14 Most Terrifying Moments From Alien Films

With the crew reeling following the gruesome deaths of Kane and Brett, Dallas takes it upon himself to enter the ship's maze of claustrophobic ventilation shafts, with the plan to flush the frighteningly feral creature out of the main airlock and into the unforgiving nothingness of deep space. Well, he is the head honcho after all.

Sounds simple enough, but what transpires makes for tortuously uncomfortable viewing. Ridley Scott, once again, taps into many people's innate fears of confined spaces, which is exacerbated off the Richter scale when you factor in that Dallas is also hunting blindly in the dark for an unrecognisable merciless killer with only a makeshift flamethrower.

At first, Dallas emits a cool, calm and focused demeanour as you'd expect from an experienced captain despite losing two crew members in unusually horrific circumstances. There are, understandably, signs of nervousness from Dallas when he lets off a burst of flame now and again.

That feeling is ratcheted up when Lambert informs him that the alien signal has reappeared and is heading straight for him. We know the cat (alien) and mouse (Dallas) game is nearly up but it's still a shock to the system when he turns and shines a light onto the unwelcoming arms of the Xenomorph.

When Parker tells everyone there was no body or even a trace of blood, it's left to our darkest imaginations to fill in the brutality of Dallas' death.