In Space, No One Can See You Wet Your Pants

Rating: 9/10 (30 September 2005)

The film that can reduce grown men to tears, this movie scared the crap out of me the first time I saw it and still does. While its immediate sequel, James Cameron's "Aliens" (1986) is very good too, it's really more harrowing than frightening. Ridley Scott's original is just plain creepy as hell. It's rare to find a film more atmospheric than this one. Though I don't know what it's like to be on a space crew on board a big-ass ship in the middle of the universe, somehow I think it would be just like this. And it doesn't get more unsettling than the scene where the crew heads out to investigate a distress signal and come across the empty remains of a giant ship with a big batch of eggs growing on the floor. Need I say more? Despite the notorious reputation of John Hurt's dinner scene, the film isn't that gory. If there's anyone left on the planet who doesn't know what I'm talking about, I won't ruin it. But let's just say the next time you're at a dinner party and someone begins retching violently while his stomach starts bubbling, clear away the dishes and grab a blunt object. But other than that, the scares are primarily psychological. Filmed before the days when CGI could do everything for film makers, the visual effects team here knew if they showed too much of the alien, it would just look cheesy. Therefore, the audience never sees much more of it than brief glimpses, and our dread builds with the dread of the crew, because we don't know what we're dealing with anymore than they do. The same serendipity made "Jaws" a classic of suspense four years earlier.
And of course, the acting in this film is leaps and bounds above what you usually see in horror movies. Sigourney Weaver and Ian Holm are great fun to watch as they match up in one battle of the will after another. John Hurt made a believer out of me. And Scott uses Tom Skerritt as effectively as Hitchcock did Janet Leigh in "Psycho." "Alien" really feels like a movie where absolutely anything could happen. I haven't really liked much of anything else Ridley Scott's done (and that includes "Blade Runner"), but this movie at least proves he's got it in him to make a great film, even if he doesn't use that talent very often.
Grade: A