Director Report Card: Ridley Scott (1979)

2. Alien

”Alien” is a movie that looms very large in my brain. It was one of the earliest R-rated movies I can remember seeing and perhaps the first “grown-up” horror movies I ever saw. When I was a kid in the early nineties, thanks to the various toys and video games, I certainly knew what the titular alien looked liked. I was terrified of it. Somehow, through pop culture osmosis, I became aware of the concepts of the chestburster and the facehugger. After watching the movie, I was smitten. For years, it was one of my favorite movies. As a budding fan of both horror and science fiction, “Alien” was one of the first genuine masterpieces of the genre my young brain was exposed to. “Alien” is still a landmark film.

The Nostromo, a mining rig ship, floats through the barren stretches of space. On the way back to Earth from their latest job, it’s crew of seven is suddenly awoken from cryo-sleep. They have received a distress signal. The ship, acting automatically, has re-routed them towards an unknown planet in response. Upon landing, the crew discovers a bizarre alien ship, full of strange fossils and living eggs. One such egg impregnates a crew member, sneaking an unearthly organism onto the Nostromo. Bursting from his chest, the monster grows in size and begins to exterminate everyone it encounters.

“Alien” wears its influences on its sleeve. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon previously wrote John Carpenter’s absurdist stoner space saga “Dark Star.” O’Bannon essentially recycled “Dark Star’s” premise, of space truckers and the alien running loose on its ship, as a serious film. This was not the only idea O’Bannon willingly recycled. An earlier idea, about a gremlin terrorizing a World War II airplane, was worked into “Alien.” The film likely never would have been made if O’Bannon hadn’t worked on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s doomed “Dune” adaptation. Meanwhile, the movie obviously recalls many sci-fi B-movies of the past. “It! The Terror from Beyond Space” was an earlier film about an alien stowaway killing the crew of a space ship. The scene were the characters discover the giant skeleton of a strange creature inside a derelict ship was likely taken from Mario Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires,” though both Scott and O’Bannon deny having seen the film. “Alien” is even simpler then all of that. The movie is essentially an old dark house movie in space. “Alien” recombines these familiar ideas and troupes into a fascinating new whole, remixing past art to create something new.

The core concept of “Dark Star” is maintained: Truckers in space. The cast of “Alien” are not the high-ranking scientists and astronauts of NASA’s space program. Neither are they the peace-seeking military explorers of “Star Trek,” in their clean, crisp suits. The crew of the Nostromo are blue-collar workers. They argue about wages and raises. They bitch about the lousy quality of the food and the conditions on the ship. They wear smudged and smeared jumpsuits. The world of “Alien” is awash in future technology, such as interstellar travel, cryo-sleep, and advanced robotics. Yet some things never change, such as people not being paid enough to do hard, monotonous jobs. This decision creates a cast of everymen, natural characters that anyone can relate to.

The characters are normal, down-to-Earth people and they inhabit a common, dirty world. The clean lines and shining surfaces of “Star Wars” and other sci-fi flicks are nowhere to be seen. The future technology of “Alien” leaks, rusts, gets dirty and greasy, and breaks down. The sets, miniature effects, and production design remain impressive. The film successfully creates a lived-in, plausible world. Its space ships, meanwhile, seem like possible technology. Everything moves slowly with a lot of noise, steam, and difficulty. The labyrinthine corridors of the Nostromo are full of pipes, tubes, and metal cylinders. The bulky, green-on-black computers monitors don’t seem realistic anymore. Yet somehow that works too. “Alien” is the kind of film where the future is as broken down and corroded as the present. The unwieldy computers seem to support this idea.

“Alien” is a science fiction film, obviously. Despite this, Ridley Scott realized the story he was telling was primarily one of horror. From the beginning, “Alien” establishes a stark, unsettling atmosphere. As the opening credits appear, the title forming out of hash marks denoting the alien’s latest kills, the camera pans through the vast, coldness of space. This is not a place for humanity. The camera silently moves through the ship, outdated machines clicking away without man’s touch. The ship is silent and, save for Jerry Goldsmith’s foreboding score, so is the film. “Alien” is deliberately paced, slowly establishing its world, an uneasy feeling forming the entire time. Scott’s camera remains tight on his actors’ faces, emphasizing their cramped environment. Despite the Nostromo being huge, when the alien is unleashed, there’s nowhere to run. The quietly off-putting tone creates a nightmarish world where anything can happen, preparing the audience for the more explicit horror to come.

The environment of “Alien” also helps create that tense feeling. The title is appropriate, as “Alien” creates a truly unearthly feeling world. When the crew lands on the planetoid, its surface is black and steeped in thick mist. An ominous wind constantly blows. The derelict ship looms in the distance, a strange, curling shape. The Nostromo and its shuttles are rough but still clearly human. The derelict ship is black as coal inside. The gaping entrances are vaginal. It’s surface looks less like natural technology and more like dead, festering flesh. The egg chamber is seemingly protected by a laser light and a layer of fog. This is the nightmare world of H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist whose haunting, sexual, bio-technological artwork informs “Alien’s” horrific setting. The ship’s contents are also fascinating. No wonder “Alien” would spawn an extensive expanded universe. The space jockey, an immediately iconic image, would spurn debate for years. Where did it come from? What was it doing? Why was there a hatch full of xenomorph eggs inside the ship? We have answers to these questions now. Yet “Alien” remains more intriguing as a mysterious, disturbing world where things do not follow man’s petty rules.

The chief component of that mystery is the alien itself. Scott, O’Bannon, and everyone else working on the film understood that the central threat had to be believable for “Alien” to be successful. It couldn’t be a guy in a cheesy rubber suit. Inspired by Giger’s “Necronom IV” painting, the alien is perhaps the greatest creature design ever made for a film. Despite a superficially human shape, it remains unearthly. There are no visible eyes, no way for a viewer to project emotion onto it. Its body is both skeletal and mechanical. It has a rib-cage like exoskeleton, with tubes and ridges running under the surface. Something like industrial smokestacks emerge from the back. The head is deliberately phallic, adding a very sexual, visceral layer to this horrifying design. The juxtaposition makes it even more disturbing. As unnerving as Giger’s work is, there’s an interior logic to it. The xenomorph is hideous but it also makes sense. Without resembling anything else on Earth, it still seems like a plausible life form.

Conceptually, the monster is even more interesting. The alien’s life-cycle fascinated me as a child. This was not a monster that started as one thing and stayed that way. The pod-like eggs beget the facehugger, a creature between a spider and a giant hand with long, slender fingers. The alien has a powerful acid as a blood, making it difficult to kill by any traditional means. The alien is constantly dripping with slime and drool, always being ready for the kill. And then comes the most disturbing weapon of all, a secondary mouth inside the regular mouth. Also phallic in shape, the opening also makes it vaginal, topped with snapping, silver teeth. Fans have taken to calling it the xenomorph, an obscure term used once in the sequel, because its easier to say than “the alien from “Alien.’” It’s an appropriate term, meaning an “alien shape.” As unearthly as the monster looks, as as frightening as its behavior is, that’s a fitting name.

The incredible design and the brilliant concept makes the alien impressive. What makes it frightening is further beneath the surface. The blatant sexual imagery in its design points towards this. “Alien” is a movie about the forceful invasion of the body and the horrible damage that reaps. In other words: Rape. The facehugger forces its tube down the victim’s throat. The explosive chestburster is a perverse variation on the concept of birth. A man’s body tears apart and a naked, screaming child comes forth. The chestburster is even more phallic in design than the mature xenomorph. It is a essentially a bloody, toothy, screaming penis. And all of this is forced onto a man, a brilliant idea by O’Bannon that avoids the usual horror trope of the victimized woman. The monster gestating inside us plays on fears of parasites. The adult alien is far more intelligent than it appears, navigating the ship’s vents and easily outsmarting its pray. It’s easy to simplify “Alien” as a movie about dick-headed rape demons from space. Yet it’s about other things like disease, our discomfort with our own bodies, fear of the unknown, and the blackness of space being synonymous with the blackness of death.

The same skill that created the alien and its home planet was put to use making “Alien” a truly effective horror film. That foreboding tone of discomfort is first disturbed when the facehugger explodes from the egg, in a flash of twirling appendages and high-pitched shrieking. The chestburster scene was a horror movie moment unseen before 1979. It’s a boldly original concept that is utterly disturbing, visceral, and shocking in execution. The quick-cutting between Kane’s shaking body and the bloody shape pushing its way out still unnerves me. Afterwards, “Alien” resembles a slasher film in structure. The creature picks its victims off, one by one. However, the strangeness of the design is utilized well. As Brett is attacked, all we see is a tail, limbs, jaws and teeth, always dripping with drool and slime. The panicked editing emphasizes the suddenness of the scene. Yet Dallas’ encounter with the beast in the vents may be even scarier. The audience knows the monster is closing in and Dallas is helpless to escape it, awkwardly fumbling through a place unsuited for him. The sudden shrieking appearance is the perfect cap to the tense moment.

In its later half, “Alien” builds on this frenzied fear. The xenomorph emerges suddenly to confront Parker and Lambert. The monster's hands and body tremble in strange ways that do not make sense to us. It’s glistening secondary jaw, violently penetrating its victims like a razor-toothed piston, is viscerally unnerving. Lambert’s death is kept off-screen. We see the pointed tail curl around her leg, further suggesting sexual assault. From Ripley’s radio, we hear her agonized death cries. Now, Ripley is alone on the ship, leading to an intense scrabble for escape. Why does the Nostromo fill with smoke and fire as it's detonating? Because Ripley might as well be navigating her own panicked mind. Even after escaping the ship, Ripley is not safe. “Alien” does not exist in a safe universe. The monster sudden appearance on the shuttle, its hand jutting from the piping of the ship, remains a viable jump scare. The finale, the show-down between the vulnerable Ripley and the stalking beast, remains one of the most intense finales in horror history.

“Alien” is an ensemble film. The cast is easy to keep track of. It’s seven people on a cramped spaceship, the cast feeling even more exposed and vulnerable because of that environment. Like any variation on “And Then There Was None,” “Alien” keeps its audiences guessing over who will be next. Dallas seems like the expected hero. Tom Skerritt is a reasonable authority figure. His scruffy beard and quiet, commanding presence makes him seem like somebody’s dad. Skerritt is even top-billed. He doesn’t survive. Parker seems like the most likely next hero. He is played by a bawdy, physical Yaphat Kotto. Kotto is all forehead sweat and macho anger, creating a believable tough guy character. He doesn’t survive either. Instead, it’s Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley that becomes the unlikely hero. Ripley is cool-headed and strong-willed, never letting her panic take over her mind. If she had gotten her way, and the alien had been left on the planetoid, none of this would have happened. Weaver’s determination powers the character, creating a strong, focused heroine that would soon become an iconic figure.

The supporting cast is similarly filled out with fantastic character actors. Ash is played by Ian Holm, a stately figure of British genteelness. As a science officer, Ash is logical and calm. Which makes his eventual reveal as a homicidal robot all the more shocking, Holm’s casting becoming another subversion of the audience’s expectations. Veronica Cartwright, already a veteran of the horror genre by this point, is Ripley’s polar opposite as Lambert. The character is sprayed with blood when the chest-burster punches through. Cartwright’s unplanned panicked becomes the character’s defining characteristic. She spends the rest of the movie with wide eyes and gritted teeth, always weeping and blubbering. This, in a way, makes her the most realistic character. Kane and Brett, played by Harry Dean Stanton and John Hurt, exit the film relatively early. Brett plays into Stanton’s easy-going, slightly eccentric skills as an actor, creating a character who would’ve been the comic relief in a different movie. Kane, meanwhile, makes good use of Hurt’s working man charm.

The final sign that “Alien” does not exist in a hospitable world is the late film reveal that all of this was planned. The corporation wanted to capture the monster, bring it inside, and take it back to Earth. This reveal comes via Ash’s breakdown. In close-up, a milky substance runs down his face, a bizarre image presented without context. His murder attempt, choking Ripley with a rolled-up magazine, is even harder to understand. Finally, when his head comes off, the audience is left truly baffled and unnerved. He spits milk while intestine-like tubes dangle from his decapitated head. It’s the most unusual type of robot. What he says is further damning. Even in the future, big business shits on the common worker. The killer alien is just the most obvious sign of a nihilistic world-view. There’s life out there, all right. And it’s going to get us. Assuming we don’t get ourselves first.

“Alien” remains a landmark film, as effective now as when first released. Extensive merchandising and multiple sequels have diminished the purely unnerving power of the main creature’s design. Scott’s direction and composition is without fail, creating an atmosphere of mounting dread. The cast is subdued and subtle, creating a performances full of tiny nuances. Jerry Goldsmith’s dread-filled score and the fantastic special effects cements the deal. And the film’s rich undercurrents makes it a classic. Many films would emulate it but few have matched the genius of “Alien.” [Grade: A]