Inspirational sci-fi/horror that launched a thousand rip-offs!

Rating: Null/10 (17 November 2001)

To judge ALIEN against its sequels is to blame Eve for handing Adam that damned Granny Smith! Without Ridley Scott's masterpiece, there would BE no sequels!
ALIEN is almost 23 years old and stands even now as the benchmark for films of this ilk. Even the fabulously entertaining ALIENS did not (and nor did it TRY) replicate its claustrophobic fear, its style, its inventiveness. Ridley Scott is a one-of-a-kind director. Like Stanley Kubrick (and I do not seek to equate them here) he has an individuality that comes through in his movies and stamps them as being HIS alone. ALIEN, LEGEND, BLADE RUNNER and of course GLADIATOR all bear the mark. The sensitivity, the human angle, the unique (at some point) blue lit filtered backdrop. He is an artiste!
ALIEN has dated very little, evidenced only by the youth of the actors. Can anyone see a similarity (more-so in attitude) between the young Sigourney Weaver and Jane Fonda in her youth?
The bridge of the Nostromo, made up primarily from electronic junk lying around the place was innovative (agreed, "Mother" looks rather old hat, especially with her clunky old DOS interface!) The storyline has been re-hashed so many times since, but in 1979 it was fresh and cutting-edge stuff. The interior of the alien craft with the 'space jockey' was a jaw-dropping visual and the barely-glimpsed alien, fear incarnate! Not too many bio-mechanical twin jaw chompers before IT! The ONLY time the alien looked even vaguely suss was when Ripley blasted it out of the airlock. Just for a second one had an impression of the old "man-in-a-suit" routine!
Characterizations were superb, as they were in ALIENS! The demise of Lambert particularly, brings the horror of the alien confrontingly close to the viewer. Electronic sound fx and the musical score serve to heigten suspense at key moments, of which there are several. In the upshot however, the film belongs to Weaver as Ripley (although a young Ian Holm is brilliant as Ash - watch his facial expressions!) a model of constructive thinking, resourcefulness and bravery.
No, they don't come much better than this!