The film’s main character, Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) went on to appear in three more films in the series, and the alien itself was the centerpiece of yet two more (including the stultifyingly dumb marketing stunt Alien vs. Predator: Requiem.)
But don’t judge the original by what came after -- Alien isn’t just the scariest space movie ever made, it’s a meticulously constructed master class in film suspense.
The Plot
Don’t adjust your set - the first few moments of the film are almost silent. The spaceship Nostromo (named after Joseph Conrad’s novel of existential dread) is slowly drifting back to Earth carrying twenty million tons of minerals ore. The crew is held in suspended animation for the long trip home, and we watch them wake up and stumble towards breakfast.
They haven’t made it home yet. Instead, the ship's computer (“Mother”) has woken them to offer assistance to a deep space distress signal. But they don’t find anyone in need of help. Touching down on a barren planet the crew discovers the remains of a huge spaceship, with an alien pilot long dead and a horde of leathery eggs. Soon they’ve brought aboard a supremely lethal new life form, and it’s not long before they're hunted down one by one.
The plot is neither complicated nor innovative, but that’s not the point. Under Ridley Scott’s direction, the film unspools deliberately and without mercy. Whether or not you’ve seen it before, be advised: This is not a movie to watch alone!
The Cast of 'Alien'
Ridley Scott managed to procure quite a team for his ragtag group of blue-collar, workaday hacks - the coal miners of the space age. Sigourney Weaver, in one of her earliest roles, plays the hard-nosed protagonist, Ellen Ripley; Tom Skeritt is Captain Dallas; and Ian Holm (well before he became a Knight of the British Empire) plays the two-faced science officer, Ash. Leave It to Beaver alumn Veronica Cartwright, the always excellent John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, and Yaphet Kotto of Roots round out the cast.Turns out, these marvelous players turn out to be merely supporting characters (and lunch) for the real star of the show.
The Alien
To design the alien, Scott brought on Swiss painter and sculptor H.R. Giger. Giger combined organic and mechanical elements, phallic imagery and feminine sleekness to create a thoroughly nightmarish creature. (A thick layer of mucus doesn’t hurt in the creepy department.)But don’t expect to see too much right away. The genius of Alien genius lies how little we actually see of the monster. Confined to shadows and held just outside the camera as it stalks the crew, what the audience imagines in far more frightening than anything Scott could ever show.
The Backstory
Even a casual viewer will probably see superficial traces of Star Wars (with its weathered, battered technology) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (with its all-controlling computer pseudo-character.) But a more persuasive inspiration is Howard Hawks’s claustrophobic The Thing From Another World (itself a landmark of science-fiction horror.)Later movies in the franchise became exercises for different directors to make extremely different films. Alien remains the best of the series and Roger Ebert called it "the most influential of modern action pictures." (1997’s Alien Resurrection, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, is my pick for second. Imagine a sequel to Alien by the same person who directed the lovely Amelie!)
In 2002, the movie was included in the United States National Film Registry.
'Alien' - The Bottom Line
No question, watch this one when you want to be scared silly. Go ahead. Watch it with the lights off. I dare you.If you liked 'Alien'
You may like The Thing From Another World, John Carpenter's The Thing, or Aliens and Alien Resurrection.Just the Facts:
Year: 1979, ColorDirector: Ridley Scott
Running Time: 117 minutes
Studio: 20th Century Fox
