ALIENS (1986)
Starring Sigourney Weaver and Lance Henricksen
Cameron had just wowed the world with his low-budget masterpiece "The Terminator" when he decided to craft a sequel to one of his favorite movies, "Alien." (Only a few years earlier he had worked as a production crew member on the very lame "Alien" copycat from New World Pictures, "Galaxy of Terror.") Weaver was reluctant to star, until she read the script and realized it was going to be a mega-hit. The film was such a success that it landed her on the cover of "Time." It had a huge impact on the horror genre, since it was one of the first viable horror-action movies. A string of similar splatter pics would follow, with good guys doing battle with vampires, aliens and other monstrosities as if they were in Vietnam. Among the films that were no doubt influenced were "Blade," the horrible "Phantasm 2" and some of the later "Nigthmare on Elm Street" films.
The film picks up where the last left off, with Ripley (Weaver), the sole survivor of the space ship Nostromo, floating through space in a shuttle. She's picked up, frozen in space, 50 years in the future. The corporation that originally sent her now doesn't believe her tale of an alien monster that killed off the ship's entire crew, with the help of a company android. But when a colony they set up on the same planet where the alien had been discovered suddenly stops answering their calls, they want her to go back with a team of space marines to confront the monster.
It's a great sequel that plays more like an action movie than a horror film. A "special edition" was released on laserdisc featuring new scenes on the alien colony and a subplot about Ripley's daughter, who died while she was in hibernation. At the time of this writing, that out-of-print laserdisc version is slated to be released on DVD.
Followed by the underrated "Alien3."