Completed: Alien

Originally published December 3, 2011 on Tumblr

So yesterday not only did i see Kiki’s deliver service for the first time…. i also saw Alien…. our school has a theater and every friday they open it up and watch movies.

so some things to keep in mind about me while you read this.

I’m not a huge sci-fi fan if only for the reason that it takes place, most of the time at least, in space… i don’t like space very much… which is odd cause i love stars and planets and the whatnot…

Also i don’t like horror because i can’t find it scary (unless it’s a plague horror…. those things scare the shit out of me)… i focus too much on the “they did this effect like this” or “wow they did a good/bad job on the blood” to actually get immersed and scared.

So…. thats brings us to Alien.the version we watched was the ‘original 1979 theatrical version’ according to the Blue ray disk…

I would call this film a deserted Island sci-fi horror. We start with a title screen slowly coming to light over title cards…. then we are introduced to the ship which has a crew of 7 and a cat.

They all wake up from freezing expecting to be brought to earth but they seem to have gone way off course.

Captain Dallas goes to the computer system, MOTHER, and asks what is going on…. apparently there was a 12 second loop that they think is a distress call and their company protocol is to check it out or forfeit their ship.

so they go to this planet and three of them try to go find the source of the loop. Back on the ship Ridley, played by a very young Sigourney Weaver, checks over the message and finds out it doesn’t seem to be an SOS…. it sounds more like a warning…

oh this can only end well. 

anyways one of the three guys comes across some odd looking eggs…. one opens up and we are introduced to the face huggers. they bring the guy with Alien stuck to his head on board, breaking all the quarantine rules,  and try to treat him. 

again… nothing could possibly go wrong… 

so apparently these aliens bleed acid and will not let go on the guys face… but the guy doesn’t seem to be dying… just comatose and paralyzed. Eventually they even see that the face hugger has let go and it somewhere in the room. 

They do find it… and it’s dead…. hm… that didn’t seem so scary…. oh… except now there's a freaky alien bursting from the guys chest…. that can’t be good. 

so now they have this vicious killer alien on the ship and people start getting killed off… eventually we find out that one of the crew members is a robot that was told to bring the alien back alive even if it was at the crews expense. 

so the remaining crew + 1 cat end up trying to kill the alien with no luck and eventually decide blowing up the ship is the best course of action. 

after a lot of painful flashing and a few more deaths only Ridley and cat are left, they make it to the escape pod and the ship blows up 3 times… too bad the alien made it onto the ship as well…. but it just seems to want to survive and doesn’t seem to be out to kill her right now…. still she dons a suit that’ll give her air and puts the cat in the freezing thing  then gets the alien to go to the airlock… then shoots it with a grappling hook and when it tried to get back in through the thruster she turns them on and burns it to a crisp. 

so… seeing as she’s the only survivor she does her report and goes to sleep and hopes one of the scanners will find her ship.

The end~ 

now i know that's a lot of spoiler but honestly…. if you haven’t seen a movie this old then you deserve to get spoilers…. i’m surprised i hadn’t heard any spoilers to be honest…. 

but yeah… what did i think? 

I liked it…. the practical effects looks amazing even by todays standards…. except the robot head…. that looked so bad that when it switched from prop to actor the entire audience laughed. also the explosion looked like a drawing but that's okay… it was the 70’s…. but the face hugger looked like real flesh and the alien had this crazy sheen on it and the sets were great. 

the story was pretty good…. i mean like i said i don’t like sci-fi or horror but this was enjoyable. unfortunately i already knew ripley survived cause i’ve heard she’s in the second one so that took a little suspense out of it. 

things i didn’t like… The flashing… in a dark room it was just painful to look at everyone had to put a hand over their eyes to be able to avoid headaches. oh and i  guess there was a tone of sexual imagery that just seemed silly… but otherwise a pretty good film…. i’ll eventually see Aliens as i’ve heard argued that it’s the better of the two films…. 

but for now…. i need some princess tutu~