Horror isn't complicated. You find out what makes your audience uncomfortable and present it to them in the most unsettling way possible. This is why horror movies aimed at young males contain vague allusions to homosexuality -- it's what makes that audience nervous.

So, if you have a country scared that communists are secretly infiltrating society, you give them 1956's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. If you have a nation coming off a recession and spiraling violent crime rates in 1980, you give them Friday the 13th.



And if your country is terrified of people with dreadlocks, you make Predator.

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Which Brings Us to the Rape

But Alien? It's all about rape.



And not just the one Joss Whedon wrote.

Oh, we're not joking. Our goal isn't to paste a bunch of out-of-context shots or lines of dialogue to make some spurious case. We'll let Alien screenwriter Dan O'Bannon spell it out himself:

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"One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex... I said 'That's how I'm going to attack the audience; I'm going to attack them sexually. And I'm not going to go after the women in the audience, I'm going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.'"



Hearing this man utter the words "I'm going to attack them sexually" is more terrifying than all the Alien movies combined.

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That's from the Alien Saga documentary.

At the time, O'Bannon was coming off Dark Star, a comedy directed by horror luminary John Carpenter. Dark Star wound up being as big a disaster as a boy scout selling candy in a village of werewolves, so for revenge O'Bannon vowed to make a movie that would allow him to rape movie-going audiences right under their noses.