Martinex1: The Bronze Age movie theater was rife with movies about aliens, so let's discuss these films and rank the best of them. There was a window of time in which little green men with big eyes (or human-looking beings with strange quirks) seemed to be arriving each and every release date.
Just about any movie with aliens is open for consideration, but to keep this discussion fair, let's dismiss the franchises of Star Wars and Star Trek. Those movies and series would tend to fill many of the top tier slots. So to be clear those are outside of our purview today. In addition, let's try to steer clear of the violent, killer, destructive aliens that became common during the same time with the Alien and Predator offerings. That may be a discussion for another time.
Today we are ranking and filing the friendly or at least relatively benign alien flicks!
In the late 1970s and through the 1980s particularly, there were various blockbusters with aliens who acted as friends, compadres, partners, heroes, and protectors. What were the best of those? Take a look at these posters to get primed for the discussion. Why did some of these films work and others fail? What were the top five best films with this criteria? And what were the worst?
Martinex1: I was probably in a very small group of ten-year-olds who liked Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) better than Star Wars. I was mesmerized by the mysterious lights, the sunburn on half of Richard Dreyfuss' face, the urge to carve the monument out of mashed potatoes, that little kid that got abducted, and the eerie musical notes. I cannot say why the movie intrigued me, but I know I sat in the back seat of my mom's car that night looking up to the sky. In retrospect, I suppose it was serendipitous that the film was released around the same time that I was pulling library books about Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, secrets of the pyramids, and other such things.
I saw The Brother from Another Planet (1984) one day after school my Junior year of high school. My buddies and I hiked downtown and made it to an "art" theater to see John Sayle's story of an escaped mute three-toed alien slave portrayed by Joe Morton. I haven't seen it in years but I loved that movie at the time and its commentary on many social aspects. There was a lot of humor in the movie and it is well worth another look.
In college, on a lark I watched The Hidden (1987) after classes at the theater just off campus. This was a different type of movie and barely meets the criteria of today's challenge. A slug of a creature is inhabiting citizens' bodies and taking them on sprees of killing and debauchery. The "good' alien arrives in the form of a law enforcement officer (Kyle MacLachlan) who is tracking his spacefaring foe. It is violent but also has some tongue-in-cheek humor that made this outing better rather than worse.
Alien Nation (1988) came out about a year later and took another look at alien style police work. A fully loaded ship from space is stranded on Earth, and the newcomers have to start assimilating to their new home. Life marches on and the police have their plate full dealing with both our normal crime and some other weird events due to the new arrivals. Investigators from both worlds have to interact and solve the crime. This is a cross between a strange invasion movie and a buddy-cop film. Mandy Patinkin does a great job as the alien cop Detective Sam Francisco.
Those are some of my favorites. I've also seen Enemy Mine with Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett Jr. but I do not remember much. I was not a big fan of E.T.; it was okay but never grabbed me long term. I did not like Cocoon; it had that sugary sweet, message-bearing, feel-good vibe of many films from the era that left me feeling under-entertained. I never saw Starman believe it or not; Jeff Bridges was nominated for an Oscar so maybe I will search it out. Mac and Me was a notorious and horrendous money grab following the E.T. wave.
So what did you think about films like these or the dozens like them. What were your favorites and what do you wish never arrived? And yes, I guess Superman fits the criteria I outlined. Cheers!
