When I think of the films that have given me the most memorably fun scares of my movie life, my mind goes to Wait Until Dark (1967), The Exorcist (1973), Jaws (1975), The Omen (1976), and Alien. In another category entirely are the films I consider to be scary because they are disturbing and unsettling (like Rosemary's Baby which I saw in 1968 when I was still an impressionable Catholic School kid). Those movies are memorable cinema experiences, but too shattering to be labeled "fun."
But Alien was another matter. Ridley Scott's science fiction monster movie masterpiece was structured like the classic monster movies of my youth, a movie manufactured to deliver solid, old-fashioned thrills, suspense, and excitement. Seeing it for the first time on opening day in 1979 was a fun, thrill-ride movie experience I've never forgotten.
But Alien was another matter. Ridley Scott's science fiction monster movie masterpiece was structured like the classic monster movies of my youth, a movie manufactured to deliver solid, old-fashioned thrills, suspense, and excitement. Seeing it for the first time on opening day in 1979 was a fun, thrill-ride movie experience I've never forgotten.
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| Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley |
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| Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas |
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| John Hurt as Executive Officer Gilbert Kane |
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| Veronica Cartwright as Navigator Joan Lambert |
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| Yaphet Kotto as Chief Engineer Denis Parker |
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| Harry Dean Stanton as Engineering Technician Samuel Brent |
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| Ian Holm as Science Officer Ash |
WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS MOVIE
In my earlier essay covering Alien’s opening day at
Los Angeles’ Egyptian Theater in 1979, I mentioned how I wasn’t initially all
that keen on seeing the film because sci-fi flicks—like westerns, sports films,
and war movies—are not generally my cup of tea. This wasn’t always the case.
When I was
young, television (all three channels of it) was virtually non-stop westerns,
sporting events, military combat shows, and sci-fi programmers. And broadcast movies
were only more of the same. I remember liking them a great deal when I was small, but after years of exposure to these formulaic, male-centric entertainments,
I grew weary of their elemental sameness. What they all seemed to
share was a strict adherence to the fundamental format of your average western:
evil force terrorizes a township or isolated group, only to be confronted and
eventually vanquished by a solitary, lantern-jawed hero (always white, always male)
while the women shriek helplessly on the sidelines and the weaker men resist
taking action.
Having this macho myth recycled endlessly in films and TV shows
over the years may have done wonders for bolstering the egos and fueling the fantasies
of adolescent boys of all ages, but the combination of predictability and patriarchal
pandering only led to my developing a strong, broad-strokes antipathy toward films
that fit into any of the above-named genres.
I never stopped enjoying being pleasurably scared by a good sci-fi thriller or monster movie, but how I longed for some kind (ANY kind) of deviation from type. Then I saw the advance trailer for
Alien. Its biggest appeal being that it didn't tip its hat and give away its surprises. Indeed, what initially attracted me to Alien was its having the confidence and self-assurance (conveyed by its subtle ad campaign) to simply tease. It didn't give away any of its surprises, and by withholding so much, it seemed to promise even more.
I was immediately drawn to Alien via the comfy familiarity
of its setting and premise. It reminded me of Creature Features sci-fi programmers
like The Thing from Another World (1951) and The Green Slime (1968). Just two years earlier George
Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) had spectacularly updated those Saturday matinee
adventure serials of the ’30s and ‘40s, so the idea of Alien being a
throwback to the tradition of those space invader films of the ‘50s I used to
watch on TV as a kid struck me as both welcome and promising.
And Alien
did, indeed, live up to its promise…exceeded it, in fact, by emerging as both a
throwback and a work of canny originality. For all its harkening back to the sci-fi monster movies of my youth, Alien, by merely tweaking some of the more careworn clichés of the
overly-familiar genre, proved that innovation doesn’t always require
redesigning the wheel; sometimes it’s simply a matter of getting that wheel out
of a rut.
One of the
smartest things Alien does is immediately establish a sense of realism
via its Used Future look. Alien envisions a recognizably grungy 2122
devoid of 2001: A Space Odyssey sterility and (mercifully) lacking in self-consciously
futuristic attire like bodysuits, spandex, or metallics. There’s none
of the shiny optimism of Mid-Century Jetsons streamline that flatters our illusions
of progressiveness. Instead, the future looks very much like industrial now.
Which leads to
the next great thing about Alien’s setup.
In lieu of adventurers,
space explorers, Colonial Marines, or other interstellar travelers who knew the
job was dangerous when they took it, Alien gives us a motley crew of laborers
ill-equipped and ill-suited for the events that await them. The seven-member crew
of The Nostromo, a commercial towing vehicle, are essentially space truck drivers who…like
your average working stiffs…spend their time getting on each other’s nerves, quibbling
about their salaries, and griping about the quality of the food. They have zero
interest in anything but finishing their jobs and going home.
The characters
are well-delineated in an ensemble-cast sort of way, fleshed out in minimalist detail
by the talented actors in a way that sidesteps the kind of war movie shorthand of
Whitman Sampler archetypes that marred Aliens (1986) for me. The flinty crew
of The Nostromo come across as comfortable with each other, relaxed and natural
in their behavior (crucial to rooting a fantasy film in a recognizable reality),
and, at first glimpse, refreshingly non-heroic.
The latter
goes a long way toward infusing Alien’s disarmingly uneventful early
scenes with a great deal of suspense. I like that when ordered by MU-TH-UR, the
mainframe computer responsible for running The Nostromo, to investigate a possible
SOS signal on a nearby planetoid, everyone is of a different mind about it. No one,
not even the captain, leaps to hero mode; they do so more out of professional duty
(fear of forfeiting their pay shares) than moral obligation. And since we’ve ready
had a foretaste of their workplace fellowship (Parker and Brett are in a
clique, Ripley and Lambert have an unexplained friction between them, and nobody seems to care for Ash) throughout the expedition—from exploration
to alien infestation—there’s absolutely no certainty of what to expect from any
of them.
H. R. Giger’s designs
for the rapidly-growing alien and that creepy derelict spaceship are as iconic
as they are nightmarish, but it’s chiefly through the film’s ability to get me
to identify with and relate to the human characters…to get me to see them as
real and care about their fates…is where Alien triumphed and succeeded in becoming a genuinely scary movie experience.
PERFORMANCES
I know others
feel differently, but when I’m watching a science-fiction or fantasy film, the details
of set design, accuracy of the science, or the sophistication of special effects
aren’t nearly as significant in creating a sense of verisimilitude as the characters.
If the characters are written with complexity and dimension, cast with actors
capable of inhabiting a role and bringing it to life with minimal dialogue and
screen time, if they behave and relate in ways consistent both to the character and
recognizable human psychology; most any situation or setting, no matter how
fantastic, can be made believable and convincingly real. (1978’s Superman: The Movie comes to mind.)
Perhaps due to
the fact that at one time or another I've had co-workers similar to The
Nostromo crew, and I always gravitate to the Lambert type (a little high strung and prone to bellyaching),
I have a particular fondness for Veronica Cartwright in this film. It’s not
just that I’d behave EXACTLY like her character in this situation, but as Tom
Skerritt once stated, Cartwright gives the best performance in the film. And I absolutely
agree.
With Sigourney
Weaver commanding the screen with assurance and staking her claim for movie
immortality in this, her star-making feature film debut (not counting a blink-or-you’ll-miss-it
bit part in Annie Hall), the strength of the performances of the women
in Alien play no small part in it being my favorite sci-fi thriller of
all time.
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| Jonesy the cat is cute and all, but he's a bit of a jerk and is responsible for far too many deaths and close calls |
THE STUFF OF DREAMS
Not being one
of those mainstream film critics of the ‘70s conditioned to ignore the
contributions of Black Cinema, I was aware of both Pam Grier (Foxy Brown
– 1974) and Tamara Dobson (Cleopatra Jones – 1973) as trailblazing female
action movie heroines long before Sigourney Weaver blasted that alien “The
fuck out into space.” Yet, factoring
in the widespread success and influence of the whole Alien franchise, it’s
hard to over-emphasize the impact the character of Ellen Ripley has had on the
depiction of women in action and sci-fi films.
By now, most everyone
knows that Warrant Officer Ripley was originally conceived as a man; a gender switch regarded at the time as just another unexpected thriller twist for the audience.
As it turns out, having a woman be the sole self-rescuing survivor in a traditionally
male-dominated genre came to rank right up there with the hiring of H.R. Giger to
design the creature as among the sharpest of Alien’s pre-production
decisions.
As this pertains
to the scene where Ripley orders the infected crew members to be quarantined, it begs the question as to whether or not there would have been such swift resistance to the command
had it come from Dallas or Kane.
A pet peeve of mine is when screenwriters assume they have created a strong, feminist female character when they have really just created a woman who behaves in a macho manner (say,
like the hot-rodding women in Russ Meyer's Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill!). Sure, it's important when a woman has agency in a film and her actions propel the plot, but simply ascribing aggressive
male characteristics to a woman and declaring "feminist!" only signals to me the writer has little understanding of either.
Ellen Ripley
may have evolved into an action-hero type over the course of all those sequels,
but in Alien she’s just a no-nonsense type, good at her job and not
prone to panic. For all her resiliency, she’s an incredibly empathetic, good-hearted,
and sensitive character. Just check out Weaver's reactions during the chest-bursting
scene…Lambert is horrified and in hysterics (again, me) but Ripley’s face (and it’s the most amazingly
subtle thing) conveys both alarm and compassionate anguish for what Kane is going
through.
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| While I fully understand the well-taken criticism, but I'm one of those "nudity is not always sexual" guys. I'm in the camp that doesn't find Ripley's controversial strip to her underwear sexualizes her. It feels like a connecting link to the opening scene where John Hurt awakens from hypersleep and the camera lens lingers on him in his underwear. Both scenes emphasize the vulnerability and humanity of the characters against all that space technology. The contrast of human flesh and the part-machine/bio-organism design of Giger's creature is a visceral underscoring that is chilling. |
THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Much in the
way Twyla Tharp's loose-structured dance designs made her the ideal choreographer
for Miloš Forman’s adaptation of Hair, Alien (and, indeed, the
entire science fiction movie genre) owes an unpayable debt to the biomechanical
nightmare designs or Swiss artist H. R. Giger.
It’s not often
that one encounters the unimaginable (thank God), but Giger’s exceptionally strange,
sexualized, body-horror designs for the film are what set Alien apart
from any other film I’ve ever seen. The unsettling blend of the mechanical with
the organic—in which both structures and organisms share the same solid/soft, vulnerable/impenetrable
contrasts—transport the primal shocks of the average monster movie to places so
dark (male rape, impregnation, and violent birth) you feel slightly queasy. Thank
goodness Ridley Scott chose to keep shots of the fully-formed alien to a
minimum. I was plenty unsettled by the facehugger, the chest-buster, and the
ribcage/vertebrae interior of that creepy ship they explore.
Giger's magnificent, ugly-beautiful design work--triggering subliminal impressions of sex, flesh, metal, and machine--heighten Alien's ick factor by making the unimaginable not only possible, but credible. And once a horror film succeeds in making the impossible credible, you're a goner, for then you know you're in a place of the unstable and unpredictable where anything can happen.
In space no one can hear you scream.
I've intentionally left out behind-the-scenes trivia and information pertaining to the making of Alien because the internet overflows with a veritable treasure trove of information, scripts, production notes, and all manner of details relating to the production. Here are links to a couple of my favorites. |
| "This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off." |
Copyright © Ken Anderson 2009 - 2019
