A tough claustrophobic survival flick .....

Rating: 8/10 (16 June 2017)

Alien is usually called a tough survival flick. It is not really an action film. The two classes of employees in the ship Nostromo is established earlier on when technicians Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto humorously complain about the discrepancy in salaries between them and the rest of the crew. But this is never really developed upon.
Ripley's cold hard bitch nature is underscored when she refuses to let in the search team that has comeback with an alien being on the face of one of the explorers. I felt a distance from the characters. They all came across as cold and sterile. It was a really disturbing film. The claustrophobic environment filled with electronic hatches deserves special mention. Jerry Goldsmith's terrific background score that sounds like an army of rats swarming over earth was very apt for this film.
Sigourney Weaver is used as a sex object towards the end of the film when she takes off her clothes while escaping in one of the smaller space vehicles. I am not complaining. Sigourney looked gorgeous. I felt bad for her when Veronica Cartwright slapped her. I felt like Sandra Bullock might have tried to replicate this in GRAVITY. Ian Holm has the best bit of dialog in the film. The scene where the alien takes away Harry Dean Stanton and cuts to the cat watching meekly was very clever.