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The science fiction/horror film genre was born of the West’s manic fear of not just Communism, but of all things alien, different or abnormal to basic “mom & apple pie America” during the cold war in the 1950s. Virtually anything that induced a phobic reaction in the straight male U.S. demographic was exploited by screenwriters for use in sci-fi film plots. And what better way to emphasis the scariness of a monster than to imbue it with “subversive” sexual proclivities? What better way to instill “fear of penetration” in the delicate libidos of movie-going males than to imply it sexually, however subliminally?

In it’s early low-budget, “grade B” form, most sci-fi horror is at best laughable. We have pathetically fey aliens (apparently cast from a local gay bar) in Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959) and nasty men-hating, extraterrestrial drag-queen type babes in Zsa Zsa Gabor’s Queen of Outer Space (1958).

But the sci-fi genre has grown over the years into an extremely sophisticated and profitable venture. Undoubtedly, hit-seeking Hollywood producers consulted the cleverest social psychologists on Madison Ave to keep dredging up sexual “monsters from the Id” in order to continue scaring mainstream hetero society out of it’s mind (and into theater seats).

And how well it has worked. In Ridley Scott’s brilliant and terrifying hit Alien (1979) and in its sequels, the rug is pulled out from under male superiority as a plethora of phobia-inducing horrors attacks masculine complacency from all sides at once. There is the repulsive, black widow-like alien itself, who impregnates men with it’s own hideous offspring, forcing them to experience the birthing process (effectively turning males into females--yikes!). In Aliens (1986) we meet the queen “bitch” alien herself. In Alien 3 (1992) the plot is played out as an allegory on the AIDS crisis, as one alien is let loose in, and “infects” an all-male prison colony.

In the movie Stargate (1994), the main villain is a sexually indeterminate evil Egyptian sun god played by sexually indeterminate Jaye Davidson. Kenneth McMillan as Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the chief evildoer in Dune (1984) is an altogether disgusting, morbidly obese, pustulated rogue, who just happens to also enjoy raping and murdering pretty young boys. In fact, all the leather and codpiece-clad Harkonnens in this film apparently indulge in same-sex activities, and come off as a nasty bunch of “rough trade” S&M gays.

In addition to homophobia, sci-fi/horror films have also exploited another of heterosexuals’ most primal sexual fears: the Medusa Myth. This myth finds itself played out in films where something wickedly feminine and/or some kind of monstrous spider/snake/insect pose a threat to men. Check out Tarantula (1955), She Demons (1958), The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962), The 4th Man (1983), Arachnophobia (1990) and especially the recent Species (1995).

Of course, all this sci-fi sexual demonizing can eventually fall in on its self. The result is what we call “camp,” and is actually the fate of many of the films described above. Although such movies were originally intended for a straight audience, they often end up being more popular with gays!

A recent case in point: Marlin Brando’s garishly over-the-top-fem interpretation of mad scientist Dr. Moreau, in Island of Dr. Moreau (1996). The rotund star (a deranged creation unto himself) turned in one of filmdom’s grandest, and most unnecessary, gay stereotypes, in this umpteenth remake of H.G Wells’s classic story. His on-screen delivery ranges from Kate Hepburn in The Mad Woman of Chaillot to Truman Capote entertaining at home. We have here a Dr. Moreau who tries to halt the attacking mutants by playing "Rhapsody in Blue" on piano.

Interestingly, if one is to believe the most popular conceptions of extraterrestrials from TV shows like Star Trek and Stargate, films like E.T., Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, The Abyss, Mission to Mars, and Man from Planet X, books like Communion and The Martian Chronicles, and the reports of self-described UFO abductees, most “space men” are a very un-masculine, androgynous, soft-spoken, meek type of being, and possess many qualities usually associated stereotypically with gays.

It’s as if when humans ponder the possibility of intelligent life in the universe, and imagine its nature and appearance, we subconsciously hope they are not like the selfish, macho, destructive hetero men of our own world.

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