I already mentioned Alien, but the prison planet on Alien 3 was actually even creepier than the smashed alien ship. That bleak, abandoned planet with its industrial freakshow prison was so depressing and hopeless that audiences stayed away from this film in droves — even though it was directed by David "Se7en" Fincher, a guy who certainly knows how to give good setting. William Gibson worked on an early version of the script. If you haven't seen this one in a while, give it a second viewing. You might be surprised.

One of the all-time most horrifying scifi settings is the hallucinatory, hellish veterans hospital in Jacob's Ladder. This film about a guy given weird "super soldier" drugs during Vietnam has strange religious overtones, but mostly is about someone driven crazy by government-conspiracy pharmaceuticals and high-tech warfare. Played with wide-eyed hysteria by a very young Tim Robbins, the guy begins seeing himself in a hospital hell, which is full of these twitchy-headed, masked demons who make the scariest dry-shuffling noises I've ever heard. Watch if you dare.

A cult movie from the mists of time (ie, 1975) called A Boy and His Dog wins for best scary, underground city long before City of Ember locked us into its spell. Featuring Don Johnson and a talking, mutant dog who is smarter than he is (yes, I know that's believable), the post-apocalyptic flick chronicles Don's foray into an underground city called "Topeka" where everybody wears weird clown makeup and lives a horrifying nightmare of suburban life, complete with enforced church-going and scary, ultra-trimmed lawns. Unfortunately for poor Don, radiation has made all the men sterile and they want to keep him prisoner and milk him for sperm (but not in a fun way). Jason Robards does an amazing job as the underground city's demented mayor. Actually, this trailer may scare you for reasons other than the underground city.

Laboratories — especially where They are experimenting on humans — are always frightening. That's what made so many scenes from The X-Files compelling.

And it's also what makes us love to fear the lab featured in Resident Evil: Extinction, where Milla Jovovich's clones kept getting tested and killed over and over again. But for sheer horror in set design, nothing can beat THX 1138, George Lucas' film about a completely sanitized, emotion-free society where everyone wears white (except the cops), every room is white, and everything is lit with insanely bright floodlamps. Filmed partly in one of San Francisco's ultra-white subway stations (the Powell St. BART station, to be exact), the whole film is saturated with a freaky fascist feeling created by Lucas' minimalist but frightening setting.

• Blade Runner: This movie has been sampled from everyone from Sigue Sigue Sputnik to Paul Haig, but it's Gary Numan who has a real love affair with it. He's used it in at least four different songs. It's been one of the most sampled movies used in music, particularly by electronica and punk bands. Wonder if the replicants would like this stuff.
• Star Trek: New Order and Jesus Jones have used lines from Star Trek in their songs, but the most popular song to borrow from Trek was "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)" by Information Society. Spock's voice repeating "Pure energy" over and over was the hook for this number, and they ended up having to put (Pure Energy) in the title so people would know what this was.
• Dune: Dark and moody electronica and pseudo-goth music is attracted to Dune like the Harkonnen clan is to the spice. The trippy speech describing what the spice does is has been used by trancepop bands like Aphrodite to Astral Projection, and it makes you wish that stuff was real.
• RoboCop 2: Probably not the first movie that would spring to mind when you you think about killer samples. Front Line Assembly seriously mined this movie for their song Mindphaser, and made a killer scifi video to go with it.
• THX 1138: Electronica group Front 242 tossed in ten lines from this movie into their "Operating Tracks" song, and hopefully helped expose more people to this movie. Plus, if it was good enough for Babyland and Nine Inch Nails, who are we to argue?

THX-1138. Totally hairless dude? Check. Drugs keep him asexual and out of it? Check. Total childlike submission to authority, at least at first? Double check. Somewhere there's an adult baby touching himself to this movie right now.

Brazil. Jonathan Pryce wanders through most of the movie with a lost-little-boy look on his face. And when he dreams about fighting back, it's as a childish fantasy sword-hero who isn't all that effective. It takes Kim Greist and Robert DeNiro kicking his ass to get him to start taking matters into his own hands. The film presents his boyishness as lovable, even though it's a direct result of the oppressive system he lives in.

The Truman Show. The film audience loves Truman for much the same reason as his fictional viewers. His cute overgrown boy grin, his cutesy sayings. People watch him sleep, like a puppy. Everyone around him tries to keep him scared to go too far away from home, and his job as an insurance agent is all about clinging to security. He's a big kid.

The Island. Okay. Ewan McGregor and his fellow agnates wear pajamas. A "nannyish" computer scans their urine and monitors their diet. Black-clad guards rush over if male and female clones spend too much time touching each other. They're taught to fear the outside world, and they do as they're told, waiting to go to a storybook paradise called The Island. Basically, it's THX-1138 with hair.

Of course, all of these films end with our hero growing up and casting off the corporate/state apron-strings. Otherwise, they'd make for pretty dull viewing. But first, they linger lovingly over the spectacle of their heroes turned into kids, because all that regression provides an escapist thrill for us, the audience. And why not? Isn't that what's so seductive about authoritarian cultures in the first place?

"Deep space, at the edge of the galaxy. The future. A new prisoner arrives on top security prison ship and psychiatric research unit Dante 01. Sole survivor of an encounter with an alien force beyond imagining, Saint Georges is a man possessed by inner demons, caught up in the battle to control the monstrous power within him."

Translation: sounds like your standard "holy crap, we're on the edge of space and sanity, and this alien thing has really screwed us" scenario.

The Weinstein Company has bought the U.S. distribution rights, which hopefully means we'll be seeing it on our shores not too long after the January 2nd premiere in France. While the premise might sound tired, Caro's other films make great eye candy.

Famous Names: George Lucas (Writer/Director); Robert Duvall, Donald Pleasance (Cast).

Crunchy Goodness: 4

Life Lesson: When the fascist state of tomorrow tells you to take your meds, just start swallowing.

Sight You'll Never Unsee: The silver-faced law enforcement droids — which are somehow both cheesy and creepy.

Deadliest Spoiler: THX gets away — not because he's faster or tougher than his pursuers, but because his pursuit has gone over-budget.

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