Alien

Released:  June 22^nd, 1979

Rated:  R

Distributor:  20^th Century Fox

Starring:  Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto

Directed by:  Ridley Scott

Written by:  Dan O’Bannon

Personal Bias Alert:  saw Prometheus before seeing its predecessors, was hyped for a good horror flick

7 of 10

            Alien is one of those films that everyone knows, and its revered legacy sets up a new viewer to expect something great.  A legacy like that is something that very few films can actually live up to, and while Alien does prove to be a well-paced horror film, it’s muddled, throw-everything-at-the-wall style of writing holds it back from being anything too eye-opening.

            The plot is largely a mish-mash of points borrowed from other material, something writer Dan O’Bannon readily admits.  An isolated crew being attacked by an alien is straight out of the novella Who Goes There?, which served as the basis for the 1951 film The Thing from Another World and the 1982 and 2011 films The Thing.  O’Bannon transposed the novella’s premise onto a space ship and structured it to have a long, tense setup similar to Jaws.  None of these were bad ideas as the confined area the characters are smooshed into lends itself to pot-boiling.  A sense of foreboding hangs over every scene, even when only small things are going wrong.  Early on, the crew squabbles over incidentals and clearly isn’t functioning as a team, something that comes to haunt them once they begin getting picked off.  Director Ridley Scott and his editing team kept the story lean and mean, even before the alien’s appearance, with nary a comfortable scene in sight.

            The issues come when you try to examine anything beyond the basic premise.  Several characters are remarkably thin, with Veronica Cartwright’s Lambert being such a weak sniveler that I wanted someone to sacrifice her to the alien just to make her shut up.  Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley and Tom Skerritt’s Dallas have some nice texturing in regards to their leadership roles, but none of this is used to effectively enhance the horror.  Consider Jaws again.  One of the most affecting scenes doesn’t feature the shark at all but is a simple recounting of battle wounds that culminates in Quint’s terrifying account of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis.  Nothing of that sort can be found in Alien as much of the dialogue is perfunctory arguments that quickly dissipate once the alien gets serious.  This lack of character depth plays against its building tension, leaving the audience without much to care about when it comes to the individuals being killed.

            Much has been written about Alien’s gender politics and the enduring question of whether it’s anti- or pro- feminism.  My stance is that the confusion stems from the film’s own lack of stance in the first place.  As already noted, the primary writer admits that the story was inspired by several different works and that many of the phallic or seemingly pivotal scenes to either side of the feminist stance were spur of the moment ideas (the alien impregnation storyline was allegedly thought up in the middle of the night).  Weaver told Hero Complex just last year that she didn’t think Scott had “any great feminist sentiment” toward Ripley or the film as a whole.  In fact, despite Ripley being renowned as a feminist icon, there’s an unavoidably objectifying scene where she strips to her underwear and trounces around with part of her butt hanging out.  The mixed messages in Alien is likely due to the extensive rewrites that occurred during pre-production, muddling attempts to add sex to the mix that were never intended to have any political meaning.

            What’s essential to evaluate in Alien is its horror, which plays out in dripping, oozing glory.  Yes, it’s over the top with its blood and guts, which is a brand of horror that I’m anesthetized to (my job has me handling the stuff every day), but there’s still that excellent plot construction to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Other Notes:

Ø  I wasn’t a big fan of the cinematography here.  There was precursor found-footage stuff, excessive shaking, and manipulative camera angles that only worked to keep the alien obscured.

Ø  I think that cat was secretly homicidal.

Ø  Seriously though, the amount of phallic imagery was just ridiculous.

Ø  “This place gives me the creeps.”  What gives you the creeps, the half-translated alien warning or the octopus thing attached to your friend’s face?

Ø  Hero Complex’s interview with Sigourney Weaver can be found here:  http://herocomplex.latimes.com/movies/alien-at-35-sigourney-weaver-reflects-on-ridley-scotts-masterpiece/#/0