5 Alien Movies With Starspawn's Travis Bain

Inspired by the legend of the Min Min lights and H.P. Lovecraft's cult horror stories, 'Starspawn' is a sci-fi/ horror/ thriller seeking crowdfunding for its creation.

When a TV current affairs journalist, Jo Danforth, travels to outback Australia with her camera crew to interview a group of survivalists who are preparing for some kind of apocalypse, they uncover evidence that ancient aliens who once ruled the planet are planning to return to reclaim what was once theirs.

Fragments of 'Starspawn' concept art

“I've been a huge Lovecraft fan since I was a teenager in the '80s,” Crairns-based filmmaker Travis Bain says. “But I've always found it hard to find satisfying film versions adapted from – or inspired by – his mythos, so I decided to try to make one myself. 'Starspawn' will be a film made by Lovecraft fans for Lovecraft fans, and we're hoping to put some of his most iconic monsters on screen in a way they've never been seen before, using old-school practical effects.”



Recently releasing feature film 'Throwback', Travis (writer/ producer/ director) is turning to Kickstarter to allow the filmmarkers to commission alien puppets and costumes, and shoot a-proof-of-concept excerpt from the full feature in Northwestern Queensland. Signing on for a key role in 'Starspawn' is 'Throwback's Vernon Wells ('Mad Max 2', 'Commando'), and many others are said to be 'circling' the film.

Sample of Timmo Walter's portfolio (creature FX creator)

These are Travis Bain's Top 5 alien related films, that also heavily inspired 'Starspawn':

Predator (1987)

After 'Rocky IV' someone joked that Sly Stallone should battle an alien in his next movie, after having run out of worthy opponents on Earth. This throwaway Hollywood in-joke somehow morphed into 'Predator,' a yarn about super-soldier Arnold Schwarzenegger and his ’roided-up black-ops buddies fighting an extraterrestrial hunter who’s swanning around the Guatemalan jungle collecting human skulls as trophies. Endlessly quotable (“I ain’t got time to bleed”), this is a bona fide ’80s classic, with superb cinematography by Australia’s Don McAlpine and one of the best monsters ever designed by the late great Stan Winston. Even more so than The Terminator series, this is one franchise we’d really like to see the post-comeback Arnie revisit.

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Aliens (1986)

It was Ridley Scott who first introduced us to the grungy, dimly lit 'truckers in space' scenario, but it was James Cameron who launched the franchise into overdrive with big guns, big swarms of xenomorphs, and one very big queen bee-atch. After this sweaty-palmed action/ horror classic, the series drifted into half-baked sequels and terrible Alien vs Predator mashups and really hasn’t recovered since, despite the venerable Sir Ridley returning to the franchise with the nice-looking but bewildering Prometheus. And remember: they mostly come at night. Mostly.

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Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)

John Williams has probably composed more instantly recognisable movie themes than any other musician, and his famous five-note motif from Spielberg’s 1977 classic is no exception. A lost battleship turns up in the Gobi desert, Richard Dreyfuss moulds mashed potato into mountainous mounds of mealtime mystery, and French New Wave director François Truffaut pops up to bring some Continental je ne sais quoi to the proceedings. And then one thumping big mothership arrives. Cue awe, wonder and that timeless five-note tune. It’s quite the spectacle, and available on DVD and blu-ray in three different cuts, almost as many versions as that other popular sci-fi flick from 1977.

Forbidden Planet (1956)

Before he was the bumbling Frank Drebin in the 'Naked Gun' films, Leslie Nielsen was a serious actor, and a pretty good one at that, with 'Forbidden Planet' boasting one of his best dramatic performances. This loose adaptation of Shakespeare’s 'The Tempest' in space still looks stunning today in glorious CinemaScope and MetroColor, with beautiful matte paintings and a fairly cerebral script that draws upon Freud and Jung, surprisingly highbrow influences for '50s sci-fi. The invisible monster is one of the most interesting movie 'aliens' ever, and sci-fi icon Robby the Robot makes his screen debut, years before he warned Will Robinson about danger in TV’s 'Lost In Space'.

The Thing (1982)


For me, this is the mack daddy of all alien films, the perfect combination of suspense, terror, gallows humour, memorable lines (“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding”), rampant testosterone and bearded Kurt Russell bad-assery. John Carpenter’s peerless masterpiece of paranoia and practical creature FX (by the then 23-year-old whiz-kid Rob Bottin) was a critically derided flop in 1982, but now it’s in the IMDB’s list of the top 250 films ever made, and deservedly so. The whole film is exceptional, but the apocalyptic opening and closing scenes are especially sublime, with a final cut to black that leaves you quivering, breathless and frostbitten. I could watch 'The Thing' a hundred times and never tire of it. In fact, I think I have! (The 2011 prequel of the same title was a noble effort but came nowhere near the greatness of its predecessor).

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Honorable mention – Planet Of The Apes (1968)

Not really an alien film, the original 'Planet Of The Apes' is more a film about a bloke who suddenly feels like he's the alien. Alpha-male astronaut Charlton Heston finds himself stranded on a distant planet surrounded by haughty talking monkeys, and then spends the rest of the movie trying to come to grips with suddenly being regarded as the 'inferior' species. It doesn’t sound like a recipe for a hit film, but it was, and its numerous sequels, TV spinoffs and lunchboxes are fondly remembered by children of the ’70s. (And even commemorated in a 'Simpsons' musical segment). The recent remakes have reinvigorated the series with dazzling 21st Century effects, but the devastating twist ending of the 1968 original is yet to be topped.

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The 'Starspawn' Kickstarter campaign closes on 19 July.