What’s crazy about the original 1979 Alien that like a lot of horror movies from that decade, it was originally intended to just play as an exploitation drive-in movie. With another Alien movie, Alien Romulus, in theaters, let’s look back at the movie that started it all.
The late Dan O’Bannon who had worked with John Carpenter on Dark Star, his first feature debut as a director, said he felt some people were expecting something more serious than the comedy the movie was intended to be. O’Bannon said he was growing tired of how science fiction movies set in space portrayed everything as clean and neat. The characters in Dark Star are scruffy dingy characters. There’s even a mischievous alien that really nothing more than a beach ball with some fake claw feet on it.
The movie wasn’t well-received as Carpenter and O’Bannon would go to nearly empty theaters. O’Bannon was upset people weren’t laughing at scenes he thought was funny. So, he commented “If I can’t make them laugh, then maybe I can make them scream.” Alien is a twist where the crew is terrorized by a creature. O’Bannon also suffered from Crohn’s disease most of his life. He would die in 2009 from complications of the disease. But he also said he was fascinated by using the disease as a foreign object that was inside his body.
After working for months in Paris on Alajandro Jodorowsky’s failed Dune adaptation, O’Bannon found himself broke and homeless crashing on the couch of Ronald Shussett, a fellow writer. O’Bannon had written 29 pages of a script titled Memory that would be the starting of Alien. He decided to revive it with Shussett who told him to add in the idea he also had about a gremlin terrorizing a B-17 bomber during WWII and just move that to a spaceship in outer space. Shussett would also come up with the idea of a crew member being implanted with an embryo.
Both O’Bannon and Shussett would write a script taking things from The Thing From Another World, Forbidden Planet, Planet of the Vampires and other works. O’Bannon said “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody. I stole it from everybody.” They actually told people it was basically “Jaws in Space” as they tried to sell the script. They almost had a deal with low-budget filmmaker Roger Corman. However, they happened to know a friend who was connected to a new production company, Brandywine, created by Walter Hill, Gordon Carroll and David Giler, which had a distribution deal with 20th Century Fox.
However, the studio wasn’t interested in doing a science fiction movie. That was until Star Wars opened in the summer of 1977 and became a phenomenal blockbuster. Interest rose and Ridley Scott was chosen as Carroll, Giler and Hill as producers felt a more established director would treat the movie like a B-movie. Scott said he wanted the movie to be a horror movie even though the storyboards made it look more like a fantasy. Alien has also been described as a haunted house movie in space.
Speaking of Jaws, there’s very little of the titular character seen in the movie. Even the shark in Jaws got more screen time. Because of the impressive design based on the works of H.R. Giger, the Xenomorph lurks around in the shadows and often blends in with the dirty metal background of the ship. We don’t even spot it at one point even though it’s right in front of our eyes.
The plot revolves around the Nostromo, a commercial tug ship, which is transporting some material back to Earth. The seven-member crew is in stasis is awoken thinking they’re close to Earth but discover through their Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), the ship’s main computer picked up a distress call from a planet that actually is farther away from Earth than they thought.
When they land on the planet, Dallas along with the executive officer Kane (John Hurt) and navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) don spacesuits and go out to investigate the distress call. However they don’t see much activity except for a space jockey creature who appears to have a giant hole in its chest. Kane is lowered down into a chamber with hundred of large eggs.
On the ship, warrant officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and science officer, Ash (Ian Holm), have a disagreement over the distress call. Ripley, upon examining it more, says it appears to be a warning. However, Ash says the others have been gone so long they’ve probably already know if it is dangerous. And Kane discovers that is true as one of the eggs open and a huge spider-like creature (later identified as a face-hugger) lungs out toward him, breaking through the glass on his helmet.
Dallas and Lambert carry Kane back to the ship. However, Ripley refuses to allow them in as it’s protocol to put in quarantine. However, Ash overrides her and allows them in. This is where the movie sets up a bait and switch. We presume Ripley is going to be the antagonistic character. She argues with engineers Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and is critical of Lambert’s navigation because they were supposed to be directed toward Earth when they awoke from stasis.
We assume Dallas is going to be the chief protagonist. By 1979, Skerritt was making a name for himself after appearing in movies like MASH and The Turning Point as well as the lead in low-budget exploitation movies like Big Bad Mama and The Devil’s Rain. This was Weaver’s first leading role and making her the chief protagonist isn’t common in a movie like this. In the extended cut of the movie, Lambert punches Ripley for not wanting to let them back on the ship and Dallas yells at her for disobeying his order even though she followed proper protocol. I can see why Scott cut these scenes because it ruins the set-up that anyone on the Nostromo is vulnerable for what is going to happen next.
SPOILER ALERT!! Ash and Dallas realize it’s impossible to remove the face-hugger from Kane’s face because its tail will wrap around his throat to choke him. Also, it has acid for blood which means they can’t cut it off on fear the acid might cause more damages to Kane or the ship. After a while the face-hugger dies and falls off. With the ship repairs fixed they take off back to resume their route back to Earth.
Kane wakes up before they have to go back in stasis so they all decided to eat before. However, while they’re doing this, Kane starts convulsing and a small creature bursts out of his chest killing him. One thing particular they did that makes the chest-burster more disturbing is by having pieces of Kane’s inner organs and blood covering the creature. It’s been highly debated over the years that the cast was unaware of what would happen. A shot of fake blood spraying Cartwright by accident as she screams stayed in as she was not prepared for that. Considering how a difficult scene would be set up and shot, it’s highly unlikely the cast went into it unaware of what all would happen.
They try to track the creature down to kill it. But it takes Brett when he mistakes Ripley’s cat Jones for the creature on a motion sensor. I’ve always found the image of Jones watching Brett being killed and taken up in the crawlspaces of the ship to be disturbing. It shows the difference between human and animals. Jones could sense the alien, now a full-grown Xenomorph, but Brett couldn’t.
The next one to go is Dallas in an odd twist that shows the audience that everyone is vulnerable. While trying to track the Xenomorph through the tunnels to set it on fire, he gets turned around and comes directly into contact with it in one of the best jump scares ever. The editing by Terry Rawlings and Peter Weatherly help create an eerie sense of horror on this ship. Despite the chest-burster scene, the movie is actually not that violent. I’d argue Jaws was more violent. And it got a PG rating while Alien is rated R.
This is why another scene was cut out because we see the fates of Brett and Dallas during the climax. Scott said the scene was cut out for pacing and it does seem to bring the climax to a halt halfway through when it’s not needed. Also, it leaves it to our imagination what happens to Brett and Dallas. Also, the fates of Parker and Lambert are hardly shown. It’s been suggested that the Xenomorph uses its spiked tail to sexually assault Lambert. However, this has been debated over the years with some people saying the tail moving through her legs was to pull her closer so it could kill her.
We never see much because a lot of what happens to Parker and Lambert as it’s heard over the radio PA system as Ripley tries to rescue them and then decides it’s futile and she saves herself. There’s a lot of imagery in the movie with the eggs as well as the face-hugger more or less violating Kane’s body by implanting an embryo in him. Then, when the creature bursts out of his chest, there’s a phallic look to it.
The ship’s main computer is referred to as “Mother.” Parker reads dirty skin magazines and has them all over his room. When Ripley learns that the company has set an order that Ash try to to secure the Xenomorph alive at the risk of the other crew, they fight. He knocks her out and using the skin magazines rolled up to choke her by ramming them down her throat. You can see the imagery right there.
Parker comes to Ripley’s rescue and they use a fire extinguisher cannister to knock Ash in the head. He spins around and spews what is supposed to be white fluid. It’s a stretch but you can say Ash is getting aroused by the violence and has an orgasm which causes him to flip out as there is a correlation between sex and violence. Ash is an android unbeknownst to the rest of the crew. This goes back to a scene before Kane dies where Ash seems to be watching Kane a little too closely. Did Ash know something he didn’t share with the rest of the crew? It’s possible, but even he was surprised by what happened.
There’s also been some questions about how Ripley when she thinks she’s safe on the shuttle after setting off the self-destruct mechanism that destroys the Nostromo, she strips off her clothes. Underneath, she’s wearing panties that are a little too revealing and a undershirt showing off her midriff. She is preparing to go back into stasis but you have to wonder why does Ripley have to be in her underwear? I’m sure this was a creative choice by the director and/or producers. You can’t have a beautiful woman like Weaver who’s Ripley takes no shit off anyone without giving the guys some eye-candy.
It’s ironic because Ripley has become the iconic role Weaver is most famous for, next to Ghostbusters and Gorillas in the Midst. In the sequel, Aliens, she earned an Oscar nomination for her role. Dame Helen Mirren also auditioned for the role and while I like Mirren so much, she was already an established actress of stage and screen by 1979. Because Weaver was relatively unknown, it works in the bait and switch as we don’t realize until two-thirds in, Ripley is going to be the hero. It’s a great way to trick the audience without making them feel they’ve been tricked. (An unused idea was to have the Xenomorph kill Ripley and use her voice to record a distress call.)
As for the Xenomorph itself, it’s hard to imagine there was actually a human in the costume. Bolaji Badejo who stood at 6-foot-10 was discovered by the casting department. Stuntmen were also used for a creature that has very little screen time, Scott and the editors make sure we never fully see the Xenomorph at full scale much. Badejo does a great job making it move like something that we forget it’s a guy in suit. Sadly, Badejo would die of sickle cell disease in his native Nigeria in 1992.
Produced on a budget of $11 million, it would gross over almost $185 million worldwide which was a lot of money at the time. And while it’s spawned a franchise of sequels, prequels and cross-overs, the original still remains as terrifying now as it was back in 1979. In Alien 3, the Xenomorph walked on four legs as it was born out of a dog. The idea that a creature forms inside you to kill you but also adapts to your body type before it does is very disturbing.
You also have to wonder how the audiences felt the face-hugger was the titular character when they saw it in theaters only to discover it was a lot worse. And you got to love a movie with the tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 