Olatunde Osunsanmi directs the beautiful Milla Jovovich in The Fourth Kind. Close Encounters was the third kind i.e. contact with extraterrestrials. The Fourth Kind is alien abduction. Apparently, there is a part of Alaska which has had an unusually high number of missing persons and an unusually high number of otherwise credible people who appear to truly believe they have been the victims of alien abductions.

The movie is part documentary and part reenactment, juxtaposing videotapes psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler made of patients with reenactments by Milla Jovovich. I may have a stronger opinion one way or the other, after seeing the movie, but I’m personally on the fence on what to think about alien life forms performing experiments on humans.

By the way, according to the alien interaction scale, the second kind is collecting evidence of aliens and the first kind is just sighting a UFO.

Perhaps Kids in the Hall can offer some insight:

Alien 1: So what’s bothering you?
Alien 2: Ah, lately I just keep wondering what’s the point?
Alien 1: The point?
Alien 2: Yeah. What’s the point of what we do?
Alien 1: Sorry, I don’t follow you
Alien 2: Well, I mean, we travel 250,000 light years across the universe, abduct humans, probe them anally and release them.
Alien 1: Yeah? And?
Alien 2: Well, doesn’t it seem kind of pointless?
Alien 1: I really don’t think about it.
Alien 2: Well don’t you think you should?
Alien 1: No, I don’t think I should. I don’t think I should question the leadership of our Great Leader
Alien 2: Oh, come on. I mean, we’ve been coming here for fifty years and performing anal probes and all that we have learned is that one in ten doesn’t really seem to mind.
Alien 1: Well, do you have a better plan than our Great Leader?
Alien 2: Yes I do, I do have a better plan. My plan is that we don’t travel 250,000 light years, we don’t abduct any humans and — this is the best part — we don’t do any anal probing.
Alien 1: Oh, great plan. Do you realize how many people Intergalactic Anal-Probing employs?
Alien 1: Well back to work.
Alien 2: Aw.
Alien 1: Ready the anal probe.
Alien 2: Anal probe is ready.
Alien 1: Commence anal probing
Alien 2: Couldn’t we at least abduct their political or religious leaders instead of just any idiot in a pickup truck?
Alien 1: I’m sure the Great Leader has his reasons
Alien 2: Well, I’m sure the Great Leader is just some sort of twisted ass freak!
Alien 1: All right. I am now officially ignoring you. Commence anal probing.

Or perhaps Kids in the Hall can not offer any insight on the existence of alien abduction, but it can be very humorous. The first time I ever got strep throat was when I went to go see Close Encounters with my father. I still feel phantom pain in the back of my mouth, when I think about it.

What originally happened to H.R. Giger’s initial conceptual designs for the “face-hugger” creature in the 1979 film “Alien?” If you know that the answer is that they were seized by U.S. Customs, then you should head over to the Halloween Catalog Trivia challenge and use your horror trivia brilliance to unlock the fun special video footage.

The films covered include Child’s Play, 28 Weeks Later, The Hills Have Eyes, Pumpkinhead, Jeepers Creepers, The Omen, Misery, Turistas, Hannibal, and the classic Alien.

I always felt like H. R. Giger just knew how to make really great-looking alien monster people-eater terrifying kind of art. He has fallen afoul of the law a lot though. Most Blue Blood readers probably know that H. R. Geiger’s artwork was the center of the controversy over distribution of The Dead Kennedys’ album Frankenchrist.

Everyone ready for Halloween?

When, in his first inaugural address, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt stated that, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” he wasn’t necessarily talking about the nature of horror in television and film. The main thrust of his speech was that, in wretched economic times, hope and a positive attitude were integral to pulling America out of the Depression. Nonetheless, that one expression has, in the general zeitgeist, outlasted the rest of his speech about how “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.” And it seems fair to say that the line about the only thing we have to fear certainly outlasted FDR’s exhortations that there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.”

Historically, comedy entertainment has flourished in times of economic strife and war and drama and horror have done better when the audience’s day-to-day lives have been more comfortable and free of fear. But we live in interesting times and horror is booming. NBC has an ambitious new television series starting today which showcases the works of thirteen top horror teams. In case this wasn’t obvious from my deconstruction of the origins of the expression about what we have to fear, the name of the series is Fear Itself.

I asked my unsavory pals and I asked the Blue Blood boards and I asked my sixty thousand close personal friends on MySpace what frightened them. They were all frightened by things besides fear, but hopefully they’ve got some optimism and some taste for the allstar horror series NBC is releasing.

Interestingly, Alien, The Exorcist, and Halloween tied for first place as scariest movies ever. Most people I know were quick to add that they absolutely 100% only meant the first Halloween movie when they were talking about terror. Poltergeist came in fourth and apparently scared a lot of viewers off of television. Pretty clever for the filmmakers, given that Poltergeist came out at a time before movies and television media had quite the synergy they do today. Hellraiser came in fifth, although I think some people I know liked the fashions more than they were genuinely scared, but I’ll accept it. Bizarrely John Carpenter’s The Thing and E.T. tied for the next slot. Apparently, I know some alienated-ass people, who didn’t trust their government or scientists as children, and who were just sick with fear over what was going to happen to that poor alien. I felt the same way actually about both E.T. and Short Circuit, if the truth be told, but no one but me thought of Short Circuit for this list, so I think it doesn’t make it. The Shining came in number eight and I would have felt that all work and no play had made us all very dull if it wasn’t somewhere on the list. Newer flicks like the SAW movies and 1408 and The Descent were mentioned, as were slightly older ones such as Event Horizon and Child’s Play and The Cell, and of course classics like Jaws and Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Nightmare On Elm Street. But none of those films got a real critical mass of respondents putting them in their top ten. I’d have to give the number nine slot to a special subgenre, rather than one movie. And the number ten spot actually is a movie I’ve never seen, but I’m vaguely creeped out at how many people thought of it in the top scariest movies and television of all time.

So, in conclusion, here are the top 10 scariest films of all time, according to Blue Blood readers:

1. Alien
2. The Exorcist
3. Halloween
4. Poltergeist
5. Hellraiser
6. The Thing
7. E.T.
8. The Shining
9. Anything Japanese involving doing weird stuff to eyeballs
10. Jesus Camp