ALIEN will scare the pus out of you pinball machine. It artlessly fuses Jaws' jaws, Kubrick's 2001 portentousness, and-rather mystifyingly--a few feline hijinks from That Darn Cat. But why look for sources; the sources are every shitty horror flick ever made. The difference is that this is a vicious, cosmic, Dolby-ized shitty horror flick, with enough spattered innards to fill a Panavision popcorn popper.

Alien begins with a succession of long, slow pans through a spaceship, like 2001 without the Strauss. I was rocking in my seat with excitement: what movie would dare to have such a boring beginning if it weren't going to be scary as hell later? Unfortunately, those opening shots set the tempo for the whole film, with the alien's attacks serving as shrieking exclamation points.

The first murder is one of the most revolting yet put on film. It put me off my popcorn, and I'm not easily nauseated. Alien operates thereafter on our anticipation of similar blood and guts; the tension is totally mechanical and rather unfair. The movie proves witless, plotless, pointless, spectacularly unoriginal, and surprisingly cruel.

The cast is full of interesting character actors who have no chance to do their thing. Those who applaud Alien for featuring a "liberated, non-sexist" heroine-Signourney Weaver, who proves to be the strongest and most resourceful crew member--should take another look at her brawl with Ian Holm; at last we have a heroine sturdy enough to be elaborately bashed and pummelled, slammed and kicked with enough intensity to give sado-masochists wet dreams for millenia to come.

Director Ridley Scott stretches the movie out with assorted idiotic red herrings, the crew taking time out battling the monster to look for the ship's pet cat, Jonesy. As for the undulating ectoplasm known as the alien, you wonder why the crew isn't wearing lobster bibs. Somebody clearly had a good time putting it together--pouring on the blood, slime, and animal intestines--but the fun as all his. Actually, in its last scene the alien does exude a little personality, curled up in the corner of a space shuttle cleaning itself off, smacking its lips, coming to resemble a Hollywood producer, perhaps the producer of Alien, speculating on the grosses and gross-outs of his movie, and his new Beverly Hills mansion.

PROPHECY at least has a social conscience, pretending to explore the white man's physical and moral pollution of Indian lands in Maine. Methyl mercury, used to soak lumber, gets into the fish, which is later consumed by animals and humans. The poison primarily affects the fetus, causing nasty mutations, one of which--a huge, snorting, blood-soaked pig (or something)--menaces federal health investigator Robert Foxworth, his pregnant wife, Talia Shire, and assorted noble Indians and opportunistic lumber executives.

Unlike Alien, where the cast is confined to monosyllables, the characters in Prophecy talk. A lot. Long time. Enough exposition for five giant monster movies. Everybody has a point of view; so did I--I munched my popcorn and thought about the blonde three rows down. When it comes to mixing horror and blatant social criticism, I prefer Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster:

"Uh-oh, all that sewage pouring out of the Tokyo somestacks has created a giant monster."

"Well, we better send for Godzilla, hadn't we?"

"He'll protest us. Next time we'll know better than to pollute."

Alien is ugly in conception, but it achieves what it's after; Prophecy is an innocous shocker, dully made. Which is a surprise, because director John Frankheimer has made some wonderful thrillers; the least I expected was a little directorial style. Frankheimer keeps the killings relatively bloodless, but they're also flat and slightly rushed, lacking the witty camera set-ups or pungent, economical editing of a classic like Jaws. The baby mutants--popped little dragons--are rather cute, but they're straight out of Eraserhead. The big pig has no personality; at best, it suggests the nightmare of a Hasidic rabbi.

Alien and Prophecy have a common failing: they are scared stiff of stillness. There are no intentional laughs in either movie,and nobody smiles. The actors are too busy being realistic. And finally, the atmosphere of each becomes oppressive: the popcorn gets stuck in your throat. Existentially, Alien is more of a downer than Waiting for Godot. Beckett pins some hopes on the human spirit and personality; Alien presents people as walking red meat and pus for greedy lobsters.

PEAKING OF RED MEAT and pus, Dawn of the Dead, the nifty, entertaining sequel to Night of Living Dead (1969) is he work of George Romero, who may be a madman but is also an artist. Kooky scary, satirical, bloody as nell, Dawn has everything you could want from a summer horror movie and more. Romero has little criticisms of our society, but, unlike Prophecy, Dawn employs them as cunningly and efficiently as our body employs our vital organs, may of which are on display on the film.

The tone of Dawn is wildly different from Romero's earlier film, which was stark, claustrophobic, strewn with unintentional laughs, and genuinely funny. The gore and quick cutting help provide the scares, but the heavy use of shopping mall Muzak and color (the original was in black and white) buffer the horror and amplify the irony. It's also shockingly well-directed, blazingly edited (also by Romero), well-written (by Romero), and even well-acted (not by Romero)! The music editing, color, and jerky movements of the living dead combine to create a weird cinematic tour de force, and an all-too-colorful black comedy.

In the first film, you may remember, the newly dead began coming back to life and feeding on the living. (Nobody knows why, although one of Dawn's characters offers this explanation: "My grandfather used to tell us, 'When there's no more room in Hell, the dead will walk the earth'"). If a zombie doesn't completely consume someone, that person also comes back to life and eats flesh. You can permanently kill them by shooting them or bashing them in the head, but since they multiply rather fast, well--one way or another, they're gonna find you, they're gonna getcha getcha getcha getcha.