The First of a New Sci-Fi Horror Breed

Rating: 8/10 (7 July 2009)

Alien (1979)
The First of a New Sci-Fi Horror Breed
It's hard to believe how fresh and scary this movie was at the time, but it's also a relief to see it still holds up as a well made movie even now. Is it a classic great movie? Almost, almost. But not quite, in the end--mostly because of some clichés and goofs in the acting and dialog--although it has really great moments. And it's a great way to discover director Ridley Scott's unique style.
Certainly now that H. R. Giger the artist has gotten famous in his own right, the alien itself deserve special mention. And the sets are impressively otherworldly and familiar at the same time--not only the huge and hugely baroque ship, but the interior scenes on the planet toward the beginning. These are marvels whether or not your style (and for my money, the alien is a really improbable type of extraterrestrial, more at home in a comic book Hades than actual space). Another novelty to note, probably a product of the shift in movies in general since the 1960s, is the director's intention to keep things real and everyday. Things are dirty, people worry about their paychecks, and so on.
This is a long way from the sterility of 2001 though head to head the earlier Kubrick film is on another level of art. I know a lot of people would rather be entertained, though, and Alien is entertaining. It's fast, it's scary, it's gory, it's messy. It's surprising. It's beautiful. And it spawned a whole series of follow-ups, the next one confusingly called Aliens (1986), also a very good take on the new genre.
I first saw this when it came out in Colorado and it was on a huge, curving screen that wrapped around the audience, and I was really, truly scared. Now, thirty years later, the scary parts are still really scary, and it's edited so quickly you won't spend more than a minute on any one scene that doesn't quite click. Horror sci-fi has never been the same since.