Alien Quadrilogy Retrospective: Alien

When George Lucas’s Star Wars hit theatres in May 1977, the exuberant space opera finished the job that Jaws had started two years earlier. That double-whammy set Hollywood cinema on a course away from the gritty auteur-led projects that typified the American New Wave towards crowd pleasers with state-of-the-art special effects. It also reinvigorated the moribund science fiction genre, making it suddenly big bucks again.

A meteor storm of sci-fi adventures rained down on theatres, some more obviously inspired by Lucas’s global blockbusters that others, and the influence lasted well into the next decade: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Black Hole, Flash Gordon, Krull, The Last Starfighter, The Ice Pirates, and Spaceballs.

Mel Brooks’ spoof was mostly parodying Star Wars with characters like Dark Helmet and Pizza the Hut, but it was also notable for a skit involving John Hurt and a high-kicking, straw boater-wearing creature that bursts from his chest and treats the shocked onlookers to a rendition of Michigan J. Frog’s signature tune from One Froggy Evening.

In this scene, Lucas’s film intersected with Looney Tunes and a far scarier movie that got a boost from the Star Wars phenomenon. Directed by Ridley Scott, its premise was simple. Light years from Earth, the crew of a hulking interstellar spaceship are picked off one by one by a ferocious alien creature. The title: Star Beast.

That’s how it started out, anyway. The concept came from the mind of Dan O’Bannon, the writer, actor, and special effects wizard whose career began with Dark Star, a student project made by his university pal John Carpenter. The expanded version of the cult sci-fi comedy was essentially a collection of sketches about the ordinary-joe crew of a spacecraft sent on a mission to destroy unstable planets. Along the way, their travails include the destruction of their entire supply of toilet paper, a talking bomb that threatens to destroy the ship, and a beach ball-like alien creature. 

The alien looked suitably ridiculous, but the scenes following the crew as they search for it through the corridors and vents of the ship are genuinely suspenseful, hinting at Carpenter’s later mastery of turning the screws on an audience.

O’Bannon’s work on Dark Star improbably got him the SFX gig on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune, the Chilean madman’s visionary and wildly ambitious adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal novel. O’Bannon worked on the ill-fated project in Paris alongside a trio of legendary artists that Jodorowsky had corralled for the film: Chris Foss, Moebius, and H.R. Giger. Sadly, the production collapsed after six months (check out the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune – it was surely one of the best movies never made) but Giger’s sinister yet strangely beautiful biomechanical designs had a huge impact on O’Bannon. By the time he returned to the States, he had an idea for his next screenplay: He would write a movie about one of Giger’s creatures.

Sitting down to work, he combined it with an earlier concept about gremlins terrorising the crew of a WWII bomber, and he also had little qualms about cribbing from other sci-fi classics. “I didn’t steal Alien from anybody,” he later said in an interview, “I stole it from everybody!” Into the script went a little bit of The Thing From Another World with a dash of Forbidden Planet and a pinch of Planet of the Vampires. Although inspired by some proper hokum, O’Bannon (understandably) wasn’t too keen on the working title, Star Beast. 

He switched it to Alien, which was a masterstroke: simple, scary, understated, mysterious, and the movie’s classic poster would follow suit. The iconic artwork just featured a sinister-looking egg set against a black background with ghoulish green light emerging from a crack in its shell. Combined with the tagline “In Space No One Can Hear You Scream,” it was so effective that the fact it was a regular old chicken’s egg totally unlike the alien eggs in the film barely registers.

20th Century Fox initially had doubts about the marketability of the film before the success of Star Wars put rocket boosters on the project. O’Bannon wanted to direct, but Fox wanted more experience; they originally targeted Walter Hill (The Warriors), but he had a busy schedule and opted for a co-producer role.

A shortlist of other directors included the likes of John Boorman, Robert Aldrich, and Robert Altman, but it fell to Ridley Scott instead. Scott had started out making TV commercials in Britain (most famously the Boy on the Bike advert for Hovis bread) and made his film debut with The Duellists in 1977. Scott eagerly snapped up the opportunity and set to work, determined to pump up the horror element of O’Bannon’s screenplay. The script had undergone significant re-writes in the early development process including the addition of Ash, a life-like android with a ruthless hidden agenda.

The working script included a note from Ronald Shusett, the roommate who had developed the original story with O’Bannon, stating that “The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men and women.” This gave Scott plenty of leeway with the characters and casting. And what a cast he put together; a strong line-up that allowed him more time to focus on the visual storytelling without having to worry about directing performances.

With no major stars onboard, Scott was also able to keep his cards close to his chest. It isn’t immediately obvious who our main protagonist is and therefore we have no clue who will live or die. The first character we focus on is Kane (John Hurt), the Nostromo’s second-in-command, as he awakes from stasis. He’s flanked by Parker (Yaphet Kotto), the chief engineer, and Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer. We only see the other four members of the crew as they are sat around the dinner table: Dallas (Tom Skerritt), the captain and nominal star of the film; Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the warrant officer and eventual lone survivor; Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), the technician; and Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), the navigator. 

Weaver made her screen debut with a bit part in Annie Hall a few years earlier and only had one other credit to her name when she appeared in Alien. Initially, she barely registers as part of the ensemble as the focus is more on Dallas, Kane, and Ash. She comes off as a little officious and humourless, and there isn’t much to indicate why she would become the backbone of a huge franchise until people start dying and she takes command of the situation.

Roger Ebert also noted that the Alien cast were older on average than the usual actors commonly found in thrillers at the time, presented as regular everyday types who are just out in deep space working for a paycheck rather than swashbuckling adventurers. 

Similarly, the Nostromo is a working ship that convincingly looks lived in. Instead of the gleaming white corridors of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the interior of the mining ship is cramped and murky. Crew members smoke constantly and put their feet up on computer consoles. It is their home for the duration of the trip and they inhabit it much like a trucker does with his sleeping cab on long journeys.

The whole cast essay neat character studies. While we may not find out much about these people, they are instantly believable in the roles: We know who these people are from the get-go, and it grounds the film in a reality that we can relate to. The workmanlike performances and confines of the Nostromo also provides a down-to-earth contrast when we get to the fantastical stuff. 

When they touch down on a barren moon orbiting a huge ringed planet (Alien lore establishes this as LV-426 orbiting exo-planet Calpamos, 39 light years from Earth) they find that the signal is coming from the improbable wreck of a horseshoe-shaped spaceship. Now we see Giger’s designs in all their baleful glory: the gnarled and hostile surface of the moon; the unsettlingly organic-looking corridors of the ship; a huge deceased creature that would become affectionately known by fans as the Space Jockey; and a vast open space filled with hundreds, or possibly thousands, of leathery eggs.

Kane is the first to encounter the egg chamber and, establishing a trope that would persist throughout the entire series, peers into it when he should be legging it back to the dropship. A jump-scare introduces us to the horrible facehugger, and the practical effects on the thing when they get Kane back to the medical bay are really impressive. I love the way it pulsates and tightens its grip around the stricken man’s throat when Ash and Dallas tentatively try to remove it, and the acid blood is a neat touch that sums up the sheer hostility of this alien species.

What comes next is the stuff of sci-fi horror legend, a moment of shock-and-awe perhaps only rivalled by the spider-head “chest chomp” scene in John Carpenter’s The Thing. The facehugger detaches itself from Kane of its own accord and he awakes, groggy but otherwise rather cheerful. His good spirits don’t last long, however, as tucking into a meal prompts a very phallic-looking alien hatchling with steel teeth to erupt from his chest. 

The filming of the chestburster scene was genuinely shocking for the cast, who had seen the design of the creature and knew it would emerge from Kane’s chest, but they weren’t prepared for the squibs that would spatter them with fake gore. Cartwright came off worst, hit in the face by a strong jet of blood that caused her to go into hysterics.

With Kane dead, the remaining crew have a monster hunt on their hands, and they fatally find out that the creature grows up very quickly. The life-cycle of the alien, which would become known as the Xenomorph, wasn’t established at this stage. It would only get more complicated with the ever-expanding lore surrounding the series and by Ridley Scott’s unsatisfactory prequels, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.

In a cut scene, the lone Ripley stumbles on a hive space created by the alien where Brett and Dallas, who is still alive, are morphing into new eggs. The scene was put back in for the Director’s Cut in 2003, but by then James Cameron had introduced a far more plausible method: A mighty Alien Queen who lays the eggs via a gigantic gloopy sac. Since then, fan theories about a process called Ovomorphing, or Eggmorphing, have found their way into canon. This workaround suggests that in the absence of a Queen, a lone Xenomorph can turn its victims into eggs and carry on the species until a new Queen is produced.

Like in Jaws a few years earlier, Scott wisely kept his alien largely unseen apart from terrifying glimpses as the crew are picked off from the shadows. We see a lethal serrated tail and a close-up money shot of a domed, eyeless head with a set of extendable jaws dripping with saliva, an effect that was created by using lots of KY jelly. For the full body appearance, a suit was created for Bolaji Badejo, a slender 6 ft 10 inch Nigerian visual artist who Scott’s casting team discovered in a Soho pub. Badejo brings a lithe athleticism to the creature, although the Xeno has an unfortunate man-in-a-monster-suit look in a couple of shots.

Throughout the film, Scott keeps the pace slow-burning and suspenseful. The introduction of a motion tracker device, which would also be used to great effect in the sequel, is a really simple and effective way to crank up the tension. I do have issues with one element, however: that damn cat.

Alien is often compared to a haunted house film in outer space, but it has more in common with a newer genre that burst onto the scene a year earlier with John Carpenter’s Halloween: the slasher movie. For a sci-fi horror with such an elevated status, its stalk-and-slash tropes slightly cheapen the overall downbeat dread. Ripley’s feline friend provides at least two jump scares and way too many characters wander off alone in the dark to search for the cat while a biomechanical killing machine is on the loose. That includes Ripley, who becomes our Final Girl at the end.

In the gripping last reel, Ripley decides to kill the creature by setting the ship to self-destruct and get away in the escape pod. A fourth act was added with the Xeno hitching a ride with her, setting up a deadly final confrontation. This is where we get another slasher element creeping in. Women are routinely sexualised in slashers and the scene where Ripley strips down to her underwear ready to enter hypersleep remains a contentious issue.

Critics of the scene contend that it is gratuitous and exploitative, especially regarding the visibility of her butt crack in her tighty-whities and the prominence of her nipples through her tank top as she climbs into her space suit when she realises the creature is onboard. James Cameron even piled onto the issue in 2018, saying the perceived strip tease “crossed the line.”

On the other hand, the movie has already established that crew members wear only underwear in hypersleep and it emphasises Ripley’s fleshy human vulnerability versus the sleek brute force of the Xenomorph. For her part, Weaver wanted to go one step further and do the scene naked, feeling that the underwear was a cop out. That idea was too much for the studio.

Whatever way you look at it, it’s an effective final showdown. Violent sexual imagery is abound throughout the movie with the alien species forcefully penetrating the crew members, from the facehugger that essentially rapes Kane orally to impregnate him to the grown Xeno slamming oozing steel jaws from its phallic head into its victims at every opportunity. Now the tables are turned as Ripley penetrates the creature instead, skewering it with a harpoon gun and blasting it into space.

Ridley Scott wanted to conclude the movie with the creature biting Ripley’s head off, but that was too much of a downer. Besides, it would have denied Ripley the chance to gain her iconic status as one of the strongest female characters in sci-fi history. Having said that, dying in the third movie hardly stopped her from returning in Alien: Resurrection…

Instead, the film concludes with Ripley leaving a final log note explaining the fate of the Nostromo and the other crew members before she and the cat enter hypersleep. Surely it won’t be too long before someone picks her up and nobody else is likely to stumble upon all those other eggs on LV-426, right?

So there you have it, our look back at Ridley Scott’s Alien. Where does it rank in your overall estimation of the Alien franchise? Watch this space for the next instalment of our quadrilogy retrospective: James Cameron’s Aliens.