The classic sci-fi horror film Alien, directed by Ridley Scott, screenplay by Dan O’Bannon, story by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, was wide-released in U.S. theaters on June 22, 1979. Today, therefore, is the movie’s forty-fifth anniversary. It’s the perfect opportunity for me to discuss this masterpiece.
So much has already been written about Alien. I could sing praises for the film’s direction, set design, performances; every single element is superb, and the whole is magnificent. Instead, though, I’ll talk about my personal experiences with the film, as well as why I think the film has endured in filmgoers’ imaginations so powerfully.
I think my brother and I were in our early teenage years when we first watched this movie. This was soon after our parents had bought cable and DVR. Alien was playing on one of the premium film channels, and we recorded it to watch at our convenience.
I remember being bored at the beginning of the film. I’m a much different film viewer now, more capable of picking up on mood, atmosphere, and visual symbolism. When I was younger, though, I expected action and excitement from adventure films and creature features. As an adult revisiting the film, I have deeply appreciated the beginning. It’s meant to show the status quo of the main characters, workers aboard a spaceship carrying out their jobs for the company that employs them. They spend the early scenes of the film waking up from stasis (their bodies have been kept in cryosleep chambers to preserve them during their space travels) and completing different errands.
This is solid world-building. We as viewers get to see the ship, where most of the film’s story takes place. We also get to meet the characters in what are, for them, normal circumstances. This is just another day on their job.
Plus, I have come to realize that one technique in developing a horror story is to establish the status quo before disrupting it via a source of imminent danger. The film shows what life is like before the threat arrives in order to sharpen, via contrast, how deeply the threat disrupts the world.
In addition, I have also grown to admire the atmosphere of the opening. Everything is so quiet, emphasizing the isolation of the endless void of space. There’s sterile, mechanical coldness to the spaceship. This really isn’t a place meant for people.
Sadly though, the younger me didn’t catch all this. He interpreted the quiet and the low energy scenes as features of “old” movies. Even when the main characters are investigating the ruins of a crashed alien ship, which they have found after following a distress signal in space, I am embarrassed to admit that younger me wasn’t hooked yet.
And then, the absolutely grotesque spider-like creature, now known amongst audiences as the face-hugger, jumps out of what seems to be a giant egg and burns through the protective helmet of crew member Kane (John Hurt) before latching itself onto his face.
Even younger me was freaked out.
I’ve come to realize that Alien moves through scenes of oppressive dread that are punctuated by bursts of violence and destruction. Once Kane is back on the ship, the crew try to remove the creature from his face, but cannot. He lies comatose on a medical bed with the face-hugger wrapping his entire face in its spindly limbs, its tail twisted around his neck. Younger me, after the face-hugger’s attack, was a little bored again. I expected overt distress and terror from the crew. I’m so embarrassed to admit all this now because, when I ponder the sequence of Kane in the medical ward, I sense the sheer hopelessness of the crew. They have no idea how to help their co-worker and friend; they know not what will happen. They are at the creature’s mercy, waiting for it to let their friend go, if it chooses to.
And it seems to do just that. It falls off and dies, and Kane appears to be fully recovered. The ease is short-lived, though. What follows is what I submit is among the most shocking and impactful scenes in a popular horror film, up there with the shower scene in Psycho.
During a crew meal, Kane suddenly starts screaming in agony and convulsing. His co-workers and friends lay him on the table in order to try to help him, but before they can do anything, his chest bursts open, sending splashes of blood and pieces of viscera around the room. A creature has erupted from out of him, with an oblong head and a mouth packed with piercing teeth. It hurries away, leaving Kane dead.
Younger me’s jaw dropped at this moment.
The face-hugger had laid an egg in Kane, and the creature now loose on the ship had used him as a host. When the remaining members of the crew search for the creature aboard their ship, those who encounter it find that it has grown significantly in size. It has matured into an adult, and it starts to kill them one by one.
The full-grown alien is portrayed by Bolaji Badejo in costume. It is a testament to his excellent performance and to the incredible costume design that I had no idea during my initial viewing that a costumed actor portrayed the alien.
On that note, one reason I think this film has endured is artist H. R. Giger’s brilliant design of the alien. It is truly nightmarish, deeply uncanny, and instantly iconic. Its slender, smooth head, without discernible eyes but with two sets of mouths—one inside the other—embodies its endless hunger. Its body is like a warped version of a human’s body; it has a torso, two arms, and two legs, but its limbs and torso are thin and long. Its legs have the sharp joints of a digitigrade creature. And then, its tail serves as an extra limb; ending with a sharp dagger-like point, the tail is deployed by the alien to stab and choke its prey.
Opposed to this menace, having no choice but to try to kill the alien, are the human crew members, led by one of the greatest protagonists in film: Ellen Ripley, played brilliantly by Sigourney Weaver. Ripley is among the highest ranking members on the crew and a skillful leader. She is thoughtful, pragmatic, and adaptable. And in the face of the monstrous threat, her humanity shines through; the safety of her crew is vital.
I will now discuss the sequence that has become my favorite in the film. As much as the alien’s appearances carry shocking power and otherworldly danger, this sequence doesn’t depict the alien at all.
Ripley is frustrated with her science officer, Ash (Ian Holm), for being unhelpful, so she accesses the primary computer system of their spaceship herself. Doing so, she learns that Ash has been given a secret order from the company they all work for: to ensure the alien’s safe delivery to the company at all costs. He’s meant to make sure the alien reaches the company alive. The crew, according to the order, is expendable.
Ash appears next to Ripley once she finishes reading the message on the computer. A fight ensues, and when Ripley and the rest of the crew defeat Ash, he’s revealed to be a robot, with white goo and wires sputtering out of his severed neck. This is yet another moment in which the film masterfully dives into the uncanny; first the alien, and now Ash, blend recognizable and unfamiliar features. They both embody a combination of human traits and inhuman traits.
Then comes the climax of this brilliant sequence. The crew repairs Ash’s severed head just enough to interrogate him. Ripley asks how to kill the alien. Ash says they can’t. He taunts them, saying they don’t know what they’re dealing with. The creature is a perfect organism, he says. Every aspect of it serves its function to hunt and reproduce. It has no conscience, no guilt.
It is alien not just in its appearance, but in how its mind works.
Science-fiction horror often delves into themes of cosmic horror, the terror that emerges from the idea that the universe is so completely beyond our understanding, and that we may be at the mercy of forces we can do nothing against. Who knows what lies in the vastness of space, in the planets orbiting the countless stars? This is the type of horror that often doesn’t accelerate the heart as much as it freezes the bones.
This scene in Alien presses on the horrors of the cosmic, but connects them with a more immediate horror: the horror of exploitation, of being at the mercy of cold, inhumane systems that humans have made. The company the crew members work for wants them dead if that means its goals can be achieved. Not only are the crew at the mercy of the otherworldly alien, but they are also at the mercy of their employers.
I admire this so much. In a matter of minutes, the film combines the cosmic and the immediate. It takes something distant and hypothetical, and it brings it to the realm of the relatable and tragically relevant. In the real world, exploitative systems such as capitalism and its associated evils feel overwhelming, pervasive, all-encompassing. They can feel like otherworldly, eldritch terrors that are powerful, unstoppable, inhumane.
I have watched additional (though not all) films in the Alien series, and I’ve appreciated spin-offs in related media, including video games and comic books. The best stories in this fictional universe keep in mind the horrors that emerge from human-made things, the inhumanity of human creations.
This is such a fruitful garden for nightmares. That’s why I think the franchise has endured for so long. The artists behind this landmark movie struck a nerve, having audiences face the chilling fact that forces in our world are so much greater than us, so much more powerful, and that individually, we are so small in comparison.
This isn’t to say that the film is hopeless or nihilistic. Ripley survives, and the final moment of the film is a surprisingly gentle one, as Ripley enters cryosleep with the ship’s cat, the alien having been ejected into the void of space.
Though the tropes of the slasher film genre hadn’t been solidified by the time Alien came out, it does have a similar progression as a slasher does, with each member of the cast being killed by the threat one by one. However, unlike a lot of slasher films that have emerged since Alien, the original film and many of its sequels and related stories in different media don’t ask audiences to root for the alien. We are meant to root for the survival of the people, as we witness their resilience and resourcefulness.
Maybe, even within various, vast and overwhelming forces, both on Earth and beyond, the human spirit can still survive.
For me, this film is timeless.
One of my favorite films! Awesome review
Wow Ameer you have outdone yourself this time. Excellent review. Bravo 👏 👏👏