Claustrophobic, suffocating, and mysterious until the searing pain jolts one wide awake, director Ridley Scott’s Alien represents one of the most perfect monster movies, and certainly the best tagline ever (“In space, no one can hear you scream”). Then for grins, it introduced Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley, she of the coolest head in cinematic history and one of its greatest and most enduring heroines (or heroes for that matter).
The powerlessness, the inability to see clearly, the familiar turning treacherous, and the frankly foreign leave Ripley and crew of the Nostromo utterly exhausted and at a loss, facing a creature they (and we) can neither understand nor combat. The dark tunnels, myriad surfaces and hiding places, and reality of being slowing picked off one by one result in an astonishing personal sense of panic.
Unless you’ve been in a coma since the late 70’s, you also know that Alien sports arguably the most horrifying sequence known to humankind in the form of a little disruption over dinner. Fun fact, only John Hurt was clued in to what would happen; others (particularly Ian Holm) were given only broad strokes, and the reaction shots are natural.
Danger escalates, options dwindle, and the inclination to sit down, cover one’s head, and wait for death is remarkably palpable. Scott keeps us guessing as to whose eyes it is through which we see, and the simultaneous sensory deprivation and near-overload are like nothing seen before. Triumphant and dazzling.
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