"Alien" is a classic horror and sci fi film. Director Ridley Scott and writer Dan O'Bannon combine the suspense and terror of a teen slasher film with the production values and style of a cerebral space exploration action film. The result is a tense drama with a spaceship crew hunted on their own ship by a hideous, seemingly invincible alien.
The story takes place sometime in the future. The Nostromo is a mining ship loaded with ore, now on a return voyage to Earth. The crew is awakened from hibernation, still in a distant galaxy, to investigate a possible distress call from a crashed spacecraft. Upon landing, crew member Kane (John Hurt) is attacked by a disgusting, tentacled creature hatched from an egg on the alien planet. He recovers back on the Nostromo, but has been impregnated. In the film's most notorious scene, a hideous alien about eight inches tall emerges from Kane's stomach.
The alien escapes and soon grows to be seven feet tall. The crew must try to kill it before it kills them, which is all the more difficult since it has ship-eating acid for blood. The ensemble cast includes Tom Skerritt as Captain Dallas, Ian Holm as a creepy science officer, Yaphet Kotto as an excitable mechanic, Veronica Cartwright as navigator Lambert, and Harry Dean Stanton as comic relief. There's also a cat named Jones, and warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver). Ripley provides the voice of reason, which is thwarted by the actions of her crewmates.
Weaver's character Ripley would dominate the sequels to "Alien", but here she is just one of the crew. Her character is intelligent, and capable of making quick, accurate decisions. Her maternal instincts, so clearly demonstrated in "Aliens", show up here as well, as she risks her life to rescue the cat. More feminine than in the sequels, she's still too tough to scream or cry, but shows fear when threatened. Ripley is less interesting than Holm's chilling character Ash, but the latter can't be described without giving away the film's best plot twist.
"Alien" won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and was nominated for its art direction (the best of which are the sets on the alien planet). The film was eventually followed by three sequels, "Aliens" (1986), "Alien 3" (1992), and "Alien Resurrection" (1997), of which "Aliens" was easily the best, even exceeding the original. (78/100)
The first movie of one of the most popular sagas in science fiction history, Alien introduces Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the iron-willed woman destin...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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