Review: 45 Years On, "ALIEN" is Still a Great Film

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 36 of 2024 (No. 1980) by Leroy Douresseaux

Alien (1979)

Running time:  117 minutes (1 hour, 57 minutes)

MPAA – R

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott

WRITERS: Dan O'Bannon; from a story by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett

PRODUCERS: Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill

CINEMATOGRAPHER: Derek Vanlint (director of photography)

EDITORS:  Terry Rawlings and Peter Weatherley

COMPOSER: Jerry Goldsmith

Academy Award winner

SCI-FI/HORROR/THRILLER

Starring:  Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Bolaji Badejo, and Helen Horton (voice)

Alien is a 1979 American science fiction and horror film directed by Ridley Scott.  It is the first movie in the Alien film series, which has entered its fifth decade and is comprised of prequels and a set of crossover films.  Alien is also a multimedia franchise that includes comic books, novels, video games, and an upcoming television series.  Alien focuses on the crew of a commercial spacecraft that encounters a deadly alien lifeform after landing on a mysterious moon.

Alien opens on the commercial towing vehicle, the Nostromo, which is returning to Earth.  Its cargo is twenty tons of mineral ore that is being refined.  It has a crew of seven in stasis (suspended animation): Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), 3rd Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), and engineers, Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton).

The ship's computer, Mother (voice of Helen Horton), detects a mysterious transmission of unknown origin from a nearby moon and awakens the crew.  The company that owns the Nostromo has a policy that the crew must investigate any transmission that indicates intelligent origin.  After landing on the moon, Dallas, Kane, and Lambert head out to investigate the landscape, and they discover a derelict alien spaceship.  What they find onboard that ship leads to a deadly encounter with an alien lifeform.  The problem is that the crew does not know how dangerous the lifeform is, and not everyone on the ship is working towards the same goal.

20th Century Studios (formerly 20th Century Fox) is set to release Alien: Romulus (2024), the latest entry in the Alien film franchise.  It is set between Alien and its sequel, Aliens (1986).  I have already reviewed Aliens, so I decided to watch Alien for the first time in over three decades and to review it for you, dear readers.

There are generally three reasons that I fondly remember Alien.  First, the Alien creature (now known as a “xenomorph”) was created and designed by the late Swiss artist, H. R. Giger (1940-2014).  Alien was how I discovered Giger, and I became a huge fan of his.  I sometimes paid premium prices for his art books, including those that focused on his work on Alien and his prior work that influenced the film.

The second reason is the film's director Ridley Scott.  I am a fan of Scott's work, especially his 1982 science fiction classic, Blade Runner, and his Alien prequel, Prometheus (2012).

The third reason that I fondly remember Alien is that it is one of the first films that introduced me to the Oscar-nominated actress Sigourney Weaver.  Her most famous films appeared in the 1980s and 1990s, including such personal favorites as Ghostbusters (1984) and Galaxy Quest (1999).

That aside, the film is rather good, although I think that Ridley Scott takes many of his cues for the film's pace, tone, and execution from Stanley Kubrick's space epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).  That is not necessarily a bad thing.  Unlike some of the Alien sequels, Alien is a science fiction film that is also a classic horror film.  It builds its scares not on action and violence, but rather on building a sense of mystery, creating an atmosphere of fear and desperation, and throwing a blanket of suspense over the entire thing.  Of course, the chest-bursting scene is still chilling and mesmerizing.

Alien remains a great film because it demands that we be patient and enjoy our steadily mounting feelings dread and terror.  The film is not perfect, but because it acts as if its audience is smart enough to enjoy a film without fast-paced action scenes and frenzied blood and gore, it is almost perfect.  Alien is as good today as it was when it first debuted in theaters forty-five years ago (specifically May 1979).  I am happy that Alien remains a thrilling film full of imaginative and inventive production design, SFX, and make-up and creature effects.  Not showing any wrinkles, Alien has aged well.

9 of 10

A+

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

NOTES:

1980 Academy Awards, USA:  1 win: “Best Effects, Visual Effects” (H.R. Giger, Carlo Rambaldi, Brian Johnson, Nick Allder, and Dennis Ayling) and 1 nomination: “Best Art Direction-Set Decoration” (Michael Seymour, Leslie Dilley, Roger Christian, and Ian Whittaker)

1980 BAFTA Awards:  2 wins: “Best Production Design” (Michael Seymour) and “Best Sound Track” (Derrick Leather, Jim Shields, and Bill Rowe); 5 nominations: “Best Costume Design” (John Mollo and Terry Rawlings), “Best Editing” (Terry Rawlings), “Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Role” (Sigourney Weaver), “Best Supporting Actor” (John Hurt), and “Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music” (Jerry Goldsmith)

Golden Globes, USA:  1 nomination: “Best Original Score - Motion Picture” (Jerry Goldsmith)

2002 National Film Preservation Board, USA:  “National Film Registry”

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