TBT Movie Review: Alien – That phantom pain in your chest isn’t just indigestion

Alien Poster

Genre: Sci-Fi/Horror

Running Time: 117 Minutes

No intro needed!

The Plot

The Nostromo and her seven man crew are en route back to Earth. After receiving a strange transmission, Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) follows company procedure and lands on the planetoid, taking Kane (John Hurt) and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) with him. This search party soon discovers an alien spacecraft with a large alien creature whose rib-cage appears to have exploded from the inside. Upon further investigation, Kane happens upon a chamber filled with hundreds of eggs. He decides to investigate the eggs and is attacked.

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), now the acting senior officer on the Nostromo, discovers that the signal is actually a warning, and when the search part returns with an injured, possibly infected, Kane, she denies them entry to the Nostromo. Ash (Ian Holm) overrides the system and allows the search part on board.

Once Kane wakes up, it doesn’t take long for the crew to figure out what the face hugger was for. The new alien is hiding somewhere on the ship while the crew start dropping like flies! And, this is when the fun begins.

Special Effects & Performances

I’m not going to go into a deep and meaningful analysis of each person’s performance. The only one I really want to single out is Veronica Cartwright. The performances were fantastic and gritty. Ian Holm was sinister but without skulking in the shadows. Ms Cartwright was a fucking annoyance. Sweet butter Christ. I have no idea is it was bad casting or worse direction but rarely have my sensibilities been so offended by a whiny, sniveling character. I think the only other time I’ve ever come so close to breaking something, was while watching any scene with Jar Jar Binks in it.

The special effect, close to four decades old, look awesome! I think that a lot of this can be credited to the use of models, rather than CGI and the ever worshiped genius of H. R. Giger. Though a huge fan of GCI, when done well, it must be said that it generally ages badly and starts to show it’s age a lot sooner than SFX where models were used. I love the Nostromo‘s design and the dated ’70s tech adds to the ambiance.

The Review

What is not to love? This movie has everything: a strong, kickass female character, deceptions and subterfuge, mysterious orders from an all knowing “entity” (MOTHER), death, destruction, aliens, blood and gore, space and a cat… If you are a horror fan but want a break from the teen slasher, take a stab at this. Yes, it’s almost 40 years old but it’s a masterpiece.