Movie Review by Bill Rendall

Alien

My scariest movie scene award goes to Alien. The scene features a baby alien tearing itself out of John Hurt's belly. A man gets to experience the pain of carrying and giving birth to an unwanted child. Being stalked by an evil alien is bad enough but having one inside you is even worse. There really is nowhere to hide.

The story of Alien was inspired by a 1958 movie called It! The Terror From Beyond Space. The crew of a space ship unwittingly take on board an evil alien hell-bent on killing everyone in sight. The tension in the air is palpable as the crew members are killed one by one and we wait to see who will be the alien's next victim.

The alien monster is truly horrific. It was designed by the Swiss artist H.R.Giger. His previous contribution to popular culture was designing the album cover and logo for Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery.

Alien broke new ground by featuring a dominant, heroic female role model in Ripley (Sigourney Weaver.) The movie's director, Ridley Scott, later directed Thelma and Louise and G.I. Jane which also feature strong female roles. However, the women in these two movies end up doing less to advance the female cause than Ripley does in Alien.

If you enjoy horror and science fiction then you can't do better than watching the original Alien. I am not a fan of the horror genre but even I like this one.

Director: Ridley Scott

Screenplay: Dan O'Bannon

Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Further viewing:

Alien was followed by a great sequel called Aliens. James Cameron took over as director and made good use of improvements in special effects. He reinforced the theme of strong female characters dominating weak males. He brought three of the actors from The Terminator with him despite having a reputation for being one of the most difficult directors to work for.

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