Alien

While titularly a sci-fi movie, it had all the hallmarks of a classic horror flick; lengthy stretchs of tension that you could cut with a knife, heart-pounding suspense, bugaboos that pop out of seemingly nowhere and desperate races for safety and escape.

Alien: The Look, the Feel

Set aboard a grungy freighter towing oar for 'the Company', the movie has a look that owes a lot to the art of famed fantasy artist H. R. Giger, who won an Oscar for his artwork in the film. His aliens are vintage Giger, creepy slime-covered behemoths with redundant and inventive appendages and bio-based architecture.

Alien was the breakout film for director Ridley Scott, who went on to direct BladeRunner, Thelma and Louise, Gladiator and others. It also provided the breakout role for actress Sigourney Weaver, who stars are Warrant Officer Ripley, a role she reprised in the sequels.

The Story

The freighter Nostrodomo is diverted to investigate a distress call. The call is non-human, and old enough that it is thought that the originators are probably beyond help - the Company is apparently motivated by hopes of valuable salvage.

The seven-person crew of the freighter discover a derelict spacecraft, with all personnel aboard dead a violent death. Some actually have huge holes in their chests. In the course of investigating, the Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) is attacked by a 'face hugger', a small many-legged creature that wraps itself around his face. The Nostradomo crew get him back to the freighter, where the creature is surgically removed and Kane appears to be recovering.

Then in one of the most terrifying scenes ever filmed, during a quiet moment onboard the ship, Kane is ripped apart from the inside, as a creature emerges from his chest.

We discover, as the crew does, that the 'face-hugger' form is an intermediate stage in the alien's lifecycle, between the eggs laid by the Queen and the full-blown morphology of the mature xenomorph. "Face-huggers" need a host to create the next stage of life, and lie in wait in the eggs for suitable hosts to present themselves. Then they are taken over and 'impregnated' with the next level lifeform, which kills the host as it emerges.

Thus follows a heart-pounding race for survival, as the remaining crew attempts to avoid becoming host material for the creepy little things. It's an elimination match, with eventually only Ripley surviving to escape in the escape pod, destroying the Nostradomo behind her.

But of course, Scott has one more scare waiting for us, as Ripley discovers she is not alone in the pod. This scene lives on in the minds of men who were boys in the seventies, as the 'underwear' scene, since Ripley had stripped down to her skivvies before she learned she had a passenger. The quick-thinking warrant officer manages to make it into a pressure suit before blowing the intruder out the airlock with all the shuttle's atmosphere.

For Maximal Effectiveness, Threaten a Small Animal

This movie has stayed with me for decades in part because of the effectiveness of using the ship's cat. As the ship's computer counts down the self-destruct sequence and Ripley is dashing to the escape pod, I'm sure I wasn't the only one in the theater yelling 'Don't Forget the Cat!' And indeed, she raced back to pick up the cat in its kitty-carrier. Pshew!