Overrated

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 2003)

Nice to see that a few all too rare reviewers agree that Ridley Scott`s ALIEN is a rather overrated film , yes I agree with everyone that the set design is fantastic but the film suffers from 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY syndrome in that it has a very slow sterile atmosphere which makes it difficult to connect with the characters . The only character I felt any sympathy with was Kane and that`s only because he was played by the excellent John Hurt . As for the rest of the crew I couldn`t care less if they got eaten or not . To all intents ALIEN is a corny B movie script ( I think we can ignore all the pseudo-intellectual claptrap involving subtext - it`s a B movie script ) produced by A list technicians
Trivia point : Ridley Scott was working as a BBC designer in 1963 and legend has it that he was due to work on a fledgling sci-fi series but became unavailable at the last moment which meant Raymond Cusack worked on this new show called DOCTOR WHO and it was he who designed the Daleks undoubtedly the most visually interesting creations in the history of television.
Talking of DOCTOR Who check out the 1975 story ` The Ark In Space ` which has a very similar premise to ALIEN but is far more enjoyable