THE EXPLOSIVE REVIEW

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Ian Holm, Veronica Cartwright, John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, and Bolaji Badejo.

Directed by: Ridley Scott.

Story:
In the 22nd Century, a crew of seven space truckers are awakened out of cryogenic hibernation en-route back to Earth by a strange distress signal coming from a nearby barren planet. Following company orders, the crew lands on the planet via space shuttle craft to investigate. Three of the crew members set foot on the surface and track the distress signal back to an odd derelict spaceship that seems to have crash-landed some time ago. Inside, they find a fossilized space jockey being of sorts with some strange parasite attached to his face. In another chamber, they find a field of eggs. One of the crewmen gets a little too close to one of these eggs which opens up and releases a similar parasite, called a face hugger, that attaches to his face and renders him unconscious. The downed crewman is brought back to the shuttle and returned to their mother ship The Nostromo for further examination.

Sometime later, the face hugger releases itself from the man’s face and he regains consciousness. During dinner, the crew man suddenly experiences strange seizure-like symptoms where another parasite, called a chestburster, pops out of his chest and kills him. The chestburster escapes and the remaining crew members set out to hunt it down. The small creature eventually grows and matures into adult-size - known as a Drone alien. One by one, the creature hunts down the last six crew members of the Nostromo.

Characters:
*Ripley (Sigourney Weaver): The Nostromo’s Warrant Officer as well as the main female protagonist of the film - A rather smart choice, market and story-wise.
*Dallas (Tom Skerritt): The ship’s Captain. He gets into a lot of disagreements with Ripley and likes to do things his way. Considering his fate, it’s too bad he didn’t listen to her.
*Kane (John Hurt): The Executive Officer of the Nostromo. He becomes the main host for the alien itself and is the first to go. He looks like he’s asleep in about every scene he’s in… well, at least until the “dinner scene”, then he finally wakes up.
*Brett (Harry Dean Stanton): The Engineering Technician of the Nostromo and buddies with the Chief Engineer Parker.
*Parker (Yaphet Kotto): Chief Engineer of the Nostromo. He adds some international spice to the group and is the toughest male in the pack - in fact, he almost makes it.
*Lambert (Veronica Cartwright): The Nostromo’s Navigator. She’s the second female in the entire crew and is the weakest of the two. She will cry and whine so many times that you can’t wait for the monster to get her.
*Ash (Ian Holm): The Nostromo’s Science Officer, later to be revealed as an evil traitorous android sent by the company with intentions to bring back the alien alive for further studies.

Overall:
“Alien” opened at the height of cinematic science fiction in the late 1970s which boomed thanks to the likes of 1977’s “Star Wars”. “Alien” presented a different aspect of sci-fi film - Terror and the unknown. The film is very eerie, dark, and scary with its large open-ended environments that are dimly lit most of the time with tight winding ship corridors and cavernous planetary landscapes that were all inspired and designed by the ever-so strange and magnificent H.R. Giger.

While the script was pretty much stolen right out of the hands of the original writers by the film’s two main producers, they did one good deed which was to make the chief protagonist a female character (Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver) in a time when most of the science fiction film market was dominated by male heroes. Ripley as the heroine certainly stands out against the Alien antagonist. “Alien” maintains a high level of mystery to it - For instance, we never find out where this alien species really came from nor where the derelict ship it was found in came from and why it was carrying the eggs.

It’s safe to say that 1979’s “Alien” became another “Star Wars” phenomena, a science fiction film with a horror edge to it - Is it any wonder that the film was released on May 25th, the same release date as “Star Wars” but two years later? Nevertheless, the film won over much critical acclaim, a successful box office run, and several awards including Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, and Two Saturns for Best Science Fiction Film and Best Direction by Ridley Scott. Ever since, “Alien” spawned a complete media franchise ranging from novels, video games, toys, and comic books, and not to mention several sequels following it.

Rating: ****

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