Film: Space Invasion of Lapland (1959)

Alias: None

Type: Alien

Location: Tundra

Height/Weight: About twice as big as a house.

Affiliation: Neutral, leaning on Evil

Summary: Keep your pets on a tight leash. Because if you don't, they'll do whatever they want, and whatever they want isn't always best for everyone else. Whether the aliens of this film cared or not doesn't matter. What does matter is that their companion was huge and destructive.

History: Somewhere in Lapland, Sweden, a circular spaceship crash-landed. After a while, some livestock was disappearing, and the locals were getting uneasy. As it turned out, a massive ape-like beast under the thumb of morally ambiguous humanoid aliens was the reason for the uproar, and it wasn't long before it started to get a bit more physical with its attacks.

Notable Kills: Nothing special.

Final Fate: Armed with torches, the locals manage to corner the alien over a cliff face. After setting it ablaze, it falls off the edge, dead as a doorknob. The main aliens, having seemingly gained nothing from this trip, go back into space.

Powers/Abilities: Strong and impervious to bullets.

Weakness: All of that fur makes this alien rather flammable.

Scariness Factor: 4-This beast is quite imposing in most shots, coming off as a true giant rather than the man in a suit that it truly is. Whether it actually meant any harm to humans or not before we noticed him is anyone's guess, though.

Trivia: -The American version of this film was given additional scenes with actor Jerry Warren in it. We call this the Raymond Burr effect.

-The first animal ever to go into orbit was Laika, a stray mutt chosen by the Soviet Union to do so in 1957.