If the premises of films were spray-painting stencils to lay over a generic script and create what studios hope becomes a hit, Alien scriptwriter Dan O'Bannon and director Ridley Scott would have made more of a fortune than they did. What was fresh, terrifying and engaging in 1979 when we'd never seen it before got old and tired over the next ten years as it turned up again, again and again in every possible setting.

One of the favourites was undersea research facilities (a la Deep Star Six). It's been described as killing-by-numbers, as a small band of characters are picked off by a monstrous entity one by one. The pitch was undoubtedly 'Alien underwater', and after the brilliance of Robocop , Peter Weller could have done a lot better.