Seriously Scary Creatures That Will Give You Nightmares

There are a lot of reasons to fear the bugs in the 1997 science-fiction favorite "Starship Troopers." For starters, there are thousands upon thousands of these little alien insectoid creatures flitting about, and it takes dozens of bullets to take down each and every one of them. They are also fast and outfitted with razor sharp legs, and just when our heroes think they've found a way to exterminate them, another species of the bugs pops up to prove them wrong.

Consider the moment when the troops rally within their steel fortress, surrounded by walls and armed to the teeth with weapons. Even with all of their equipment and numbers, they have a serious challenge on their hands to combat the ground bugs that charge in inestimable numbers. Then, to make matters worse, the soldiers then face an onslaught of winged bugs that are even uglier, harder to kill, and more efficient at separating soldiers' heads from their bodies.

And as if all of that wasn't enough to force the inevitable retreat, the troops then find out the hard way that there's yet another type of bug on the rise — this time, a gigantic beetle-like creature that can travel underground and yank them under the sand and then spit fire to fry them up as they run away. The sheer viciousness of these extraterrestrial slaughterers is incredibly entertaining to watch, of course — but only because they're not real. And let's hope it stays that way.

Of course, what makes the antagonists in "Starship Troopers" even more terrifying is when you realize at the end that the bugs aren't the bad guys at all — they're revealed to be the victims of humanity's relentless need for war and conflict. The true villains of the film are us. How's that for nightmare fuel?