The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens - io9 Comments

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Kanamit — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 09:08:22 PST

Read the story, saw the episode, ripped the name.

Where were the bugs in Independence Day (the movie, not the original novel--jk)?

@Huxleyhobbes: I pretty much agree with you. Greatest scary alien aspect: inhuman thought process. Alien perspective = The Unknown = scary. That's why birds and fish freak me out. And Donald Trump.

Kanamit

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

antipaganda — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 20:52:03 PST

I'm with Newitz. I read the story, never saw the episode.

antipaganda

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

arachnophilia — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:46:28 PST

something about the alien's drool. it's not really like drool at all. it's like water, lubricating or cooling a machine. very different. the ones afterward have always been goopy. kind of turns something creepy and foreign into a simple rottweiler.

arachnophilia

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Elijah — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:49:14 PST

@gybryant:
I would pick you for my team of life...

Thanks for backing me and the others up.

Elijah

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jeff-Minor — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 10:37:40 PST

Actually, spiders can make me scream. Like a little girl. Especially the big hairy ones. Ahhhhh!

Jeff-Minor

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

gybryant — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 07:07:01 PST

@Annalee Newitz: Garsh! I bet you don't even own a TV and refer to it as an idiot box to all of your extraordinarily literate friends. Touch you! I hate replying to old posts, but you had to start name calling.

I've read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". But if I were editor of an SF blog and referred to James Cameron's classic film "Knife Runner", my credibility would be in serious jeopardy. B-b-but, you've read the short story. Who gives a shit if you've read the short story? It's the Twilight Zone episode that is the SF cultural landmark and not knowing it's name or the series that spawned it seriously puts your credibility in jeopardy. And - the thing is - there seems to be a pattern of this ignorance. I'm sure you're a fine person with many things to be proud of. I'm just not picking you - the SF blog editor - to be on my Star Wars Trivial Pursuit team.

gybryant

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jeff-Minor — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:33:04 PST

@Annalee Newitz: "I have READ the short story, which is a fat lot more than most of you TV-watching wankers can say."

LOL. Classic line. I for one have NOT read the story. I didn't even know there was a short story. And, I'm going to go look it up now. Thanks for sharing that bit. LOL...

Jeff-Minor

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jeff-Minor — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 05:27:13 PST

@Whyaduck: Sorry dude, I was mistaken. I've read that book twice but it seems my memory is for crap.

Jeff-Minor

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

FourEyes — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:36:12 PST

@El_Bandito: Probably more of them than all the bullets that your entire fleet where bringing with them. The Arachnids really are a good example of the enemy who just wont stop no matter how much of it you cut of and that can be scary as shit. Not that they really where very scary in Starship Troopers.

FourEyes

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Spakkenkhrist — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:13:18 PST

I thought the bugs in Mimic where a really good concept (using their wing casings to mimic human appearance) but not unearthly enough to be scary.

Spakkenkhrist

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

El_Bandito — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:49:44 PST

Bugs are freaky... and what's worse is the harmless ones.
Look at the kiwi weta. As harmless as fuck - it can't do anything to you... it just happens to look like a very small version of a big-ass killing machine waiting to rip you a new asshole with it's serrated legs.
The bigs in Starship troopers were scary because a/ they were big and could carve you a new asshole with its serrated legs and b/ there was more of them than all the bullets in your gun combined.

El_Bandito

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

FourEyes — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 22:23:20 PST

@Annalee Newitz: I don't think Lovecraft had anything except a general idea of the universe in mind and generally expanded it how he saw fit for stories he was writing. Besides the stories are the accounts of humans trying to relay something they can't understand, so it is only natural they don't get everything right

So debating what is right and what is wrong about a universe you only got a limited and flawed understanding of is rather pointless, much like debating how you actually pronounce Cthulhu.

FourEyes

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

codydog — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:04:16 PST

@Westender: Sabertooth little kids.. And i never did get why Lovecraft is SF and not Fantasy.. A few words of anthropology?

What always creeped me out as a kid was parasites, like those wasp eggs on the back of tomato caterpillars. That's the whole Alien thing. I think in "The Jupiter Theft" one of the heroes is a parasitologist, and he manages to creep the whole book out, and then save it.

Of course, if you ever looked a lamprey in the mouth, you might get a little nervous. And they are vertebrates.

codydog

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Counterglow — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 21:03:52 PST

Indifference to suffering is especially creepy. If you've ever seen a praying mantis chowing down on a victim that's still very much alive, you know what I mean. Add enough intelligence so that the alien understands its prey is sentient, and you're just about as high as you can get on the scary scale.

Counterglow

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Westender — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:47:16 PST

I know it's more horror than sci-fi, but nothing is creepier than evil little kids in a movie.

Westender

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Bob_of_Mars — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:25:28 PST

Alright, maybe this will get the vid to work:

Bob_of_Mars

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Bob_of_Mars — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:22:32 PST

Let's see here....The things about aliens that scare me
1. The facehugger/chestburster: This actually scared me worse than the actual alien. I don't know, I guess the rape fear was part of it, but also the whole parasitism thing gets to me. Bot flies scare the crap out of me, and are one of the main reasons I won't ever go to South America.
2. The Thing. I've never actually seen the movie, but that clip from it that was on here a while back scared the crap outta me (or creeped me out, I don't know).

other things that creep me out: crab eyes (I honestly don't know why), Spider eyes (completely soulless, expressionless. Completely dark eyes with a faceless face. uugh.), Big slugs (yeeeech), and um....humans getting eaten. Not just that, but in a weird way. For example:

this vid, around 36 seconds in, a dragonfly nymph catches and eats a tadpole, but it does it by almost eating it inside out, so the skin is left intact, as well as its eye. Its just so creepy, it wigs me out!

Also, I knew I read To Serve Man somewhere! I've known the story for so long, and everyone told me it was a Twilight Zone episode, when I actually did read it!! Thanks Annalee!!

Bob_of_Mars

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

SF Guy In Korea — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:44:45 PST

@Huxleyhobbes: Yup, the Borg "Queen Bee" killed one of the most well done scary alien concepts ever. File that in the "WTF are you thinking, Gene?" drawer.

SF Guy In Korea

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

botanicidal — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:22:17 PST

I think Dark City qualifies for 3 of the above:
2) have almost single collective consciousness
3) aliens look like/resemble humans
4) study humans (utilize us as we use chickens) for their own benefit by modifying out memories in artificial containment.
Hence, the supra scariness of the above film.

botanicidal

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:16:01 PST

@tetracycloide: Hey, now, I didn't say I'd turn down sex from a vagina with teeth.

I draw the line at articulated mandibles.

@Annalee Newitz: Entirely possible! The codification of the Lovecraft Mythos appears to be as much as product of the hacks that followed him (I'm looking at you, August Derleth!) as it was his own.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Whyaduck — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:15:52 PST

@Jeff-Minor: @JerkyLeBoeuf: Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. The final human generation evolves into a part of an alien collective consciousness (which is different from a "collective unconsciousness"...mee no rite so gud sumtimz).

Whyaduck

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

JerkyLeBoeuf — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:34:52 PST

@Whyaduck:

I think you're referring to Theodore Sturgeon's novel, More Than Human, and not Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End.

JerkyLeBoeuf

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:55:28 PST

I have READ the short story, which is a fat lot more than most of you TV-watching wankers can say. The Twilight Zone episode is BASED ON the short story. Jeezus. Get some ejumakashun.

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

ideaman2020 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:50:18 PST

@tetracycloide: Excuse me, but...

You don't know me.
Nor by extension, do you know whether or not I would turn down oral. [I might.]

There. Your argument falls apart. Completely specious.

ideaman2020

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

zenpoet — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:48:59 PST

@gybryant: You obviously haven't been posting here long, where "fundamental gaps in knowledge" are a prereq for posting!

zenpoet

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:43:14 PST

@Jeff-Minor: Exactly. In fact, the less I know the more opinionated I am.

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:42:42 PST

@braak: Hmm, I think that Lovecraft is actually internally inconsistent on this stuff. It drives me nuts!!!

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jeff-Minor — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:21:21 PST

@Whyaduck: I think you're talking about Village of the Damned. Childhood's End, by Clarke? Where the Earth is blown up at the end?

Jeff-Minor

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jeff-Minor — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:19:36 PST

@tangledweb16: Editors don't have to know everything, just enough to have an opinion.

Jeff-Minor

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Mister Adequate — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:15:07 PST

Whilst these may be good for visceral scares, what really scares me is motivation. I'm scared by Xenomorphs because they are so utterly alien - not in appearance, not in capacities, but in motivations. They're intelligent, we know that, but their actual motivations are alien.

Motives we either cannot understand or cannot even discern scare me more than any gore or physical weirdness.

Oh, as for the Borg, they scared the hell at me at first. When they got a voice, a figurehead/leader, etc., then they stopped scaring me. They were scary because they were essentially an elemental force, not anything you could rationalize with.

Mister Adequate

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Whyaduck — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:35:27 PST

Congrats on attracting the nitpicky dickheads with this one.

I remember being creeped out by Childhood's End when I was a kid because of the whole collective unconcious/they look like us thing. The children would have been even creepier if they drooled too.

Regarding the wide/double mouth rule:

Whyaduck

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

tetracycloide — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:33:24 PST

@ideaman2020 & braak: i think you're both full of it.

i'd like to prove this by transitivity if i may.

neither of you would turn down oral.
mouths have teeth.
therefor, neither of you would turn down sex even the girl had teeth in her vagina.

tetracycloide

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

drift_marlo — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:29:12 PST

You forgot one of the most important, scariest alien features of all - BIG GIANT BRAINS. If Americans are terrified of anything, it's brains. And I'm not just talking about the kind you eat. Forbidden Planet, countless Twilight Zone and Outer Limits episodes, every 50s B flick. You can't beat big brains for scary.

drift_marlo

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Elijah — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:49:13 PST

@Annalee Newitz:

How can Annalee be an editor here if she hasn't even seen one of the most famous sci fi stories out there?

I mean, "To Serve Man" is a classic, and anyone who fancies thereselves a true fan of science fiction should have seen it.

Elijah

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:30:51 PST

@medeasin: If you say so. I've never seen a vagina that looked like the Predator's face.

If I did see one...well, that's a girl I wouldn't go out with twice.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

ideaman2020 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:27:53 PST

I am scared of no vagina.

Unless it has teeth...

ideaman2020

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Froggmann — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:25:05 PST

You guys forgot flying aliens, Like the Night seeing hammerheaded Pterodactyl like things in Pitch Black.

Froggmann

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

medeasin — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 13:16:28 PST

Scary aliens should have grotesque vaguely sexual features, like the Predator's vagina face or tentacles for phalluses. Because sex is scary.

medeasin

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

bakana — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:47:10 PST

Jeff-Minor is right - it's probably more scary to think of aliens treating us the way we treat other humans rather than the way we treat animals.
And of course countless sci-fi stories have drawn parallels between hypertechnological aliens arriving and performing genocide with European colonialism in Africa and the Americas, etc.

bakana

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

gybryant — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:44:47 PST

@Annalee Newitz: You're right - I didn't know it was a short story first. Thanks for the info. It's probably a pretty good indicator that I shouldn't try to pass myself off as an authority with such fundamental gaps in my knowledge.

gybryant

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:37:28 PST

@Annalee Newitz: Okay, so, yes. The Deep Ones worship Cthulhu, as any sensible species might, but there seems to be consistent evidence that they are not the same as Cthulhu's spawn. In Call of Cthulhu, his spawn are referred to as cosmic octopi (while the Deep Ones are consistently referred to as frog-fish hybrids), trapped and undead along with Cthulhu in the city of R'lyeh (while, again, the Deep Ones remain active, and have built their own cities throughout the seas).

In addition, At the Mountains of Madness, which relates the story of the war between the Elder Things and the Star-Spawn of Cthulhu, describes the spawn as being made of some kind of cosmic, malleable matter. This is in direct contrast to the Deep Ones which are, for better or worse, clearly biologcals in the same fashion that the Elder Things are.

Not to nitpick, or anything. Well, I guess, yes to nitpick, but what the hell else am I supposed to do all day? Actually write something original?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:33:15 PST

@Jeff-Minor: What's more horrible than a bunch of Nazis pushing people into an oven? A bunch of eyeless Nazis pushing people into an oven.

All due respect the horror that is mankind, no matter how bad a thing is, a creative mind can make it worse.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jeff-Minor — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:24:09 PST

Who needs Aliens when you have Homosapiens? The most horrible beast I can think of is man. What's more horrible than a bunch of Nazis pushing people into an oven or Islamo terrorists cutting off someone's head? Humans are the standard by which all monsters are judged.

Jeff-Minor

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

CaptainCynic — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:09:11 PST

I'm so tired of the aliens who look like us / shapechanger cliche. I think most sci-fi movies or tv series use this as what they think is a clever way to avoid special effects expenses. I was so very disappointed when the cylons looked human. I miss the robotic ones. They're far scarier.

The whole concept of not being able to identify the enemy because they look like us is so overdone it's boring. Please, won't someone use the left side of their brain and come up with the next future cliche?

CaptainCynic

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Plague — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:06:53 PST

I'm just chimin' in to say we need more horrorhead on IO9. Or a fantasyhead.
Or any kind of head, actually.

Plague

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

petronius — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:54:20 PST

Based on these rules then clearly Plan 9 From Outer Space should be right up there on the scariness scale.

Aliens that look like humans? Check.

Aliens taking over human bodies (and dead ones at that)? Check.

Treats humans like humans treat animals? OK maybe not.

petronius

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

aspiringexpatriate — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:50:20 PST

What about a blue scaled bipedal with 8 pointy appendages coming out of her head who uses them to poke out people's eyes and eat them?

aspiringexpatriate

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:49:42 PST

@Ghede: Actually, I was making a Smiths/Psmiths joke. Though the thought of millions of Smiths fans creating a "Collective Unconsciousness" is pretty good too!

Ed Grabianowski

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:48:44 PST

@Jack: Oh good point, good point.

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

zenpoet — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:45:09 PST

@braak: I would agree Braak. Eyelessness is just inherently creepy, be it in aliens or people.

As far as I am concerned though, the only sure fire way to make something "scary" is to have Geiger do it. Everything else is either a rip-off, an almagamation, or a synthasizing of one of his creepy ideas.

Not to say that others have not made great aliens, but nothing has been scary like a Geiger alien.

zenpoet

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

bob_d — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:40:42 PST

@Annalee Newitz & @braak:
Since we're already being nit-picky: ;)
The frog-like "deep ones" from "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" were the servants/worshipers of Cthulhu, not his offspring. They did spawn with human beings, though, as did a number of "monstrous others" in H.P. Lovecraft's stories. (Lovecraft himself never even wrote about Cthulhu's spawn- that was an elaboration by other authors.)

bob_d

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Ghede — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:39:20 PST

@zeppelined: Ouch. I meant to say Collective Conciousness.

Point gotten, and laughed at.

Ghede

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Jack — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:38:14 PST

"We will not, however, speak of the human-camo farting aliens from Doctor Who."

Though Anthony Stewart Head's Headmaster in season 2 was a good Who-vian example of this particular rule. Especially because no flatulence or blue LED lighting effects were involved at all.

Jack

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

desiredusername — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:32:42 PST

You know what would make a great movie? Some really, really scary aliens who are just good guys that happen to drool, have double mouths and be shapechangers. That wouldn't be a punchline stinger at the end, it would be apparent throughout, even to the characters.

IT WOULD BE ABOUT RACISM GEDDIT??

desiredusername

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:29:59 PST

@Ghede: Speak for yourself. I find Morrisey terrifying.

Wait, what?

Ed Grabianowski

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:28:36 PST

@Annalee Newitz: Hmm. Unfortunately, I don't have the texts in front of me, so I can't prove it, but I seem to remember that throughout the Cthulhu mythos, the descriptions of the religious and social structure of the Deep Ones was at least implicitly different from the society of Cthulhu's spawn. My mind is hung up on the relationship between Dagon and Cthulhu, here.

Still, I could be mixing my sources up, so I'll concede this one.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Ghede — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:25:43 PST

Also, I don't find collective unconcious to be all that scary. Now mandatory assimalatiion is terrifying, but collective unconcious all by itself? Meh. The Psmiths aren't that scary.

Ghede

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:25:37 PST

@Annalee Newitz: Ugh! Someone has not been watching the requisite number of hours of SciFi Channel's holiday Twilight Zone marathons. And you call yourself a science fiction enthusiast! For shame!

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Ed Grabianowski — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:25:27 PST

@Annalee Newitz: It's ok, last night on American Idol, Randy said that Simple Minds' "Don't You Forget About Me" was an INXS song.

Oh god, I just publicly admitted that I watch American Idol.

Ed Grabianowski

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Ghede — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:21:54 PST

You left out Teeth. Lots and lots of teeth. And goo. Lots and lots of goo. Although teeth is someone included in the mouth part, I find that the number of teeth is more important than the size of the mouth. If the creature can't open its mouth but has several hundred teeth jabbing in all directions it would freak me the hell out in a dark alley.

Goo could also fall under the "Drool" category, but that means it comes from a MOUTH. Gooey secretions or environment will do. Anything that looks like it could be snot, spit, or worse will do.

Ghede

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Macloserboy — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:21:35 PST

@aak7268: Exactly. The order of this list should have been 1. Vagina then 2. Insects. Giant bugs never stop being scary.

And it leaves Alien out of the impregnate category when that's what humans were used for there. It combines insects, drool and a rape fear.

Macloserboy

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:20:25 PST

@gybryant: Dude, you didn't know the "Amazing Stories" reference so get off my ass.

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:19:37 PST

@braak: Actually, they are. If you read "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," where we get the whole history of sexytime between Cthulhu's spawn and humans, the main character even yells the "Cthulhu ftagn" stuff before he turns into a Deep One and slithers into the sea.

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

gybryant — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:16:37 PST

Oh, and the episode was called "To Serve Man" - not how to serve man. Trivia? Sure. But this is sci-fi 101. Jeebus.

gybryant

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

Annalee Newitz — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:14:43 PST

@gybryant: Really? OK, sorry -- I've only read the story in an "Amazing Stories" anthology and thus didn't know the exact TV reference. Fixing!!

Annalee Newitz

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

gybryant — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:10:31 PST

Outer Limits?

*sigh*

gybryant

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

abnormalmembrane — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:06:50 PST

braak's right. "To Serve Man" was a classic Twilight Zone episode, not Outer Limits.

abnormalmembrane

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 11:03:32 PST

@tetracycloide: Interesting. I'd actually suggest that you could conflate a lot of the characteristics here into a sort of supercategory--I don't know what you'd call it--where some of the scariest things represent a kind of discord between the familiar and the unfamiliar.

So, eyelessness because the aliens clearly behave as though they are not blind. Even the Bodysnatchers aliens and the Borg, part of what might make them creepy (assuming that someone was actually once creeped out by the Borg) is that bizarre behavior--that unnatural uniformity of movement. The bug in the Edgar-suit (again, stretching credulity and suggesting that someone found Men In Black scary) exactly because it wasn't a very good Edgar-suit.

I once wrote a paper about the Uncanny Valley, and how it applies onstage; I think there's merit to applying some of the ideas of cognitive dissonance to traditionally horrifying monsters.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

sir_eccles — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:57:44 PST

Zeroth rule: Don't actually show the alien or if you must only tiny glimpses never in full.

sir_eccles

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

tetracycloide — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:51:26 PST

@braak: i think you could take 'eyelessness' a step further and posite that the most frightening characterisitc of the xenomorphs was how incredably perceptive they are without having any physically apparent sensory organs.

human beings are already aware of thier acute physical dissadvantage over other species that are already on earth. we remain confidant in our superiority because of our ability to take the more limited information of our surroundings our sense provide us with and form a more cohesive picture of what that information means based on our perception alone. the aliens were simply better at that than we are, which is what made them so frightening.

tetracycloide

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:43:33 PST

Oh, and yeah, sorry--the Deep Ones are not the same things as Cthulhu's spawn.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

braak — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:41:19 PST

I think "To Serve Man" is a Twilight Zone, not an Outer Limits Episode.

Also, I maintain that eyelessness is the most frightening characteristic of the Aliens series xenomorphs, not mouthiness.

braak

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

aak7268 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:39:14 PST

Tetra...that's because the only thing scarier to nerds than an alien is a vagina.

aak7268

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

CyberKender — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:35:28 PST

Good list, but one little nitpick: The aliens in The Abyss aren't shapechangers. The 'tentacle' is an artificial construct that the alien is using, not the alien itself.

CyberKender

The Seven and a Half Rules for Making Scary Aliens

tetracycloide — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 10:34:49 PST

correct me if i'm wrong but isn't alien the only movie that was actually scary referenced in this list of rules for making scary aliens?

i'm confused by the fear of aliens wanting to mate with you. i mean i understand the fear of death afterward, that makes sense, but the actual mating part?

tetracycloide