Revisiting a scene so disgusting and horrific that it nearly destroyed two beloved sagas

It's still horrendous.

Penis. There, it's out in the open. It's no secret that the Xenomorphs in the Alien franchise are sexualised creatures that were designed from the twisted and genius mind of H.R. Giger. The Swiss artist designed the Facehuggers to impregnate both men and women equally by forcing their seed down the throat of its victim and laying an egg in the chest of the unwilling host. The Alien Queen gives birth to a plethora of eggs and the Xenomorph itself has a very phallic-looking head. As for the eggs themselves and how they open, well, Google it. You get the gist. Ridley Scott's Alien is an absolute classic and amidst the building tension, horrific set pieces, and superb characters, one scene just bursts through your memory. Yep, you know you've achieved greatness when you're parodied by Spaceballs, but in many ways, the iconic chest-burster scene works because 1) it's a wonderful moment of horror, 2) psychoanalysts have written endless pieces equating that scene with men's fear of giving birth. Read into that what you will but there's no denying the fact that Alien combined brains and blood to create something brilliant. Another film that had a chest-bursting sequence of its own was Predator and with Shane Black's new film, The Predator, being released in Irish cinemas, we felt it's time to revisit an absolutely brutal (every sense of the word) moment that almost killed off both beloved franchises. Alien vs Predator: Requiem. Hospital. If you've seen that dumpster fire of a film, you'll know exactly what we're talking about. Be warned though, it's pretty sickening. To begin with, the original Alien vs Predator wasn't exactly a hit with fans of both franchises - it was too 'kiddie-friendly,' lacked gore and the 20% score on Rotten Tomatoes doesn't lie - but the sequel, Alien vs Predator: Requiem, made its predecessor look like Citizen Kane. Aside from being poorly lit - the Predator in Requiem was harder to see than those moments in John McTiernan's original when he was using camouflage- AvP: Requiem is a strong contender for having one of the most bad taste and unnecessarily horrific scenes in film history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh8W2UOIo6Y Clip via Bruno Rei Like all film fans, this author absolutely loves the gore in the Predator and Alien franchises - we even wrote a piece ranking our favourite deaths - but 10 years later, the hospital scene in Requiem is still one of the most brutal, disgusting and unnecessary moments of horror in any film. Ok, let us set the scene. After the Predalien (that's a hybrid of the Predator and Alien that appeared at the end of the first crossover)  crash lands and starts to cause havoc in a small rural town, a senior Predator is sent to Earth in an effort to kill this monstrosity and erase all evidence of its existence. I If only the same can be said for the scene that followed. As you can see above, the Predalien stalks a maternity ward before deciding to rape and 'impregnate' its next victims, a heavily pregnant group of women. It's horrible, disturbing, gruesome, gratuitous and just unnecessary. To compound matters, the alien eggs that have now been fed into these women proceed to eat the unborn child and every single woman that's in the ward.  To say that it's massively fucked up is a massive understatement. Audiences absolutely hated it while critics called for an end to this crossover franchise. Thankfully, that happened. Ultimately, the release of Predators, Alien: Covenant and now, The Predator, has repaired some of the damage from Requiem and showed us that there's still some new neon-green blood in both franchises, but for the love of God, never let them meet again. Here's the incredibly uncomfortable legacy of that scene. https://twitter.com/si_underwood/status/374643353029472256 https://twitter.com/grayscalecrash/status/838481263388471296 https://twitter.com/IMJones111/status/632204887485497344 https://twitter.com/paigelafloor/status/570844054377725952 https://twitter.com/Team340/status/449352328563286016 Having watched films for over 20 years, that hospital scene is still the most horrific, nasty, disturbing, bad taste, negligent, malicious and unnerving thing that I've seen at the cinema. Aside from this, it also chipped away at the legacy of two iconic sci-fi sagas. As for the critics, well, just like the Predator when he met Dutch's team in the jungle, or the Alien on board the Nostromo, they took no prisoners. They were right not to. More than 10 years later, it still deserves to be regarded as one of the worst pieces of cinema in recent memory. EFilmCritic - "A vile, joyless, murky, moronic, amateurish, contemptuous, numbing, unintentionally hilarious, and thoroughly diseased motion picture...a middle-finger to the paying crowd." Empire - "An early but strong contender for worst movie of 2008" Hollywood Reporter - "So lacking in imagination is this movie that the Brothers Strause and writer Shane Salerno keep scrambling back to the original movie for inspiration." Washington Times - "Does Alien vs. Predator: Requiem spell the end of the dual-monster franchise? Let's hope so."