Films: Screamers (1995), Screamers: The Hunting (2009)

Alias: Autonomous Mobile Swords, Screamers

Type: Man-Made

Location: Desert/Civilized Area

Height/Weight: That of housecats.

Affiliation: Evil

Summary: Viva la resistance. That's what we like to say. But next time perhaps the resistance needs to not rely on killer robots designed not only to be smart, but take on our forms...

History: On the now derelict space colony planet known as Sirius 6B, there lie the remnants of a great union war between the ruling mining company and "the Alliance", which tried to turn the tide by creating the AMS, or Screamers, as they were called by those who had lived to hear one shriek at them as it attacked. But now the planet is all but abandoned, and those who either arrive or remain are treated to assault from the AMS and their new human forms.

Notable Kills: Nothing special

Final Fate: Most of the AMS who attack the heroes are killed, human form or not. And the few who manage to get off Sirius 6B leave wondering why they even bothered with the planet to begin with.

Powers/Abilities: Can self-replicate, and can even take on human form based on acquiring visual information.

Weakness: Anything conventional.

Scariness Factor: 4-As per the norm, shapeshifters are freaky. But they're especially so when they're robotic monstrosities with rotating saw blades for heads and a language composed entirely of shrieks. Good thing they're mostly confined to a deserted planet.

Trivia: -This film was going to be made...a whole ten years before 1995. Between that time and then, the film was stuck in development hell.

-The original Phillip K. Dick short story, "Second Variety", had the AMS be moon-born mechs, having been made there by the U.S. government to get a leg up on the Soviet Union for destroying America.