The Parallax View (1974) follows journalist Joe Frady as he investigates a string of deaths linked to the assassination of a US senator — only to find himself drawn into the recruitment pipeline of the shadowy Parallax Corporation. Directed by Alan J. Pakula and shot by Gordon Willis, it is a tightly wound, visually austere thriller whose power lies in its procedural rigour and refusal to grant its protagonist redemption or revelation.
A commercial towing crew, woken early by what they believe is a distress signal, boards a derelict ship and returns with something that starts killing them one by one. Ridley Scott's first science-fiction film builds the genre's most enduring monster movie almost entirely out of dread, sound design and H.R. Giger's biomechanical creature, on a budget that a science-fiction boom had only just made possible.
James Cameron's 1986 sequel to Alien sends Sigourney Weaver's Ripley back to the colonised moon where the first creature was found, this time with a unit of Colonial Marines whose confidence collapses fast once the aliens appear. Greenlit only after Brandywine settled a profit-sharing lawsuit with Fox, and made after two separate standoffs over Weaver's return, the film swept effects and sound awards, earned Weaver a rare Best Actress nomination for a science-fiction role, and returned more than seven times its 18.5 million dollar budget.