Alien (1979)

When Alien was first released in 1979 during the summer season, science fiction movies were all the rage. The trend had been started two years earlier with the unexpected box office success of Star Wars, and by 1979, anything even remotely connected with space and/or aliens was a guaranteed success. Two highly anticipated efforts – the big screen debut of Star Trek and the Star Wars sequel (Empire Strikes Back) – both of which were within a year of their opening dates, further invigorated the atmosphere. It was into this climate that Alien was unleashed upon the general public.

When commercial towing vehicle Nostromo, heading back to Earth, intercepts a SOS signal from a nearby planet, the crew are under obligation to investigate. After a bad landing on the planet, some crew members leave the ship to explore the area. At the same time as they discover a hive colony of some unknown creature, the ship’s computer deciphers the message to be a warning and not a call for help. When one of the eggs is disturbed, the crew do not know the danger they are in until it’s too late.

The people who developed Alien knew they would be in the shadow of Star Wars and Close Encounters. But these were feel-good family films, Alien marked a return to the malevolent flying-saucer flicks of the 50’s –with a dash of horror thrown in. Writer Dan O’Bannon and Co-story man Ron Shusett intended Alien to be a low budget affair, like O’Bannon’s previous film; Dark Star. Over three months, a modest script emerged from a half-finished O’Bannon story about a distress signal in space called memory. It was re-titled Star Beast and finally Alien.

The film’s memorable tagline “in space, no one can hear you scream”, promised a far different experience to the other Sci-Fi films seen before. Most people these days would consider Alien to be more horror the science fiction. Alien is about shocks, chills and thrills, not space battles. Where Star Wars had Light sabers and blasters, Alien has intense atmosphere. In many ways Alien was the first of its kind. True – it wasn’t the first space movie to feature a homicidal monster, nor was it the first a group of characters were hunted down one-by-one in dark, dank spaces. However, this film was one of the first to effectively combine these two genres. Alien became the blueprint for dozens of rip-offs and three Alien sequels (With the prequel Prometheus coming out this spring!!), with one exception (James Cameron’s superior Aliens which changed the creepy horror for all out action), none has come close to what filmmakers attained way back in 1979.

As I said previously, Alien set the blueprint for Sci-fi horror: the claustrophobia, the crew class system, and getting a cat involved in the proceedings, and of course, the famous Alien out of chest scene. There are thrills of the highest order – but the beauty of Alien remains. One of the best Sci-Fi films ever made.