Superior horror film which executes the basics more than just efficiently.

Rating: 7/10 (6 April 2019)

They must have thought that that was very clever of them when they first conceived it: depict a female character undress to her briefs, whilst alone in an enclosed space capsule. Then, have her walk around for a bit, distract the audience by leaning over slightly, and then 'wham!' - have the monster of the piece wriggle around a bit in the background within the confines of a crawlspace it has found for itself... Much water has passed beneath the proverbial bridge by this point in the film, however, but it does demonstrate quite perfectly how rudimentary 'jump' scenes such as the one just described can be as effective as this one is if everything around it is executed properly.
The cynic inside of me thinks that, at a time when George Lucas and co. were blasting away at the cinema screen via the "Star Wars" films - essentially using outer space as a playground for all manner of shoot-outs and interplanetary crafts hurtling around the place at top speed - Ridley Scott and his team were doing something calmer and more effective much more quietly. In "Alien", space is a bleak, lonely place - its ships, like the transport vessels on the open oceans of Earth hundreds of years ago, hulk peacefully through tremendous fields of nothingness, its crew eager to get home, its journey devoid of notoriety, its androids not quirky and funny but potentially deadly.
The film begins with some seemingly unnecessary tracking shots through the corridors of the ship itself, the Nostromo - it appears empty, and surprisingly narrow for its size. The film appears to be introducing to the audience the venue for the fight which is set to follow. On the bridge, some mechanical whirring brings a computer to life and a screen seems to then uncannily 'interact' with a stationary helmet positioned on top of a seat. We then play witness to the crew of seven waking up from some kind of enhanced sleep for long journeys. What becomes evident here and in the following scenes is that there is no clear lead - a captain, played by Tom Skerritt, might fit the bill; so too might an engineer named Parker (Yaphet Kotto), whose qualm with some kind of futuristic payment scheme the film seems to think is important and is something we expect to be resolved later on.
Otherwise, things are fairly anonymous - "Alien" keeping its cards close to its chest. When the crew try to figure out why they've been awoken prematurely, given there is no sign of Earth, the film positions the character of Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) nearer the back of the bridge and away from the consoles the navigators check for answers. What the crew come up with is a repetitive signal radiating out from a nearby moon every twelve seconds, and conspire to investigate it as per space protocol. In this space-set universe, and unlike Lucas', mankind has seemingly succeeded in avoiding contact with lots of different galactic creatures - convergence with a foreign body not of Earth's proportion is a rare thing.
Still with no clear lead, a gang of volunteers venture out into a storm after the ship has landed on the moon - the inhospitable weather, violent winds and unwelcoming atmosphere conspiring to act as a kind of warning or prelude for the situation to come. Having bravely nominated himself to be amongst the first to investigate, and then to go below-deck once they discover a shipwreck, John Hurt's character Kane presents himself to the audience as a protagonist of sorts: the explorer, the discoverer - what he discovers are thousands of small eggs and then something else besides when he gets a little too close.
Back on board the Nostromo, the events which play out for the rest of the film have etched themselves into a kind of cinematic legend - is there a person alive who does not know how the biology of the face-hugger works? Or what to expect when you're not expecting? Apparently paralysed by his venture, our volunteer hero Kane is seemingly out of the equation as two others in the form of the aforementioned Captain Dallas and a science officer named Ash (Ian Holm) step up to take his place. But why does the film think it important for Dallas to digress said officer was only instated on the mission mere days before disembarkation? Saints be praised, Kane appears to wake up and we have our lead back...
The genius behind "Alien" within the confines of its genre and what it's attempting to do lies in what director Ridley Scott does with what he has at his disposal. Much later on, when we sense the creature is in a large storage hold with one of the crewmembers, Scott uses the water dripping down from a vent shaft high in the ceiling to create a leathery sound as it rebounds off a crewman's cap, and we're never quite sure if we're hearing that or the monster's own limbs wriggling into an attack position.
As a setting, the old beaten up Nostromo itself makes for the perfect locality - there is certainly something in the way it hulks towards us in the film's opening few shots, heavy in the load it's carrying, and we sense it has seen better days. Its interior lighting is a little funky, illuminating some parts of some corridors and not others, as would reflect its deterioration over time. It feels like an unreliable host, even more so when it is damaged upon landing on the mysterious moon, and this paranoia of the on-board technology betraying us later occurs.
Simplicity is the key to "Alien" - its three-act structure, the first of which culminates with the egg discovery; the second of which concludes with the alien's birth and the third of which concludes with the biggest bang of them all, before a brief postface, is executed brilliantly. Reputation and place in popular culture aside, see "Alien" if you have not already done so.