10 Sci-Fi Horror Movies That Broke All The Rules

10. Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Prior to the seventies, between the influence of the censorious Hays Code and the "patriotic" thought policing of the HUAC, sci-fi movies like most Hollywood productions were forced to ensure their endings were happy and morally unambiguous.

This resulted in some surreal scenes like the original 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers closing on the bleak image of its protagonist unable to convince the authorities detaining him of the alien threat currently insidiously invading their community... until two random blokes stroll inside the precinct with alien pods in tow to say "he's not crazy, let's get those aliens" and the day is saved.

Not so in the 1978 remake of the same name.

Ending on a brutally downbeat note as Donald Sutherland's hero is revealed to have been assimilated by the threat, this quintessentially seventies redo set the tone for the decade’s bleaker, darker style of sci-fi horror alongside the more disturbing and hopeless likes of A Clockwork Orange and THX 1138.