Nightmare on the Nostromo

Rating: 9/10 (22 July 2007)

One of the first offerings from master of atmosphere Ridley Scott, Alien takes place aboard a cramped, claustrophobic starship, the Nostromo, as she heads back to Earth from a mining mission in the outer rim. Unfortunately, the crew are awoken early by a distress call from a small, seemingly uninhabited planet. A cold, wind-swept little rock in the middle of nowhere. They set down on LV-426, and a team makes their way across the barren planet to the scene of an old starship-wreck. They go inside the alien craft, and Kane (John Hurt) is molested by a parasitic organism that attaches itself to his face. Rushed back to the Nostromo, Kane is put in stasis with the organism attached to his face, keeping him alive for reasons unknown. Later, as the crew is sailing, back on course through dark space, about to re-enter hypersleep, Kane takes ill...and dies...but not before a larval alien 'thing' bursts from his chest in a shower of blood and intestine...before disappearing into an air duct and skittering away...
And so begins the nightmare on the Nostromo...as the crew race to find the being, who quickly sheds layers of skin and grows...and grows...til it looms massive, taller than Brett, the unfortunate first member of the crew to run into the Alien. From here to the end of the film is a desperate race against time and against a cold, unfeeling, brutal, seemingly indestructible killing machine whose "technical perfection is matched only by it's hostility..." and the tension does not let up until the very last frames...when you actually release the breath you've been holding for 40 minutes...
This premise, so original 2 years after Star Wars rocked the sci-fi world, has been ripped off by so many films now that anyone under the age of 25 who sees this now thinks "it's all been done before..." What a shame! Coz this film started it all. Take a bunch of likable, "normal" people we can all relate to, put them in a claustrophobic, dark, practically inescapable setting, and turn a rabid beast loose on them! Ridley Scott did it first, and best...the rip-offs fail miserably by comparison.
This film is highly atmospheric. So, wait for a cold, dark night...preferably windy, rainy, miserable. Shut off all the lights...grab a blanket...turn the brightness slightly down on your TV (I found the DVD transfer TOO good with Alien, it helped to re-create the sense I got when I first saw Alien on a tiny, bad little TV set) Trust me...the less you can make out in the darkness of this film, the more effective it is...
Just a quick thing...sorry to grab your quote donstuie, but it's so apt it's worth re-iterating here (this is from the Alien message boards): "The simple fact is that it's much easier now to make people jump, gross them out, and blow stuff up, then it is to scare them. And not only that, more people will see something that has shock value or lots of thrills, than a brooding and disturbing horror movie. It sucks, but that's reality. Audiences today think Saw and Hostel are horror movies for God's sake!" So true, donstuie, so true... I hate to say it...but they just DO NOT MAKE movies like this anymore!