Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Hated upon release, I long held a soft-spot for the gonzo B-Grade horror flick “Maximum Overdrive,” written and directed by Stephen King (his only directed film). And it’s partially inspired by “Overdrive” magazine, a truck-centered pub I worked at for five years. I first saw this film at, what, 13? Maybe. Those Green Goblin eyes sold me back then. I digress. Apologies. The story: An alien comet passes near Earth, turning machines into live creatures with a thirst for human blood. At a redneck Wilmington, N.C., truck stop, it’s the big rigs that go mad and kill. Among the heroes: Emilio Esteves as an ex-con turned grill boy, and Pat Hingle as his NRA-loving prick boss. The Green Goblin eyes belong to a tractor trailer with the face of the Spider-Man villain on its cab. None of it makes sense, the blood is comically thick, and the jokes are corny, but this is a drive-in lark fueled by King’s then cocaine appetite. Yes, diesel fuels the trucks, but coke fuels the master. And likely much of the cast. Watch it as a comedy and AC/DC jam. B+

The Last Days on Mars (2013)

The very title of “The Last Days on Mars” is erroneous as it all takes place within one day on the Red Planet, but, hey, somehow it recalls a ’70s Brit prog rock concept album. Never mind that. This is “Alien” meets “Night of the Living Dead,” with Liev Schreiber as a scientist on a Mars research gig with a motley crew (Elias Koteas and Olivia Williams among them) who are all gung-ho to finish up until that one last errand goes bad bad bad oh so wrong. And then people start turning into zombies and start attacking each other. Why? No idea. I don’t need to know. “Alien” didn’t explain a thing. But I peered in too deep because there has to be something else here other than zombies attacking people on Mars, with no escape. But there’s just not. Oh, I dug Schreiber’s messed up astronaut, with his fear of closed spaces, and space ships (huh?), and some accident that struck before the film, but that’s not enough to carry this story. Not when the best character –- Williams’ cold officer -– is tossed off with a shrug. C+

The World’s End (2013)

Planet Earth had it rough in 2013. Along with numerous sci-fi flicks, our home got smashed about in “This is the End” and “The World’s End,” widely different (despite titles) comedies that satirize cinematic apocalypse larks with onscreen man-bonding and plenty of drink and drugs. “World’s End” is the last in a comedy trilogy from director/writer Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, following “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz.” Here, we take a smart stab at alien-attack flicks and the goofy nostalgia films of old high school chums getting back together to party like the good ol’ days. Wright, Pegg, and Frost call bullshit. Not on aliens. Reunions. When you go back, you fail. Your town has changed, you have changed, and everyone else has, too. Pegg’s boozer doesn’t realize that, though, and watching the guy fret over beer more than humanity is riotous, and a smash at every other boozer film. As they have before, our trio up-end the genre they mock with laser sharp wit. Mainly: Whoever you be, never argue with a drunk Brit. Bonus points: An ex-Bond in a end-game cameo. Love the beard. A-

Prometheus (2012)

The must re-watch shocking, amazing, perplexing, fascinating film of the summer, maybe the year. “Prometheus” is not exactly an “Alien” prequel, but a smarter, darker great-grandparent to such a prequel, fueled with curiosity of beginnings and origins, but not just of the classic 1979 sci-fi horror film that set off a new genre and exploded my young mind, but where all life began. The questions and the answers here, as in life, vex more than soothe and settle, and I’d settle for nothing less. Weeks out, I still obsess about this entry.

“Alien” – for all its glorious cinematic blood and guts, big hidden ideas and woman as warrior hero/savior of a kitty, was sort of like “Jaws in Space,” a monster film. A  brilliant one, no less. With exploding-from-the-inside chests and a real Paranoid Android, thank you, Thom Yorke. I love that film, endlessly. This is far deeper, and comes from not just the mind of original director Ridley Scott, but co-screenwriter Damon Lindelof, the man behind the question-baiting, answer-withholding enigma-within-a-puzzle “Lost,” an absolute favorite TV show, and I don’t watch much TV shows.

All this in a summer flick, I love it. I digress. 

To the film: Despite the million bitch-and-moan reviews you see everywhere, those pointing out scenes don’t match up, we’re not even on the same planet -- LV-426 -- that Ripley et al landed on in our 1979, the movie’s 2122. Instead, here, much of the action takes place in the year 2093, on a moon dubbed LV-223, and believed to be the exact spot of the creation of humankind, all the universe, or so a series of ancient cave paintings tell two scientists, one a Christian named Shaw (Noomi Rapace of the European “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” trilogy) and the other an agnostic hard-ass named Charlie (Logan Marshall-Green of “Devil”). The two brains become the center of a $1 trillion, multi-year mission to find the planet, and meet our makers, God, or –- so dubbed here –- The Engineers. (Go engineers!)

Yes, things go bad soon after touchdown and a non-human, but definitely hand-built massive structure, is explored, and bodies are ripped apart, stomachs opened, and -– in one nasty scene -– a worm crawls out of a person’s eyeball. (I refuse to give any spoilers, so I’m being as vague as possible here, but think this: Worst science class field trip ever.) But this isn’t a B-horror movie, it’s Scott’s bid to give us a pre-telling of not just “Alien,” but possibly “2001: A Space Odyssey,” every great science fiction film ever made, including “Blade Runner,” and our own lives. Connections to the 1979 flick are ... on your own to figure out, off screen, before or after this action.

“Alien” is just one child of this movie, this story, this Father. So many more films are wide open to explore, even those closer to home than anything in the films we all know and love, save Parts 3 and 4, and anything with “Predator” in the title. To wit: Dig the opening scene in which a massive, ivory-colored being drinks a strange, harsh potion atop a massive waterfall, and immediately starts to literally crumble. From the inside out. A disc, flat then tall, hovers above. He falls, splashes dead into the water, and his decaying cells are reborn in the water into new live, and we can flash guess from the next jump to Scotland, we just saw the birth of humans on Earth. All us.

In a summer flick. (Have I mentioned that before? Call me smitten.)

It’s not a perfect film, too many of the scientists, engineers, doctors and brainiacs aboard the ship must act foolish in order to meet their end, and a late-in-the-game self-surgery procedure (the film’s biggest talk-about-it scene that will live on infamy and YouTube clips for decades) would lay a person flat for a week, but the wildly resilient character bounces back far too quickly. (Note: The person ingests and injects enough drugs to kill every member of Guns N’ Roses, so the script leaves wiggle room on that point. Almost.) 

But damn the nitpicks, I loved it all, from the sound design, the vast sets of the human space craft (the ironic title of the film is its name) to the caverns of the alien temples and spacecraft, and Michael Fassbender’s David, an android with no outward feelings or emotion, but all too aware that as his creators -– mankind -- are all capable of being flawed, hopeless, hopeful, beautiful, addictive, messy, psychotic, murderous, and kind, why cannot man’s Creator also be that. Scott even plays off of Fassbender’s godly good-looks and stranger-among-strangers post as David obsessively watches and mimics Peter O’Toole’s performance in “Lawrence of Arabia.” Even the 3D version rocks, including the surgery scene, and the eyeball, quite effective. Also, will someone please nominate Fassbender for an Oscar already, the man from “Shame" near owns this epic tale.

This “prequel’ is no “Thing 2011” rehash -– that’s the worst this film could be –- Scott is shooting for the heavens, the stars, and beyond, and that’s something to celebrate during a summer of caped hero movies and Adam Sandler comedies. Let the uncut, full, master version of Scott’s vision come quick. God may be in the details. Imperfections and all, this is my kind of summer flick. Bravo to all. A  

Signs (2002)

I loved M. Night Shyamalan’s box-office-smash ghost story “Sixth Sense,” and dug the under-appreciated bleak superhero thinker “Unbreakable.” For me, sky was the limit for Shyamalan when his alien-invasion flick “Signs” hit cinemas. I was stoked. Then I saw it. Sky fell. Hard and fast, and has never risen again. This is a painful, awkward, insulting film to sit through, the absolute symbol of bad cinema to me. Not just when Shyamalan unleashes his trademark “gotchya!” shocker when a legion of world-invading aliens turn out to be allergic to water (!) on a planet full of water, but the whole damn dull story of a faithless priest (Mel Gibson) living with his young children and faithless baseball player brother (Joaquin Phoenix, young enough to be Gibson’s son). Hours drag by as the titular crop circles appear, the plot is set for the green visitors to arrive, and then the climax comes and a glass of H2O and a Louisville slugger are the weapons of choice. Ridiculous. This is the moment where a star filmmaker turned incredulous hack, when Shyamalan screamed aloud, “They’ll love it,” and no one said, “No.” He’s never recovered. F

Alien (1979)

Even in 1979, the plot to “Alien” was been-there, done-that – a monster systematically kills a band of trapped humans until it’s one-on-one, last man (thing?) standing. But this sci-fi flick is a masterpiece, a touchstone in my cinematic life. The monster is an acid-for-blood alien on a massive spaceship, and the last man is a woman, Ripley, played by the amazing kick-ass persona of Sigourney Weaver. Director Ridley Scott’s film is epic, claustrophobic and paced out to the most extreme. It takes 50-some minutes for the shit to hit the fan, and when it does – on a mess hall table -- oh my God. Dark, nasty and bloody, “Alien” never lets up. I love the details. The ship is packed with junk and dials and machines, seemingly designed by engineers cramming in everything for space in outer space. And the cast: Phenomenal. Yaphet Kotto, John Hurt and the god-like acting class of Ian Holm as a single-minded science officer. But, wow, Weaver. This is her film. Her world. Every brilliant moment here belongs to her. Feminism rules!  A+

The Descent (2006)

"The Descent" is a frighteningly good, nasty Scottish production from writer/director Neil Marshall, who made the recent and far less worthy "Doomsday."

This centers on a group of female friends from varying countries who meet for an adventure-vacation in North Carolina's mountains. The sextuplet drop into a cave for what should be a light, one-day natural exploration, but things go wrong fast: The group's leader lied about the destination, the strongest outdoors sport member is quickly injured and, near the one-hour mark, cannibalistic bat-like creatures attack.

It's a simplistic romp, really -- a knowing tip of the hat to "Alien," "Deliverance and even the lesser "The Cave," but it's smarter than 99 percent of the "trapped in" horror genre films. The violence is savage, but the all-female cast is never treated as mere meat who exist only for disembowelment. These women fight back from the start, and never let up, with a few exceptions. The tension also is different, and keeps the film glued together. The linchpin: Of the six women, the main hero (Shauna Macdonald) lost her family in an accident the year prior, and the group's lying leader (Natalie Mendoza) is harboring a longtime secret. When the (admittedly obvious, yes) secret is revealed, it sets off Macdonald on a rampage like Martin Sheen in full "Apocalypse Now" mode.

It's all great fun to watch, despite the occasional lapses in logic. (The creatures are blind, sure, but they can't sense heat?) Fact: Nothing stems or compares to a woman's rage, not even certain knowledge of having your guts ripped out and eaten whilst you're alive. European films have a knack for tapping into a woman' rage without making them into "bitches"; few American films do that. This alone puts this gory flick into a rare category: Horror you can proudly show your teen daughter. The ending is spectacular. B+

The Thing (1982)

"The Thing" is classic John Carpenter. Cheap, fun and nasty, it asks no more of its audience than to watch carnage rip a cast of characters limb from bloody limb. "Alien" in Antarctica, the Thing, or things, is/are a shifting alien presence that viscerates an isolated group of U.S. scientists, doctors and pilots at an Antarctic research camp. Kurt Russell is the stoic, fearless leader, with support from later '80s TV staples David Clennon, Wilford Brimley and Richard Dysart. Brimley is the standout as an unhinged pathologist. You'll never eat Quaker Oats again. Unlike "Alien," there's no character development. That's OK. This is quick, nasty, giddy, grisly fun and the frigid ice and air is as deadly as space. The highpoint has a man's head sprouting other-worldly eyes and spider-like legs as it crawls off his burning corpse. Props to the pre-CGI effects that still scare and Ennio Morricone's glorious score, which vibrates with high strings, low horns and pure dread. Gore galore, and a dark ending. Love it. A