Forget chocolate and peanut butter. If there are any two tastes that go great together, it's science fiction and horror. These two genres have a long history of intermingling in pop culture. After all, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is considered one of the first examples of science fiction, and that's very much a horror story, too.

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Alien Invasion

This week sees the release of Riddick, the third entry in the sci-fi trilogy starring Vin Diesel. Riddick is notable for returning the franchise to its horror-tinged roots a la the original film, Pitch Black. In honor of what we assume will be a much better movie experience than The Chronicles of Riddick was, we've decided to take a look at the many ways Hollywood has blended science fiction and horror over the years, from early classics like Godzilla and Invasion of the Body Snatchers to modern favorites like 28 Days Later and Terminator 2.Perhaps the most straightforward example of the horror and science fictions genres being merged involves the idea of aliens invading Earth. It's a concept that has long terrified the general public, as shown by Orson Welles' infamous radio dramatization of H.G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds. Multiple film adaptations of this tale of blood-sucking, nigh-indestructible Martian tripods have been produced in the decades since. The Blob is another early example of Hollywood depicting an invasion by an unstoppable alien menace.

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The Monster Among Us

Science Gone Astray

For many movie lovers, however, the Alien and Predator franchises represents the pinnacle of alien monster movies. The Alien movies all benefit from a creeping sense of dread, striking set and character design from H.R. Giger, and fierce battles with deadly Xenomorph creatures. Part of the horror stems from the fact that humans are used as incubators for new Xenomorph eggs.With Predator, there's an appeal in seeing even hulking action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers fighting a losing battle against an invisible alien hunter. The Alien spinoff Prometheus recently showcased the origins of the Xenomorph threat, touching on a familiar sci-fi trope - we often create our own monsters.Various other films have offered their own unique spins on the alien invasion formula. Riddick, like its predecessor Pitch Black, combines the threat of unstoppable alien hordes with the crushing despair and uncertainty of darkness. Unlike Vin Diesel's Riddick, most of us don't have built-in night vision to bank on. Both Slither and Starship Troopers attempt to inject a bit of campy humor to offset the violence and carnage of massive battles between humans and aliens.And sometimes alien threats hail not from other parts of the universe, but other dimensions entirely. This is an idea that dates all the way back to writer H.P. Lovecraft's tales of Cthulu and other monster gods with hard to pronounce names whose very appearance is enough to drive a man insane. Sadly, Hollywood has been very slow about directly adapting these tales so far, but there are some films that were clearly inspired by such material. The Mist, adapted from a Stephen King story, depicted the plight of a group of survivors holed up in a grocery store as terrible creatures roamed the fog outside. And this year's Pacific Rim saw humans suit up in giant robotic suits called Jaegers to fend off an increasingly rapid series of dimensional incursions of large beasts.Alien invasions are one thing, but very often the enemy we can't see is scarier than the enemy we know. Many sci-fi films have banked on this notion, presenting villains who either take the form of an ordinary human or humans who are corrupted by some external force.This concept was most famously used in the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as its 1978 remake (which is generally regarded as the superior version). Both versions deal with a group of aliens who replace humans with substitutes identical in every way except a lack of emotions. Their ultimate goal is to create a uniform, conformist society, and only a lone psychiatrist stands in their way.1982's The Thing is another example of this sub-genre, as well as another example of a sci-fi/horror remake surpassing the original film. Here, a group of scientists at a remote Arctic installation are infiltrated by a shape-shifting alien killer. Much of the struggle in the movie revolves around attempts to ferret out the impostor among the group. And as skilled as the creature is at mimicking human shape and behavior, when threatened it transforms into something truly terrifying.There's also 1960's Village of the Damned and its 1995 remake. In this movie, a quiet English village called Midwich is struck by a "time-out," an event that renders every inhabitant temporarily unconscious. This event causes every woman in town to give birth to near identical blond children, all of whom rapidly mature and carry dark psychic powers combined with a total lack of human empathy. The children look innocent and ordinary, but that changes once their eyes begin to glow.Supernova and The Quatermass Experiment showcase what happens when an ordinary human is exposed to a corruptive influence. In the case of the former, an astronaut is exposed to ninth-dimensional matter and lashes out at his rescuers. The latter is an interesting attempt by horror icon Hammer films at tackling the sci-fi genre, wherein an astronaut gains the ability to absorb anything he comes into contact with.Meanwhile, both the Species franchise and Terminator 2 deal with inhuman, shape-shifting villains who infiltrate modern society. Usually there's little question of who the bad guys are in the Terminator series, but the T-1000's ability to impersonate John Connor's friends and family made him a uniquely devious foe.As mentioned earlier, one concept Prometheus explored was the notion that humans create their own monsters. We are very much our own worst enemy most of the time. This is certainly something many sci-fi films have dealt with over the years. "Man creating monsters" is a concept popularized by the novel Frankenstein (whose original subtitle is, conveniently, "The Modern Prometheus"). Frankenstein has seen its fair share of Hollywood adaptations, including the iconic Universal version from 1931. That basic concept has also inspired modern re-imaginings like the campy sci-fi/horror mash-up series of Re-Animator movies.

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One of the most recurring examples of "man creating monsters" is the zombie movie. Not every zombie project necessarily falls into this category. For example, George Romero's Night of the Living Dead and its many offshoots deal with zombies created by an alien virus accidentally brought to Earth by a downed satellite. But movies like Planet Terror and 28 Days Later deal with zombies directly created by man's meddling with biology and viral experimentation. 28 Days Later also upped the horror ante by introducing zombies who can run rather than shamble, a trait that many subsequent zombie movies (the Dawn of the Dead remake, World War Z) have adopted.I Am Legend also falls into this category. Though it features vampires rather than zombies, the end result is the same. I Am Legend is particularly poignant because of its final message - lone survivor Robert Neville is as feared by the vampires as they are by him. There's an extra layer of horror in the notion that humanity's monsters hunt us not just because it's prudent or in their nature, but because they genuinely hate and fear us.The Resident Evil movies are also prime examples of lab-created monstrosities, with zombies merely being the tip of the iceberg as far as the terrible creatures on display. Interestingly, both the RE series and Alone in the Dark are examples of Hollywood adapting popular horror games and placing extra emphasis on the science fiction elements. The early RE games in particular were far more claustrophobic and horror-oriented than the films.

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The Atomic monster genre also deserves a mention. Though not as prevalent now, fears of nuclear proliferation in the '50s inspired classic sci-fi/horror mash-ups like Godzilla and Them!. In both cases, ordinary animals are mutated by atomic testing into colossal beasts that lay waste to human cities. Clearly something about Godzilla still appeals to moviegoers across the world, because the original movie has inspired countless sequels and spinoffs in a number of different media. It also clearly inspired the found footage movie Cloverfield. Though the Cloverfield monster isn't atomic, it was an innocent creature set loose by man's meddling.This category doesn't have to revolve around monsters and zombies, either. Often humanity faces extinction from its own robotic creations in these movies. In our pursuit of true, functional artificial intelligence, many fear the day when machines become self-aware and decide to turn against their human handlers. This is the basis of the Terminator franchise, where a devious computer system called Skynet caused a nuclear holocaust at the end of the 20th Century and spent the next several decades hunting down the survivors with various models of Terminator robots. This is also the basis of The Matrix franchise. There, humanity is enslaved by robots, who plug everyone into a hyper-realistic computer simulation of the late 20th Century while they harvest their precious body heat for energy. Whoa...And there are still more examples of technology running amok in sci-fi films. The Lawnmower Man sees an ordinary human turned into a super-powered killer thanks to a reckless scientist's experiments. Hollow Man, which plays on the H.G. Wells classic The Invisible Man, follows a scientist who loses all sense of moral boundaries after testing his invisibility serum on himself. And long before Inception floated the idea of navigating other people's dreams, Dreamscape depicted a psychically-gifted hero navigating the treacherous and often terrifying dream world.