Common Sense Note
Kids like scary movies, and trying to keep them away from ALIEN is like trying to discourage them from visiting the top neighborhood Halloween haunted house. While the demonic space monsters at the center of this 1979 classic shocker have since been overexposed via inferior sequels, video games, parodies, and comic books (even Superman battled them!) some of the best minds in cinema tried to ensure this movie would be a nightmare-inducer. Keep that in mind. Indeed, small kids are better off with E.T. Teens can take it for the thrill-ride that it is, and perhaps even discuss why they think it works so well (or doesn't) in evoking elemental terror.
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Charles Cassady, Jr.
Kids like scary movies. And being scary, in new and disturbing ways that hadn't been done before, was the mission of ALIEN. For a generation of moviegoers ALIEN was a state-of-the-art shocker, even though it basically has a second-hand monster plot, beloved by children who watched IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE and the original THE THING (1951) in TV reruns.
Here the creature-feature wasn't a low-budget B-movie, however, but a major studio event, juiced up with all the talent and special effects money could buy, back when Hollywood was trying to match STAR WARS' galactic vision (and profits). Some pretty smart people made ALIEN, so there's a little more to it than the numbskull stalker-killer setup on the surface. It taps into icky phobias about disease contamination, fangs, claws, and being trapped beyond rescue.
Setting is the Nostromo, a cavernous and ill-lit interstellar mining ship, manned by a miniscule crew of seven. They are awakened out of hibernation by an order from faraway Earth to investigate a mysterious distress signal on a dark and stormy (naturally) planet.
There the miners find a huge, grounded spaceship from an unknown civilization, with a long-dead alien pilot. You'd think this incredible relic would stir some interest, but it's dropped from the storyline entirely when the humans (and the director) have more of a boo! crisis to deal with. A crablike parasite, apparently the same ghastly type that took down the other craft, affixes to the face of a Nostromo crewmen. The poor guy seems to have a miraculous recovery. Then in a moment that nauseated and fascinated the first-time audiences (way before Mel Brooks spoofed it with the very same actor, in SPACEBALLS), a hostile newborn alien bursts out of the doomed man's chest in front of the rest of the crew.
The rest follows Horror 101; people trying to kill the fast-moving, fast-growing, unwelcome visitor (hiding and eerily well-camouflaged in the ship's many alcoves and ducts) before it gets them. There's some additional treachery; the predicament was somehow deliberately arranged by the nameless Company employing the miners -- plus a ship's computer, nicknamed Mother, who definitely does not love and protect her children. The filmmakers try to increase our anxiety with hand-held camerawork, psychologically-resonant gothic sets, and demonic designs by a variety of European artists, most notably the surrealist H.R. Giger. Furthermore, they made the endangered earthlings not the sort of upright space cadets seen in "Star Trek," but a more realistic, blue-collar work crew, who drink canned beer and grumble about their overtime pay.
Still, they behave like cliched horror-movie victims, wandering alone in the dark or waiting like sitting ducks to be picked off; the jokey script for SCREAM might just as well apply to ALIEN (which is almost totally humorless) for the parallels with dumb movie teens threatened by a mad slasher. ALIEN did defy stereotypes of its time in the brilliant move of making the ultimate survivor a vulnerable-looking young woman, Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), who in the intense finale is literally paralyzed with terror, yet manages to fight back against the alien marauder.
Recently Fox released a 25th-annivesary edition of ALIEN, with a few minutes of restored footage of what the alien does with captured prey -- stuff that was once considered too grim for 1979, but no surprise for anyone who saw the sequel ALIENS, or any of the later followups. Most of the violence here, in fact, is suggested in quick edits rather than directly shown, just like the skittering, skeletal/serpentine alien parasite itself. While this once-shadowy monster species has since been exposed via inferior sequels, video games and comic books (even Superman battled them!) some of the best minds in cinema tried to ensure this movie would be a nightmare-inducer, and parents should keep that in mind. Small kids are better off with E.T. Adolescents Teens can take it for the thrill-ride that it is, and perhaps even discuss why they think it works so well (or doesn't) in evoking elemental fear.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentCast strips to next to nothing for their deep-space hibernation. |
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ViolenceGrisly monster attacks, a humanlike robot beats up the heroine, then winds up dismembered himself. |
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LanguageExpletives when faced with monster outbreak. |
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Social BehaviorA famously-courageous heroine, but rest of the ensemble are fatalities waiting to happen. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSome beer drinking. |
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