Long-running horror movie series that are running low on money and inspiration love them some outer space. Why? Well, because good sci-fi movies are very difficult and expensive to make, but bad ones? You can poop out a bad sci-fi movie easier than anything.
No need to write a story, just photocopy the script to Alien! Scouting locations and shooting outside? Ugh, no need for that! Just set the movie on a “space freighter” and shoot everything in a darkened warehouse/steel mill. IN SPACE horror movies are the absolute nadir of an already mostly lousy genre.
That said, I’ve still watched pretty much all of them. No, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but thanks for asking. So, much like we did with horror video game based movies last week, let’s rank from how well various horror franchises have adapted to being IN SPACE…
5) Jason X
It’s faint praise, but Jason X is the best “horror franchise goes to space” movie to date. It would probably be giving Jason X too much credit to call it an intentional parody of these kind of movies, but the movie’s tongue is firmly planted in its cheek where it belongs. Also, unlike almost every other movie on this list the filmakers actually make some small use of the space setting — we get an outer-space fight scene at the end, robot boobs and a girl getting her face frozen with liquid nitrogen and smashed on a table. Congratulations on meeting bare minimum standards Jason X
4) Leprechaun 4: In Space
Leprechaun 4 does almost nothing with its space theme — most of what happens in the movie could have happened in a regular terrestrial-based Leprechaun movie, but for a Leprechaun movie it’s pretty okay. I guess? At least the Warwick Davis is all over the place, unlike some of the other movies on this list that scrimp on their titular villains. Also, at one point in the movie a leprechaun bursts out of a guy’s wiener.
If you want more “great” moments from Leprechaun 4, I recapped the entire movie a while back for some reason. Jump to the last slide for some sweet high-cut 90s panties action.
3) Hellraiser: Bloodline
Okay, admittedly only about half of Hellraiser: Bloodline takes place in space. The movie cuts between a space station in the year 2127, modern day and the 18th century and there’s all sorts of characters whose motivations aren’t particularly clear and everything’s very confusing and Pinhead doesn’t even show up until, like, 45-minutes into the movie.
On the plus side, the movie does feature Adam Scott in his second-ever movie role as a foppish douchebag villain with a sexy pet demon…
Now, which one is Adam? The one on the left with the powdered wig, right?
2) Dracula 3000
No, not Dracula 2000 — we’re talking about the even more dreadful Dracula 3000. I don’t know if Dracula really counts as a horror movie franchise, but come on, I couldn’t exclude a movie with a cast including Casper Van Dien, Coolio, Udo Kier and Tommy “Zeus” Lister of WWE fame. The main reason to watch this movie this movie is definitely Coolio’s totally-on-something turn as a space vampire. The reason not to watch it is everything else.
1) Critters 4
And we have arrived at the bottom of the barrel. Critters 4’s production values make Jason X look like Prometheus and the actors (with the exception of a completely out of place Angela Basset) are all terrible, but worst of all the movie is just boring.
We don’t even see our first Critter until halfway through the movie, and even then there’s only two of them. Were the rest of the Critter puppets destroyed in some sort of tragic fire at the Critter warehouse? Really the Critters barely even factor into the movie — basically they pop up, get a couple very uninspired kills and then get shot and Critters 4 pretty much forgets about them. The movie’s one redeeming moment is a brief glimpse at Angela Basset’s butt. Well, okay it probably wasn’t actually Angel Basset’s butt. So, the movie’s one redeeming feature is just some random butt. I think that about sums it up.
What are you folks thoughts on the IN SPACE genre? Think I should have ranked these five terrible movies in a different order? What horror franchise should be the next to leave these earthly bounds?