Alien
Ripley: "How do we kill it, Ash? There's gotta be a way of killing it. How? How do we do it?"
Ash: "You can't."
Parker: "That's bullshit."
Ash: "You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility."
Lambert: "You admire it."
Ash: "I admire its purity. A survivor...unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
release year: 1979
genre: sci-fi/horror
viewing setting: home Bluray, 11/1/20 and 1/28/20 and 10/19/17 and 6/7/12 and 11/15/10 and theatrical re-release in IMAX, 10/29/03 and about a dozen other times since 1979
synopsis: In deep space, an ore freighter's crew investigates a distress signal, and finds something really nasty.
impressions: This may have been the first sci-fi/horror hybrid, and was undoubtedly the most successful. I still remember reading the HBO schedule in early 1980 and seeing that this movie was coming to my TV soon. I didn't know anything else about it, but I somehow knew I had to see it. And see it I did, a few months later. The movie hit me on a deep-down psychological level and it still does. This is without a doubt one of the greatest original mood/setting movies ever made. It's a sci-fi drama for the first half, then it evolves into a horror movie without you even realizing that the change is happening. This movie is always referred to as "atmospheric" and with good reason. The locations are dark, dirty, and creepy - even before there's a monster loose in them. I watched the expanded version the last few times, and it has some extra material (most notably Ripley's finding, late in the movie, of some cocooned shipmates.) If you want to get a better idea of the total cut scenes, check out Alan Dean Foster's novelization of the movie - they're in there. Note: I watched this most recently as part of the newly-released Alien Blu-Ray box set, and this is absolutely the best picture and sound treatment this movie's ever had on home video!
things to watch for: Kane's wakeup dinner.
something this movie has that no other movie has: a gigantic dead fossilized alien entombed in a creepy wrecked ship
acting: This movie has a cast of only 7 people, and they all do great jobs portraying characters with different strengths, weaknesses, and quirks. I personally think Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto did the best jobs, as the working grunts who complain and clown around constantly. Sigourney Weaver is fairly quiet (though competent) for most of the movie, then springs into action near the end.
final word: A classic. This is one of those movies that you really have to like to be counted as a true sci-fi fan.
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