Predator (1987) stars two Republican Governors (Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura), a 70's porn star (Sonny Landham), and two black guys whose only lines translate to "I Will Be Killed in a Horrible Manner Long Before this Film Is Over" (Carl Weathers and Bill Duke). In the film, they're all military elites on a mission to find American helicopter crash survivors in the jungles of dirty Latino rebel stereotypes, and to blow up thousands of rebels, quietly to not attract attention as they escape the country. Once their job is done, and they are in the jungles again, the rescue team finds something much worse than rebel cannon fodder. They find... the Predator, an eight-foot tall alien muscle monster who now hunts them as sport.

The actor who plays the Predator (Kevin Peter Hall) would eventually die from President Reagan's refusal to act during the AIDS crisis (Hall got a blood transfusion tainted by HIV). And he gets to fight two Republican Governors? My money was on the Predator. That is, until it turns out the Predator's eyeglasses did him in. The Predator wears a visor that lets him see ultra-low resolution heat signatures (Nintendo 64 Consoles had slightly better resolution than this alien's vision), but not much else. So Schwarzenegger realized that if he wore mud, the Predator wouldn't be able to see him at all, as his heat signature would be hidden. Thus begins the Predator's baffled looks for the rest of the film, as an invisible-by-mud Schwarzenegger starts blowing the crap out of the Predator.

Predator spawned two sequels so far. The first was the best movie ever made in history, Predator 2 (1990), starring Danny Glover as a 60-year-old who beats up the eight-foot tall Predator in hand-to-hand combat, Morton Downey Jr. as a screaming, in-your-face tabloid journalist slightly less annoying than Morton Downey Jr., Bill Paxton as an annoying guy who dies a horrible death, Gary Busey as annoying guy #2 who dies a horrible death, and Maria Conchita Alonso's hair. Predator 2 has the first on-screen Predator/Alien crossover, with a scene in the Predator's trophy room which bears an Alien skull.

AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004), a movie about Predators and Aliens hunting each other in a man-made battleground from ancient times, stars perennial Alien franchise star Lance Henriksen. Henriksen has the notable honor of starring in THREE Alien films and dying in all three (shrug). In any case, in AVP, the Predators' fashion statement of using acid (taken from dead Alien corpses) to burn tattoos into their own skin proves to be their undoing. In his fervor to burn multiple holes into his own head, the lead Predator takes off his helmet in the middle of an Alien-vs-Predator battle and gets hit square in the face by an Alien Facehugger (who then lays Alien eggs in his chest). Thus, the lead Predator's status officially changes from Lead Badass Alien-Killer to "Look, it's that guy that's about to die."

A comet passes near to earth and burns nearly everyone on the world's surface to ashes. This is a particularly amazing feat since comets are made of ice. The comet also deposits millions of red spores all over the earth, which turn most of the survivors to zombies. That's right, this is a fire-zombie comet, the worst kind. Early human cultures were right to fear them. And the zombies this comet generates aren't your run-of-the-mill zombies, oh no. These zombies actually want to be cool. Even though they lose their humanity, lose their self-control, and become mindless killing machines, they have the presence of mind to reach into their coat pockets and pull out sunglasses, donning them even indoors. And that is the easiest way to recognize them; by the fact that they put on sunglasses in the dark. The best part is, there's actually a group of scientists on earth who KNEW that a giant sunglasses-obsessed, fire-spewing, zombie-generating comet was coming to earth, and they try to come up with a counter to the zombie threat by draining non-zombie humans of their blood. As you can guess, this adds to the shenanigans that the main characters have to deal with.

It initially takes a while for two of the main characters, two big-haired Valley girls, to catch on that Armageddon had struck right under their noses (especially the one who was shielded from the comet's deadly planet-destroying rays by getting a quickie with a co-worker in a movie theater). But once they realize that everyone they know and love is dead, they use the excuse to go to the mall and joyously collect 80's disco clothing. The fact that zombies love sunglasses is also lost on them, which makes them oblivious to when a zombie is sitting in front of them.

The sunglasses bit, however, is not lost on Robert Beltran of Star Trek Voyager. He appears in the film as a gun-toting hero (even holding a gun threateningly in his very first scene, when he meets the two unarmed Valley girls), who can use any sort of gun. Once he uses his prized arsenal of guns and explosives to destroy the evil scientists, he suddenly renounces violence and throws all his guns away in a trashcan one foot away from small children, who ask if they can have the guns (he doesn't reply). Man, this is a great movie.

Alien hairdos rule in this film! Just look at these alien babes! The alien invaders in this film are actually humanoid reptiles who wear human costumes. But they have the presence of mind to wear disco-loving, 80's-style human costumes, complete with Miami Vice NRA sharpshooter goggle-glasses (which is apparently standard issue among all these aliens).

The plot of V is as follows: Alien ships come to earth, humans freak out, the alien ships don't do anything, humans go back to shopping, and then an alien shuttle comes to the UN to declare peace. The alien visitors, who seem identical to European Caucasians, propose an alien-technology-for-earth-chemicals program, which humanity accepts wholeheartedly. To help facilitate this technology exchange, the visitors send thousands of armed soldiers to occupy earth, and recruit human nogoodnicks into an army to persecute humans unsympathetic towards visitors. Earth as a whole doesn't suspect a thing, but a growing number of people become suspicious of alien behavior, like the fact that they seem cold-blooded.

This miniseries pits the Beastmaster, Mike Donovan himself, against the alien visitors. Determined to investigate the motives and actions of the visitors, he decides to sneak aboard a visitor mothership undetected while holding a 1982-era mega Betamax TV camera, although perhaps a smaller camera would've been more practical. But the TV camera does him good, as he catches footage of aliens taking their human masks off, revealing their reptilian physique, and discussing possible plots against humanity. Let's just say it's a darn good thing that the aliens choose to speak English when left to their own devices. Armed with the new knowledge that the visitors are actually pretty nasty looking, Mike Donovan becomes the leader of the resistance force against the aliens. The fight for earth has never been more about looks.

The most interesting thing about the visitors' costumes is that even though the aliens wear fake human-like eyes over their reptile eyes, they don't give UV-shielding or sunglasses-qualities to their human-like eyes. Thus, they are still ultra-sensitive to earth's bright lights, and they still need to wear heavy sunglasses.

In Flash Gordon, the star human football player Flash Gordon (Sam Jones) accidentally becomes a passenger aboard a mad scientist's rocket ship that is intercepted by the forces of the ruthless interstellar Emperor Ming (a Chinese outer-space Emperor played by the Swedish actor Max von Sydow), who is bent on destroying the Earth for no reason. This is the most plausible film premise you'll ever find, ever.

Ming's two main subject races are led by Timothy Dalton (former James Bond) and Brian Blessed (Boss Nass from Star Wars: Episode I). Timothy Dalton plays Prince Barin, whose kingdom is a swamp inhabited by people wearing Peter Pan costumes. Boys become men in this kingdom by sticking their hand into a hole where a deadly poisonous beast may or may not lie (if the beast is in some other hole that day, the boy lives and is declared a man). We can learn a lot about raising our children by this culture. Brian Blessed plays Prince Vultan, leader of the hawkmen. Although Blessed has had many Hollywood roles, his best performance is possibly as Professor Atticus in MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis. The fact that he could co-star and help carry a made-for-TV MacGyger film speaks volumes of his talent. These two actors are proof that Flash Gordon is a treasure-trove of acting genius. If Flash wants to overcome Ming, he has to unite these two races in a bid for freedom.

Meanwhile, the Emperor Ming, who gets his dressing cues from the same evil tailor as the villains on Stargate, uses many different beings to serve his destructive purposes. One of these types of beings is a cybernetic group of humanoids that wear gigantic goggles as they do their cybernetic thing at Ming's computers. However, these guys have a fundamental flaw; you can kill them by taking off one of their goggles. And they don't have a very good backup system, either. If you take the goggles off one of them, they ALL die. This indicates the type of security that Flash has to overcome, which kinda shows how easy this empire will be to topple.

In The Black Hole (1979), a small group of researchers (including Ernest Borgnine and Psycho star Anthony Perkins) in space comes across a gigantic spaceship believed to be lost for the past 20 years. The sole inhabitant of the spaceship, Dr. Hans Reinhardt (Maximilian Schell), is determined to take his spaceship into a nearby black hole, and the researchers debate over whether Reinhardt is a genius or a madman. Let's consider that a moment. He wants to take his spaceship into a black hole, a phenomenon that crushes everything that enters it with an unimaginable gravitational force, and the researchers can't decide if that's a good idea or not. This movie is made tolerable by the fact that Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens play small, hovering, sassy robots. There's also a fantastic giant robot named Maximillian who kills Anthony Perkins by drilling blades into him for little reason.

The spaceship is completely operated by robots. The big twist to this film is the fact that half of these robots are actually dead crewmembers that Reinhardt reanimated. Like most old people, these reanimated crewmembers wear gigantic VR-style visors. Ernest Borgnine discovers their true nature by removing one of the visors. This tells the researchers that something may not be right with this scientist who wants to play god. Once again, sunglasses rule, but reveal twisted plots.