Alien-inspired horror anime that was ‘censored’ is available to stream

We may never see the actual Alien vs Predator anime sitting in Disney’s vault, but an ’80s horror anime heavily drawing from Ridley Scott’s original film will scratch that itch still.

Alien: Romulus has everyone in the mood for Xenomorphs, and although revisiting all the Alien movies is always a blast, there aren’t that many installments to watch. Very few of even the best sci-fi movies boast the same vibe or aesthetic, either.

Then there’s Lily C.A.T, a relatively obscure anime movie from 1987 directed by Hisayuki Toriumi, that draws heavily on both Alien and John Carpenter’s The Thing to strong effect. And thankfully, you can watch the whole thing on Amazon Prime Video.

Lily C.A.T. makes its influences apparent early on, focusing on a crew on a mining expedition who’re in cryo-sleep when things start to go wrong. Something inhuman has crept on board, and two among them have been infected.

The murderous creature continues to pick off crew-members while everyone works to figure out what’s going on and get off the ship. It’s a quick, stylish, atmospheric picture that delivers some good thrills without overstaying its welcome.

Streamline Pictures released an English dub and subtitled version in the ’90s on VHS, before Discotek Media put it out on DVD in 2014. SyFy showed it on TV in-between, using the distinctly of-the-era advertising above. These versions have caused some confusion, because they’re purportedly shorter than Lily C.A.T.’s original Japanese cut.

Our version, the one you can openly buy, is 67 minutes long. The belief is that’s actually 24 minutes shorter than the version from Japan, where the runtime was 91 minutes. The DVD case lists this runtime, as does the Amazon listing for the home media version.

Where this information comes from is difficult to discern. Despite being a genuine cult hit, there’s not a lot to go on for Lily C.A.T., other than the fact it exists and you can easily enjoy it. Alas, we may never know, such is the nature surrounding importing anime in the ’80s and ’90s.

Have a read about why Alien 3 deserve better than its reputation and what we know about Alien: Earth after you’ve checked out this offshoot.