I Will Fear No Evil Mostly

Rating: 8/10 (16 November 2008)

Every time I see this I think of my initial reaction to it at the cinema in 1979. I hadn't seen anything quite like it back then, I dare say that applied to most of the audience too  I thought it a steely cold classic, with a simple plot wrapped around a complicated future. Real computers were thankfully invented afterwards because the use and therefore the inevitable over-use of cgi cartoonery would have ruined the whole point of the film.
Team of space miners get nosey and investigate signals coming from a nearby planet  too late it turns out not to be a distress signal but a stay-away signal. The menacing external and then internal shots of the grounded gargantuan alien spaceship in the storm are still impressive. The result of their nosiness is a ruthless alien lifeform gets on board their spaceship and causes mindless havoc, the implication being of course that they would carry it with them to eventually doom Mankind. The corollary is incomplete as we don't learn whether the aliens are of different politics or religion, although we can see for ourselves that no mercy must be shown to merciless Evil. Will aliens ever be clever enough to swear an oath of allegiance via a universal translator to gain entry before embarking on their savagery? Back to the cinema: the scene where the bloody gibbering penis lookalike dashed out of John Hurt had the audience unintentionally rocking with laughter, however when Dallas confronted the alien in the air vents I jumped a clear foot out of my seat. You feel so daft! But in this dark and cold world everything is so believable and most things beyond criticism or mockery, except maybe as the Rifftrax version I've just watched pointed out, just how many times do you have to save a cat in a picture?
There's plot twists and turns to the very end: it must be one of the best of its kind even with faults caused by technological limitations, simple but unique and worth watching over and over again.