my first time

Rating: 10/10 (14 January 2009)

I saw this movie upon release. I was 15. I had to go with my dad and only because my mum knew John Hurt as a "serious" actor.
It made a huge impression on me, probably because two years before I'd seen star wars, where the future while spectacular was suspiciously clean and tidy.
The most awful scenes in Alien for me were not really the obvious ones, instead I recoiled from the hopelessly lonely rock they landed on with its unearthly howling wind and blackness, the helmet on the dirty console that reflected the machinery (just made me think of a skull), the sheet "otherness" of the beacon emitting spacecraft. Watching the alien "dot" devour the commander "dot", while Lambert screamed hysterically into the radio. "Mother" about as opposite a real mother as you could imagine: cold, unhelpful. As a kid I realized at a stroke that future did not automatically mean progress. That film visions to date (with the exception of Dark Star and perhaps Silent Running) were laughably Utopian. At the end, Ripley doesn't seem to even celebrate her achievement. She just looks empty. The uncaring and lethal universe was the real horror.
10/10 because in 79 this was a quantum leap of a movie.