15 Films That Only Needed One Scene To Become Legendary

The Movie: Alien essentially took a simple plot and shot for the stars. A ragtag crew of space miners get an order to detour from its trip back home and stop on an uncharted planet, from which a mysterious signal has been received. Once there, the Nostromo crew’s members fall, one by one, to a variety of extra-terrestrial threats, namely a tall, lanky, reptilian beast with no eyes and acid for blood.

The Legendary Scene: Having seemingly recovered from his meeting with an alien face-hugger, Kane (John Hurt) settles down to dinner with his fellow Nostromo shipmates. He’s finally free from the grip of his new extra terrestrial buddy but he doesn’t realize that he has a mischievous baby extraterrestrial growing inside of him. Seconds later, and the Xenomorph comes bursting out of his chest quite gruesomely and to the shocked dismay of his crew.

Not only did the moment shock the audience but it shocked the actors even more: the look of genuine fear and terror on their faces is completely genuine – they had no idea how gross this moment was actually going to be. This scene is still surprising effective decades later.