy.
See, they started to replicate humans pretty effectively, and killing indiscriminately.
So now the world of Screamers is an endlessly paranoid one: anyone could be a screamer in
disguise. You can’t trust ANYONE. Especially not the
kid with the teddy bear on the dead planet. Hell, don’t even trust his teddy bear.
Dark, mucky, desolate, desperate, this is a flick scary in scope, that also has plenty
of spooky moments. Kind of like Blade Runner meets Alien, but
also less memorable than either of the two. But this is a list about forgotten movies!
So I think we can forgive it for not living up to legendary status.
NUMBER TWO: CUBE OH CANADA!
Always shouting out Canadian origins, you know me.
Cube is a cult classic that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough.
Members of it’s ravenous fanbase may claim otherwise, but that’s because they never
stopped talking about it. Plus there’s plenty of new stuff that tries
(and fails) to take its place by using similar tropes but way less effectively. See: Escape
Room, and the soon-to-be-released Escape Room 2.
There’s seven folks trapped in a cube, each of whom have a talent that should help them
survive the brutal gauntlet ahead. And when I say brutal, I mean both in terms
of the bloody traps set, and the architecture of the rooms.
Cube is famous for being atmospheric, intelligent, and not trying to force an explanation for
everything somewhere in there. It feels a little Kafkaesque, and is definitely
full of surreal charm. Plus, it's an absolute masterwork in low-budget
thrills. Like, they just redecorate and relight the
same concrete room in a bunch of different ways to make it seem like the Cube is as big
as it claims to be. Big budgets be damned, this looks and feels
more cohesive than most of what other torture-porn flicks try to get across.
I think the best thing that Cube does is avoid overwritten explanations and exposition.
There are moments in which characters pontificate on the purpose and origin of the Cube, ranging
from government conspiracies to alien lifeforms, but they don’t ever try to give a big, overarching
resolution. Nope, it focuses on the characters dealing
with problems as they present themselves, and interacting with each other in interesting
ways. And crazy traps. Gotta love the crazy traps.
All for our enjoyment! It’s kinda meta, when you think of it.
Who needs government experiments and extraterrestrials when you have a bloodthirsty audience?
NUMBER ONE: ALIEN RAIDERS 2008 doesn’t seem like that long ago, but
all of the sudden that’s twelve years. Makes sense that this one is sort of under-the-radar,
especially considering the low budget and lack of wide release.
This was still pre-streaming too, so it’s likely that it just didn’t reach the audience
it so definitely deserved. The boilerplate title probably didn’t help
either. Regardless, Alien Raiders is a crazy-tense
bottle scenario of a movie. A group of masked gunmen take a grocery store
hostage in order to check the shoppers for alien infection, while the cops outside have
no idea what’s going on. It kicks off fast, with very little setup
or explanation, which is actually a very good thing in this case.
The alien-hunting squad rolls in and scares the hell out of folks in the store: NO TIME
TO EXPLAIN, DRINK THIS MILK! It’s so effective, because they’re acting
extremely unhinged for no apparent reason. Folks in the store haven’t the foggiest
as to why they’re being held hostage, and see folks getting gunned down for being “aliens.”
Picture yourself in that situation: sitting there, hands behind your back, thinking the
people with guns have completely lost it. As the alien threat becomes more apparent,
the clock starts ticking while the cops outside get more and more antsy.
It’s tense and well-shot, at times feeling a lot like a modernized The Thing.
There are less cool effects, and obviously Carpenter wasn’t involved, but the comparison
is still effective. We’ve got a group of desperate, mostly competent
people fighting against a threat they barely understand in a tight space. It works!
OUTRO Do you think you’ll remember these now?
Go give them a watch, and let me know if they stick.
What did you think of the list? Which of these have you seen? Did you remember
them, or was this a shocking reminder? Are there any sci fi horrors that I neglected
to mention? Make sure you let me know down in the comments!
Speaking of comments, let’s take a look at some of your more bespectacled ones from
the TOP 5 SCARY LIVING CREATURES THAT NEED TO BE IN HORROR MOVIES:
The Art of Horror says “Not living, but have always wanted to see a “Marsupial Tree
Lion” in a movie. Those things look evil AF: stealthy, carnivorous, tree-dwelling death
dealers.” Oh hell yeah. Let’s find some fossils and
pull a Jurassic Park! I wanna see it happen! Victor Valdez says “I’m picturing the
Satanic Gecko with a larger urban counterpart. Imagine that stalking the streets of say,
Rio, but then it hops a cargo container to NYC, shades of SCP-1155 (predatory street
art). Now let’s imagine enough for a breeding colony, that’s monster movie GOLD!”
I don’t know what you’re doing writing it in the comments here, get the ol’ typewriter
out and put together a first draft! Pitch that to a studio ASAP!
Tami Ruiz says “Love the irony of wearing an “outdoors” shirt while in quarantine.”
I’m trying to manifest the outdoor energy! FlankerVT says “Good job on being able to
concentrate and work from home” It’s not the easiest thing, but we gotta
get the content to you good folks watching from home!
Fundygymnast says “I actually volunteered in my animal physiology class to let my Prof
slap a lamprey onto me like a 90’s slap bracelet.”
That is an image I didn’t think I needed, but here we are! One question for you, though:
WHY? And that’s all the time we have for today!
Before I emulate Peggy Hill while skydiving, make sure you give this video a big thumbs
up, and subscribe for more science fiction freakyness!
Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time!