Ridley Scott is the Perfect Director

Rating: 10/10 (30 September 2007)

I have just watched the Directors Cut of this and enjoyed the commentary by Scott, Weaver, Skerrit, O'Bannon, Hurt, and others who were involved in the original production.
I saw this in 1979. In 1979 there were two movies to see that had something to do with monsters emerging out of "Eggs" - Prophecy and Alien. So, we had to pick, which monster movie to go see, and it was Alien, mostly on the basis of Rumour. We saw it twice in a row on consecutive nights. Needless to say, I took off my dinner jacket and watched the whole movie with one eye, so I could cover up my face. Now normally monster movies did not bother me that much except when I was very young.
Now I have to reach back to give my impressions, and those impressions are larger when seen on a huge curved screen- I think they had some kind of four-channel sound in that theatre, it was the first film I saw that had noises coming from behind me. That might have been set up special for that theatre, I do not think that was so common back then.
So, this film starts and there are these lines appearing on the screen, which resolve into the word Alien, while the credits roll underneath. Underneath this enigmatic hieroglyph, a very dark planet revolves, someplace we do NOT want to visit, an omen of bad things to come.
Then we are shown a space ship, which in design is mainly four oil derricks: But to the eye appears to be a dark Gothic Cathedral.
And the inside of the Nostromo is shown and we see all manner of corridor and dark rooms and machinery of all shapes and sizes. This is all the spoiler that you will get out of me.
And so was set up the first Gothic Horror Movie set in Space. The first Successful one at least... There was The Green Slime before, sort of the same premise.
This film perform all the basic Horror genre elements expected: The less you see, the more frightening it is. In Scott's case, it was not, how little or how much you see, but how fast that information can be flicked at you.
HR Giger created the perfect monster: And my impression of it was that this thing was partially mechanical and also that it could hide itself in plain view. Another of my assumptions was that this creature would assimilate qualities of the organism chosen as host. I had a whole list of things this creature would do, or could do. This based on the very few appearances and activities of the thing we see in the film.
When I drove home the first night I saw this in 1979, I was horrified but also fascinated with the qualities of the creature. I became obsessed with it, I drew it, what I could remember of it, in my notebooks, and when they came out with a toy figurine of the thing, I was first in line to buy it.
This original Alien, designed by Giger but given life by Scott, is the best of all of the creatures of this type in the 5-film franchise. It is bar none the best monster ever made up by demented minds like mine.
There is a serious, plodding pace set by Scott in this film. In modern horror films, the horror activity has a tendency to take place as quickly as possible: But in this one, we are set up from the first appearance of those Hieroglyphs at the beginning, to the point where we think we are safe (But we KNOW that something ominous will happen) and when it happens we are hit with a jackhammer: And I was not surprised to find out, when the famous scene was filmed, the cast themselves were reacting with real horror reactions.
If Scott had not done it that way, this film never would have worked in that crucial spot. And because of that, there is really no place for sequels of this film to go: But thanks to James Cameron, there was a direction to go: And so the horror of the original film grew into a fascination with the creature. As was Frankenstein to early Horror films, Alien to Modern Horror films.
I was pleased to hear Sigourney Weaver and Ridley Scott, when talking about this film, confirm all of my assumptions about this creature.
And this is what makes Scott the perfect director, at least for the film Alien: because what was in his mind, he put across into OUR minds.
And the most pleasing thing about that is he did it with mostly Practical Effects, simply executed, photographed and edited well.
When I see the modern depictions of this horrifying creature, sometimes they use CGI representations of it which do not convince me, even though I did enjoy the STORY of Aliens vs Predator, the Alien is remarkably cheap looking (IN the CGI shots): But I can forgive that, because the director of AvP BROUGHT BACK the Shiny Dome Head that HR Giger had so carefully designed to scare the s___ out of us. So when I see disappointments in the CGI... Because I know that there is really no excuse today for a CGI effect to be bad...
I know I can still flip the Directors Cut DVD into my player and catch that magic again.