Alien Is That Bitch
General Reviews
Alien is the first horror film I remember watching that scared me enough that I was afraid to go to sleep at night.
I was around 10 years old, and at the time, my family lived in a split-level house. My room was on the ground floor, separate from my parents, who were upstairs. It was next to the garage and had a window beside a large mango tree, which was often home to a gang of possums. I'm not sure if you've ever looked up what sound a brushtail possum makes, but it is otherworldly. Hearing that in the dead of night after spending two hours on the Nostromo fuelled my Xenomorph nightmares for the next few months.
Alien terrified me, but in the best way. I say this as someone who has watched a lot of horror films, but will generally tell you I don't enjoy them. However, after years of forced exposure to scary films in my line of work, I've come to appreciate good horror, and that all started for me with Alien.
To this day, I shudder to think about Facehuggers and Chestbursters, but it's an exhilarated kind of fear that comes from a film that's earned its scares thanks to its rich sci-fi world, claustrophobic atmosphere, engaging narrative, and a truly original monster.
Ridley Scott's original Alien film was the start of a franchise that continues to dominate horror today. In my opinion, nothing will ever live up to the original, although there have been several stories in the Alien franchise that I think do a pretty good job of building on that world.
The first Alien film, released in 1979, was set on the USCSS Nostromo, a commercial mining spacecraft owned by the fictional corporate entity, Weyland-Yutani. The crew on board were working-class employees, devoting decades of their lives to a deep space mission for a company that cared very little about them. Included in that crew were its Captain, Dallas (Tom Skerritt), the navigator, Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), the engineer, Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), the executive officer, Kane (John Hurt), the chief engineer, Parker (Yaphet Kotto), the science officer, Ash (Ian Holm), and the warrant officer, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Oh, and Jones, the ship's resident cat and good boy.
Abiding by the company's policy to investigate any distress signals, the Nostromo diverts from its course back to Earth to investigate a rogue spacecraft. Once on board, the investigation party finds a chamber full of gooey, scaly eggs. At the same time, back on the Nostromo, Ripley realises that this was not a distress call, but a warning.
One of the inhabitants of these eggs latches itself onto Kane's face, and the crew quickly returns him to the Nostromo, where Ripley tries to deny them entry due to quarantine restrictions. She's betrayed by Ash (an Android with ulterior motivations to serve the company), who allows the crew and the alien on board. And the rest is history.
Alien took the typical horror haunted house concept and set it in the claustrophobic confines of a deep space vessel. It plays on that innate fear that humans have of outer space, trapping Ripley and co. on board with an unknown extraterrestrial species with literally no escape but the cold reaches of space. Ridley Scott's mastery of worldbuilding and tension invited us into an exciting sci-fi environment. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien offered to take us into the thrilling world of space, only to twist it on its head and turn it into a prison.
To this day, “in space no one can hear you scream” remains one of the most chilling taglines ever penned.
The unravelling of the different stages of this alien life form was another inspired choice that kept us on our toes. There was never any telling what the alien might become next or what deadly power it might possess. Adding to that was the fact that it was all created practically, with 26-year-old student Bolaji Badejo donning a physical Xenomorph suit in the film.
There's something about the practical restrictions of old school horror films that just hits different. Like, would Jaws really have been so effective if Bruce the shark had worked as intended during the shoot? Practical effects force filmmakers to think creatively about tension and reveals. They must utilise unique framing, editing, and set design instead of relying on special effects for spectacle. There's an entire sequence that sees the crew of the Nostromo search for the alien using temperature sensors, resulting in one of the movie's best fake-outs. It was an example of masterful restraint, eking out the reveal of the alien in its full glory rather than showing all the cards right away.
A lot of the iconography regarding the alien can be put down to the work of H.R. Giger. The blend of biomechanical and organic imagery, formulated into an eyeless, cylindrical-skulled, humanoid/exoskeleton creature, resulted in an on-screen monster that felt completely original. Not to mention its three other life stages of egg, facehugger, and chestburster, which are equally creative and gruesome.
This creature has become so iconic that new Alien instalments still struggle to find ways to top it, often resorting to some blend of Xenomorph with another type of DNA to create a new horror.
Alien made so many forward leaps in the horror space. Sigourney Weaver's Ripley was one of the first female sci-fi leads who was also a smart and capable leader. Not a sex symbol or sidekick, as so many female lead characters in films were at that time, Ripley was as resourceful and brave as any of her male counterparts. In fact, she was even more so, seeing as she's the only one left standing by the end (and continued to outsmart her male companions and various breeds of aliens in the following three films).
It's been fascinating to watch the Alien franchise evolve over the years, with new and different filmmakers trying their hand at Ridley Scott's memorable world.
The closest we've come to the original happened in the last year, in Alien: Earth Episode 5. This episode revealed what happened to the crew of USCSS Maginot - a ship tasked with recovering and delivering deep space specimens (including a Xenomorph). But in the end, the reason Alien: Earth's fifth episode was so memorable, was because of how faithfully it replicated Ridley Scott's original. Everything from the sets, story, framing, transitions, and eventually the Xenomorph, felt like an extension of Alien, which is a huge compliment to the director, Noah Hawley. But in the end, it can't top that same level of horrific wonder, because it's a homage, and we've already seen it play out before.
I know it was Aliens, that gave us the iconic line, “get away from her, you bitch!”. But still, it's Alien that is that bitch for me. It's a horror icon that has endured the test of time, and it's one that I both adore and fear at the same time.
It's not often that I am happy for a movie that keeps me awake at night, but in the case of Alien, I'm grateful that it did.
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