The Setup

After plowing through the grand trifecta of the most popular creature feature themes in Zombies, Werewolves, and Vampires, the formula of the Cavalcade events was finally firmly in place. Now that we were in full swing, we felt confident in our leap out of the straight horror genre into the world of Science Fiction with Alien Invaders.

Always popular in B-grade cinema, extra-terrestrials rarely stepped into the mainstream until the late 70’s/early 80’s with big hits like Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and E.T. But since we aren’t into cuddly love-fests, we skipped Speilberg and company, and headed straight to face-hugging, disemboweling, rip-you-apart, rectal-probing space maggots focused on world crushing domination.

Stories featuring beings from other worlds can be very diverse, as evidenced in The Last Starfighter, Starman, Cocoon, Star Wars, and Star Trek.  That’s why we decided to direct our raving fandom at a particular corner of the arena and stick with the “Aliens-as-Monster” stories. As such, there’s really only two kinds of aliens that we’re dealing with…

The Humanoid Hunters

(Species, I Come in Peace, and Predator)

These guys are at least vaguely human in shape and proportion (the Predator hiding his ugly mug underneath a stylish and useful mask) and spend their time stalking humans in mostly urban environments, though they have been known to hit a jungle or two. The films themselves are less about “boo” moments and more about action and stalking sequences. Indeed some of them are straight-up action movies, while others go horror through gore, but not much else.

Bug Hunt…

(Alien, Deep Evil, Creature, and Pitch Black)

Now these suckers can run the full spectrum in form and physiology, often differing wildly from any terrestrial lifeforms.  Frequently insect-like in nature, they hide in the dark until the perfect time to pop-up, go “BOO”, and commence a popular Cavalcade Creature tradition: FACE EATING. Strangely enough, even though these creatures have a highly developed “KILL YOU” biology, the humans in these tales often spend time stalking through long dark corridors looking for them. Me? I’d get the hell out of dodge and nuke the site from orbit.

After all, it’s the only way to be sure.

The Formula

Unlike the previous themes, there are very few formulas that cross the entire gamut of “Aliens-as-Monsters” stories. The Humanoid Hunter stories tend to take place in the present, but can be in either rural or urban environments (mostly depending on budget considerations). In contrast, Bug Hunts tend to take place in a space-faring future, where everything has gone passed the Apple-influenced pristine white interiors to the 80’s heavy metal music video dark industrial designs. This is mostly due to the fantastic production design of the most successful Bug Hunt films to date: Alien and Aliens.

The two things that the two types of stories have in common are as follows:

1) There are always scenes laying out the things that make the creature alien from us. Be it fluorescent blood of the acid variety, or a highly developed sense of hair styling (e.g. I Come In Peace) with some milky-white contacts, these are brothers from another planet, dammit; and it needs to be demonstrated!

2) They. Want. To. KILL. You. Some just want you as a trophy, while others have this whole mating process. Yah, we know….Hot.

The Menu

The Booze: Everglo, Blue Curacao liqueur, UFO Hefeweizen We mostly decided to buy our booze by color, leaning heavily towards blues and greens. Everglo actually comes in a glow-in-the-dark bottle! Finally, we threw in some Jello shots for good measure (Lemon and Lime). There’s always room for Jello!

The Food: Astronaut Ice Cream

It wasn’t easy finding alien-themed food, so we settled on “space” instead. Hell, with the Chest-bursting Aliens in play, feel free to throw in some heartburn-inducing spicy foods. A goo-covered larval xenomorph ripping out of your chest might seem like a welcome relief from a Big Bite with chili, jalapeno peppers, onions, and sauerkraut.

The Movies

Lifeforce (1985): Naked. Space. Vampires. Really, there shouldn’t have to be anything more to add to that. Read it again: NAKED SPACE VAMPIRES. Okay, fine: Zombies, Naked Space Vampires, Tobe Hooper, and Patrick Stewart french kissing a Guy… as a zombie. Trust us. It’s gonna be awesome.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988): Um…Killer Clowns. From uh…. outer space. The title pretty much says it all. We suppose they could add “Giant Killer clowns” or “Eeeeevile cotton candy”, but if you’re going to see this movie, the title really does kind of say it all.

Aliens (1986): There isn’t much we can say other than the fact that this movie is undeniably chock full of excellence. We aren’t even going to bother trying to tease you on whether or not it’s Schlock-worthy or not. It’s almost perfect in every way: Great acting, great direction, great score, great effects, and it’s an amazing crowd-pleaser. It was nominated for seven and actually won two Oscars! How many films on the Cavalcade can say that?

Suggested Alternatives

We feel that we really got some choice examples for our event, but as always, there are some other directions you can go… but not many, and they’ve pretty much all been mentioned.  Predator has big action, big explosions, a big damn alien with cool weapons, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jessie “The Body” Ventura. You just don’t get much more manly than that. As a matter of fact: It’s the sheer level of testosterone on display that makes this movie so perfect for a Cavalcade. They just don’t make movies like this anymore. In another direction, Pitch Black is a very servicible Alien clone with enough going for it to make it very enjoyable. Vin Diesel plus some effective CGI, with genre favorites Keith David and Claudia Black. It’s certainly worth a look.

Finally, to get back to hot Wrestler/Alien action, you can’t go wrong with They Live with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and directed by former Genre-Master John Carpenter. Any movie that can spawn the line, “I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick-ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.” gets more than a little love in the cockles of our black hearts.