Alien (1979)

The crew of a commercial deep space mining ship, investigating a suspected S.O.S., lands on a distant planet and discovers a nest of strange eggs.

Director:

Ridley Scott

Writers:

Dan O'Bannon (story), Ronald Shusett (story),

Stars:

Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright

Top 250 #40 | Won 1 Oscar. Another 12 wins & 18 nominations.

Cast

Complete credited cast:
Tom Skerritt	...	Dallas
Sigourney Weaver	...	Ripley
Veronica Cartwright	...	Lambert
Harry Dean Stanton	...	Brett
John Hurt	...	Kane
Ian Holm	...	Ash
Yaphet Kotto	...	Parker
Bolaji Badejo	...	Alien
Helen Horton	...	Mother (voice)

Storyline

The crew of the deep space towing vessel Nostromo are awaken from hypersleep to investigate a strange signal from a nearby planet. While investigating the signal, they discover it was intended as a warning, and not an SOS.

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Plot Keywords:

spaceship | egg | warning | parasite | deep space | 

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Taglines:

It's Alien, the 8th passenger.

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Genres:

Horror | Sci-Fi

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for sci-fi violence/gore and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook

Country:

USA UK

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

25 May 1979 (USA)

Also Known As:

Alien: The Director's Cut

Filming Locations:

Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK

Box Office

Budget:

$11,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£208,081 (UK) (31 October 2003)

Gross:

$1,983,690 (USA) (28 November 2003)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Brandywine Productions, Twentieth Century-Fox Productions

Technical Specs

Runtime:

117 min 116 min (director's cut)

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) Dolby (as Dolby Stereo)

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Yaphet Kotto (Parker) actually picked fights with Bolaji Badejo who played the Alien, in order to help his onscreen hatred of the creature.

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Goofs

A moving dippy bird toy is show in the opening scene. Dippy birds require water to work. As the crew is in hibernation and has been for some time, the water in the glass in front of the dippy bird would have long ago evaporated, so the toy would be motionless, not dipping.

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Quotes

[first lines]
Brett: This is the worst shit I've ever seen, man.
Parker: What you say? You got any biscuits over there?
Ripley: Here's some cornbread.
Parker: Cornbread. Yeah.
Lambert: I am cold.
Parker: Still with us, Brett?
Brett: Right.
Kane: Oh, I feel dead.
Parker: Anybody ever tell you you look dead, man?

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Connections

Featured in Great Movie Mistakes IV (2012)
Clips of mistakes shown

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Soundtracks

"Incidental music from 'Symphony No. 2 ('Romantic')"
by Howard Hanson

User Reviews

"Alien" is not just the monster, it's the atmosphere and the way you feel!

In "Alien" we follow a seven man crew en-route to earth on board the huge space freighter "Nostromo". The crew is in cryosleep, but the on board computer interrupts the journey when a foreign radio signal is picked up. It originates from an uninhabited planet and the crew lands to investigate. There they make contact with an alien life-form...

What makes Alien so great is the constant feel of uneasiness. Right from the beginning you have a feeling that something is wrong. The crew is not particularly friendly towards each other, and you truly feel all the in-group tension. The ship itself is a huge worn out industrial-style maze of halls and corridors, and it feels more like a prison than a place to live. It is as if not only the alien but also the ship itself is against the humans. The Alien itself is the scariest monster in history because it is a ruthless, soul-less parasite completely devoid of any human or civilized traits. The design of the monster is a stroke of genius. Sure it has a humanoid form, but it has no facial traits or anything else which could give away emotions or intentions. Its actions reveals no weaknesses nor civilized intelligence. The Alien is more or less the opposite of everything human and civilized, plus the creature is more well-adapted to the inhumane interior of the ship than the humans who build it. To sum up, you then have a setting where the humans are caught in a web of in-group tensions, an inhospitable ship and the perfect killer which thrives in the ships intestines. You almost get the feel that the humans are the ones who are alienated to each other and to their own ship.

Ridley Scott tells the story with a perfectly synchronized blend of visuals and sounds.

The actors do a superb job, portraying their characters in a subtle but very realistic way. The seven man crew is not a bunch of Hollywood heroes. They are ordinary people with strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes. In this way they all seem so fragile when confronted with the enemy.

As mentioned the ship is very claustrophobic and Ridley Scott adds to the eeriness by using camera movement, lights and shadows in an effective way. The living quarters are bright and should be comfortable to the crew, but there is something sterile about it all. The rest of the ship is basically a huge basement.

The music by Jerry Goldsmith underlines the eeriness so well, and the movie wouldn't have worked without his score. Combined with the sounds of the ship it all adds to the uneasiness.

This is not a story about heroic people who boldly teams up against evil. It's a story about ordinary people facing true fear, which is the fear without a face. The fear we can't understand and can't negotiate with, because its only goal is to survive on the expense of us. It's a story where some people bravely fight back whilst others are destroyed by the terror. It's a story where people a killed in a completely random way. There is no higher-order justice behind who gets to live and who dies. All seven characters are just part of a race where the fittest - not necessarily the most righteous - will prevail, and all seven characters start the race on an equal footing. None of them are true heroes, and none of them are true villains.

All the above makes Alien so great as a horror movie. The terror isn't just the Alien itself, it's the entire atmosphere which gets so effectively under your skin, that you just can't shrug it off after the end credits like you can with so many other Hollywood horror movies. The title "Alien" doesn't just refer to the monster, it is the theme of the movie and it is the feeling you have during and after the movie. 9/10