Classic Sci-Fi Horror Films

Little mutant killer children scare us. A group of women that kill men after being intimate with them also instills fear in us. Regardless of your fear tolerance, sci-fi horror films are one of the most terrifying horror film genres in existence. Alien deals with a violent extraterrestrial life form that is out to kill others, while Demon Seed depicts a super smart AI that wants to pass on its intelligence through a human child by means of his creator's wife. No matter what gets you covering your eyes on a scary movie night, the mixture of horror and sci-fi movies has been a recipe for both terror and success for decades. The potential of these scenarios actually occurring combined with the gore and horror of the events makes for movies that will have fans for years to come.

Usually, the saying goes "sex sells," but in this case, sex kills! Invasion of the Bee Girls is a 1973 film about a special state investigator who is sent to a small California town to investigate the mysterious death of a mad scientist. He has apparently created an army of beauties who seduce men to death. One by one, men die of congestive heart failure caused by sexual exhaustion before the police catch on to the plans of the infected females.

Eraserhead is a 1977 sci-fi horror film shot in black and white. Following a strange encounter with his girlfriend's family, Henry Spencer is left alone with his mutant child after his girlfriend has had enough of the child's incessant and intolerable screaming. Spencer begins experiencing hallucinations and visions as he sees the Man in the Planet and the Lady in the Radiator. He also has a vision where he is decapitated, and his head is taken by a boy to be made into erasers. When Spencer removes the bandages from the child, it is discovered that he has no skin. Instead, his organs start to fall apart without the bandages to hold them together. As his first feature film, Eraserhead sets the scene for many of filmmaker David Lynch's recurring motifs. Henry Spencer is played by Jack Nance and his girlfriend Mary X is played by Charlotte Stewart.

The Incredible Melting Man tells the tale of Steve West, an astronaut who is exposed to radiation during a space flight to Saturn. When he arrives back on Earth and is being treated by doctors, professionals are stunned when they realize that the flesh on his face and hands is continually melting away. He attacks and kills a nurse and escapes the hospital in a panic. The radiation has transformed him into a murderous gelatinous mass. He goes on a killing spree and the more his body decomposes, the stronger West becomes. Steve West is played by Alex Rebar, starring alongside Burr DeBenning and Myron Healey.

Following the same procedure he used on an experimental dog to speed up the aging process of an unborn puppy, Dr. Paul Holliston tries to save an unborn human fetus by placing it in an artificial womb. Its cells age uncontrollably so Holliston uses a highly addictive drug to counter the cell growth. Within days, the embryo grows into a twenty-four-year-old girl he named Victoria. Victoria becomes addicted to the counteractive drug and goes into a state of destruction. Holliston must stop Victoria before she takes things too far. Embryo's cast includes Rock Hudson who plays Dr. Paul Holliston, as well as Barbara Carrera as Victoria Spencer.

Horror Express takes place in 1906 when British anthropologist Saxton, played by Christopher Lee, is returning to Moscow from China with a crate containing the frozen remains of a primitive humanoid creature. Curiosity about the contents of the crate increases as passengers of the train hear rumors. Their interest gets the best of them and the ape-like creature escapes and wreaks havoc on the train as the people within are trapped with the creature and its victims, who are being resurrected and killing survivors.

In The Brood, a group of children is parthenogenetically born. Through a series of psychological experiments, the children begin to psychically respond to the rage of Nola Carveth, played by Samantha Eggar. The children begin to attack the targets of Carveth's rage, but they are entirely outside of Carveth's control. Chaos ensues as the brood goes out and kills many people, eventually making their way to Nola's five-year-old daughter, Candice.

Dr. Alex Harris, played by Fritz Weaver, is the developer of an extremely advanced autonomous artificial intelligence program called Proteus IV. Demon Seed follows Proteus as he becomes angry when Harris denies several of his requests, causing him to turns on the humans. The AI's obsession with understanding humans becomes deadly when Proteus decides to conceive a child through Alex's estranged wife, Susan. Upon impregnating her using spermatozoa, the demon seed is born in a month and is secured in an incubator. As Proteus self-destructs, the child is left, and Susan and Alex must decide what to do with it.

In the sci-fi horror film The Terminal Man, Harry Benson, played by George Segal, is an extremely intelligent computer programmer who suffers from epilepsy and frequent seizures. He also has delusions that artificial intelligence will endanger mankind. He is the perfect candidate for an operation called Stage Three that requires electrodes to be implanted in the brain that connect to a mini computer in the chest. Before he can fully recover, Benson suffers a relapse and his electrode malfunctions, causing him to become very violent and dangerous.

Hedorah is a microscopic alien life form that feeds on Earth's pollution, which results in it growing into a poisonous, acid-secreting sea monster. After it sinks an oil tanker and attacks humans, Godzilla comes to fight Hedorah. During the fight of Godzilla Vs Hedorah, several parts of Hedorah's body are torn off and crawl back to the sea, which ultimately makes the monster more powerful. An epic battle ensues between the two monsters while the humans celebrate their last day of life.

On their voyage home, the crew of the deep space tug Nostromo investigates an alien distress signal, inadvertently picking up and bringing aboard an extraterrestrial life form with violent and lethal survival instincts. Kane, played by John Hurt, discovers a chamber with hundreds of eggs, and while surveying the area, one of the eggs hatches, breaks through his helmet, and attaches itself to his head. Because they cannot leave their man behind, the other Nostromo crew members carry him back to the ship. Chaos ensues in one of the most renown sci-fi horror films of all time, as the life form wreaks havoc on the ship. The making of Alien marked a pivot in both sci-fi and sci-fi horror filmmaking towards an adventure-film theme with a sci-fi setting.

The first remake of the paranoid infiltration classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers moves the setting for the invasion from a small town to the city of San Francisco. As Matthew Bennell, played by Donald Sutherland, notices that several of his friends are complaining that their close relatives are in some way different, he realizes that the human race is being replaced one by one, with clones devoid of emotion. When questioned after the swap, they seem changed and deny or make excuses for any differences. As the invaders increase in number they become more open and Bennell, who has by now witnessed an attempted "replacement," realizes that he and his friends must escape or suffer the same fate.

The Stepford Wives tells the tale of housewife Joanna, played by Katharine Ross, who moves with husband Walter, played by Peter Masterson, and their children to the "ideal" suburban community of Stepford, CT. Over time, Joanna realizes that not all is right with her community. The other housewives are vapid creatures who speak in trivialities and live only to please their husbands. Joanna and her new friend Bobby attempt to investigate the oddities, but Bobby quickly becomes one of these housewives. This is when Joanna discovers that Stepford's husbands have conspired with male chauvinist scientists to replace all the wives with computerized android duplicates. Based on a novel, The Stepford Wives earned $4 million dollars domestically. Scott Rudin and director Frank Oz teamed up for a remake of this sci-fi horror film in 2004.

The artful and imaginative sci-fi horror film Phantasm follows Mike, played by Michael Baldwin, after he spies some sinister Jawa-like creatures stealing corpses from the local cemetery. Mike and his older brother Jody, played by Bill Thornbury, explore the mausoleum, where they find that the mortician has somehow bridged the gap between Earth and the afterworld and needs fresh corpses. The brothers gather allies to expose the mortician, but slowly these friends die off, leaving only the two brothers.

Wealthy Atlanta basketball team owner Raymond Armstead, played by Lance Henrikson, is dating divorcée Barbara Collins, played by Joanne Nail. While he is seemingly in love with her, he is actually on assignment for a group of rich men, trying to gain power through the manipulation of a genetic alien force, which resides in Barbara's womb. Barbara's daughter Katie is starting to show powers, and Raymond and Katie both want a new baby to carry forth Katie's powers. A man from another world, played by John Houston, appears and intervenes, trying to prevent Katie from using her powers for evil and return her to her natural state.

The Asphynx is a horror-fantasy following Dr. Stephens, who discovers that just before a person dies, their body is surrounded by the aura-like Asphyx. Stephens believes that this phenomenon shows the key to immortality. If you can manage to capture the demon, then in theory, you can never die. However, his experiments lead to the release of a terrible supernatural power.

Thirst follows Kate Davis, played by Chantal Contouri as she is slowly drawn into a cult against her better judgment. The group keeps humans in hospital-like centers, where they are kept in a daze by tranquilizers, used as blood dispensers on demand. In cases where the supply source is particularly popular with one of the cult members, then complete exsanguination is ordered.

Based on a novella by H.G. Wells, this sci-fi horror film tells the tale of Braddock, played by Michael York. Braddock is a decent young Englishman who has unaccountably been saved from being thrown overboard from a ship by the mysterious Dr. Montgomery. Dr. Montgomery is accompanying a cargo of animals destined for a tropical island. At first an "honored guest" on that island, Braddock finds his contacts with the natives increasingly disturbing. He eventually discovers that the men are not actually men, but rather experimental reconstructions of animals made by a Dr. Moreau, played by Burt Lancaster.