Hit Me With Your Best Shot: Aliens

Nathaniel Rogers' Hit Me With Your Best Shot series over a The Film Experience is examining the strange goings-on on the planet LV-426, which I'm sure you'll recall is the setting of James Cameron's wicked 1986 sci-fi actioner Aliens. Cameron and DP Adrien Biddle concocted arresting images too numerous to count for the film, but for me, there are a select few standouts:

The reveal of Stan Winston's mother alien in all her slimy glory is heart-stopping to say the least, and makes a great gasp-inducing start to her tense staredown with Ripley. A nice companion shot to the one above would be this similarly back-light image of Ripley and her weapon of choice, a mechanical loader, on the cusp of the her most cited quotation, "Get away from her, you bitch!".

But the real money shot is that of young Newt in peril, trapped in a flooded corridor, initially unaware of the sinister tail emerging from the water behind her. I jumped clean out of my seat the first time I saw this, and it still gives me shivers to this day.