You know the cliché, a distress signal/call goes out and the investigative team is assembled/stumbles into and the plot begins. It’s a brilliant tool used to really kick off the intrigue and peak audience’s interest and although considered a bit of a movie trope today, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of a good mysterious distress call.

This list was inspired by a conversation I had recently with Roy from Fortress of Mystery. Check out his blog out, he’ll probably be arguing a point you’d never even considered.

Magnetic Rose

Previously mentioned in my top ten anime experiences, Magnetic rose falls part 1 of three for the collective work known as Memories. The story begins with a salvage crew of four just going about their daily business when an SOS is received. Not like your usual distress call, the signal is a mixture of pulsating beeps mixed with snippets from the opera Madama Butterfly. The signal itself of course sparks the narrative and beckons the salvage crew members to investigate where things begin to take a dark turn.

Begin at 4:30

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Not a distress call in the strictest terms nor is it picked up but delivered, ‘help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope’. The message is a call for help from a princess in distress and it is received by a group who do indeed investigate and come to the rescue. The reason that this distress signal is on my list is because of the implications of such a message. A New hope was the original instalment in what would be one of the greatest sagas’ ever to grace the silver screen and this message is in part, that reason, that trope, that cliché that does in effect give birth to the story. Life to a generations of bad cosplays and unfulfilling follow ups.

Starship Troopers

Delivered off scene this SOS call from a military base on nearby planet ‘P’, sends our beautifully heterosexual Johnny Rico into an unknown danger. If you know Starship Troopers you know it’s a multiple read text that on the one hand appeals to satirist enthusiasts that enjoy Paul Verhoeven other work more (namely Robocop and Total Recall) for the same exact reason and it appeals to the knucklehead generation that grew up watching WWF on a Sunday morning and enjoyed Aliens more so than Alien because it had more guns (me). This SOS begins for me the most enjoyable sequence in the entire film, a full scale bug army approach on a heavily under armed based filled with a few soldiers. It’s appeals to the 12 year old me, it appeals to the 26 year old me. Shameless.

Alien

A distress signal that you have to search youtube to find because it didn’t make it to the final cut. Perhaps giving too much away, the call is both mysterious and creepy, what’s even creepier is the crews reaction or lack thereof to what is almost certainly a bad situation. Enjoyable for reasons, as pointed out by my good friend Roy, other than the curiosity of it but instead because they are contractually obliged to do so. The horror is inevitable and there’s little they can do about it.

Sunshine

The only one on the list that is solely here due to the actual sound of the call itself. Have a listen:

Chilling, haunting and all new levels of eerie. This distress screams leave it the hell alone. I’d use it as my ring tone but I prefer to sleep at night.