This Ain't ET

Rating: Null/10 (13 April 2007)

Two comments stand out about Alien in the review from Newsweek in 1979: One, that Alien reminds us that not all extraterrestrials are cute, as in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Second, that the movie is nothing more than a scifi haunted house story. The reviewer was really impressed by Ridley Scott's terrifying and claustrophobic telling of a very unwelcome guest on a deep-space version of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Anyone who appreciates the craft of film making should too.
I don't think anyone really anticipated that the Alien, chest-popping, acid-dripping, chrome-toothed, eggplant-from-Hell answer to the little guys with the big heads in CEOTTK would become so ingrained in our national pop-culture. You can do a sock-head impression with your hand, have it pop out of some sort of surface, do a periscope swivel while you emit some sort of high-pitched shriek, and then have your hand scurry off . . . and everyone gets it! At the same time, anyone who has to sit by the fat, sweaty guy on the Southwest Airlines flight can do a Sigourney Weaver impression, when she gets face-to-face with Eggplant Boy.
Alien scared the pasta sauce out of me, sitting there in the UA Cinemas in the Spokane Valley, 28 years ago. Cripes, it was uncomfortable. What was even weirder is that, without the theatre's intention, the climate of the place matched the cold dampness of some of the Nostromo's interiors. It was hot out and the A/C in the theatre was doing double-time and a half while the critter picked off one member of the crew after another.
Which brings us to the ending, the infamous cat-saving scene and Sigourney in ribcage-length tee and panties. Stephen King, in a review of the best movies of 1979 in (I think) Crawdaddy Magazine, said that hyper-feminists and male chauvinists both groaned when Weaver's character, Ellen Ripley leaves herself wide open to attack when she saves the Nostromo's house cat. The Feminazis snarled that Ripley betrayed femalehood by doing something girlish, and the pigs in the audience, while drooling over Weaver, bra-less, and with buff buttocks clearly defined in her undies, snickered at Ripley's being just like a woman, stopping to save a stupid cat.
King disagreed with both of them. He pointed out that it was Ripley's ingrained humanity that caused her to do what all the armchair commandos were complaining about. We'd respect her less if she didn't do what a compassionate person would do.
I liked King's thinking, here. Sigourney Weaver became a star by portraying a woman with power who uses her intellect and strength to stay alive on the Nostromo. If she hadn't been compassionate, she would have been nothing more than a Terminatrix. Even the little bits of cotton stretched over boobs and butt made her seem more human, a more sympathetic character.
Well, I've thought this thing too hard. I recommend Alien for the three things all great action movies need to entertain: Empathetic characters, believable situations, and a great, great bad guy.
The Buick fangs and acidic blood are gravy on the mashed potatoes!