WARNING: The following contains spoilers for American Horror Story: Double Feature Episode 7, "Take Me to Your Leader," which aired Wednesday on FX.
As usual, the new episode of American Horror Story wears its influences on its sleeve. Season 10, Episode 7, “Take Me to Your Leader,” dives headlong into various outer space horror movies, reflecting its UFO incursion story with a number of visual cues. Sharp-eyed fans can spot nods to John Carpenter’s The Thing and the original The Hills Have Eyes among other classics, to say nothing of the Theremin music on the soundtrack and similar camp trappings of '50s sci-fi.
But the episode’s real homage comes with decidedly less gentleness. Alien, the seminal Ridley Scott film about a monster that infiltrates a human spacecraft, most deeply informs the Episode 7's wildest moment. Besides making for a great scare, it adds a bloody sheen to the otherwise more PG-rated UFO abduction material -- part of the episode's larger pattern.
Alien concerned a commercial spacecraft with seven crew members answering a distress signal on a distant planet. One of their members disturbs a cache of eggs, only to find one opening and its occupant eating through his helmet. He’s brought back onboard with a “facehugger” wrapped around his head, which is busy planting an embryo in his innards while his crewmates ponder a solution. In one of the most seminal moments in cinema, the embryo chews its way out in the middle of dinner after the afflicted crew member seems fine.
“Take Me to Your Leader” isn’t shy about depicting its aliens in brutal and violent ways, often adding raw carnage on top of what would otherwise be bloodless stereotypes of alien abduction. For example, after possessing the hapless housewife Maria in the episode’s opening scene – a moment full of standard abduction trappings like bright glowing lights and floating on the ceiling – the aliens greet her returning husband by telekinetically causing his head to explode. It’s yet another nod to a sci-fi/horror classic – in this case David Cronenberg’s Scanners – but it also sets the viewer up for the episode’s biggest shock.
The Alien moment comes during another cliché: an autopsy of an alien “grey” in an Air Force Base. “Take Me to Your Leader” shoots its '50s flashback in era-specific black and white, lending the scene a sterile, clinical atmosphere. The doctors cut open the body, only to find it a hollow shell devoid of internal organs. As they examine the being’s empty chest cavity, the material lining of the interior leaps up without warning and wraps itself around a doctor’s face.
The effect is slightly different than Alien’s, whose spindly facehugger was an overtly biological creature. While horrifying, its form at least made sense from an evolutionary perspective. The creature in "Take Me to Your Leader" is something utterly different -- essentially a sentient piece of goo whose unworldly actions speak to worlds far more horrifying than Earth. And yet the nod to Alien can’t be missed, as the goo first grips the doctor tightly around the face, then switches to his partner before the exploding head trick begins to repeat itself and President Eisenhower – witnessing the entire affair – is hustled away for his own safety.
The slime likely didn’t cause the exploding heads – a possessed Maria arrives shortly thereafter and the ability appears to lie with her – but there’s no doubting the horrific nature of the attack. It's shocking not just for its unexpected nature, but for the effective way it’s able to repeat one of the best-known jump scares of all time. Beyond that, the evocation goes right to the heart of the AHS episode's terrors, and knowing American Horror Story, such playful references are just getting started.
See the nod to the sci-fi/horror classic in American Horror Story: Double Feature. New episodes air each Wednesday at 10 p.m. ET on FX.