Alien poster - movie review blog - maldeegan.com/blog
“After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as a distress call, its landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious lifeform, and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.”
I came to the party late watching ‘Alien’ initially in the early 90’s having watched ‘Aliens’ many years before it and thoroughly enjoying it’s action and tension. Perhaps this coloured my opinion as I was initially a little underwhelmed by ‘Alien’ when I first seen it. I did appreciate it’s dense visual tapestry something all Ridley Scott’s movie’s have in common but it lacked something in terms of character - a type of distancing approach which counterpointed ‘Aliens’ in your face aesthetics. (By that stage there had been any number of inferior ‘copies’.) Indeed you could say that the characters themselves are mostly one-dimensional bar Dallas and Ripley who play off one another with equal love and tension.
What mostly got me was the sense of claustrophobia and gradual build up of tension. It practically drips with it. Every scene a mixture of elements and atmospherics. Light and darkness, smoke and hidden shadows. It is a potent mix designed to draw you into this grunge-filled world. No more so than in the final 20 minutes where you can literally feel the sweat dripping down Ripley’s face when she comes face to face with her nemesis. This scene would be less impactful had there not been such a long build up introducing mundane tasks and underlying tensions amongst the group of space truckers. The cinematography is brilliant, designed to be looked at on the biggest screen possible and perfectly captures the claustrophobic feel.
As a designer Ridley Scott is unparalleled. He has spawned many copy cats but none have been quite able to match him in terms of aesthetics. ‘Alien’ was considered a hackneyed B-movie by executives and perhaps it could have been in another directors hands. Indeed Tom Skerrit was initially skeptical about the project citing issues with the budget. The initial budget for the project was projected at 4 million which gave you an idea of the thoughts of Fox executives. Make a low budget ‘Corman rip off’ and release it on the cheap to capitalise on the success of ‘Star wars’.
Ridley had other ideas creating a world filled with a terrifying monster from the twisted mind of H.R Giger. A creature that is silently menacing, stalking its prey in the shadows. The scene where Dallas is trapped in the airlocks a particular highlight.
Thankfully the budget increased and finally settled on 14 million. It’s small wonder what it would have been like had Fox not bought Ridley Scott’s vision for the project. What is quite clear is the fact that we wouldn’t be talking about the movie 40 years later nor have it appear on ‘best of’ lists.
Not that the movie doesn’t show the occasional minor flaw grown from the use of a man in a suit. Mostly these exchanges are clever punctuated by quick cutaways which hides the suit only occasionally can you see the alien in its entirety. But these are few and far between.
For the most part it is a slow burning ride, gradually building in tension and suspense. In space no-one can hear you scream.
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