Still Screaming in Space: Remembering “Alien” on its 40th Anniversary

Monday, 27 May 2019 16:10

Still Screaming in Space: Remembering “Alien” on its 40th Anniversary

by Michael Coate

Alien (1979) screenshot

Coate: What do you remember about the first time you saw Alien?

Barsanti: I saw it on VHS at a sleepover. We ate pizza and stayed up too late. I remember that I didn’t want my friends to know how terrified I was. I remember that the room we were watching it in had a large sliding glass door and that the night outside was dark enough to hide all kind of horrible things. I do not remember sleeping.

Rinzler: I remember it as a terrifying experience.

Sammon: I initially saw Alien during the first weekend of its opening theatrical release. My wife was with me. The theater was sold out, as there was already a buzz about this picture, one which, in that pre-Internet age, was solely due to word-of-mouth. And the communal experience of seeing the film was quite extraordinary. Basically, Alien’s makers could not have asked for a better audience response.

I immediately realized within the first few minutes that I was participating in a significant pop-culture event. The crowd loved it, was totally in sync with whatever mood was up there on the screen. Suspense, eerieness, wry humor, horrified surprise, whatever. We were living it, in the moment. Like only the best motion pictures make you do.

So I certainly enjoyed myself, and was caught up in the middle of that shared emotional stew. Yet part of me remained curiously unmoved. As I told my wife when we were leaving...she asked me what I felt about what we’d just seen, and I replied, “If I was 17 years old instead of 29, I’d be doing cartwheels out of the theater.” You can make of that statement what you will.

Coate: In what way is Alien a significant motion picture?

Barsanti: It was one of three major redefinitions of science-fiction film that occurred over a period of just a few years. From Star Wars to Alien to Blade Runner, you can see the roots just about every major genre permutation that would sprout up over the following couple of decades. Like those other trailblazers, Alien broke new frontiers in special effects storytelling. Like Blade Runner (also by Ridley Scott) it parsed the potential for psychological examination in a futuristic context.

Rinzler: It solidified the idea of space as not pristine, from a design POV. From that plus Star Wars, people making movies that take place in space could be more creative in how they depicted whatever world they were exploring. Also had a very strong female protagonist in Sigourney Weaver.

Sammon: The most common response over the decades to that question has been how effectively, and in such a strikingly original way, Alien successfully melded the science fiction, monster movie and horror genres. Which is of course completely accurate. There really had not been such an impactful example of what was essentially a “haunted house in outer space” movie prior to Ridley Scott’s film. Although there had been cheaper, lesser-known ones that were pretty damn good — Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires being among the most well-known precursor in that subgenre.

But beyond what I’ve mentioned, what’s always struck me about Alien was not only its obsessive attention to production detail and design but the fact that Scott and an uncredited Walter Hill (who did a major rewrite on Dan O’Bannon script) were able to present the film in such a subtle, adult way. Alien wasn’t only a ground breaking mashup of science fiction and horror — it was basically a serious film, deadly serious. One that elevated what could have been 99-cent-store material to a level of sophistication and maturity previously only seen in a handful of motion pictures like 2001, Quatermass and the Pit, and Colossus The Forbin Project.

Furthermore, Alien (like other 1970s films such as Jaws, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Godfather, and Star Wars) was a seminal landmark in the upgrade of shopworn B-movie clichés — monsters, comic book characters, flying saucers, gangsters, Saturday afternoon serials — into major A-movie assets.

Let’s not forget that with Alien’s central, ever-mutating creature, Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger created an iconic monster that’s endured for 40 years. The Xenomorph has joined the lasting ranks of classic cinematic creatures like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster, the Wolfman, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The last of which recently showed up in barely disguised fashion as an amphibious lover in The Shape of Water.

Another aspect of the film that caused great interest during its initial release was Alien’s graphic sexuality. By that I do not mean sexual explicitness; I’m referring to the film’s unprecedented proliferation of elegant yet strongly suggestive phallic and vaginal symbols.

The most obvious is the Xenomorph’s head. That’s essentially a gigantic penis, equipped with an extruding, “penetrating” tongue, making it doubly phallic. As for the alien eggs, those could not be more feminine. Aggressively so, interestingly enough, since they launch facehuggers which extrude phallic tubes in order to inseminate their hosts. Another feminine motif; the vaginal openings to Giger’s derelict alien spacecraft, which still stands as one of the most brilliantly original designs ever conceived for an extraterrestrial cinematic spaceship.

What I also find fascinating 40 years on is the perverse sexuality snaking through Alien’s narrative. For example, the first person to be impregnated by a facehugger is not, as one would expect in a traditional genre offering, a woman. Instead it is a man, Kane, portrayed by John Hurt. The one man who is the Nostromo’s most curious crewmember. Kane makes the great mistake of touching the alien egg, triggers a facehugger, and is then, in essence, orally raped by the same creature.

Right there you have a fairly overt subtext. Next you have an inversion of natural human birth — it’s a man who gestates and delivers an alien creature, via the chest burster. All of Alien’s human men, in fact, except for Yaphet Kotto’s Parker, wind up becoming feminized by being inseminated by the monster. And in the Director’s Cut they’re eventually turned into eggs, too!

As for Ash, he might be a robot, but there’s a strange sexuality at work there as well. The more frustrated he becomes, the more he starts to “leak” a milky substance that’s revealed to be artificial blood. But that blood looks awfully semen-like. Which Ash sprays all over Ripley, incidentally, as he attempts to kill her by rolling up a porno mag and stuffing it down her throat. Another oral rape. Then, later, a suggested vaginal rape occurs. The tip of the Xenomorph’s barbed tail is seen inching up Lambert’s (Veronica Cartwright’s) leg. Cut to her letting out a copper-lunged scream. Ugh!

Finally, I find it very thought-provoking that the one character who displays such a strong mixture of masculine and feminine characteristics — Ripley — is the only character that the Alien does not really attack. At least, not until the end of the film, when Ripley provokes it by bombarding it with steam. I mean, why doesn’t the Xenomorph go after her the instant they’re alone in the shuttle together? I know the perceived wisdom is that the creature is either dying by that point or going dormant. Or maybe it’s just the old suspension of disbelief coming into play. But one way of looking at the full-grown creature’s curious inaction could be that it was actually confused by a human who does not exhibit traditional gender characteristics.

In any event, I find Alien’s visual and narrative “perversions,” if you will, to be fairly radical for any science fiction picture. Especially one released in 1979.

Coate: How would you describe Alien to someone who has never seen it or to someone who has avoided seeing it because they dislike science-fiction and/or horror films?

Barsanti: I would honestly tell them not to see it. It is both science fiction and horror. Somebody who doesn’t like either of those genres will not enjoy this one in any way. Similarly no matter how great I find Rio Bravo or The Magnificent Seven, if somebody doesn’t like Westerns, they should still stay away.

Rinzler: That in some ways the most interesting part of the film is before the alien manifests. The silent prowling through corridors; the exploration of the derelict; the amazing production design. The crew interaction.

Sammon: I’d say it’s not cheap. It’s not stupid. It’s not a piece of junk, or a gore picture. To use a more simplistic form of the vernacular, I’d say Alien was a really well done movie. One that’s suspenseful, scary, beautiful to look at, and involving in a way that very few films of its genre are. It has terrific characters, excellent acting, and a fantastic mood. Alien’s exceptionally atmospheric. And it’s definitely not just about spaceships flying past and shooting at each other, or about people’s heads being bitten off. Instead, it’s spooky! Suspenseful! Riveting! Truly classic! In fact, in a way, Alien is a science fiction and horror movie for people who don’t like science fiction or horror movies!

Coate: In what way was Ridley Scott an ideal choice to direct Alien and where do you think the film ranks among his body of work?

Barsanti: Scott made sense for the movie due to his dedication at this time to a dense lattice of dark visualization that made the script secondary. This is less of a story than a mood piece. And Scott was at the time a master of mood. These days, he is too impatient a filmmaker to create something like Alien.

Rinzler: Scott was an inspired “get” by the combo of Sandy Lieberson in the UK, David Giler at Brandywine, and then Alan Ladd at Fox, to take a chance. But Scott had proved himself a master in many respects with The Duellists.

Sammon: Ridley Scott has proven throughout a long and distinguished career that he is one of the most visually accomplished and genuinely artistic of our contemporary film directors. And Ridley used his many, many talents to hoist up Alien up to a height of accomplishment that very few other directors or designers of that period, circa 1979, could have achieved.

As for ranking... Ridley’s so prolific, it’s hard for me to assign a numerical value to his corpus. Alien is certainly within his top five; its influence has been lasting and ubiquitous. Right up there with Blade Runner’s.

Coate: Where do you think Alien ranks among the Alien franchise?

Barsanti: Second. To my way of thinking there is not much to be done in this franchise that wasn’t accomplished in Alien and James Cameron’s gung-ho space marine follow-up Aliens. David Fincher’s Alien 3 had potential but it was mostly squandered. After that, it was mostly just variations on people running down dark tunnels screaming.

Sammon: Obviously, number one. I know people love Aliens, the second film in the franchise. I do too. Cameron did an incredible job on Aliens. But there would have been no Aliens without Alien. Just as there would have been no Empire Strikes Back without A New Hope. Which means that I prefer the first Star Wars film over its first sequel. That sequel’s amazing, too. But again, I think the first Star Wars film is far superior to The Empire Strikes Back. A New Hope had a certain purity and innocence and energy that’s been lacking in every Star Wars film since. Even Empire. Wherein I could already detect the creeping influence of that dreaded franchise in the making attitude, the venal virus of sequel-itis.

Coate: What is the legacy of Alien?

Barsanti: The same legacy that we are seeing in just about every genre movie of note. It’s a once-memorable classic that broke new ground whose significance is now being ground into nonexistence by the filmmakers’ and studios’ refusal to just let it go and stop making sequels and spinoffs.

Sammon: Alien’s legacy is multifaceted. It proved that mainstream Hollywood could actually make a frightening, claustrophobic science-fiction movie that was also an adult, Gothic horror film with world-class production designs and a truly original monster at the center of its vicious little heart.

Alien was also a movie that audiences worldwide found involving and scary and funny and suspenseful and ultimately cathartic, in a positive way, due to a surprisingly upbeat climax. And, oh yeah: Alien was an early, powerful example of a commercial Hollywood film starring a woman who was every bit as resourceful — and ultimately more successful — than the men around her.

They all died, if you’ll recall. Only Ripley survived. She deserved to!

Coate: Thank you — Chris, Jonathan, and Paul — for sharing your thoughts about Alien on the occasion of its 40th anniversary.

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IMAGES

Selected images copyright/courtesy Brandywine Productions, CBS-Fox Home Video, Dolby Laboratories, Bobby Henderson, Magnetic Home Video, 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Alien (1979) screenshot

SOURCES/REFERENCES

The primary references for this project were regional newspaper coverage and trade reports published in Billboard, Boxoffice, The Hollywood Reporter, and Variety. All figures and data included in this article pertain to the United States and Canada except where stated otherwise. This work is based upon articles by same author previously published at In70mm.com and in Widescreen Review magazine.