Cinema may have gifted us at least one fantastic ‘haunted house in space’ movie – we salute you, Alien — but heading away from Earth isn’t usually a good sign for horror films.
It’s a running joke in Hollywood that there comes a time in every long-running franchise when inspiration weakens along with gravity, and the story heads to space. We’re old enough to remember when several Fast & Furious movies teased a space trip before Furious 9.
The James Bond series kept it cool — it waited until its eleventh film to take the suave superspy off-world. That flexible franchise can thank its 60-year life on reading cinema trends, and in the wake of Star Wars, 1979’s Moonraker had little choice but to equip U.S. soldiers with space lasers.
Action franchises like Bond and Furious have been joined by Ice Age, Jumanji, and even Emanuelle on intergalactic adventures. The parody of heading off-world has been there since Airplane 2: The Sequel blasted towards the sun, and horror has undoubtedly handled the idea the worst. While you can see the appeal of a space in action series eager to outdo itself with every installment, horror tends to head to space as its core principles dissolve. It’s hard to be scary in the infinite. Horror’s at a double disadvantage as budgets are generally low and declining. That certainly hasn’t helped their reputation.
Here are five horror franchises that went off-world, not that it helped them achieve stellar reviews.
Critters 4 (1992)
It may be rated PG-13, but horror clings to the adorable carnivorous fur balls The Critters wherever they go. Considering the hairy threats are alien, it’s tough to include them, but the first three movies had been reliably terrestrial. Critters 4 may have been filmed back-to-back with part three, but it darkened the tone as it changed its location.
Set in 2045, the Critters stage a comeback on a space station with a crew including Angela Bassett and horror icon Brad Dourif. Critters 4 did reasonably well shifting the franchise to a different setting and introducing pretty good special effects, but that was probably the carnivores’ downfall. It wasn’t quite adolescent enough, and the Critters’ movie career screeched to a halt.
The Critters franchise wouldn’t bite onto anything until 2019 with a feature reboot, along with a web series that was released on Shudderthat same year.
Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996)
Hellraiser: Bloodline is a disappointing addition to this list. It’s not to blame for the string of adapted spec scripts that made up the Hellraiser movies that followed, but coming after the relatively tight, if unraveling trilogy that preceded it, Hellraisder: Bloodline’s production troubles sunk Pinhead and his cenobites’ ambitions.
The idea couldn’t be faulted, apart from maybe, the ability to film it. Hellraiser: Bloodline sets out to tell the history of the famous puzzle box at the heart of the franchise, the Lament Configuration. At the end of three timelines, Pinhead (Doug Bradley) and humanity would meet for the final time aboard a space station in 2127, thanks to a plan centuries in the making. There are some compelling moments in the future, but the cenobites aren’t made for space, and other movies have captured Hell in a vacuum better.
Hellraiser: Bloodline was released with director and special effects maestro Kevin Yagher adopting the infamous pseudonym Alan Smithee. It also marked the last involvement of the saga’s creator Clive Barker for 30 years. The Hellraiser franchise stuck to video releases with lead cenobite Pinhead reduced to bit parts in the immediate sequels.
Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996)
There’s something about fourth installments. Dark comedy slasher Leprechaun 4: In Space took the titular Leprechaun off Earth in an action-packed, ridiculous adventure. Set at the end of the 21st century on a distant planet, the Leprechaun’s plans to marry his way to power are disrupted when a group of marines rudely kill him.
You can’t keep a good Leprechaun down, and the rest of the movie follows the diminutive supernatural killer taking down the military and their crazed cyborg commander. Leprechaun 4: In Space finds time for pastiches of other space movies and features one of the most extraordinary reanimations in slasher movie history (you have been warned!). Reviews inexplicably branded the franchise’s leap into space as ‘desperate.’
The Leprechaun would return to Earth in Leprechaun 5: In the Hood.
Jason X (2001)
With its tenth outing, the Friday the 13th franchise achieved the ultimate space jump that was awful and brilliant in equal measure. While the humans of the 25th century may not behave very differently from the counselors Jason was used to stalking, Jason X doesn’t skimp on imagination in a futuristic environment. One of his more gratuitous kills makes brilliant use of liquid nitrogen, which you don’t usually find around a lake. Jason also suffers a rather conclusive death before, of course, he’s rebuilt into an even more hulking cyborg.
Jason X packs a lot in, including a colossal space crash which indirectly gives Jason the most kills of any slasher, and a trap involving a holographic recreation of Camp Crystal Lake. Jason would next take on fellow horror icon Freddy Kruger in 2003’s Freddy vs. Jason, before he went solo again in a 2009 reboot.
Dracula 3000 (2004)
Sneaking onto this list because of its audacious title, Dracula 3000 wasn’t a sequel to the gothic and humid horror of Dracula 2000 that starred Gerard Butler, but it does holds a ridiculous place in one of the largest horror franchises of all time: the Dracula movie.
Dracula 3000 doesn’t necessarily feature the titular vampire, but rather Count Orlock (Langley Kirkwood), a reference to the classic horror movie Nosferatu. Awakened in deep space, the movie replays the fights of 19th-century earth with descendants, including Casper Van Dien’s Captain Abraham Van Helsing and Alexandra Kamp’s Mina Murry. Sadly, it’s difficult to find a good review.
Dracula has enjoyed a far more profitable time on 21st-century television, including Showtime’s Penny Dreadful and the BBC’s Dracula.
