Jaws in space.” — The original studio pitch for Alien.
That’s a catchy hook for a sci-fi horror flick, and no doubt it helped get Alien bankrolled at 20th Century Fox. It also undersells the uniqueness and uncommon quality of Ridley Scott’s finished product. This is no cheap, rickety derivative, destined to expire as soon as it exits theaters. No, Scott delivers a lean, claustrophobic masterwork that feasts on our collective fears and seems to get a little better with each passing year. This isn’t Jaws in Space or Star Wars in Hell. There was nothing quite like the visceral chest-punch of Alien, and the result was an audience that would never be the same.
The film opens in the quiet cold of deep space. We see the Nostromo, a massive intergalactic tugboat, rumbling through the empty expanse. (The Nostromo looks a lot like Legos incoherently stuck together. For all of Alien‘s brilliant monster effects, the outer space shots have aged poorly.) Her crew is in hyper-sleep for the long drift back to Earth. Suddenly, an action message flashes across the monitors, prompting the sleep-pods to open. The Nostromo crew awakens to find an urgent message: They are to investigate a distress signal on a remote planet and report their findings.
Seems simple enough. An away team lands on the planet, only to find an ominously deserted rock. Everything looks drab, musty, and decaying. That is, until Kane (John Hurt) stumbles onto a cavern filled with goopy, oversized eggs. At this point, the film becomes a buffet of poor character decisions, and Kane kicks things off by poking and pawing at the moist, wiggling monster eggs. A quiet beat passes before a giant parasitic squid-beast pops out of the egg and latches onto Kane’s face. The ship’s captain (Tom Skerritt) and navigator (Veronica Cartright) push for Kane to be admitted back to the ship for treatment. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the sensible second officer, immediately objects to allowing an unknown alien parasite aboard the Nostromo. (Ripley seems to be ship’s only source of moral fortitude.)
Unfortunately, Ripley is overruled and Kane is brought aboard. This ultimately unleashes the Xenomorph, a hissing, reptilian demon, onto the crew. As you might guess, the remaining shipmates continue their cavalcade of bad decisions get picked off one at a time. Thus it falls to Ripley, the smartest and most resilient of the Nostromo survivors, to lead the defense against the Xenomorph.
From that story, Scott delivers a triumph of tense silences and eerie visuals. Where most contemporary sci-fis showed us a scrubbed-clean future, Alien goes the opposite route. Everything about this film feels dark, damp, and confining. The Nostromo is a ship of clattering metal and dripping leaks. In many scenes, her crew appears groggy and downbeat. Morale is low and the crew often bickers. In fact, this squad is half-defeated before the Xenomorph even arrives.
To play this doomed group, Scott wisely casts a troop of venerable character actors. Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto play the salty, greedy engineers. Ian Holm adds to the spookiness as an aloof, smug science officer with a surprising. Cartright’s pilot is the jittery bundle of nerves, a part that will fall to Bill Paxton in the sequel. Still, Weaver is the film’s center of gravity. Her Ripley is intelligent, resourceful, and the most relatable presence. Her performance rated strong enough to spawn an entire franchise. (In Aliens, James Cameron would brilliantly supercharge Ripley into an action superstar.) Unsurprisingly, Alien elevated Weaver into an instant A-list player.
Alien also inspired countless imitators. Many of them would attempt to replicate Scott’s dehumanizing visuals and Dan O’Bannon’s lean, muscular script. Outside of Cameron’s brawny, rip-roaring sequel, most of the others would fail miserably. On paper, Alien might look like Jaws in Space. On the screen, however, this is an enduring nightmare of its own special kind.
116 min. R. MAX.
