It’s been years since I’ve seen the movie that started it all and I have to admit that I’m not sure why. Despite being more than 20 years old, Alien moves at a pace that would match even today’s films. I do admit that it’s been long enough since I’ve seen the original, theatrical release, or even what has been available on video, that I can only guess at the restored footage. What the director’s cut made me realize is that Alien has for many years been wrongly labeled a science fiction film. The reality is, Alien has all the classic hallmarks of a Grade-A horror movie.
The opening shots of the empty corridors of the Nostromo set the horror movie tone with an extremely reduced field of view. This camera technique heightens tension on the trek to the ship on the planet-toid, carries through the dinner scene in which the alien is ‘born,’ and continues right through to the last human death on the ship. The reduced field of view, particularly on a large screen, causes in the viewer an almost physical need to turn and look at that which can not be seen out of the range of the camera’s eye. Regardless of whether or not anything is happening out of the range of the camera’s eye, the viewer picks up on the actors’ terror and is pulled into the movie further than a wider shot would allow.
Not only is the camera work marked by horror movie technique, the use of sound effects, and, most importantly, the absence of sound combine to create an aural landscape that, even without seeing the alien, serves to trigger the brain’s built in fight or flight terror reflex. The use of an actual heartbeat during one sequence of the film only serves to bring to the forefront the underlying themes of sexual terror and fear of the birth process.
All that said, Alien is a damn fine film. It’s well paced, well acted, the production values, with the exception of the 1970s era computer technology, still hold up. In addition, Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley still embodies the female warrior archetype that has become so prevalent in American cinema in the past twenty or so years. In many ways movie heroines from Sarah Connor right through Trinity would not exist without Ellen Ripley. If for no other reason than that, and even without mentioning the impossibly small underwear that has made the climax of this film such a cult classic, I’m giving Alien four and a half out of a possible five.
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