Alien (1979)

The crew of a commercial deep space mining ship, investigating a suspected S.O.S., lands on a distant planet and discovers a nest of strange eggs.

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Reviewed by Lukas.

This is a very exciting post for me to share with you, as it has been very kindly written by my good friend Lukas. I actually ‘met‘ Lukas around 5 years ago gaming online with the PS3. We have always stayed in touch, and as I have had years of him telling me how amazing Alien is, I knew that for this project there was only one man for this film review. He is not a writer as such and has no blog to promote. He has done this purely to stop me nagging him to do it, and I know he put a lot of love and passion into writing it. There are spoilers and it’s a long review (there may actually be more words in this than the actually script!), but it epitomizes why I wanted guest reviewers to help me with this project. You can see how much he cares for this film, and if you are nice enough with your comments we can convince him to return for the sequel write-up!! I hope you enjoy this piece as much as I did.

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Top 250 #41

Year of Release: 1979

Director: Ridley Scott

Cast:

Tom Skerritt – Dallas
Sigourney Weaver – Ripley
Harry Dean Stanton – Brett
John Hurt – Kane
Ian Holm – Ash

Its 1987, a young mischievous mind sits in a darkened room with his new film, a movie with a certificate set at double the age of the consciousness about to absorb it. Folks had attempted to ward this young mind off of such a movie but young minds always know better…”Pffft I know what I’m doing, I have watched Jaws…and Predator!! How hard a watch can this actually be?” such adventures of course are quite different to the journey I was about to start upon.

The Twentieth Century Fox fan fare embers out, the screen becomes dark, very dark and the suggestion of something begins to pan into view as a sound like space wind echoing through the void starts the unconventional musical notes of the opening sequence. Barely noticed on this viewing the cast names begin to flash slowly upon us but the young mind is fixated on the single “I” top center of screen as a vast dark planet begins to dominate the view. As this foreboding world passes through the camera glyphs continue to appear and begin to spell a word, equally paced they appear, letters developing gradually like the bacteria that grows together to create larger life forms with more presence these symbols continue to evolve until the word…A L I E N…is complete, as the unsettling music plays through the young mind observing tries to silence a small voice deep in his soul…”you are in trouble” it whispers.

So the tone is set for arguably one of the cleverest, atmospheric and memorable sci-fi experiences in mankind’s library. It lays out in simple terms from the off, you’ll need your tension and don’t forget to prep your imagination. It seems that from the offset Scott, the producers and original writers had one thing in mind, make this story as believable and as ‘real’ to the viewer as humanly possible (in the confines of ones budget of course, which Scott managed to double on the strength of his story board) and in every element of this movie outside deep space travel they seem to pull it off remarkably.

Atmosphere, a word written into Alien’s DNA, it’s there from the first second as mentioned in the opening credits, for that we can thank Ridley’s vision and Jerry Goldsmiths score, despite minimalistic at times that’s all you need. Goldsmiths tones and threatening horns pepper the dark corridors of this film, to say the music in this film is beautiful is a gross underplay. Goldsmith who seems to have more of a relationship with romantic scores and grandiose emotion seemed often frustrated with the film makers, especially when they used his scores from previous films for the end credits rather than his fresh work, but Alien required dark disquieting accompaniment not poetry and the editors have taken exactly from Goldsmiths score what they required.

From the moment you are placed into a Jones eye view of the first verbal sparring of the crew you feel a part of this ship thanks wholly to the incredible performances of the cast. There are no clichés here, it’s a utterly cheese free zone, the ‘workers’ reflect to the letter the same kind of over worked oily rags you would find in any area of industry, indeed the conversations and exchanges on-screen are as identifiable as the kind you would have in your lunch hour in a canteen. Arguments about pay structures, bonuses and the hardships of the job are all too familiar in a terrestrial based confine and immediately bed us in with these ‘space truckers’. This also has the effect that when things do become difficult it’s clear that these people are far from able to understand or deal with the problem they are faced with adding to the overall feeling of hopelessness and fear that washes this movie down in almost every minute.

A typical Nostromo corridor

Which brings me to their home or office, The Nostromo, a tug designed to haul massive structures for the refining of deep space resources, in this case 20,000,000 tons of mineral ore, this is stored in what can only be described as a battered mess of cut price industrial design, a huge refinery impersonating a Gothic cathedral designed by the brilliant mind of Ron Cobb. The front of this mighty vessel, the tug Nostromo is where our heroes are housed and their visitor hides. To look at it screams haunted, inside it screams claustrophobia and more frighteningly…no escape.

Nostromo approaching the planetoid

The Cathedral like Refinery

The plotline for Alien is as simple as can be, 7 workers transporting their payload from a deep space location named Thedus are awoken from cryosleep with a headache and a hefty contract clause. They have been rerouted to investigate a transmission of unknown origin whilst still 10 months from Earth. Having negotiated the sensitive task of separating from the refinery and landing (badly) on a planetoid orbiting the dark sphere in our title sequence, the Captain his first officer and his less than impressed navigator set out on the awkward hike towards the source of their beacon. They soon find it…on a more than alien looking terrain they find an even more than alien looking derelict spacecraft and the incredible disquieting mind of HR Giger slips into our consciousness. Giger’s mind is dark, nightmarish and we begin to stare dumbfounded at a craft that appears more like it has been grown than built.

Inside they soon come across the source of the “distress call” A large fossilized creature humanoid in appearance sat in a chair in front of a huge telescopic device of some kind, upon closer inspection the large corpse shows signs of internal trauma and exploded ribs present some clue as to how this behemoth perished. First Officer Kane finds a small out of place hole in the area of the corpse and soon investigates only to become too curious with the derelicts contents and find himself smothered by a huge crablike spider and rendered unconscious. The whole imagining of this crafts interior is another incredible gateway into the ideals of Giger, bones and ribs seem to be everywhere, a biomechanical realm that still today is an incredible set to behold particularly in Blu-Ray quality. You could make a million CG sets as grandiose as you can imagine yet compared to the masterful artistic talent behind the interiors of this craft they would be mere childsplay.

Having taken Kane back to the infirmary of the Nostromo after a tense stand off with Warrant officer Ripley on quarantine laws the man who broke standard procedure to get Kane inside examines his charge with almost inhuman fascination. Science Officer Ash is both cold in his methods and stand offish in his demeanor and having ascertained the creature will neither pull off or be cut off due to the high pressure acid it uses for blood the crew leave him too it so they can concentrate on repairing the ship and returning to the payload.

After some time the parasite vanishes and a little while later Kane regains consciousness utterly exhausted, thirsty and complaining of a bad dream and hunger. Captain Dallas declares triumphantly “One more dinner before bed time, why not, IM BUYING” and as the crew dig into to their last supper Ash seems pre-occupied by the behavior of the revived Kane. Seeming to choke on a piece of food Kane raises clearly pain racked and collapses back onto the table to the horror of his ship mates. What follows is an inhuman birth straight from the prophecies of the fallen angels, a parasitic nightmare, and probably one of the slickest most impressive scenes of any horror film before or even since. The fact that this was pulled off with animatronics real actors, improvisation and no CG not to mention piles of guts and blood from an abattoir only heightens its achievement, and as the phallic teeth filled larva regards its new prey before ploughing across the table and off to the confines of the dark Nostromo you are stunned silent. But that nagging reminder in your head….its now loose…just won’t go away.

From here its straight survival, plans are put together, attempts to trap and eject fail, Technician Brett, and Captain Dallas are taken, Parker and Ripley get a brief Glimpse at what they are up against having now reached full maturity in mere hours, “The son of a bitch is HUGE! I mean it’s like a man..its BIG!” are Parkers words. The entirety of the Nostromo is now a huge hiding place, the Alien has the run of the ship, the humans are limited as to where they can go and the claustrophobia is unrelenting, the movie has now reached a stage of tension where you are happy for any scene where there is excess light, your safe in the light your mind tells you….monsters like the dark.

Ripley starts to come into her own, she suspects Ash of foul play, she has her hands full controlling the wayward Parker and she is also conscious that Navigator Lambert is starting to lose her mind. The casting of a Fem Fatale is another of Alien’s master strokes. An unfashionable concept made fashionable by what they achieved here and Sigourneys amazing performance. To a young mind she has all the air of a teacher in full control, a female soldier who has seen things before, she takes the initiative only to find out the hard way the horrible truth about the mission they were forced to take and the role of her science officer.

Another master stroke of plot writing, this time the credit going to the studio producers, Gordon Caroll, David Giler and Walter Hill who wrote the planted android betrayal plot into the movie after O’Bannons original script. O’Bannon always seemed skeptical of Ash’s inclusion but there is no doubt this major twist in the plotline was totally justified and yet again another comment on the parasitic and corrupt nature that is the reality that we live in, is it not totally believable that clandestine power mongers on Earth would try to improve their standing by acquiring new assets, or technology?

From here on in all that matters to the survivors Ripley, Lambert and Parker is escape, get to the shuttle and flee, they have lost, Ash’s final words hit home with Ripley when he spoke about their adversary. “I admire its purity. A survivor… unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality” and the phrase “Perfect organism”

This brings me to the real star of this movie, the son of HR Giger. Unlike anything ever designed or created for sci-fi or films the 7 foot biomechanical parasite for which there is no defense. So good was Scotts portrayal of this creature that for years I wouldn’t have actually known how the thing looked in its full glory (if it had not been for the sequel) this is simply because I barely saw it, and what I did see was all I needed to see…..blackness, big teeth and no eyes. Essentially a man in a suit became a strange and totally frightening apparition with the Nigerian businessman Bolaji Badejo moving unconventionally with his uniquely slim and long physique.

Two scenes leave the imagination ruined other than the chestburster moment. Both the scene where Brett is taken and Parker and Lambert are snuck up on are mind blowing pieces of cinema, as Lambert is cornered Parker bawls at her to move so he can bring his incinerator to bear…she however is paralyzed with fear as the serpent raises to full height right in front of her. As this plays out, and Scotts incredible camera shots hypnotize the eyes Jerry Goldsmiths vicious horns and orchestral mayhem block your senses with terror, by the time the creature’s tail is seen sliding up the open legs of Lambert you are too terrified to wonder…..”what on Earth did it do to her”

The trick in this creature’s realism despite its utterly Alien appearance and physiology can be found in this monsters life cycle, very noticeable in my first watching factoring in my impressionable age was the parasitic nature of this being. A creature that starts of requiring the nourishment and warmth of an egg, that will then spring into action to attack immobilize and then transplant itself into a living host whilst helping to maintain the hosts health, gestates for a small period building up form and strength and then erupting into birth to continue the cycle until all local prey is exhausted. For me life on Earth and indeed in the sea is dependent on other life. Species live off of each other and have done throughout evolution, when watching Alien I couldn’t help but recognize this. Our Alien is not interested in mindless death or pointless wastes of energy or its efforts, our Alien is impressively conscious, it uses only what it needs of itself, despite grossly outmatching its prey on the Nostromo it hides and waits for its moment to attack and does so silently and efficiently. These attributes make the moments of peril or tension towards the end of this movie all the more edgy, as the creature is born the film has a more formulaic approach and the crew members begin to get picked off in B-movie fashion but these scenes are so stylishly executed.

What I picked up on in subsequent viewings over the years that the adult audience would’ve been experiencing as they watched in fixation in the theatres was Giger’s clear fascination with the warping of sexual imagery, Alien does things no other film attempts. Alongside the promotion of the female from wimpy vulnerable victim to instinctive survivor and leader is the obvious and blatant attack on the male sex. A spider-like creature with vaginal shaped orifices impregnating a man through a nasty throat rape, the unnatural pregnancy…..the…birth…of a penis with teeth! If Brandywine, Ridley etc wanted a thousand men sat in a cinema cross-legged and wincing then they certainly got close to their aims. The Alien itself is a phallic monument to human sexuality, and even in some moments in the film when the creature approaches Brett and Lambert you are left wondering if the creature wanted to kill them, harvest them, or even rape them, it seemed quite curious about Lambert and even spends a good time in the shuttle watching the lightly dressed Ripley almost intrigued by her.

Flicking through Giger’s book Necronomicon you find the inspirations behind the Alien, Ridley on the moment he saw the designs he was convinced that was the way to go. Giger describes his art as the images of dreams, its clear from this that Giger dreams a lot about curious sexual situations and horrific biomechanical mutilation.

Necronom 4 the painting that created a monster! Sexual overtones are even more prevalent.

Giger adapted his painting into this final design, note the feminine form with the phallic cranium.

Indeed up to the final exchanges between this humanoid and our female heroine you just do not know how it will end, convinced this creature is utterly unstoppable and horrid beyond comprehension, you are scared stiff to think what would become of Ripley if she did get cornered, but despite the creatures incredible consciousness and its ability to adapt and improve its intelligence to its surroundings, the ingenuity of the species it came from out maneuvers it and triumphs in the bitter end. Indeed that scene at the end when the Alien is outside the shuttle hanging from a thread is probably the only time one sees the whole creature probably to the scenes detriment, even then though it is still surviving and heads for the booster shroud, unfortunately for it though that is its first wrong decision

The only ‘man in a suit’ in the film

In the years from the release of the abominable fourth film Alien Resurrection, interesting information began to surface about the original film and through the internet soon became accessible. Conversations involving interesting deleted scenes and outtakes sparked my intrigue and soon enough these were being released in box set reissues and collector editions. This is the only reason I marked this film down 1 score, in my personal view there are scenes here that should’ve stayed in and the reasons for their removal just plain frustrating and wrong.

Hollywood and the movie industry in general seem to need to work in certain ways with certain considerations, in the case of these deleted scenes pacing, movie length and necessity meant they were taken out, personally for the sake of a bunch of people in a cinema who’s mind constantly need jolting or those that can not sit on a chair for more than 90 minutes should not be the reason the rest of us miss out on certain contents. Many of these scenes include things like the playing of the radio transmission to the nervous crew or a meeting of the remaining 6 after Kanes body is ejected in which Dallas is clearly becoming more exasperated by the situation and an unnerved Brett questions an even more evasive Ash on the nature of their guest. These scenes are brilliant, also they are a nice little bout of character building which is scarce in this film as a whole, it’s not as if you are feeling that you need much more in a movie of this nature but it’s still a nice touch to continue the sheer tension as you watch these poor unprepared people try to solve their conundrum. There is one particular scene though that’s removal I class almost as criminal, of course I am referring to the cocoon sequence.

As Ripley flees the infected Nostromo she happens across an alcove around the landing leg area of the ship, in it she comes across a clearly pain riddled Dallas as he seemingly is slowly metamorphasising into one of the eggs that Kane’s leaping parasite developed in. As Ripley tries to discover what has happened to Dallas she notices the body(?) of Brett further down the transformation line and looking almost like a full egg. Dallas can barely muster the strength to beg for his death but Ripley obliges and torches the two human chrysalises. This scene is imperative, not only does it fully explain the creatures life cycle and also give us closure on why Dallas and Brett were taken rather than killed outright, but by this logic it also explains the disappearance of the crew on the derelict…they had all gone through this transformation as they were captured of course leaving the one Space Jockey carcass which the initial alien gestated in!!

Personally this worked for me so much more than subsequent movies or interpretations, the capture, immobilization and metamorphosis concept is so utterly alien, and not to mention horrid, the legacy of the sequels is to dumb down, and underplay the Aliens presence and legacy.

Like all masterpieces Alien has spawned a franchise of sequels and video games, whilst some of the sequels are earnest worthwhile efforts some are also an utter disgrace, Alien is one of the rare movies that seems to fall into the category of “Bettered by the sequel” I however utterly reject this. One of the reasons for that is upon initial watching it took me two years to pluck up the courage to watch Alien again, Aliens however I could watch over and over, it was a fun film to say the least but to me that makes it not as memorable.

With the cocoon sequence gone James Cameron swooped in to write his own take on the Aliens life cycle, from the mythical unstoppable yet curious and sexual being Cameron throws numerous less intelligent ‘bugs’ at us, he also gives them a very terrestrial social system like those of Ants or Bees. I could talk about this more in an Aliens review but I will say here that I’m not overly favourable to the direction this has lead the franchise since and for me I still regard Alien as stand alone.

Cameron’s Queen

Giger’s Woodruff Jnr adapted Dog in Alien 3 was an excellent concept spoiled by blue screen effects

Alien Resurrections Newborn, a crime against Giger!!

Aliens, Alien 3 the utterly abysmal Alien Resurrection which then lead to the AvP crimes all but killed off the franchise, indeed any Alien film where Tom Woodruff jnr is in charge of the overall Alien design concepts is out for me, Aliens are alleged to take the DNA shape of the creature they gestate in, so why Woodruff jnr continued to keep the Aliens looking like dogs in Alien Resurrection despite them emerging from humans is one of the blatantly obvious sloppy attempts to please ‘fans’ and keep the franchise alive.

Having the opposite effect of course we are now treated to a Scott reworking in Prometheus, apparently set 3 movies before we even get to Alien the grandiose blockbuster that was to answer so much has actually only really succeeded in destroying most of the myths and powerful secrets of Alien. As well as again leaving half the film in deleted scenes that would’ve unquestionably made the film far more enjoyable I get the feeling that after 30 years of plaudits Ridley himself has forgotten the point as to why he made and put so much effort into the detail of Alien.

An interesting monument on the Engineers craft in Prometheus.

The problem all these newer more modern twists of the original have is they are missing the point, Alien is great because its realistic and believable science fiction, the setting in terms of a working environment and characters are genuine. It is brilliantly paced with a slow first half doing nothing other than building tension and atmosphere, and the devil is in the conscientious detail. You can try all you like to recreate, duplicate….expand on, but films like Alien come around once a generation, you need many things to fall into place at the right time. A dedicated team of writers, designers, actors and a director hitting the sweet spot all at once. With the exception of Aliens (which is still big and dumb in comparison) all other sequels in one way or another have failed.

I struggle to remember an experience with any other film as the one I had with this masterpiece, maybe I watched it too young but I can say that for months after and a good year or two riding on Ripleys coat tails through the dark corners and crevices of the Nostromo with an inhuman intangible nightmare hiding somewhere, in my nightmares no one could hear me scream!!

By Lukas

Posted by Tysoncarter182 on February 12, 2013

https://headinavice.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/alien-1979/