Alien (1979)

This post contains content not suitable for children. It contains discussion about violence, gore, and death.

Alien (1979), directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O’Bannon, follows the crew of the commercial space tug, Nostromo, as they encounter a highly advanced and predatory Alien creature loose on their ship. Returning to Earth, the crew is in stasis: Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), and two engineers, Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton).

They are awoken from stasis early by the ship’s computer, Mother, after detecting a transmission from a nearby moon. Per company policy, they head down to investigate the distress signal despite warnings from members of the crew. After a rocky landing that damaged part of the ship, Dallas, Kane, and Lambert head out into the hostile landscape, discovering a strange crashed ship. Kane descends deeper into this ship and stumbles upon strange egg-like objects, which awakens in his presence. Then, a face-hugger emerges from the egg and attaches itself to Kane’s face. When they return to the ship, Ripley, the officer in charge, refuses to let them into the ship due to quarantine protocols, but Ash ignores her, letting them. Ripley mistrusts Ash, causing many clashes between the two. Most of the crew senses the danger that lay on this moon and so the crew repairs the ship, then takes off with Kane and his face-hugger. Ash examines this strange alien and attempts to remove it from Kane, discovering that it contains highly corrosive acid that will destroy the ship and any attempts to remove it will kill Kane.

Later, the face-hugger is found dead and Kane wakes up with some memory loss. All seems well until Kane begins to convulse and choke. A small alien life-form breaks out of his chest and flees from the crew, killing Kane instantly. Ash persuades the crew not to kill the Alien, leading to suspicions of his true motives (especially by Ripley). After ejecting Kane’s body from the airlock, the crew separates and hunts for the creature with tracking devices, electric prods, nets, and flamethrowers. Now, the Alien simply needs to pick the crew off one by one. The next victim is Brett who separates from his group to search for the ship’s cat, Jones. What he finds instead is shed skin and a huge fully developed Alien who kills him instantly, taking his body away. The crew figures out that the Alien is using the air ducts to travel, so Dallas enters the air ducts with a plan to force it into the airlock. The Alien, proving itself to be both agile, and intelligent, attacks Dallas, costing the crew its captain.

Captain *Dallas played by Skerritt via* HD Report

Now that Dallas is dead, Ripley is now in charge. She continues with Dallas’ plan, despite Lambert’s concerns that the Alien is picking them off one by one. Ripley interfaces with Mother, discovering Ash has new orders to bring the Alien back to Earth and the crew is expendable. She confronts him with this new revelation, and gets into a violent confrontation, leading to the astounding twist that Ash is an android. Ripley, Parker, and Lambert destroy Ash after he admits that he was assigned to ensure the Alien’s survival, then decide to self-destruct the ship and leave by escape shuttle.

As they prepare for this daring escape, Ripley finds the cat, Jones, while Parker and Lambert are violently killed by the Alien. With the self-destruct sequence initiated, Ripley finds herself blocked by the Alien, unable to enter the shuttle. She attempts to stop the self-destruct but is unsuccessful. She then returns to the shuttle with the Alien nowhere to be found. She undocks the shuttle barely escaping the explosion from the Nostromo’s destruction. Ripley puts Jones into a stasis pod but soon finds that the Alien has stowed away on this shuttle. With quick wits and slow movements, she puts on a spacesuit, and then opens the airlock, forcing the Alien out of the ship. Ripley is forced to shoot it with a grappling hook to prevent it from hanging on, and then she fires the engines up, killing the Alien instantly. She makes a final log, then puts herself into a stasis pod.

Dallas, Ash and Ripley played by Skerritt, Holm, and Weaver via HD Report

Horror Film Rating System

Category	Rating (/10)
Performance	9
Special Effects	9
Violence/Gore	6
Score/Foley	8
Scare Factor	8

Performance

All of the actors in this film performed with such veracity and skill, but I feel we should not look any further than Sigourney Weaver’s performance. Her role in this film made it what it is. It definitely helps that this character was well-developed and multi-faceted. Of course, this is because the character was originally written for a man. She shows so many different emotions beautifully. She screams in anger, frustration, fear, and cries out of desperation. It is so incredibly believable and makes you root for her to win. She shows vulnerability and strength. Another actor, whose performance was even received a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress, was Veronica Cartwright. She showed more of the fear and vulnerability experienced in this terrifying situation. In particular, her death scene is incredibly acted. Another talented actor was Ian Holm, who played the deceitful android Ash. Finally, John Hurt, who played Kane, was also an amazing addition to the film. In particular, the scenes involving his character being attacked by the face-hugger and chest-burster. I really enjoyed the performances of this film and feel that they especially demonstrate that a smaller cast can still create an effective movie.

Lambert and Ripley played by Cartwright and Weaver via Little White Lies

Special Effects

The special effects of Alien are a huge draw for this film. The design of the Alien in its three stages: face-hugger, chest-burster, and adult alien (nicknamed “the big fellow” or “the big guy” by the crew). The biomechanical nature of this alien species comes from the great mind of H.R. Giger, a Swiss artist. At the time of the project’s inception, he had released the book, ‘The Necronomicon’, which Ridley Scott took one look at and then immediately flew to Zurich to secure Giger. Both the chest-burster and Big Fellow were based on drawings within this book. As well, Giger invented the derelict extraterrestrial ship and its mummified occupant. He was so detailed and dedicated to his work, which was ultimately celebrated when he received the 1980 Academy Award for The Best Visual Effects. As an artist, he used his sculpting abilities to create the giant eggs that housed the face-hugger, using various plastics and rubber casting. As well, they used slime and real flesh-animal meat. The design of the face-hugger was based on a child’s jack-in-the-box with a spring-like tail.

Giger painting an egg via Cinephiliabeyond

As stated by Giger in an interview with David Huston, “And it has two great hands to hold the man’s head. It is a practical biological form…” “We were having troubles, so I spent most of the time working on the egg and the big alien. We got Roger Dicken to build the face-hugger and chest-burster—and he did them very well. They are taken from my paintings.” Referring to the design of the chest-buster, Giger added “I tried to do several things with the chest-burster. He started out with arms and legs, but later we made them only small. Now he’s like the long skull of the big alien—a long skull with teeth and a tail.” It made the progression to Adult Alien more cohesive as the design of the “tongue with teeth” mimics this baby alien. The design was taken directly from ‘The Necronomicon’ with some alterations to make it less phallic. The extruded skull combined with the tongue with teeth and no eyes created the sensation of this Alien creature. It is such a unique and stylistic design, especially with the fusion of both biological and mechanical parts. Giger continued in the same interview, “Then I started thinking. That long skull ought to have a function. I thought: I can make a long tongue come out. The end of the tongue even looks like the head of the chest-burster. See the muscles and tendons of the jaw? We made them out of stretched and shredded latex contraceptives.” “There was a tall black person, and we made a cast of his body to build the alien suit on. We built up details with plasticine and even some real bones—for the rib cage. And we used tubes and piping and other technical stuff. This is my way, you see: he is half organic and half technical. The alien’s biomechanical.” This was his vision and it paid off immensely, creating an alien that will never be forgotten.

Giger working on the Big Guy via Cinephiliabeyond

*Ridley Scott, H.R. Giger and other crew members working on the Big Guy via* Cinephiliabeyond

Violence/Gore

The violence and gore within this film are quite interesting. It starts with Kane being attacked by the face-hugger in an intrusive and violent manner. Then it escalates with the chest-burster scene that is incredibly gory and graphic. This is when things take a turn… We experience Alien jump scares for both Brett and Dallas’ deaths, but we never actually see them die. It always pans away or fades out. This leaves a lot to the audiences’ imagination. Then in the last 30 minutes of the movie, we witness Lambert and Parker’s incredibly violent on-screen deaths. Overall, the cool-down of on-screen deaths in the middle amplifies the terror the audience experiences in the last 30 minutes of the movie. I think of the other films in the Alien series, specifically Prometheus and Alien Covenant. Both included many graphic deaths from the Aliens, but they utilize CGI heavily. It definitely invokes reactions from the audience, but in a much different way to the original. I have noticed that in some horror movies they tease the audience barely showing the entity, which adds to the fear of the unknown. In some, the entity is revealed and then it loses its scare factor (e.g. Mama). I found the violence and gore in this movie quite effective and not gratuitous.

Score/Foley

The score and foley in this film are really well done. I am thankful that I am rewatching while intentionally listening and noticing the sounds of this film. I found all of the ship’s sounds to be very believable and add to the isolation and fear within the ship. More importantly, the Alien foley is perfect and terrifying all at once. The roars, snarls and raspy breathing! As well the score itself foreshadows much of what is to come, which ultimately lends itself to the scare factor of the movie. I noticed in particular the flute/wind crescendos were captivating. As well, they knew when no sound was necessary, which then made the jump scares that much more spontaneous and frightening. Finally, when Ripley kills the Alien, the music changes entirely into happy music, letting the audience know all is well. The score and foley of this film are effective and captivating.

Scare Factor

I have seen this film quite a few times and before I started watching it, I assumed that it would not be very scary. I believed that I would be unfazed. However, it definitely is a scary film because I was crunched into positions as I waited for the Alien to attack. It definitely is a subtle horror movie in that sense. It almost seems like a sci-fi action until the chest-burster scene when things ramp up. A lot of what makes this scary is the anxiety of knowing something bad will happen, but being unable to stop it or look away. As well, this intense sense of isolation that Ridley Scott developed perfectly hits us, humans, in the most primitive spot in our psyche. Giger’s designs push this film into much scarier domains as these organisms are both biological and mechanical. The sheer size of the adult alien also terrifies me, especially in the scene with Parker and Lambert. An important moment that provides contrast to the terror is the scene when Kane wakes up and everyone is happy and laughing. This is then followed by the chest-burster scene… A short-lived moment of happiness. Overall, this movie creates moments of intense scare and fear and then eases off until the next moment. This is incredibly effective and makes this such a good film! If you have some time, this video essay is very detailed and relevant.