31 Days of Horror Movies - Apollo 18 (2011)

Apollo 18 is another horror movie disguised as science fiction [see Event Horizon and Alien].  The story takes place in December 1974.  The Apollo 18 mission was cancelled in real life by Richard Nixon, but in this movie it was resurrected as a super double top secret Department of Defense mission.  The mission was to place sensors on the Moon to monitor Soviet ICBM launches.  After all, it was during the height of the Cold War.  Here’s the kicker - the mission never returned to Earth.  The movie is “recently discovered” footage of what happened during the mission [think “Blair Witch Project”].  The footage showed why the US never returned to the Moon.

Commander Nathan Walker, Lieutenant Colonel John Grey, and Captain Ben Anderson comprised the crew.  Walker and Anderson landed on the Moon while Grey orbited the Moon in the Command Module. Grey was out of the picture for a while.  Weird things started to happen to the two astronauts after they landed on the Moon.  After they planted the missile sensors and collected rocks, a Moon rock sample that the astronauts thought was secured inside the LEM was found lying on the floor.  The flag they planted outside disappeared.  They heard noises outside on the lunar surface.  A camera they left outside captured images of a moon rock that moved.  Why did a rock move?  After the crew went to explore outside the LEM, they discovered footprints that led to a Soviet moon lander. Some of the footprints were human - some of them weren’t.  They also found a dead cosmonaut in a crater near the Soviet spacecraft.

After their mission was completed they attempted to leave and return to the Command Module.  The blast-off aborted because the LEM started shaking badly.  Walker went outside to inspect for damage, and in doing so disappeared from Anderson’s sight.  Walker told Anderson he felt something moving around in his helmet, like it was a spider.   Anderson went outside to look for Walker and found him unconscious.  After they got back into the LEM, Anderson found a wound in Walker’s chest, inside of which a moon rock was embedded.  And by the way, they can’t contact Houston - something is causing interference.  Were the “ICBM sensors” causing the interference?  Were the ICBM sensors at all?  Anderson didn’t think so.  He figured the sensors were put there to track something, but it wasn’t missiles.

Walker started to show signs of an infection, and got a bit paranoid.  He knew there were cameras inside the LEM, and as his paranoia grew he tried to destroy the cameras.  Before they are trashed, the cameras caught the moon rocks on film - moving.  They weren’t rocks - it was disguise.  The rocks were aliens - the “spiders” inside Walker’s helmet.  But when Walker tried to trash the cameras he damaged the life support system - the LEM began to depressurize.  Their only hope of survival was to go back to the Soviet spacecraft.  As they rode the lunar rover toward the Soviet ship, Walker made the rover crash and he ran away.  Anderson caught up to him back at the crater where they found the dead cosmonaut.  But Walker was pulled into the crater and disappears.  Now alone, Anderson made his way to the Soviet ship.

Anderson contacted Soviet mission control.  They patched him to DoD.  The deputy defense secretary told him the folks in Washington knew about his situation, and knowing what they knew they feared Anderson was infected like Walker.  Walker is denied permission to come home.  Anderson is screwed, but he didn’t want to take no for an answer and prepped the Soviet ship for takeoff.  As Anderson made his preparations, Walker “attacked” the ship.  Ok, “attacked” is a bit of a stretch, but he did try to get in the ship.  Before Walker could get in the Soviet ship, he’s attacked by a swarm of “moon rocks,” some of which breach his helmet and kill him.

Anderson figured out how to fly the Soviet ship.  He called up Grey and told him of his plans to rendezvous with him.  What I couldn’t figure out was how one ship was going to dock with the other - they didn’t match, but I digress.  Anderson got the ship to take off, and it even reached escape velocity.  However, at the very moment the Soviet ship achieved escape velocity and the inside of the capsule became a “weightless” environment, lot of “moon rocks” suddenly became spiders and attacked Anderson.  Anderson lost control of the Soviet ship.  It crashed into the Command Module, killing him and Grey - game over.  Roll the credits and show the made-up stories of how each crewmember of Apollo 18 “disappeared.”

Whoa! Moment #1 -   The spiders inside Anderson’s helmet.  I don’t know a living soul who isn’t creeped-out by spiders, whether they’re Earthbound or space creatures.  When I see big spiders I want to burn the house down.  This guy had spiders crawling on his face.  Ew!  But what I want to know is this - how did those spiders get in his helmet in the first place?  Aren’t spacesuits supposed to be airtight?  If there was the tiniest breach in the suit, wouldn’t Walker explode due to depressurization?  So many questions, so little time…

Whoa! Moment #2 -   This one is pretty obvious - more spiders!  Imagine my surprise when the “moon rocks” did a “moonwalk” inside the LEM and turned into spiders.

Whoa! Moment #3 -  Zero gravity turns moon rocks into spiders.  Just when you thought Anderson was going to make a clean getaway, those pesky spiders gang up on him and kill him.

Apollo 18 might just as well be subtitled Arachnophobia in Space.  Chef said it best in Apocalypse Now! - don’t get out of the boat.  Absolutely damn right - but it would be a pretty boring movie if Walker and Anderson stayed in the boat.  If there are all these spiders on the Moon, just think what lies in wait on Mars.

31 Days of Horror Movies - Alien (1979)

In space no one can hear you scream…  This was the line that was used to promote Alien (1979).  Alien is the chronicle of the spaceship Nostromo.  It introduces us to one Ellen Ripley, who throughout the Alien saga [Alien and its three sequels – Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection] becomes the ultimate female badass in movie history.  Sorry Sarah Conner, but Ellen Ripley is more awesome.  And she’s better looking, too.

Everybody knows the story – a spaceship on the way home to Earth hears a distress call.  The crew is awakened to go investigate said distress call.  The crew finds a bunch of eggs during their investigation.  One of the crew is attacked by one of the eggs, from which spider-like creature attaches to the crewman’s head but doesn’t kill him.  The same crewmember dies when he “gives birth” to a creature during a spaghetti dinner.  The creature gets loose, gets incredibly huge and very nasty, and kills most of the crew.   One of the crew turns out to be an android. He has instructions from his corporate masters to bring creature back at all costs [including if the entire crew dies].  Eventually everybody dies except for the movie’s heroine.  She makes a getaway in an escape pod, so does the creature.  After she suits up and decompresses the escape pod, she blasts the creature into outer space.  Then she goes to sleep for a very long time.  But this wasn’t the end – there were three sequels, after all.

Why is Alien a horror movie instead of just a sci-fi flick?

Tony’s Horror Movie Rule #1 – If it makes you scream or jump out of your seat, it’s a horror movie.

Tony’s Horror Movie Rule #2 – If it has a monster that makes you feel “creeped out,” it’s a horror movie.  Godzilla is a monster, but it doesn’t scare anybody except Tokyo.  I actually root for Godzilla to destroy Tokyo every time, but I digress.  The creature in Alien is pretty damn scary.

Every good horror movie has at least one “Whoa!” moment [or “Holy Shit!” moment if you prefer].  Alien has three of them:

1.      Kane is attacked – Ok, I was expecting something to happen when John Hurt’s character [Kane] gets his face right up next to the egg.  But, that didn’t lessen the impact of when the creature jumped out of the egg and wrapped itself around Hurt’s face.

2.      Kane gives birth – Nobody saw this one coming, not even the cast.  The only one who was clued in about this scene was John Hurt.  When the rest of the cast looks shocked, it’s because they really were.  As John Hurt is eating spaghetti, suddenly he doubles over in pain.  The crew doesn’t know what to do.  Suddenly a baseball bat with little eyes, teeth and a tail bursts out of his chest.  I didn’t want to eat spaghetti for weeks after I saw that.

3.      Bilbo Baggins is an android – Ian Holm played Ash.  Ash was the science officer on the Nostromo.  He’s a quiet, logical, by-the-book guy – mostly.  After Kane is attacked, Ash violates Ripley’s orders [and quarantine protocol] by bringing Kane aboard.  After the creature has killed most of the crew, Ash tries to kill Ripley by stuffing a magazine down her throat.  Two of the crewmembers, Lambert [Veronica Cartwright] and Parker [Yaphet Kotto] bash Ash over the head with a container.  The first time they do it Ash malfunctions.  The second time, Ash is decapitated.  When he is, he spews android hydraulic fluid [which looks like skim milk] all over the place.  Then they have to electrocute him with a cattle prod.  He was almost as hard to kill as Grigory Raputin.  To add to this, the remaining crew reactivates Ash’s disembodied head, only for it to tell them he had orders to bring the creature back to Earth alive, and that the crew was expendable.  Soon Ripley turns the head into Ash Flambé. 

The alien looks like an album cover.  As I watched the alien evolve, I couldn’t help that I felt like I’d seen the creature before.   Then I learned the alien was designed by H.R. Giger.  He’s the guy who did the cover for Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s album Brain Salad Surgery.

Alien made a ton of money, so it was a given that there would be a sequel.  Then the sequel made a ton of money, and Ripley became more of a badass.  Then Ripley died in the third movie.  Not satisfied with Ripley’s death, Ripley somehow got cloned like Bill the Cat’s tongue in Bloom County for the fourth movie.  But wait!  That’s not the end – there had to be a “prequel!”  Enter Prometheus.  Luckily, I liked all the movies.  But the bald look in the third movie just isn’t for Sigourney Weaver.  Just sayin’…

If it is true that nobody can hear you scream in space, then why do we always hear explosions in space in every sci-fi movie ever made?  Or rockets?

31 Days of Horror Movies - Event Horizon (1997)

I don’t exactly remember when it was [it wasn’t that long ago]; we saw a science fiction movie called Event Horizon on HBO.  It has actors we like [Laurence Fishburne, Sam Neill, Joely Richardson]. The premise was simple enough – a rescue mission is going out to find another ship that is lost in space.  Simple enough, right?  Well, not quite.  Things in this movie are never as easy as they seem.  What we thought was a science fiction movie turned out to be a horror movie instead.

It’s the year 2047 and the Lewis and Clark are sent to look for the Event Horizon.  The Event Horizon disappeared in 2040 during its voyage to Proxima Centauri, which is about 4.5 light years away from Earth.  Dr. William Weir is coming along for the ride because he designed and built a new kind of gravity drive that’s on the Event Horizon.  The gravity drive looks like a huge gyroscope, but what it does is to create artificial black holes that allow spaceships to cover huge astronomical distances in short periods of time.  Think of it as a kind of “warp drive” from Star Trek.  After being missing for seven years, the Event Horizon sent a distress call.  The Lewis and Clark found the Event Horizon orbiting Neptune.  The search party boards the Event Horizon to look for survivors, but there are none to be found.  What they did find was evidence that many, if all, the crew had been killed by something.  While the search party is on the ship, the gravity drive activates by itself.  Hmmm…

After the gravity drive activated, strange things began to happen.  One crew member found the gravity drive.  The gravity drive generated such a force it opened a portal to another dimension, and when this particular crewmember found it, he [Justin] is sucked in.  He was brought back, but when he got back he was in a state of shock.  Something he had seen on the “other side” made him catatonic.  He’s brought back to the Lewis and Clark, but while on board he tried to commit suicide.  He tried to leave the spaceship without a suit.  His shipmates were able to close the airlock and pressurize it before Justin exploded.  Other crewmembers begin to have hallucinations.  Captain Miller [Fishburne] has flashbacks of a abandoning a fellow astronaut in a fire.  Dr. Weir sees his dead wife come back to life, only there are no eyes in her eye sockets.  Apparently she killed herself while Weir was away on another space flight – she couldn’t bear the separation any longer.  This vision of his wife [whom he misses terribly] urged him to join her wherever she is.  The medical technician [Kathleen Quinlan] sees her dead son.  Such is the effect the gravity drive is having on the Lewis and Clark crew.  The force generated by the Event Horizon’s gravity drive is also damaging the Lewis and Clark to such an extent that the crew has to abandon the Lewis and Clark and use the Event Horizon as a lifeboat.

After a while Lieutenant Starck [Joely Richardson] is able to unscramble the Event Horizon’s video log.  It shows the Event Horizon’s going insane and killing each other.  Having seen the log, Capt. Miller makes a snap decision – “we’re leaving!”  Capt. Miller figured out the Event Horizon was indeed able open a gateway through space and that it crossed over into another dimension, one that Dr. Weir called “a dimension of pure chaos, pure evil.”  As all of this was happening, the Event Horizon turned into a sentient being.  Perhaps that’s how the gravity drive activated itself at the beginning.  Capt. Miller wanted to destroy the Event Horizon, but the ship was not only able to think for itself, it was also telepathic.  Dr. Weir didn’t want his creation to be destroyed.  The ship had an iron grip on Weir’s mind – he went insane.  He gouged out his own eyeballs and sowed the sockets shut.  He didn’t need eyes anymore – the ship did the “seeing” for him. And, he wanted to go to that other dimension to be with his wife.  One by one, the crew begins to die.  Kathleen Quinlan’s character saw another vision of her dead son.  This vision led her to the engineering section, where she died in a fall.  Dr. Weir killed another crew by vivisecting him [that was pretty gruesome].  We didn’t see the act itself, just the result, which was horrible enough.  Weir trapped Lt. Starck on the bridge, and had by this time had activated the ship’s gravity drive again, only this time with a ten-minute countdown to transport back to the other dimension.   Weir shot out the window on the bridge, the decompression of which sucked him into space.  Capt. Miller and Lt. Starck managed to seal off the bridge and survive.

Miller decided the only way out is to blow the ship into two parts.  The part with the gravity drive would go back from whence it came, while the forward section would be a lifeboat.  While he’s in the back of the ship, he’s attacked by manifestations of the man he abandoned in the fire years ago [an astronaut named Corrick], and of the recently-departed Dr. Weir.  Weir shows Miller what he can expect when he gets to the other side – visions of his crew suffering the same fate [and in the same way] as that of the Event Horizon.  He fights off the manifestations of Corrick and Weir and sets off the explosives.  His plan worked -  the Event Horizon went back to the other dimension [presumably Hell], while Lt. Starck and two other astronauts escaped to safety on the “lifeboat.”  When they were rescued, Lt. Starck was awakened from her deep sleep, only to see a vision of the eyeless Dr. Weir as one of her rescuers.  She starts to scream uncontrollably – the door closes…

Event Horizon didn’t do so well at the box office, but thanks to Encore it’s a cult classic in the Howard house.  It’s just a little over 90 minutes, and it doesn’t drag.  The visions of the eyeless Dr. Weir are too creepy for words.  They’re what I call “Whoa! moments” – those things that are so unexpected, so intense they just blow your mind when they happen.  Event Horizon has enough “Whoa! moments” to keep it interesting, which is what every good horror movie needs.