Alien

Watching Alien, the mega classic science fiction horror blockbuster from 1979 that spawned a slew of sequels and is probably one of the most watched films in history, is a grueling, terrifying, sometimes sickening experience. I compare it a little to being lost in the bowels of some fossilized insect, the doom proffered by the Alien "Mother" lurking around every dark, dripping, desiccated, or, alternately slime-corroded corridor. It is dark, white-knuckled terror at the end, reminiscent of Scott's later Blade Runner (1982) wherein Harrison Ford must contend with his own personal Alien Queen Mother--in the form of Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer).

Almost everyone on this planet has seen this picture, I take it, almost making a review redundant. But write about it I must. A film this intense and this perfect demands attention from everyone that gives attention to the film.

The film begins obviously in the vast, empty, deathless, and yet lifeless darkness of space--aboard the Nostromo, a floating city-scape piloted by a crew of just seven--Ash (Ian Holm), Kane (John Hurt), Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Parker (Yaphet Kotto), Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), and, lastly, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the Warrior-Woman. They are common people, despite their interstellar expertise, and they come across as such. Awakened prematurely from their cryogenically frozen state of hibernation by "Mother" their onboard AI, the crew of the Nostromo quickly figure out they're not "home" yet, and have been awakened merely to investigate a strange distress signal coming from a meteorite or something. They go out, per their standard operating procedure (but against the wishes of Parker and Brett, who are both concerned about their "bonuses") to investigate. They find a U-shaped crashed alien craft, apparently ancient. Aboard, a fossilized gargantuan extraterrestrial is sitting astride a device that looks as if it could be a huge laser artillery gun...but could be anything. The interior of the ship has a curious, ugly dark "ribbed" look, and the designer of this film was, of course, the late, lamented H.R. Giger, whose biomechanical nightmarish artwork defined this particular genre of science fiction horror.

Kane (the late John Hurt)goes below deck into some sort of cargo hatch full of fecal-looking "eggs". One of them opens up, revealing a weird, pulsating bladder the color of raw chicken. Everything is veiny and repellent. It bursts forth onto his face, penetrating his space helmet, and ensuring you may wish to never eat lobster again.

The rest, as they say, is chest-bursting cinematic history.

Alien then becomes an outer space "stalk and slash," or the extraterrestrial equivalent thereof. One by one...but, I don't have to tell you any of this, do I? And I shouldn't, just in case you're one of two human beings alive who have never seen this film.

All of the performances are excellent and beyond reproach. The late Yaphet Kotto comes across as the most (forgive the pun) "down to Earth" and likable of the crew, with the others seeming more detached. Sigourney Weaver, except when in the throes of panic, seems the coldest and (pun again) "alienated" of them all, a walking "by the book" superbitch with a flame thrower and a will to live. She goes running around in her skivvies at the end, but the man me finds it less interesting visually than the boy me did.

A dark, brooding, Lovecraftian visual feast, Alien puts you firmly in the horrific and often nauseating world of the Nostromo, while her crew is being hunted by a being Scott wisely chose to never let us completely "see" for most of the picture. (When the whole alien is finally revealed, it looks like a giant lizard man with a porpoise head. It nearly kills the horror, as we immediately think, "Man in a rubber suit.")

Make no mistake though: there's nothing here that will leave you feeling edified at the end. Alien is a grueling cinematic experience, one that still resonates and electrifies after so many long, dark, and silent decades. In space, after all, no one can hear you scream...

Cult Films and Midnight Movies: "From High Art to Low Trash Vol. 1" by Tom Baker