Alien (1979) A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp (C) 1997 by Serdar Yegulalp
CAPSULE: THE trend-setter for crossbreeds of horror and SF; still retains all of its original power and vision. Indispensible.
"All fear is ultimately the fear of death."
-- A.S. Neill
ALIEN is a "haunted house movie in space" the way CASABLANCA was "a WWII movie about a cabaret in Morocco". Categorizing it doesn't come close to describing its power and unrelentingly near-sadistic psychic pressure. It is easily the best movie of its kind, and has yet to be surpassed in its capacity for creating giant, silent spaces of horror in viewer's minds.
The plot is direct and unadorned. A group of space pilots who're on the way home -- "truckers in space" was the way the press kit described them -- get pulled out of suspended animation because of a distress beacon. The company they work for stipulates that they have to respond to any such call "on penalty of total forfeiture of shares", as one of the crew members icily explains it. They're not scientists or adventurers; they're just a gang of ordinary beer-drinking Joes who wanna go home.
The signal turns out to be emanating from a derelict craft on a lifeless planet. On closer inspection, they find what they believe to be the pilot -- in a shot that is by itself immortal -- and something... more correctly a whole mess of somethings... in the cargo hold. And beyond that I will not go, if only for the sake of the ones lucky enough to have not seen the movie yet. See it in widescreen if you can manage it: much of the film's remarkable Panavision photography loses a lot when cropped by almost fifty percent for a TV screen.
Director Ridley Scott -- this was only his second feature-length film, after THE DUELLISTS! -- keeps the movie fluid and calm for the most part. He has eschewed using too many obvious horror-movie cliches: the false alarm, the having-someone-jump-suddenly-into-the-frame shock, etc. When he does, he turns them on his ear -- such as the scene with Dallas (Tom Skerritt) in the tunnel, or the scene with Harry Dean Stanton in the bowels of the ship. Both end with a shock, but take their time to deploy the shock properly, with surgically-precise timing. He also keeps the acting toned way down -- no one's reaching for effect here, except near the end when sweat and whites of the eyes and flat-out hysteria are required. Sigourney Weaver, of course, is most often remembered, but look also at the other actors, even in the quietest moments.
And then there is the alien itself, which is a slithering anthology of everything we ever imagined lived under our beds and in our closets as scared children. H.R. Giger, the artist responsible for the movie's cliche-shattering look, once told an interviewer that while brushing his teeth one night on the ALIEN set, he bumped into a light bulb and sent it swinging. This caused shadows to move, and made the alin sculpture in the corner appear animated. He screamed.
The reason a movie like ALIEN still scares us -- REALLY scares us, not just gives us cleverly gory barf-em-up shots -- isn't due to any one thing, but an amalgam of elements. Films are collaborative; the best films are the product of many great minds, not just one, and ALIEN had a truly golden collection of people working together to bring us something that not only entertains, not only scares, but that has defined a place in our collective minds for many others to follow.
Four out of four eggs.
syegul@ix.netcom.com EFNet IRC: GinRei http://www.io.com/~syegul another worldly device... you can crush me as I speak/write on rocks what you feel/now feel this truth =smilin' in your face, all the time wanna take your place, the BACKSTABBERS=
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