#17: Alien (1979)

"It's got a wonderful defense mechanism: You don't dare kill it."

The crew of a commercial towing starship Nostromo (basically a very large freight rig in space) awakens from their months long sleep to find that they are not nearing earth as expected, but are instead within range of an uncharted planet from which a distress beacon is emitting. At the behest of their corporate employers, they land on the planet and discover the wreck of an alien spacecraft, and a strange chamber full of what appear to be . . . eggs.

Though often overshadowed by its highly enjoyable sequel (James Cameron's 1986 Aliens), Ridley Scott's Alien is a masterful exploration of the human response to fear. Every character has a unique reaction to the situation, and seeing how that plays out is one of Alien's great pleasures.

I'm also impressed by how the film manages to combine many genres into a single package: it can be seen as a slasher film, a psychological thriller, a survival story, a splatterfest, and a feminist fable- all wrapped up in a genuinely believable science fiction setting. I particularly have always enjoyed the "truckers in space" element of the film- the people in this film aren't military types or great scientists, they just haul millions of tons of ore around the galaxy.

Though H. R. Giger's design of the titular alien has been imitated and copied so often as to be passe, it really must have been amazing to see for the first time. Giger is perfect fit for this film, especially seeing as his art echoes the films own mashup of the biological with the mechanic, its chilling starkness, and its nightmarish sexual imagery. And while the mature alien is the star attraction of this film, I've always found the concept of the facehugger to be far more disturbing . . . a creature that orally rapes you, impregnates you regardless of gender, and then causes you to die giving birth to its children is, to say the least, somewhat unsettling.

A lot of people I've watched this with have commented on the slow pace of the film, and I have to admit that it is rather long (119 minutes long to be precise.) But while I do think some of the earlier sequences could have been trimmed, I've also appreciate the slow build up that leads to the sheer terror of the last third of the film, as things spiral completely out of control.

Also . . . I have always wondered what use the crew of Nostromo had for what I like to think of the "wet dangling chain storage room."

Check in tomorrow for #16!