YOU ARE MY LUCKY STAR: ALIEN 40th ANNIVERSARY 1979

The sci-fi horror thriller Alien turned 40 this year. And in that time—progressing from sleeper hit to franchise to authentic classic—Ridley Scott’s 2nd feature film has enjoyed a growth cycle arguably as swift and expansive as that of the titular xenomorph itself. As a rule, science fiction tends to rank somewhere beneath westerns, sports films, espionage thrillers, and war movies in my roster of least-favorite movie genres, but Alien is a different animal entirely. An ingenious and genuinely scary update of those '50s sci-fi Creature Feature programmers I recall from my youth; Alien is a solid suspense thriller that just happens to take place in outer space. I fell in love with it when I saw it on opening day in 1979, and after all these years, after seeing it countless times, Alien still rates a special place in my heart. Just as long as it's not in my chest.

On the occasion of Alien's 40th Anniversary, 

my electronic film diary memories of Alien's opening day, May 25, 1979. 

A Cruel Summer

Alien and a then-unknown Sigourney Weaver make the June 18, 1979 cover of Newsweek

Because movies aren't created in a vacuum, because successes can't be predicted, and because I'm forever fascinated by the almost alchemical selection process by which the public responds to one particular motion picture over another; allow me to take a moment to put the release of Alien in a bit of context by taking a look at what was hitting the theaters in the summer of 1979.

The year began with new releases from favorites Robert Altman (Quintet, A Perfect Couple), Woody Allen (Manhattan), & Milos Forman (Hair). And the fall promised an original musical from Bob Fosse (All That Jazz), a romantic comedy from Alan J. Pakula (Starting Over), and the film debut of Bette Midler (The Rose). But when I looked ahead to what the summer months promised in the way of film releases, the Summer of ’79 didn't appear to be shaping up to be much of a banner season at the movies.

For those who like their big-name stars served up with as few surprises as possible, there was Clint Eastwood in Escape from Alcatraz and Barbra Streisand reteaming with her What’s Up Doc? co-star Ryan O’Neal in The Main Event (getting a significant publicity boost from La Streisand’s late-to-the-party stab at disco with the film’s theme song). That summer also saw my beloved Audrey Hepburn and Ali MacGraw testing the limits of the adage ‘Everybody loves a comeback story’ by appearing in the high-profile miscalculations Bloodline and Players, respectively.

Photo: Gary McVey

On the topic of adages (or proverbs), no summer would be complete without echoing homage paid to: ‘If they liked it once, they’ll love it twice.’ On that score, the Airport and James Bond franchises persisted with The Concorde… Airport ’79 and Roger Moore’s 4^th go-round as 007 in the 11^th Bond film Moonraker. Meanwhile, major industry money was riding on the sequels Rocky II and More American Graffiti (the former delivered, the latter, not so much) while somewhere in the distance Irwin Allen was squeezing the life out of the once vital disaster film genre with his unasked for Beyond the Poseidon Adventure.

For those inclined to play it safe, there were limited-engagement 70mm rereleases of both Grease and The Exorcist. For the gamblers, the summer presented a roster of television personalities making a play for big-screen gold: Charlie’s Angels’ Farrah Fawcett appearing in Sunburn, Three Company’s John Ritter in Americathon, and SNL’s Bill Murray in Meatballs. And if those prospects weren’t scary enough, The Amityville Horror, Prophecy, and Dracula hoped to add a few chills to the summer heat.

DigitalBits

After enduring nearly four years of hype and controversy, the film I was most stoked to see was Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. No one believed it was going to make its exclusive August 15th opening date.  

Which brings us to Alien. I wish I could say that the film that turned out to be my number one, absolute favorite movie of the summer was a film whose release I'd eagerly anticipated. That it was a film I'd read about, heard advance word about, and knew would be a hit. I wish I could. But the truth is, Alien was a movie woefully off my advance radar. Maybe it was due to other, more high-profile films hogging the publicity landscape at the time, but I have ZERO recollection of even being aware of the existence of Alien before teaser ads began to appear in the trade papers at the start of the year, and when intriguingly cryptic ads began airing on TV.
What really brought Alien to my attention was when posters for the film began to appear around town. They really grabbed me. I mean, after the PG-rated, retro earnestness of Star Wars and all that benevolent optimism in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, here was an R-rated sci-fi monster movie that held the promise of a creature that wasn't so nice.

Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley

Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas

John Hurt as Executive Officer Gilbert Kane

Veronica Cartwright as Navigator Joan Lambert

Yaphet Kotto as Chief Engineer Denis Parker

Harry Dean Stanton as Engineering Technician Samuel Brett

Ian Holm as Science Officer Ash the Android

An Alien Encounter

I saw Alien on the Friday evening of May 25, 1979. The date was the kickoff of a long Memorial Day weekend which also happened to be the 2^nd Anniversary of the blockbuster release of Star Wars. The studio 20^th Century-Fox (no doubt hoping that lightning would strike twice) marked the occasion by premiering Alien, its new sci-fi release, in 70mm and Dolby Stereo at the Egyptian Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Not an official, invitation-only movie premiere, but an exclusive engagement that had Alien was screened for 48 continuous hours over that holiday weekend, its debut feted with searchlights, towering signs, giveaways, lobby displays of props and models, and a massive scale replica of the film’s “Space Jockey” in the theater’s courtyard (Space Jockey is a name that came to stick sometime later. Then, still in the flush of Star Wars mania, many referred to it as the “Star Pilot”).  

The line I stood in was an incredibly long one that stretched west from the theater’s massive curved marquee (George Hamilton’s Dracula spoof Love at First Bite—a holdover from April—was playing in the smaller Egyptian Theaters II and III) past the London Britches blue jeans store next door (in 1927 it was the Pig 'n' Whistle restaurant), beyond Jambi’s sandwich shop, down to the Pioneer Chicken take-out on the corner, winding around McCadden Place across from the Scientology building, all the way down to Selma Avenue.
Certainly, public interest was high for any all science fiction films released while awaiting the December premiere of Star Trek: The Movie, but a contributing factor to Alien's huge turnout had to be that it had the weekend virtually all to itself. Friday the 25th also saw Mann's Chinese Theater regretting booking Peter Sellers' The Prisoner of Zenda (a film I'd wager even his fans have forgotten), and further up the boulevard headed east, minimal competition was offered by the release of David Cronenberg's The Brood.

By 1986, the sequel to Alien would open in dozens of theaters throughout the Los Angeles area, but in 1979, I only recall Alien premiering at 2 locations: the Egyptian in Hollywood and the Avco Center Cinemas in Westwood (above). As you can see, the triplex also hosted Harrison Ford's WW II bomber bomb Hanover Street and The China Syndrome.

The buzz standing in line was tremendous because, like Star Wars, Alien was an “event” movie with nary a star in its cast and a film that no one knew anything about. It was a high-concept scary movie whose marketing seized the imagination by playing up the ambiguity. With a campaign and poster designed by the same team responsible for the groundbreaking marketing campaign for Rosemary’s Baby, everything from Alien’s trailer to TV ads were all about what you didn’t know and what you couldn’t see. Similarities to the iconic 1968 Rosemary’s Baby poster could be seen in Alien’s eerie green/black color scheme, its arrestingly simple typeface, the bold graphic of a scabrous egg emitting a green vapor from a glowing crack in its surface, and that irresistible, unforgettable (now classic) tagline: In space no one can hear you scream.

Philip Gips, Barbara Gips, Stephen Frankfurt, Paula Silver, Gina Stone, Belott-Wolfson photography

A significant part of my excitement that night was anticipation born of simply not knowing what I was in for. I didn't know anything about Ridley Scott or designer H.R. Giger, and I’d never heard of a Sigourney Weaver, much less knew how to pronounce it. Everyone else in the cast was familiar in a vague kind of way from TV episodics or small roles in films. Tom Skerritt I remembered from playing Shirley MacLaine’s husband in The Turning Point (1977), Yaphet Kotto as the bad guy in Live and Let Die (1973), John Hurt from when PBS aired The Naked Civil Servant back in 1976, and Harry Dean Stanton from appearing in practically every TV show on the air in the ‘60s. Curiously enough, Alien’s biggest star and primary draw for me was Veronica Cartwright, the versatile and underappreciated actress I’d fallen in love with after seeing her in Inserts (1975), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (1976), and nearly walking away with the remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978). 

Before Alien, sci-fi movies were a boys club genre where women were either ornamental or sat worrying on the sidelines. My initial disinterest in Alien was sparked by this teaser ad that appeared in the trade papers. It made the film look like another one of those snoozy sci-fi melodramas like Marooned or Capricorn One.

While I’ve since matured (calcified?) into the kind of person who runs in the opposite direction at the mere sight of a line forming, back in May of 1979 when I was a 21-year-old with a far more gregarious nature, the idea of waiting in a line for two hours to see a film merely added to the overall excitement of the moviegoing experience. The evening the general atmosphere on the line was genial and full of anticipation, and with no cell phones to bury our heads in while waiting, many of us joined in conversation with the folks standing near us in line, each of us comparing notes about how much or how little we knew. And what with the aforementioned Jambi’s sandwich shop and Pioneer Chicken take-out doing land-office business with patrons sitting along the boulevard eating and drinking, waiting to see Alien also felt like an automobile-free tailgate party.

A funny thing about standing in line for a new film, especially on a street as heavily traveled by tourists as Hollywood Blvd, you can find yourself seized by this foolish, decidedly silly notion that you have suddenly become part of the city's attractions to gawking out-of-towners. Just standing there amongst the Walk of Fame stars on the sidewalk and the beaming Klieg lights at the curb, you are no longer yourself, you are now "a huge line outside the Hollywood premiere of Alien" in somebody's vacation anecdote.

Photo: William Malone

Prop of the Alien Egg Chamber

Ever the eager-beaver when it came to movie opening nights, I was able to snag a primo bit of movie line real estate. A location very near the entrance to the theater’s courtyard which afforded a prolonged look at Alien’s posters and lobby cards, along with a sizable, unsettling 3-D promotional display/movie prop that at the time looked to me like rows of oozing, two-feet-tall Cadbury Crème Easter Eggs that had seen better days.

As the line progressed further into the theater’s then-roofed courtyard, things began to take on the feel of an amusement park. Following a barricaded path to the theater entrance, patrons were led through the dark, padded hallway of a spaceship when then opened out into a rather dazzling geometric room of tiny yellow lights and computer screens. This, of course, was the mainframe computer room of The Nostromo, but at the time I only had Disneyland’s Space Mountain ride as a point of reference, and that’s what it all reminded me of.

Photo: Lisa Morton

Photo: Alien Explorations

By this time I’d already begun to feel somewhat giddy with anticipation, but when the enclosed computer room opened out into the larger rear courtyard (near the Wishing Well of the Stars) I came face-to-face with a mind-bendingly bizarre structure that looked like the skeleton of an elephant fused into a chair and looking through a futuristic Planetarium projector…well, I was a goner. Neither I nor anyone else in line had any idea of what we were looking at (a ¾ scale prop of the Alien Space Jockey) but it struck me as being surreally grotesque, phallic, and utterly disturbing…in other words, absolutely gorgeous.

Photo: William Malone

At last, we were at the entrance to the theater. Regrettably, my awareness of the throngs of people waiting to get in, combined with my obsession with grabbing the ideal seat smack dab in the middle of the auditorium, prevented me from even noticing that there were more props and models from Alien on display in the lobby. I simply dashed to my seat, ignoring the snack bar and the very likely prospect of a souvenir program for sale (you can get a look at all the lobby props I personally missed at this blogger's account of the Alien premiere Here).

Upon entering the auditorium, early arrivals were given a free promotional pinback button. An item that triggered an ungrateful, inner “WTF?” response from me.

The reason is that the free souvenir button didn’t feature the film’s tagline, a picture of one of those alien eggs, or even the film’s title. Any of which I’d have been happy to have. No, it was a black button approximately 2 ½ inches in diameter that simply had the words “You Are My Lucky Star” printed on a starry background. Hindsight plainly reveals this to be a very clever giveaway that patrons wouldn't appreciate until after they'd seen the film (Ripley sings the song to herself in the climactic scene as a means of calming her nerves) but at the time all I could think was what the hell did a tune from Broadway Melody of 1936 have to do with Alien? 

I still have my souvenir Alien button. 

These days, especially here in L.A., it’s not uncommon for movie theaters to display the props and costumes of films on exhibit in their lobbies. But back in 1979 such pomp and circumstance were largely the stuff of star-studded premieres and rarely available to the public. That novelty factor is perhaps why the Egyptian put faith in the honor system and left the safety of its display items in the hands of just a few strategically placed “Please Do Not Touch the Display” signs. When I returned to the theater the following weekend to see Alien a second time, the props had all been removed due to someone having set the Space Jockey sculpture on fire. Imagine, an extraterrestrial fossil surviving all that time on a planetoid, only to be demolished in a matter of days when confronted with the boundless stupidity of what passes for "intelligent life" on this rock called earth. 

Strange Shapes

So, what was it like seeing Alien for the very first time with absolutely no foreknowledge of what I was getting myself into? Abso-fucking-lutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.

What did I ultimately think of the film and what were my overall impressions?

That's for my next post. 

Happy Birthday, Alien!

Read my review ALIEN the film, not the opening day experience, HERE

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