I watched the movie Alien today for the first time since I saw it back in 1979.\u00a0 Some things surprised me about the movie but the general impression is much as I remember it.\u00a0 Luckily, the most annoying thing about the movie as I remembered it, the wildly varying sound levels used as a weapon against those with intact ear drums, was under my direct control thanks to the volume button.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t give a detailed synopsis since everyone knows the plot.\u00a0 I\u2019ll describe it as follows.\u00a0 An Earth space ship, the Nostromo, is travelling to Earth with a large cargo of ore.\u00a0 The crew is awakened to investigate a message beacon coming from a nearby planetoid.\u00a0 On it they find an ancient space ship with a long dead creature that seems to have died when something exploded out of its chest.\u00a0 They discover a chamber that contains what look like eggs.\u00a0 One of the eggs opens up and a crab-like creature smashes through the spacesuit helmet of one of the crew (played by John Hurt) and attaches itself to his face.\u00a0 Later on, back at the ship the creature detaches from the crewman\u2019s face and wanders off to die.\u00a0 The crewman is seemingly unharmed but a few hours later a small somewhat humanoid creature erupts out of the crewman\u2019s chest killing him.\u00a0 The creature which is about a foot tall runs off into the ship and the crew goes on a search to find it and throw it out into space.<\/p>\n
Somehow the creature increases in size until it\u2019s about seven feet tall and spends the rest of the movie killing off the rest of the crew.\u00a0 Finally, the only one left is Warrant Officer Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver.\u00a0 She sets the Nostromo to self-destruct and escapes on a shuttle craft.\u00a0 But, of course, the alien is on the shuttle so she has to sneak into her space suit, open the air lock and shoot the alien with a grappling gun to push it out into space.\u00a0 It manages to grab onto the engine so she ignites it thus ejecting the charcoal broiled alien into interstellar space.<\/p>\n
The movie is a mixed bag.\u00a0 The sets on the planetoid and the exterior shots of the Nostromo are beautifully done.\u00a0 The interior shots of the Nostromo for the most part succeed in portraying a futuristic but gritty industrial environment.\u00a0 I guess a combination of a tramp steamer and a star ship.\u00a0 But one of the worst features of the movie is intentional.\u00a0 Apparently, the designers and constructors of the ship ran out of light switches.\u00a0 The whole movie takes place in the absence of light.\u00a0 You can\u2019t see a thing.\u00a0 Sure, every once in a while, the monster\u2019s jaws and its inner jaws start opening up and monster drool drips out but you never get to see the damned thing doing anything other than that.\u00a0 And there\u2019s a very good reason for that.\u00a0 When all is said and done and all the marvelous CGI shots of the planetoid and the Nostromo are taken into account it\u2019s still a movie with a guy in a rubber suit.\u00a0 And that\u2019s just not going to cut it.\u00a0 So, most of the movie is just the crew running around in the dark waiting to scream when the monster bites them or injects them with an egg or whatever the hell it\u2019s supposed to be doing when it catches them.<\/p>\n
The actors do a creditable job with what they\u2019re given.\u00a0 In fact, most of them seem quite interesting and I wouldn\u2019t mind watching a prequel where we see them interact while performing their duties as the crew of an interstellar ore freighter.\u00a0 I\u2019ll bet they could make such a movie fun and interesting with all kinds of adventures and sights.\u00a0 But as monster fodder it\u2019s a sort of limited palette.\u00a0 Look left, look right, oops he\u2019s behind you.\u00a0 Look all around you, uh oh he\u2019s hiding on the ceiling.\u00a0 What this movie needed was a few Maglite flashlights.\u00a0 Then they not only would have seen the monster but also beat it to death with the generous heft of the Maglite ML300L LED 6-Cell D Flashlight.<\/p>\n
There was one really scary scene.\u00a0 When Ripley escapes the Nostromo in the shuttle, before she discovers that the alien is in with her, she strips down to her skimpy underwear before entering the hibernation chamber.\u00a0 And for the most part she seemed admirably contoured for a young woman thus attired but then she turned away from the camera and I discovered with horror that her butt was missing.\u00a0 Instead of gluteus maximus she seemed to be suffering from a case of gluteus minimus.\u00a0 What could have happened to her?\u00a0 Did she lose her butt in some kind of industrial accident?\u00a0 Did she donate it to someone else in the very rarely mentioned butt transplant surgery?\u00a0 We may never know.\u00a0 I still haven\u2019t completely recovered from the shock.<\/p>\n
Suffice it to say I have a mixed opinion on this movie.\u00a0 If you think you could enjoy a poorly lit game of hide and seek with an interstellar menace then go for it.\u00a0 You will see some nice visuals.\u00a0 But watch out for Sigourney Weaver\u2019s butt.\u00a0 It\u2019s truly shocking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I watched the movie Alien today for the first time since I saw it back in 1979.\u00a0 Some things surprised me about the movie but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237,4,243],"tags":[2588,43,38,1355,3432,265,3431],"class_list":["post-16841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-movie-reviews","tag-john-hurt","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-ridley-scott","tag-science-fiction","tag-sigourney-weaver"],"yoast_head":"\n