10 Alternate Endings That Almost Ruined Classic Horror Movies

The Proper Ending: Our heroine Ellen Ripley and Jones the cat are the sole survivors of the Nostromo crew after narrowly escaping the ship via a shuttle pod before it self-destructs. But wait, there’s a sneaky Xenomorph stowed away on the shuttle!

Fear not, though: this is Ellen Ripley and she’s hard as nails. She quickly ejects the alien via the airlock and incinerates it into kingdom come before leaving a log detailing the demise of the Nostromo crew and drifting off into sweet hyper-sleep with her kitty sidekick.

The Awful Alternate Ending: The Xenomorph gets the better of Ripley and rips her head off before assuming her voice and leaving the same log with the intention of tricking anyone who should find the shuttle into thinking it contains the precious cargo that is Ripley rather than an alien about to destroy all of humanity.

While we all love a gory decapitation scene, killing off Ripley so early in the proceedings means James Cameron’s brilliant sequel Aliens would’ve been a different beast entirely and probably not a very good one at that.