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First of all,this movie is for everybody.Not only for horror fans.And in my opinion,when you want to introduce someone to the monster-horror movie genre,you do a double-bill screening at your own place and you show this movie and Romero’s “Night Of The Living Dead”.Second of all,this is not only a huge influence on the monster-horror genre,but also the claustrophobic-horror/thriller[Buried(2010),Panic Room(2002),The Cube(1980),Phone Booth(2002),Descent(2006),etc.].And it kind of has everything.

I have a problem,though.I can’t decide which is the best thing about the movie.Is it Scott’s direction or the scene in which Ripley struggles to throw the alien in space?Well,Scott starts off with these people’s daily life on a ship.Everything is nice and smooth.Tension starts to arise when they start questioning themselves,ultimately making us toss and turn.Now that’s some good direction.Also,he really doesn’t rely on the fact that this is supposed to be a horror movie.In the first hour and 15 minutes,this is more about them dealing with fear.Then in the last 35 minutes,he shows us the monster and everything becomes more alert and scary.

The scene in which Ripley struggles throw the alien into space,is probably the best scene in the movie.First of all,the way it’s written is brilliant.Also,this is Weaver’s best time to shine given the fact that is the best written material in the whole movie.And the editing is perfect.The suspense grows in parallel with the sound.At one moment it becomes unbeareable.Even after writing this,I can’t decide.

Conclusion?A classic and nevertheless major influence on all horrors and thrillers(and more?) to come out of Hollywood in the past 30 years.One to watch.10/10

After Star Wars launched the Golden Age of sci-fi, Ridley Scott continued it with Alien, his thinking person’s horror masterpiece. It’s one of the most unsettling and unforgettable combinations of sci-fi and horror. Although its legacy and sequels ensured the survival of sci-fi as a box-office guarantee, it isn’t a jolly space opera like Star Trek or Star Wars. It is a film set on tough survival ground. The inhabitants of the spaceship Nostromo (returning to Earth as the movie opens) aren’t young and marketable explorers, but realistic working-class types just trying to make a living. The Nostromo is established as a place where humanity does not want to linger. It’s tight, sterile, and not fit for habitation.
One needs only to select a random protégé of Alien to get a feel not only of the film’s lasting influence, but also of how inadequately others have tried to emulate Scott’s success. Look at Cloverfield, one of the most obvious imitators. It modeled its monster after the alien, but abandoned Scott’s real characters, dialogue, and semi-plausible decisions in favor of a cast of interchangeable self-absorbed hipsters.
Exuding fear in Alien is the tension between officers and workers. Everyone just wants to go home. They have been in space longer than they have to be and everyone is at their wits end. There is also a little bit of sexism at play, evident when the men in the crew don’t trust the judgment of Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver in the role that would bring her much recognition and kick off her career). Indeed, we can sense the Freudian subtext throughout the film as the omnipotent computer system onboard the ship is curiously named “Mother”.
What’s most amazing about Alien is how little the alien appears and how little time is devoted to the actual chase. This is because, for all of its influence on sci-fi, Alien is so much more than a standard monster movie. On one level, it is an effective horror film, playing on our fear of dark claustrophobic places and of being buried alive. Like all great horror films, Alien goes into effective silent stretches. But on other levels, the primal motifs of the movie extend much further.
The crew is caught in a womb environment and the alien itself has a sexualized look. It emerges by impregnating a man and, indeed, we always fear things that can harm us from inside. In this regard, Alien not only has levels of both horror and sexual connotations, but also intertwines the two.
It’s also noteworthy that the Alien films were great feminist movies. Although she is teased by the men on the crew, Ripley is the only worker capable of properly navigating the Nostromo. Sadly, after Alien all went back to normal and to this day women still have a hard time getting good roles in horror and science-fiction films.
On a third level, Scott poses a tough ethical dilemma for the viewers. After Kane (John Hurt) wanders outside of the ship and becomes infected, Ripley and Ash (Ian Holm) argue about whether they should break protocol and let him back on the ship or keep him waiting. Ripley is utilitarian (looking at the consequences rather than the action and what will benefit the greater number of people) while Ash is ostensibly a deontologist (judging based on the act itself). The rivalry between Ripley and Ash is the central undercurrent of Alien. Of course, letting Kane back in also brought the alien on board.
Our first glimpse of the alien is as a skeletal system which is scary in itself due to its sheer size, but it’s a foreshadowing to an upcoming scene that would make horror movie history. The notorious chestbuster scene was as successful as it was thanks to some ingenuity on Ridley Scott’s part. The baby alien popping out of Kane’s chest came as a surprise to the rest of the cast. Scott planned it that way to get spontaneous emotions and natural improvisations. There are other classic horror routines that follow, including the “it’s just a cat” revelation that has become a cliché by now.
The alien grows fast and the first sign of this is its shed skin. This element of surprise work nicely and the anticipation effectively mounts our fear. We know Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) is doomed when he goes looking for the alien on his own. A real scary moment comes when the alien creeps up behind the oblivious Dallas (Tom Skerritt) and attacks him. Here the movie takes note of the fragility of the human body in comparison to the indestructibility of the alien.
Alien is working with Agatha Christie deaths. The crew is trapped and is picked off one by one. As in And Then There Were None, not all of the people are what they appear to be. Who could ever forget the chilling revelation about Ash? In fact, even the company sponsoring the voyage of the Nostromo had a hidden agenda. Suffice to say that the misfortune that befalls the crew was no accident.
Ripley becomes the classic Final Girl when her companions are all killed. Even here, it is amazing how little of the alien we actually see. Scott is one of those gifted filmmakers, like Steven Spielberg and Val Lewton, who can induce fear with minimal use of visuals. Cloverfield was aiming for that but it all felt too silly. Maybe the whole back story of the Slusho company awakening the monster was begging not to be taken seriously.
Fortunately, Alien also spawned some horror masterworks, which is one of the greatest gifts an original masterpiece can give to moviegoers. Alien itself owes a lot to Jaws, especially in its soundtrack. But in many of its shots we can see prophecies of The Empire Strikes Back (the best of the Star Wars movies) and other great sci-fi films as late as 2009’s District 9, which borrowed the concept of a human transforming himself after coming in contact with an alien. The influence of Alien cannot be overstated, however few the pictures that have even come close to matching the brilliance of Ridley Scott’s work. Then again, who can blame anyone for wanting to copy a genius?

One of the most essential horror movies. It makes aliens more scary then they ever were before. The space element and claustrophobia is a perfect touch to an already perfect story. Sigourney Weaver and the rest of the cast did a great job at being a believable group of friends and it really mattered when someone got picked off. It has amazing sets and impeccable style, some of the best work Ridley Scott has done. The effect this has had on modern Sci-Fi, Horror and Cinema is undeniable. One of the greatest advancements in storytelling.

There is a strange personal story I have with this film.

I was somewhere between 5 and 10 or something; it was a slumber-party, and someone thought it would be a great idea to see this film. First timers included!

Little did I know, I would not be able to look into the dark basement room the same way again. Not because the film is…‘scary’ in the usual jump-out-scares-kinda-way. There is an element in the movie that is “off” so to speak.

I suppose I am still trying to describe the feeling of ABSOLUTE TERROR I feel when I watch the movie. Then again, when one is a little tyke…

ALIEN was directed by Ridley Scott, a British filmmaker who was making well-known commercials at the time (one famous one is 1974 ‘Hovis’ advert).
Remarkably, Alien was his 2nd feature-film, which followed his luscious period-piece debut, THE DUELISTS. Apparently, someone saw his film at Cannes, and thought Scott would be perfect for adapting the screenplay originally coined by Dan O’bannon and Ronald Shusset (the movie was originally to imagined as a sort of B-movie sci-fi horror homage, done on a low budget and shot quickly).

To be honest, the entire production history of this film is highly mired in conflicts, personal retellings, apocryphal tales and old recorded footage of days on the set, including some other oddities. One should check it out, it’s really fascinating.

But onto the film; what’s it about?

The film quickly establishes the tone with a view of deep space, planets and stars filling the screen. Suddenly, white lines begin to slowly dissolve into the upper part of the frame. At first, we’re not entirely sure what these white markings are for but it quickly becomes apparent it’s the title, now seeming quite ominous, aided by Jerry Goldsmith’s strangely impressionistic score.

We are introduced to a massive space-ship, looking like a gigantic gothic castle, called the NOSTROMO. It’s a freighter carrying some sort of cargo, it’s crew members somewhat like truckers-in-space, being rather raw and somewhat rough around the edges. At first, the trip back to earth seems to be going well, but the ship’s computer, ‘MOTHER’, has re-routed them to somewhere….else.

It seems MOTHER picked up a distress signal on a derelict planet and the crew must investigate.

Three of the members go explore and find on the barren landscape a massive, slightly organic looking craft, looking like it crashed a long time ago. Things get weirder when they find what appears to a gigantic fossilized humanoid life-form sitting in a chair at the base of giant gun.

Things then get inextricably bizarre as they descend into the even bigger hallowed halls of the inside of the ship where thousands of ‘eggs’ reside. Foolishly, one of the astronauts decides to look in one but is greeted by a surprise: an alien hand-creature that latches onto his face.

Is this the titular ALIEN? Yes andn on. things get worse, as this ‘face-hugger’ has a trick up its sleeve, which involved impregnation, chest-bursters and lots and lots of blood in what is now known as the infamous “last supper scene”.

It appears that the face-hugger was simply a carrier for something….else…something bigger and deadlier.

Faster than you can say “don’t go there!”, the small crew is suddenly finding other members visciously murdered or missing. It appears this chest-burster has now grown into a seven foot tall….something.

After brutally murdering and presumably eating a hapless Harry Dean Stanton, the urgency of the situation is apparent: they must kill the ALIEN, before it kills them…

What happens for the next hour is unpredictable to say the least. For a good chunk of the film, we’re not exactly sure who IS the main character, or if this is supposed to be an ensemble piece. Of course, it’s all a trick, for as soon as the REAL Alien (face-hugger was also a red-herring) appears, a certain ‘Ripley’ emerges as the leader and main character. She’s also a woman, surprising still as she is not played as being tough as nails but simply more resourceful and against stereotype (i.e. damsel in distress).

Even her friend, the usually nervey Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), is simply portrayed as being overly emotional and not incompetent as most horror film characters seemed to be usually characterized.

Although you might think that this simply a fodder-fest, the cast is really quite developed, giving the feeling that we’ve been dropped right into the middle of a long-standing group friendship that we can’t quite enter because..well, we’re not their friends.

(turns out this is more deliberate than one thinks: Ridley Scott gave all the actors ‘histories’ of their characters so that by the time we see them there is no more developing to be done)

Before I can go into the ALIEN’s details, the production design…

The look is dictated by a standard principle: Industrial machinery. Everything is HUGE. Huge, and detailed, baroque and very rustic. For this reason, it’s like the anti-thesis of Kubrick’s ‘2001’, in that as opposed to being sterile, everything is lived in, dark, steam ridden, stained, and, in the end, clearly threatening.

This contrasted with the look of the derelict space craft, it’s inhabitants (including the ALIEN itself) and look designed by Swiss Surrealist H.R. Giger. Giger at the time was known for his semi-disturbing and yet elegantly nouveux-style “bio-mechanical” artwork, depicting landscapes that melded flesh and machinery into patterns, curves and recognizable…positions. By that, I mean that the art is also quite erotic, with an over-fetishization of sex, phalluses, and of course, machines.

Scott and O’Bannon agreed that this man would be perfect for creating a completely ‘new’ monster that would both scare and surprise people with its fresh design and simply disturbing nature.

They may have gotten more than they bargained for. The Alien creature is simply one of the most terrifying, beautiful ugly things I’ve ever seen. Even in light, it has an incredibly eerie presence, helped of course by its hyper-realistic look.

While the derelict has some….noticeable sexual aspects about it, none is more clear than the actual shape of the Alien’s head: read that as phallus shape, including its ‘double’ tongue which it uses to ‘pierce’ victim’s skulls and kills people.

Also, it has no eyes, which is seriously messed up. Now you got my phobia of spiders and tiny bugs going. Great job Giger…

But really, who’s kidding who? The star is the atmosphere. It’s quite unnerving, as throughout the entire movie, you’re assaulted by this heavy….gray and blackness. this is a depressing world, certainly not helped by the Alien’s terrifying presence on the ship, where there’s nowhere to run.

Things take a turn for the Kafkaesque when a certain character makes a surprise revelation (perhaps the REAL surprise of the film, which I won’t spoil) when we realize that maybe…just maybe, the Alien isn’t the true antagonist; MOTHER, and by extension, the company these people work for, seem to find this situation….expendable to say the least….
I suppose Ripley didn’t fill out the proper paperwork in situations involving lethal alien lifeforms stalking you around your ship….

Bad Kafka joke… but in the end, this is rightfully the father of the new sci-fi horror, where the Ten Little Indian’s concept is taken to its logical conclusion….in space.

Because in space, “no one can hear you scream…”

God, that’s creepy….

If Ridley Scott made “Alien” today, no one would notice. You’d find it in Wal-Mart at the bottom of the the straight-to-DVD bargain-bin with all the other Bantha Poodoo. But that’s the problem with being an archetype. Your novel contribution is sullied by all of the cheap imitations that follow.

Even disregarding all of its serial-killer bastard children, I’m forced to wonder why this film was ever archetypal in the first place. Sure, the film is enjoyable. The special effects – especially the alien ship scenes – have that loving touch missing from so many CGI-driven features today. The 2001-esque tracking shots of the spacecraft’s interiors, the hopelessly dated computers, and the made up programming languages all made me warm and fuzzy inside. When the cute little blood-drenched alien baby pops out of Kane all hiss and spit, jumps off the operating table and scurries across the floor, my wife and I nearly died of laughter.

The film offers very little in the way of character development, which is probably a blessing, considering the one-dimensional characters painfully drawn in its sequels. (“Game over, man!”) The terse dialogue and elliptical narrative also fits in perfectly with the screenplay’s efficient pacing. I loved watching android Ash descend into fanatical and homicidal obsession.

And we can overlook some of the more problematic plot points. I’m thinking specifically of Ridley staring at the screens of binary 1’s and 0’s and magically deciphering the code “stay away” (is it really any more ridiculous than Cypher watching the scrolling Matrix screens and seeing “blonde, brunette, redhead?”). Then there’s the absurdity of the recon crew parading through the sinister alien ship like starry-eyed, slack-jawed yokels without even having radio contact with their home crew.

In the end, the alien’s serial destruction of the crew is the only original contribution this film made to the medium (which, as my B-movie obsessed friend Sam Deldago pointed out to me, comes full circle in “Jason X: Jason in Space!”). And here’s what I can’t understand: even in this, the first film to really formalize this now well-worn formula, who seriously couldn’t see where it was heading? At most, this is a one-trick pony. Why God why has Hollywood raped this film over and over again?

Maybe you can help me understand. All I can say is: Watch it. Enjoy. Laugh. And Lament.