‘In space, no one can hear you scream…’
Science fiction and horror are my two favourite film genres so it should come as no surprise when I say that Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, Alien, is one of my all-time favourite films. But that’s the problem when I review films I adore as much as this, how am I possibly going to do it justice? Especially when so many before me have spoken at length about the film and how incredible it is, what more can I possibly bring to the table? I guess just my perspective, and that’ll have to do.
I think I was around fourteen or fifteen when I watched Alien for the first time. I’d recently started to get into horror with the Saw franchise, and Film4 were showing all of the Predator films, as well as 2004’s Alien vs Predator. I wasn’t impressed, even back then. But I knew I needed to see Alien. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long because shortly thereafter Alien was also playing on TV. I managed to record it using my parents DVD recorder, and I remember my heart beating out of my chest during the tense opening and covering my eyes at the breakfast scene like it was yesterday. I revisit Alien frequently, I’ve probably seen it more than a dozen times, and even now I fall in love with it every time. So, kick back, relax, and read about me gushing about Alien for a while.
The year is 2122 and the mining vessel Nostromo is returning to Earth with its seven-member crew in stasis. When the ships on board computer, Mother, detects a distress signal from a nearby planet the crew are woken to investigate. Upon touching down on the hostile planet, a creature attack’s one of the crew members and the Nostromo departs the planet to return for Earth. But the crew are no longer alone as a deadly creature now stalks them, hiding in shadows and traveling through ventilation shafts. One by one they will be picked off, unless they can outsmart it.
I think I was around fourteen or fifteen when I watched Alien for the first time. I’d recently started to get into horror with the Saw franchise, and Film4 were showing all of the Predator films, as well as 2004’s Alien vs Predator. I wasn’t impressed, even back then. But I knew I needed to see Alien. Thankfully I didn’t have to wait long because shortly thereafter Alien was also playing on TV. I managed to record it using my parents DVD recorder, and I remember my heart beating out of my chest during the tense opening and covering my eyes at the breakfast scene like it was yesterday. I revisit Alien frequently, I’ve probably seen it more than a dozen times, and even now I fall in love with it every time. So, kick back, relax, and read about me gushing about Alien for a while.
The year is 2122 and the mining vessel Nostromo is returning to Earth with its seven-member crew in stasis. When the ships on board computer, Mother, detects a distress signal from a nearby planet the crew are woken to investigate. Upon touching down on the hostile planet, a creature attack’s one of the crew members and the Nostromo departs the planet to return for Earth. But the crew are no longer alone as a deadly creature now stalks them, hiding in shadows and traveling through ventilation shafts. One by one they will be picked off, unless they can outsmart it.
Alien was the film that put director Ridley Scott on the map, as well as thrusting leading lady Sigourney Weaver into Hollywood superstardom. A true tour de force of terror, from the moment the iconic opening title crawl starts Alien keeps you firmly on the edge of your set, slowly ratcheting up the tension until it finally snaps unleashing some of the most terrifying monster designs ever conceived in horror cinema.
The film really consists of two halves, with the first forty minutes or so doing the majority of the heavy lifting in establishing characters, the ship, the mission, and eventually what this alien is. Then the remaining hour and twenty minutes is more akin to a slasher film, with the crew of the Nostromo trying whatever they can to lure the creature out and get it off the ship.
Weaver’s Ellen Ripley has become a pop culture and feminist icon in the four decades since Alien’s release. Whilst the sequels would up the badassery to sometimes absurd levels, the original Alien presents Ripley as a woman who is clearly the smartest person in the room but doesn’t have the authority necessary for people to listen to her. Once the chain of command starts to be whittled down, it becomes clear that Ripley is the only person with the smarts to outthink the alien invader, but by that point it’s too late for her crewmates.
The Nostromo’s captain, Dallas (Tom Skerritt) is a man that values the lives of his crew over the safety of the mission, a flaw that ultimately leads to the alien making its way on board the ship. Kane (John Hurt) is Dallas’ second in command, whilst he’s the crew member with the least amount of screentime, Hurt does wonders with the role and it’s no surprise he was nominated for a BAFTA for the performance.
Then there’s Ash (Ian Holm), the Nostromo’s recently appointed science officer. I feel like Holm’s performance is often dwarfed by Hurt’s & Weaver’s but he really does a brilliant job in Alien. Obviously if you’ve seen the film, you’ll know why he’s there, but for the first hour or so you’re unsure whether you can trust him because of his strange demeanour yet eagerness to keep the crew alive once shit hits the fan.
The rest of the crew comprises of Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Parker (Yaphet Kotto), and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright). I enjoy the camaraderie between Brett & Parker as the ships engineers, but they don’t play much of a role beyond being good for a few laughs in the first forty minutes. Lambert meanwhile is arguably the only aspect of Alien I dislike. I honestly feel her character could have been written out of the film entirely because all she does is complain and scream. I’m not necessarily knocking the performance of Cartwright here, but if you took her out of the film it wouldn’t be any different and it might even be a bit better.
The film really consists of two halves, with the first forty minutes or so doing the majority of the heavy lifting in establishing characters, the ship, the mission, and eventually what this alien is. Then the remaining hour and twenty minutes is more akin to a slasher film, with the crew of the Nostromo trying whatever they can to lure the creature out and get it off the ship.
Weaver’s Ellen Ripley has become a pop culture and feminist icon in the four decades since Alien’s release. Whilst the sequels would up the badassery to sometimes absurd levels, the original Alien presents Ripley as a woman who is clearly the smartest person in the room but doesn’t have the authority necessary for people to listen to her. Once the chain of command starts to be whittled down, it becomes clear that Ripley is the only person with the smarts to outthink the alien invader, but by that point it’s too late for her crewmates.
The Nostromo’s captain, Dallas (Tom Skerritt) is a man that values the lives of his crew over the safety of the mission, a flaw that ultimately leads to the alien making its way on board the ship. Kane (John Hurt) is Dallas’ second in command, whilst he’s the crew member with the least amount of screentime, Hurt does wonders with the role and it’s no surprise he was nominated for a BAFTA for the performance.
Then there’s Ash (Ian Holm), the Nostromo’s recently appointed science officer. I feel like Holm’s performance is often dwarfed by Hurt’s & Weaver’s but he really does a brilliant job in Alien. Obviously if you’ve seen the film, you’ll know why he’s there, but for the first hour or so you’re unsure whether you can trust him because of his strange demeanour yet eagerness to keep the crew alive once shit hits the fan.
The rest of the crew comprises of Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Parker (Yaphet Kotto), and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright). I enjoy the camaraderie between Brett & Parker as the ships engineers, but they don’t play much of a role beyond being good for a few laughs in the first forty minutes. Lambert meanwhile is arguably the only aspect of Alien I dislike. I honestly feel her character could have been written out of the film entirely because all she does is complain and scream. I’m not necessarily knocking the performance of Cartwright here, but if you took her out of the film it wouldn’t be any different and it might even be a bit better.
But it’s Alien’s impressive visuals and production values that I love the most and that really suck me in every single time. It’s such a product of the time it was made in with all of the Nostromo’s ‘high tech’ equipment being so old and bulky. Mother for instance is supposed to be one of the most advanced computer systems in human history and she’s the size of a room and only has the ability to display lines of text on a small CRT display. In 1979 I’m sure that the Nostromo did look super futuristic with its creamy beige padded interior design, and computer terminals everywhere. But for me I love the retro sci-fi aesthetic. It’s similar to seeing pictures of the ‘world of tomorrow’ from the 1950’s, at the time it was cutting edge but today it’s such a novelty. Where a lot of sci-fi films suffer from this dated aesthetic, I feel it really gives Alien a lot of character, and if anything, the sequels lost a lot of that character by making the technology look too slick. Even the Nostromo is just a hulking mass of metal that’s intimidating to look at. Where spaceship designs are often sleek, the Nostromo looks more like a nuclear power facility with its great towers jutting out of the main body of the ship. It also really puts into perspective the size of the Nostromo when you look at the size of the crew shuttle in comparison to the full vessel. Internally I adore the mix of the ‘futuristic’ creamy beige living quarters, and the dark industrial looking work areas. Both are unsettling in different ways. Compare it to the alien ship the crew discover which is almost organic in design. Both are strikingly beautiful in this retro sci-fi way, but also hulking masses of machinery that really do dwarf the characters.
Something that always grabs my attention too is the crew smoking. Even in the 70’s I’m sure smoking on a spacecraft was something you didn’t do because it’s so dangerous to the equipment. But it’s a quirky detail I love, to think that in the 70’s it was reasonable to expect that in a couple of hundred years smoking would be possible on a spaceship.
I have always loved the way Scott allows shots to linger, and he’s a big fan of environment establishing shots. Alien opens with almost six minutes of environment shots, starting in space and then moving inside the Nostromo to show us where we will spend the next two hours. It might be a slow way to start the film, but for me it immediately starts winding the tension up with the eerie score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Then of course there’s the alien. I mean what a truly terrifying creature. A creation of legendary designer H.R. Geiger, what would later become known as the xenomorph really is a thing of beauty. Much like Spielberg did with Jaws, Scott relegates the alien to short bursts of visibility in the film, and frequently allowing the creature to linger in darkness behind its unaware victim. The sleek black and almost skeletal design of the creature is nightmare inducing, and the way the film communicates its defensive capabilities is just as frightening as seeing it claim its prey. I feel that the sequels really downplay just how powerful a force the xenomorph is, with them being more easily killed and far more numerous. Here in the original film, one is not only clever enough to take down an entire mining crew without ever really being seen, but tough enough that the only thing that can kill it is space itself. Whilst I appreciate the sequels on their own merits, I do feel that the xenomorph is at its best in the 1979 original where its rarely seen but always terrifying.
Alien is a masterpiece of a film. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. I can understand that people who aren’t keep on scary films might want to give it a miss and I can understand that. But if you don’t like horror films because you think they’re contrived or too far outside the realms of believability, I implore you to give Alien a go as part of the reason why it’s so scary is because it doesn’t fall into the same traps that other horror films do relating to weak characters, plot conveniences, and a predictable structure.
Alien is one of my all-time favourite films, and one I love returning to again and again. Whilst the sequels can be a bit hit and miss, I assure you that the original is nothing but cinematic gold.
Something that always grabs my attention too is the crew smoking. Even in the 70’s I’m sure smoking on a spacecraft was something you didn’t do because it’s so dangerous to the equipment. But it’s a quirky detail I love, to think that in the 70’s it was reasonable to expect that in a couple of hundred years smoking would be possible on a spaceship.
I have always loved the way Scott allows shots to linger, and he’s a big fan of environment establishing shots. Alien opens with almost six minutes of environment shots, starting in space and then moving inside the Nostromo to show us where we will spend the next two hours. It might be a slow way to start the film, but for me it immediately starts winding the tension up with the eerie score by Jerry Goldsmith.
Then of course there’s the alien. I mean what a truly terrifying creature. A creation of legendary designer H.R. Geiger, what would later become known as the xenomorph really is a thing of beauty. Much like Spielberg did with Jaws, Scott relegates the alien to short bursts of visibility in the film, and frequently allowing the creature to linger in darkness behind its unaware victim. The sleek black and almost skeletal design of the creature is nightmare inducing, and the way the film communicates its defensive capabilities is just as frightening as seeing it claim its prey. I feel that the sequels really downplay just how powerful a force the xenomorph is, with them being more easily killed and far more numerous. Here in the original film, one is not only clever enough to take down an entire mining crew without ever really being seen, but tough enough that the only thing that can kill it is space itself. Whilst I appreciate the sequels on their own merits, I do feel that the xenomorph is at its best in the 1979 original where its rarely seen but always terrifying.
Alien is a masterpiece of a film. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. I can understand that people who aren’t keep on scary films might want to give it a miss and I can understand that. But if you don’t like horror films because you think they’re contrived or too far outside the realms of believability, I implore you to give Alien a go as part of the reason why it’s so scary is because it doesn’t fall into the same traps that other horror films do relating to weak characters, plot conveniences, and a predictable structure.
Alien is one of my all-time favourite films, and one I love returning to again and again. Whilst the sequels can be a bit hit and miss, I assure you that the original is nothing but cinematic gold.