Release Date: 1979; October 29, 2003 ("director's cut" re-release)
Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright
Directed by: Ridley Scott
Written by: Dan O'Bannon
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox Films
MPAA Rating: R (sci-fi violence/gore, language)
In 1979, when science fiction was Hollywood’s greenest pasture, Ridley Scott’s Alien truly terrified audiences who had been used to popcorn-bucket, neon-colored space battles, not dank, shadowy corridors and greasy, bone-splitting gore. The intense atmosphere that director Scott created makes Alien an outstanding horror film that still stands today as "the scariest movie ever made." Of course, several imitations have followed in the past two and a half decades, including three sequels (and counting), but Alien remains as gripping as ever, even with a few minor tweaks for the 2003 director's cut.
Like he did with the original release, Scott opens the film with a slow and silent pan throughout the deep space mining ship called Nostromo. There is no sign of life, command consoles and chairs are vacant, computers are sleeping, and only the sound of the ship’s engines are heard throughout the the empty hallways. For all we know, the inhabitants of the ship are already dead, victims of the deadly “alien” life form that the movie is named after. Then, a mechanical beeping is heard -- the main computer, Mother, has awoken and is processing unreadable bits of information.
Soon, the seven-person crew rises from their sleeping chambers and begins functioning as we might expect a typical military unit, acting homesick and impatient for their paychecks. Their anxiety isn’t comforted when they discover that they are not as close to home as they originally thought. Mother has detected an unidentified transmission coming from a nearby planet, and company regulations state that the crew must investigate. What they find is nothing any scientist, much less any space miner, would want to deal with -- a hostile and invincible creature that, once it ingests itself into one of the crew members, starts picking the humans off one by one.
The slow-paced introduction is an excellent way to establish the movie’s characters, setting, and scary ambiance. We become familiar with the ship, its purpose and how it functions, and the people that work on board. Impressively, the actors are each very natural in their roles, especially early on when they have discussions around the dinner table that feel so real the scenes could be unscripted. Building a familiarity with each of the seven characters, including the curious Mother computer, is exactly the right thing for this and every horror film to do, and Alien does it exceptionally well. There still remains an eerie aura about everything as well, due to the confined ship and the unknown depths of space outside it, and therefore Ridley Scott doesn’t allow the audience to fully lower our guard.
The creepiness begins to grow as three members of the crew -- Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), and Kane (John Hurt) -- leave the ship to investigate the signal that their computer detected. They fight their way to shelter on the formidable planet they’ve landed on, eventually coming across the mist-covered landscape of alien eggs. Even 25 years later, the site and sound of the egg opening like a leathery flower still sends shivers, and this is thanks to Scott’s brilliant setup. That scene, of course, is followed by one of the greatest jump-ten-feet-off-your-seat moments in movie history -- when the creature flies out of the egg and onto Kane’s face.
The only things different about the 2003 director’s cut (aside from an outstanding digital overhaul) are about six minutes of added footage and an equal amount of trimming, neither of which is terribly noticeable. Fans will likely make note of a couple new dialogue scenes and a moment where Ripley finds the Alien’s nest (which can already be seen on the Special Edition DVD), and they probably won’t miss the deletion of a few moments where people take their time talking and walking through doors. All in all, like Steven Spielberg’s 2002 E.T. re-release, this version of Alien stays almost exactly the way it was remembered.
There are still the nerve-racking moments where Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) goes off by himself to find Jones the cat, when Dallas is crawling through the ship’s dark ventilation system, and, of course, the famous dinner scene where Kane has a few stomach problems. As yet more proof of director Scott’s impressive instincts, it’s interesting to note that that famous scene was shot without the actors having any knowledge of the effects being used. (You may have noticed that Veronica Cartwright was particularly squeemish as cherry syrup sprayed on her.) The director also very smartly keeps the drooling, acid-blooded monster in the dark for nearly the entire two hours, using the Jaws technique of leaving the worst to our imaginations.
It’s almost a shame that 20th Century Fox waited until the 25th anniversary (which is actually May 2004, about six months after the theatrical re-release) to renew this classic, because it would have been welcome many years ago. It was worth the wait, though, and those who never saw Sigourney Weaver use her strength and wit against the "bitch" on the big screen in a dark theater with digital surround sound now have their chance.
-- Andy Zientek (zfilm@earthlink.net)