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Ten years from now, in a future Terminator movie, some kid is digging up Arnold Schwarzenegger. As soon as the square-jawed face is visible, the action will start. "I may be wrinkled, but I am still deadly", he says before spraying a disposable array of opponents with machine-gun fire. The human form is the surest sign of deadly intent. Why does anthropomorphism ratchet up the thrill factor?

In Star Wars, the mailbox-like R2D2 was the competent one while the humanoid C3P0 was a bumbling idiot. Despite being an obvious homage to the classical comedy duo of short/fat endomorph and tall/thin ectomorph, the contrast in ability is revealing. Had C3P0 been competent, he would have been threatening, like the robot army of Episode I. In “Revenge of the Sith”, General Grievous, the villainous leader of the robot army, was the most human-like of all the mechanical warriors. The General coughed, limped, and had a heart. He only was killed when his chest was set ablaze- he lived so long as his soul survived.

Giving the enemy human form makes the threat apparent. Once robots take on a humanoid appearance, they clothe themselves in the skin of the top predator on the planet. In “Metropolis”, the film by Fritz Lang, we start to experience the horror to come when the android takes on the skin of the lovely Maria, leader of the worker class. When that happens, we become convinced that upheaval and disaster will soon follow. The formula never disappoints, even in that most misguided film “AI”, where the entire human race is extirpated without an explanation, leaving only gleaming cyber-friends. As soon as you see the perfect human-shapes of the futuristic ultimate androids, you know we are all dead. There is no question who won the war between robots and humans: the winners are the ones who became more human than the humans themselves.

When we see the birth of the monster, we recognize it. The scientist parent, giving into temptation, endows the dream child (or dream partner) with the horrible burden of humanity. Devotion to knowledge is substituted for love, and the act of construction is substituted for procreation, as in the biological factory of Ridley Scott's “Blade Runner.” The child is born mad, with no more concern for its creator than dictated by the sterile theorems of science – the replicant Roy Batty never asks “why?” Emotion is always beyond the grasp of logic, and this deficit drives the grinding cog of conflict towards the inevitable conclusion. Frankenstein's monster went mad for the want of a name, when all it needed was acknowledgment. Abomination is never accepted – it is externalized, hunted down, and exterminated.

If the human form is not used for the antagonist, there are any number of subterfuges used to inject the human element. In “Starship Troopers,” the aliens are simply vicious until they are revealed to be spying on us by eating our brains. Once the insects start thinking like people, they become genuinely scary – truly dangerous. This is the direct path to getting under our skins. The Daleks of Doctor Who are completely contained within their domed war machines, but under the lid they have arms and legs like we do. Daleks shield themselves inside a shell of emotionless xenophobia, but the mutants inside literally seethe with greed and ambition. The differences are superficial.

Now that we have met the enemy, and it is us, the path to victory may be charted. To win, we give the enemy what they want. We give Metropolis the revolution it yearns for, and wrest freedom from tyranny; we give the Daleks the Hand of Omega, and the final solution falls into place. For darkness always yearns for the light, and never does consider that the illumination will be its undoing. In this way we comfort ourselves, that the terrors we face will always look familiar, and have familiar solutions. The alternative is the indifferent, unrelenting horror of H.P. Lovecraft or George Orwell. But that's a different story.