What do you get when you cross an alien with a snail?

Rating: 5/10 (4 March 2008)

When I first saw this with a friend around 1983, we fired it up, and after a while she took a phone call and came back 20 minutes later, "What did I miss?" she asked. "...nothing!" I responded. Truly, nothing had actually happened in 20 minutes.
This is an unusually slow-moving movie. Contrary to arguments voiced here, movies were definitely paced faster than this at the time. (Except maybe Solaris and 2001) Yes, that's right, in 1983 we already thought this was slow. This is the movies major problem. It has only mood, production design, and a couple of scares. It's slow in the wrong parts and quick where it should be more developed. It takes 40 minutes to locate the distressed ship, which introduces the conflict, and 15 minutes near the end is devoted to the self-destruct sequence, and what's left over (the plot - killing everybody) is perfunctory and still dull somehow. 5 minutes for Harry Dean Stanton to look for a cat? A long self destruct sequence starts, an attempt is made to reverse it, then it goes ahead anyway. The reversal effort does nothing but increase the running time. Once on board the Sulaco, the alien spends a lot of time mugging from his perch in some pipes. It's destroyed about four seconds after it frees itself; a wasted opportunity.
I just watched it again to see if I needed to reassess; there was no need. I completely honor it's achievement of changing sci-fi movies, but structurally it's bare. Characters are vaguely sketched in. Ad-libbed dialogue around the meal-table would have been a swell place to deepen the characters, not keep the language inaudible and trifling. It has no ideas. If you provide no ideas to think about, pacing is critical. Cameron was a better director for this type of thing as he proved with the superior sequel. This is reputed to be the first time blue collar workers are shown in space. Perhaps trying to look casual in space, Tom Skerrit is deliberately low-key and contributes to the films lethargy. Yaphett Koto receives the dumbest expository line in the script ("Ash is a ROBOT?") Yes, we're all about 3 minutes ahead of you there. Ridley Scott has an eye for detail, but he's just the wrong director for horror. It's just too arty to be scary. When Dallas gets it, there's a shock appearance of the alien who makes the "Ta-daaaaa!" gesture with his hands which is unintentionally funny, not scary. There's enough bad direction like that to kill the mood. And a cat is a lame reason (& a lousy device) to continually leave your co-workers to die.
On top of that the design for these DVD menus is very irritating. Gigers design for the majestic, evil alien is still astonishing.