10 Films You Won't Believe Were Released At Christmas

Release Date: December 25, 2007

One of the worst movies ever released on Christmas Day, this relentlessly trashy sequel to 2004’s Alien Vs Predator proves what cheaper sci-fi films have known all along – that skinny-dipping is no defense against alien invaders. Picking up where Paul WS Anderson’s movie left off, Requiem opens with an Alien-Predator hybrid running amok on board a spaceship that subsequently crashes in Gunniston County, one of those backwoods communities where everyone’s a waitress, an ex-con or a horny teenager who just wants to make out.

Having seen Pulp Fiction, the Predators send in a ‘Cleaner’ (not played by Harvey Keitel, alas) to erase all evidence of the hybrid’s existence, unaware that it has already reproduced, leading to a smackdown with the offspring that’s so dimly lit you can’t tell what’s happening. This turns into a full-scale, town-wide grudge match where hybrids get loose in a maternity ward, teenagers have their midnight swim interrupted and characters aren’t referred to again after they’ve been killed.

Despite its studio budget, Requiem is as cheap as Greydon Clark’s $150,000 Without Warning (1980), where a polystyrene-headed alien tried and failed to conquer a backwoods community home to waitresses, horny teenagers, plus future Oscar winners Martin Landau and Jack Palance. Rather than a gigantic, effects-filled finale, though, it ended with Kevin Peter Hall’s barely seen creature being tricked into entering a booby-trapped garden shed.