In Space, No One can Hear Gromit Scream – the Moon Robot tries to get into the rocket in A Grand Day Out

Horror Moments, Wallace & Gromit Edition

‘Horror Moments’ is a light-hearted series examining horror-inflected scenes and themes in unexpected places. The ‘moments’ are published weekly on Thursday mornings, and I share bonus content on the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more on Monday afternoons – don’t forget to subscribe!

[Spoilers: A Grand Day Out (1989), Alien (1979)]

Last week we explored the threat of machines in Aardman Animation’s Wallace & Gromit, A Grand Day Out, particularly the moment when the moon robot tries to hit Wallace on the head with a club.

But it was what happens next that genuinely unnerved me as a child.

Realising that the visitors are preparing to leave, the robot starts waving its arms and rushing at the rocket in a squealing frenzy. Wallace, who assumes he’s being chased for stealing cheese, rushes up the ladder.

Like all the best British sci fi robots, the moon machine can’t actually chase them up steps – though I always felt that there was something horrible about the sheer desperation with which it tries to hoist itself up after them.

Pulling out a can opener, it now starts tearing its way into the belly of the rocket and we understand implicitly that it must not be allowed to come with them into space.  

One of the many overlaps between science fiction and horror is when spaceships becoming haunted houses, taking on the same characterful menace of the gothic mansion.

The scene in Alien (1979) when the titular xenomorph is being tracked through the ventilation ducts is functionally similar to a chilling sequence in The Haunting (1963) when an unseen presence in the walls comes closer, ever closer.

“Oh God it’s moving right towards you!”

“It’s against the top of the door!”

A big difference is that haunted houses have to find a reason to keep their occupants entrapped. The mist in The Others (2001), for example, seems to confound attempts to flee.

On a spaceship, the reason is obvious: it’s simply impossible for humans to survive outside. The haunted spaceship is equivalent to a haunted submarine, and I’ll be looking at some compositional similarities between shots in Alien and early depictions of deep sea fish in next Monday’s article.

Long before submarines, the idea of being isolated on a ship with something malevolent or unpredictable has always been frightening, even if the reason wasn’t supernatural. Fans of The Omen might enjoy David Warner’s turn as a captain who descends into paranoid insanity in ‘Mutiny,’ an episode of Napoleonic romp, Hornblower.

When you’re stuck in any kind of vessel, every threat is amplified, and when an interloper can be heard but not seen — knocking, scraping, clawing, tearing, trying to get in through the walls, the pipes, the vents — we understand that it must be got rid of. Since we can’t escape this haunted house, the house must escape it.

Thus, in both Alien and Grand Day Out, the unwelcome guest is blasted away and the spaceship hurtles from it into a pitch black sky.

In Grand Day Out we realise that the robot didn’t mean them any harm and, as so often in Wallace & Gromit, something genuinely creepy resolves into something incredibly cute: it just wanted to learn to ski. Maybe the xenomorph did too, no one actually asked it — but it’s wise to be wary of creatures regarding this Earth with envious eyes, so we’ll let our spaceships leave them both behind for now.

Next week things get a lot more sinister when we meet the most dastardly villain ever fashioned from plasticine, but for now

Happy nightmares everyone!

Horror moments are posted every Thursday and a wide variety of articles exploring the history of magic, theatre, storytelling, and more are published on Monday afternoons.