Alien has stood the test of time as a science fiction/horror classic.

Rating: 9/10 (11 August 2015)

In 1979, Alien was released and was a box office hit thanks to Ridley Scott's brilliant direction and a small cast including a little known actress named Sigourney Weaver who would establish herself as one of the most successful actresses in Hollywood. The story is kept simple and there are plenty of non-stop nail biting moments that would be guaranteed to keep audiences on edge and to scare them out of their seats. Alien certainly lives up to its now famous tagline "In space no one can hear you scream". The original movie poster is brilliantly kept simple too.
Alien takes place in the near future where a commercial spaceship Nostromo is returning to the earth, intercepts a distress SOS from a distant planet. The seven-member crew of Nostromo is made up of Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), John Hurt (Kane), Ash (Ian Holm), and Parker (Yaphet Kotto). All seven crew members are woken up from their hypersleep and the spaceship subsequently descends on the planet. While exploring the planet, the crew discovers a strange derelict spaceship and thousands of alien eggs. One of the eggs hatches and attacks Kane with a facehugger attaching itself to Kane's face rendering him unconscious. Kane is brought on board Nostromo and the crew depart the unknown planet. The facehugger then disappears and Kane awakens, seemingly fully recovered. All is well until Kane starts to convulse violently during dinner with the crew and a tiny alien bursts from his chest. The crew look on in horror as Kane dies and the alien escapes into the spaceship. The remaining crew members must work together to locate and trap the alien, but it is not as easy as it seems when the alien grows larger and starts killing off the crew members one by one.
Everything is excellent about Alien. Without a doubt this is one of Ridley Scott's best movies besides Blade Runner (1982), Gladiator (2000), and Black Hawk Down (2001). The then-little known cast are excellent and it's great to see Sigourney Weaver go on to enjoy a stellar career. H.R. Geiger's visual effects are excellent (despite being a bit dated now) and it was excellent to see him being rewarded for his efforts with a well deserved Academy Award for visual effects. Jerry Goldsmith's atmospheric soundtrack was also top notch and his brilliant work is sadly missed.
Who would have thought Alien would go on to leave a legacy by following up with three sequels and establishing Sigourney Weaver's Ripley as one of the greatest female action heroes of all time. Aliens (1986) turns everything up to 11 by expanding on the first movie by going bigger, better and louder. Unfortunately Alien 3 (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997) fail to reach the same heights as the first two movies.
Alien is a timeless science fiction horror classic that has firmly placed itself as one of the best movies of all time. I still enjoy watching Alien for what it is.
9/10.