On this day in movie history - Aliens (1986 movie & novel):

Aliens

directed and written by James Cameron,

based on a story by James Cameron, David Giler and Walter Hill,

was released in the United States on July 18, 1986.
Music by James Horner.

Cast:

Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Paul Reiser, Lance Henriksen, Bill Paxton, William Hope, Jenette Goldstein, Al Matthews, Mark Rolston, Ricco Ross, Colette Hiller, Daniel Kash, Cynthia Dale Scott, Tip Tipping, Trevor Steedman, Paul Maxwell, Valerie Colgan, Alan Polonsky, Alibe Parsons, Blain Fairman, Barbara Coles, Carl Toop, John Lees, William Armstrong, Jay Benedict, Holly De Jong, Jill Goldston, Christopher Henn, Elizabeth Inglis, Mac McDonald, Stuart Milligan, Eddie Powell, Bob Sherman, Chris Webb, Tom Woodruff Jr.

Recommended reading:

Aliens

By Alan Dean Foster.

The Official Movie Novelization.

Published by Titan Books.

First published 1986.

ISBN-10: 178329017X

ISBN-13: 978-1783290178

Description:

In the sequel to the 1979 film Alien, Ellen Ripley is forced to return to planet LV-426, where her crew encountered the hostile Alien creature. There they discovered hundreds of eggs, and just one slaughtered everyone but Ripley. This time she's accompanied by a unit of Colonial Marines, but even their firepower may not be enough for them to survive and learn the fate of the colony known as Hadley's Hope.

Ripley is going back ... The sole survivor of the terror that struck her space comrades years ago, she now steels herself to help lead an expedition to the hell she once escaped. For on a planet far from earth, alien beings swarm, hungry for the human face, ready to make the human race their living nesting ground. Here waits the ultimate nightmare of Alien, hundreds of times stronger, more insidious, and practically invincible. Here Ripley must re-enter a world of sudden, unspeakable horror ... one that attacks without warning again and again and again.