Alien (1979)

MOVIE MADNESS

Alien (1979):  

Early last month, on August 13^th, Disney Hollywood Studios closed The Great Movie Ride.  On the whole, I enjoyed the ride, though I found the cast conductors to be annoying, especially once the sound track commentary was added by Robert Osborne, and the ride conductors seemed to think there job was to compete with instead of complement the audio commentary.  For those who haven’t gone on the ride, the premise was to take you into the movies of yesteryear.  It was a dark ride that went through scenes of classic movies, most of them from the Turner library of MGM/ Warner Bros. classics.  The few exceptions were a couple of Disney movies, a Paramount film, Raiders of the Lost Ark licensed from Lucasfilm, and a 20^th Century Fox film.  The latter was the oddest choice of all because here in the middle of a ride in a park run by a company that prided itself on being wholesome family fun was a salute to an R rated Science Fiction/Horror film.  My family and I rode it one last time its last week, and as I went through the Nostromo while Mother counted down the self-destruct one last time, I was moved to watch it again.

Alien, released in 1979, tales the tale of the ill-fated crew of the mining ship Nostromo.  It was directed by Ridley Scott and starred Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, Ian Holm, and John Hurt.  The film is considered to be a classic and rightly so.  In one of the pre-ride commentaries, Robert Osborne attributed part of its success to being a unique blend of science fiction and horror.  I would disagree with that as the combination in film arguably went as far back as Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde or Frankenstein, and the combination was definitely prevalent in the science-fiction hey-day of the 50’s in films like The Thing from Another World and Invader of the Body Snatchers.  What it did to was type into the zeitgeist of the time of how those genres were changing in the late 70’s.  If I wanted to be facetious, I would say it is Star Wars meets Halloween.  Now obviously, this isn’t really true.  For one, Alien is more hard science-fiction than Star Wars science-fantasy.  It also falls more in the dystopian sci-fi tradition than Star Wars, which has a much more hopeful tone.  Similarly, there are parts of Alien, particularly the 1^st third that are more constructed like a haunted house story.  The characters are mysteriously summoned to a dark and stormy location, and then they are trapped there.  I also don’t want to suggest plagiarism, the release dates are too close together for one to be inspired by the others, but Alien has the same production values as Star Wars with the pacing and building of tension of Halloween.

The movie looks spectacular with the model work of the Nostromo, the sets of the ship’s corridors, to the Alien creature effects.  The Academy evidently agrees because the film won the Oscar for Best Visual Effects that year, and they still hold up.  The only effect that doesn’t work is the transition from the dummy of the decapitated Ash (Ian Holm) to the actor’s head which was coming through a hole in the table which was covered up by the ragged faux flesh of the android’s torn neck.  What lets the transition down is the lighting and editing.  The lighting was much darker in the scene with the dummy than with the actual actor which makes the change between frames jarring.  Once the Alien bursts through Kane (John Hurt)’s chest, the film transitions to the slasher structure as the Alien stalks and kills the crew while they try to trap and capture it.  Similar to Carpenter and Spielberg, Scott knew that less was more so that you typically got quick cuts of the creature.  Also, like Halloween, while there were several jump scares, few of them were because of the monster itself.  You almost always see the creature slide in and out of frame before it strikes, with the tension building while you wait for the victim to realize the trouble there in, then the tension is released because of a flash of light, a hissing cat, or a clanging cylinder.  It’s also worth noting that this film has two villains, the second being the android Ash, effectively played as a mumbling, nervous Science Officer.  The real climax of the film to me comes when Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Parker (Yaphet Kotto), and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) were “doomed” from the beginning of the film as Ash, on behalf of the company, has been doing everything he can to make sure they bring an Alien back.  That in and of itself makes the film worthy of at least one re-watch to reevaluate the motive behind all of his actions (It makes sense to suggest that all creatures have a primal fear of fire, but was he guessing or suggesting something he knew wouldn’t be effective?  Were the trackers crap on purpose?)  I also like his movements when he attacks Ripley.  It suggests  someone not in control of their actions like a robot under an outside influence.  The cast is fine, though other than Weaver and Holm most of them don’t get a lot to do.  I do wish we had gotten some time to know the characters more, though there are some inferences: Parker and Brett are the blue collar second class to the white collar officers, there seems to me to be a romantic relationship or attraction between Kane and Lambert, though there isn’t much to overtly suggest it, and Dallas seems to be the company man who doesn’t want to make waves.  There are a few quibbles that I have: if it’s a mining vessel with five officers and two technicians who does all of the mining?;  the planet set suggests that the organic design is that of the “native” race [there is an alien corpse in a chair in a structure that was also Giger designed], but the Alien creates a nest with the same look; who is the second corpse in the nest with Dallas, everyone else was clearly killed?  However, in the end, it is highly entertaining and deserves its status as a classic.

Therefore, it maybe isn’t too surprising to find an R rated sci-fi horror movie in the middle of The Great Movie Ride.  Other than Star Wars, which had its own attraction, and Star Trek, which was IP from a competitor, Alien was probably the most famous and well regarded science-fiction franchise at the time the ride was created.