The 10 Worst Ways Movie Characters Have Died In Outer Space

"In space, no one can hear you scream."

The often-quoted but terrifyingly true tagline for 1979's Alien pretty much sums up how scary space is. Space isn't just vast, it's also completely hostile to human existence. While our best technology can get us into space, we've seen countless films explore what happens when that technology fails. We love to champion films like The Martian or Gravity, which reward viewers with human ingenuity overcoming scientifically improbable odds to survive, but the truth is space kills. A lot.

As Life, the latest film from Daniel Espinosa (Child 44, Safe House), rolls into theaters this weekend, we're once again reminded that in space, all bets are off. The film's trailer sets up what's become a standard formula for space terror: astronauts living on a space station have discovered extraterrestrial life, which in turn discovers them. In this case, we see this alien life form take hold of one screaming scientist's finger, setting us up for a truly gnarly death.

So, in the spirit of space and its many suffocating terrors, we put together ten of the worst space deaths we could find in film. From Tarkovsky to Corman, there's something here for everyone.

Peter Hyams' sci-fi thriller takes place on Io, one of Jupiter's moons, where a mining colony has been established. Sean Connery stars as William T. O'Niel, a police marshall who uncovers a secret drug smuggling operation, which greatly enhances miners work efficiency – until it turns them psychotic. Because of his discovery, O'Niel finds everyone has turned their backs on him and he has consequently been marked for murder. Sound familiar? Outland was heavily influenced by 1952's High Noon, making it a space western.

We're able to see the side-effects of the drug firsthand early on, when John Ratzenberger, better known as the beloved Cliff from Cheers, experiences one of these hallucinations and, believing his space suit to be full of spiders, he rips it open and explodes.

Often called the greatest science-fiction film ever made, director Andrei Tarkovsky took Stanislaw Lem's 1961 novel, which focused primarily on communication issues between species, and infused it with an exploration of isolation and grief.

Psychologist Kris Kelvin travels to a space station orbiting Solaris, a fictional planet whose ocean causes strange hallucinations to the scientists on board. After finding the space station in disarray and discovering that one of his friends on board has committed suicide, Kelvin awakens to find his late wife, Hari, alive and well, in his room. Solaris is creating physical Kelvin's memories of Hari, which torments and confuses him. In one of the film's memorable scenes, Hari, distressed by the reminder that she is not real, drinks liquid nitrogen in an attempt to commit suicide. She painfully convulses, oozing blood from her mouth, before dying...and then painfully resurrecting once more.

1981 was quite the year for troubling tentacle-related violations in film, with Andrzej Zulawski's Possession, Sam Raimi's The Evil Dead and producer Roger Corman's sci-fi cult classic, Galaxy of Terror. The low-budget sci-fi horror film, which boasts James Cameron as Production Designer and Second Unit Director, follows the crew of the spaceship Quest, which is drawn to the planet Morganthus by a powerful mystic known as the Planet Master.

The crew, which include a young Robert Englund and Happy Days' Erin Moran, uncover another crashed spaceship and explore an ancient pyramid where some truly brutal deaths occur (Moran is restrained by tentacles before they enter her mouth and rip apart her head). But of course, the film is perhaps best known for it's "worm sex scene," where Dameia (Taaffe O'Connell) is captured, stripped and raped to death by a giant, slimy tentacled maggot. It's ugly, exploitative and truly ridiculous but it also makes drinking liquid nitrogen look like a slightly more appealing way to go.

A Brian De Palma film, scored by Ennio Morricone, set on Mars, and starring Gary Sinese and Tim Robbins. Jackpot, right? Well...not really. Although the film conquered the box office on opening weekend, it received an overwhelmingly negative response from critics, earning De Palma a Razzie nomination for Best Director (which he lost to Battlefield Earth).

Mission to Mars is about the first manned..well, you know. Of course, things go wrong and a rescue team must be sent to the red planet and some more things go wrong (you would think they would learn their lesson). Now, I know the death of Woody (Tim Robbins) is likely what comes to mind when this godawful film is mentioned, but we've got plenty of exploding heads on this list. Besides, that doesn't quite compare to a giant Martian sandstorm so powerful it can spin you like a rag doll until your body rips apart. So, when your spacesuit doesn't fail and you aren't impaled by alien tentacles, never fear! There's always space wind.

If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere! So after taking Manhattan, what was really left for Jason Voorhees to do but head into space...in the future? Yes, a cryogenically frozen Jason coming to life in the 25th century and wreaking havoc on a space ship is ludicrous, but it's also got a David Cronenberg cameo and a nod to Tarkovaky's Solaris so, much like this list, it's the perfect blend of highbrow and cheese.

Adrienne's death in Jason X is probably one of the most memorable of the entire franchise. While studying in her laboratory, Jason attacks Adrienne and dunks her head into a vat of liquid nitrogen, literally freezing her face mid-scream before smashing it onto the workbench. It's shocking and satisfying and another reason why liquid nitrogen in space is always a bad idea.

Do you ever have a recurring dream about Mars that turns out to be repressed memories and everything you thought you knew is actually a lie? Arnold Schwarzenegger learns the hard way in Total Recall. After a memory implantation of a Martian vacation at Rekall Inc. goes wrong, the Austrian Oka gets his ass to Mars to fight Cohaagen, the planet's governor and his former employer who is seeking an alien artifact rumored to be hidden in the planet's mines.

The death of the villainous Cohaagen is over-the-top, but it's also oddly satisfying and, Neil deGrasse Tyson be damned, is likely what most of us imagine when we think of being exposed to the elements in space. Alongside the melting Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Judge Doom being steamrolled and drowned to death in acid in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Cohaagen's demise is definitely one of the defining terrors of my childhood and is still one of the best space deaths of all time.

This is perhaps the most obvious choice on the list, but could we really talk about the worst space deaths and not mention John Hurt's Kane? After discovering a chamber full of alien eggs, Kane is attacked by a facehugger (the second stage in the alien's lifecycle), which renders him unconcious. Although Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) refuses to allow him back on the ship, he's brought on anyway and eventually the creature detaches itself and is found dead.

Crisis averted, let's eat! Of course, Ripley was right. Of course, no one listened to her. But if she had gotten her way, we would get one of the greatest jump scares and deaths in science fiction. Perhaps best of all is the reaction of the actors, who were told about the creature bursting forth but not given any additional details, including the amount of blood that would be used. Keep an eye out for Veronica Cartwright terrified reaction – it's real horror.

Sure, there's Jason X and Dracula 3000, but the Leprechaun beat them all to the punch with this straight-to-video installment in the Leprechaun horror series. In this installment, the Leprechaun is in space and set to marry a princess named Zarina, except he's just after sex and she's just after his gold. True love! But the U.S. Marines get in the way and kill the Leprechaun, who has interfered with their mining operations.

One of the film's best, and truly horrific, deaths comes at the expense of Kowalski, a marine who urinates on the body of the Leprechaun after he is killed. The Leprechaun's spirit then travels up the stream of urine into his penis, only to burst forth later when Kowalski is sexually aroused. Forget Harry Potter and Star Wars, Warwick Davis truly cemented his cinematic legend status with this scene, featuring one of the best boner jokes of all time.

It comes as no surprise that one of the best horror entries in the sci-fi genre has some of the grisliest depictions of torture and death. The crew of the Lewis and Clark are sent out on a rescue mission after receiving a distress signal from the Event Horizon, a ship that had disappeared into a black hole and has now re-emerged with something sinister on board.

Although some of Event Horizon's darker scenes are hallucinations brought on by the entity that has now taken over the ship, the crew uncover a video log of the ship's former crew members, who are driven insane and begin mutilating each other during a massive orgy. At very end, we see the ship's former captain, who holds up his own eyes in his palm and warns in Latin that whomever is watching should "save themselves from hell." It's horrifying and, as it turns out, a foreboding taste of what is to come for the crew going forward.

It's by no means the goriest death on this list, but there's something inherently chilling about how effortlessly Hal 9000 kills most of the astronauts on board the Discovery One. When Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole receive word from mission control that Hal, the ship's computer, is malfunctioning, they secretly conspire to unplug the machine. Hal, of course, believes the error to be of human origin and, after lip reading the conversation between Poole and Bowman, turns mutinous.

When Poole spacewalks outside of his transport pod in an attempt to disconnect the machine, Hal takes control of the pod, severing Poole's oxygen cord and kicking him off into space. While Bowman attempts to rescue his colleague in another pod, Hal turns off the life support systems for the remaining astronauts on board, who were in a cryogenic hibernation. It's efficient and ice cold but it is especially terrifying to think that even the very environmental controls designed to protect you in space could also turn against you.