I know what your thinking and yes I agree, it has been nearly an age since I did a review for any film. This is a small error in my work but we can forget about that and move on with my review of my favourite Science Fiction film. Its one that has shocked audiences and fans for 32 years now. Yes this film is Ridley Scott's masterpiece, Alien.
Alien is a film about seven engineers or astronauts on an enormous vessel/spaceship called the Nostromo. While sleeping for the return journey for Earth, the ship's computer Mother, reads a transmission from another planet which cuts short the journey home and the crew are told by the company that loan them out in space, to investigate this mysterious planet. Once on the planet, three of the crew search through an abandoned derelict ship on the planet's surface. As they investigate, a crew member finds a room full of eggs and eventually has an organism from one of the egg attached to his face. When the crew leave the planet and the organism leaves the crew member's face, they have a turn for the worse when a small alien bursts through the crew member's chest and escapes into the rest of the gigantic ship. The story concludes with a long act of the crew being finished off one by one until Sigourney Weaver as Ripley the Warrant Officer escapes in the shuttle, destroys the ship thinking the alien is in the ship but soon finds out it stowed away with her on the shuttle and then she kills it. End of story.
Now for the time of 1979, Alien was controversial for it's only one graphic horror scene as it was never seen in an explicit way in any film before. Personally I think this is the best Science Fiction film, because it doesn't use big special effects to capture an audience like Star Wars, it doesn't make itself too gory apart from the one scene which was unexpected, it doesn't have the usual old corny sci-fi dialogue like Star Wars and Silent Running and it doesn't use consistent violence to make it a scary horror film. Instead it uses quiet suspense to make audiences jumpy or frightened. Alien also has a relatively small cast consisting of eight people (including Bolaji Badejo as the Alien in a costume) and a ginger cat. I thought the cast were very convincing as the crew, especially Ian Holm as the secret android sent by the ruthless company who loaned out the crew.
The film became so sucessful that 20th Century Fox released a worthy sequel in 1986 named Aliens. But after Aliens, came the biggest and saddest loss with Alien 3, a horrible, bleak and disgusting film that brought down the franchise. Hard to believe that Alien 3 was David Fincher's first film and its even worse now because I became a massive fan of David Fincher as soon as he redeemed himself with Se7en (1995). If your asking yourself about the spelling, please don't be annoyed its just how the title was stylised. In 1997, 20th Century Fox had to ruin the franchise even more by bringing out Alien: Resurrection. Well the only words I can use for 20th Century Fox are, I'm unbelievably horrified at what you have done to ruin a potentially good franchise by releasing the latter of films.
I will give Alien (1979) 4/4 stars and you can catch all my reviews at Reviews from the Count via Blogspot.
