Fast Food Shocker In Outer Space!

Rating: 9/10 (24 August 2002)

Alien follows all the usual shocks & horrors from your typical spooky haunted house movie. Lots of dark rooms, creepy dark corners and paranoid & scared-witless humans all dancing a merry tune trying to stay alive from the hungry monster that lurks just out of sight.
Alien turned the cosy, sterile world of sci-fi on its head when it first hit the screens back in 79. Until then most of the popular movie-going public had either viewed the sheer escapism and good guy Vs bad guy scenarios of Star Wars or the intellectualism of Close Encounters. But Alien was really the first haunted house movie in space where lots of people could hear you scream!
Although the film isn't really all that intellectually challenging and the script is very much lightweight, the film does benefit from a great collaboration of component parts.
First there is Don O'Bannon's wonderfully inventive screenplay coupled with a superbly scored movie sound track by the ever-dependable Jerry Goldsmith, that really sets the mood & tempo for the film right from the eerie opening.
Then of course some of the lead character/actors must get a mention since they were largely unknowns both here and in the States. Sigourney Weaver in particular, is outstanding and carries the film very well, and which later improved even further with Aliens.
But special mention must also go to the support, including a bold performances from Ian Holm, John Hurt and Yephet Kotto.
Then of course there is a the set design and the construction of the Alien itself - truly the stuff of nightmares and a very inventive mind thanks to people like H. R Giger, Nick Allder and Terry Rawings.
It made a pleasant change to see a space ship so untidy, messy and dirty compared to what our usual expectations of a futurist space ship should look like (ie, all bright lights, sterile white walls and not a coffee cup or half-eaten doughnut in sight).
Admittedly the opening scene of the Nostromo panning overhead to emphasise its huge bulk is a definite steal from the classic opening from Star Wars, but from there any further similarities end.
Then of course to complete a good film one does need a good director, and this is where 20th Century Fox took a big gamble in the relatively unknown Ridley Scott. Before this big break Scott was a director for tv commercials in the UK, and to be honest some of that 30second trickery of getting a message across is visible in Alien at times too.
However, Scott is also a man of vision. Anyone who went on to see BladeRunner will testify to that. Although it can also be said that the handling of a good story in both these films left something to be desired. Scott is very much a style over content director especially when it comes to either SF (BladeRunner, Alien) or great epics such as 1492.
But for all that he does a very good job scaring the wits out us with Alien coupled with some very fancy photography & characterization. He builds the tension very slowly. He knows what the audience are thinking in what is about to happen, so he hoodwinks them with false shocks and other distractions that let us off the hook when we expect the worst to happen.
But then when he does choose to shock us he does so on his own terms and when we expect it least. Of course the chest-busting (or alien birth) not only shocked us but also most of the other actors in the film as well, because Scott simply loves playing jokes on us.
The only disappointment is the real shallowness of the characters. We don't get to know them all that well before they end up being picked off by the Alien. Its only Ripley that really stands out and her character becomes far more fleshed out in the excellent Aliens.
Although I must say I was rather disappointed at the way she was exploited at the end of the film: was there really any need to have the camera see her undress and stare at her panties close up for more than what was really needed to be tasteful?
Ian Holm plays his "unusual" character just right, with a good combination of calculating charm & menace. But Harry Dean Stanton is wasted in this movie. To my mind he is more a character actor who only really shines with a good script and much more rounded character, such as his superb role in Paris Texas. But in this movie he is just Alien Fodder with a dopey fixation of searching for the Ship's Cat all alone with the hungry little Alien is in hiding waiting for its first meal.
In fact the cat proved to be the linchpin throughout the film, especially near the end when for whatever reason Ripey goes in search of it with the clock ticking and the Alien chasing her for a bit more fast food.
A lot of people feel Aliens is the better movie, but I don't agree. Alien succeeded on a relatively small budget and an old concept of shock/horror movie making but set in space and which proved to be a huge box office success.
Aliens was therefore made on the back of this success, but all that was needed to make it even more better was a bigger budget, better special effects and a deeper more fleshed-out story line and characterisation. Which Aliens did in spades.
But for all that is big & flashy in Aliens I still feel Alien is superior, perhaps not in story-content or sfx, but certainly in atmosphere, originality and concept design.
****/*****