Quick recap: The crew of the Nostromo, a cargo spaceship, must investigate a signal coming from nearby. What is initially interpreted as an SOS signal, the crew finds out was actually a warning they were listening to.  The alien brought on board the ship wreaks havoc and murders everyone except Sigourney Weaver, because she’s a cat person.

It comforts me to know I could survive an alien attack

Fun (?) Fact: From IMDB: According to Ridley Scott in the DVD commentary, he had envisioned a moment in the ending scenes of Ripley and the alien in the space shuttle in which the alien would be sexually aroused by Ripley. Scott says that in the scene, after Ripley hides in the closet, the alien would find her and would be staring at her through the glass door. The alien would then start touching itself as if comparing its body to Ripley’s. The idea was eventually scrapped.

My thoughts: Alien is one of those movies I should’ve seen a long time ago, but never got around to actually sitting down to watch. When I saw it at the Drafthouse a couple of days ago, the manager of the theater asked everyone to raise their hand if they had never seen Alien before. Only one person raised his hand, as he was apparently more brave than I am when it comes to being publicly humiliated.

Alien also has the distinction of being so ingrained in pop culture, that I feel like I have seen it a million times already. There weren’t any scenes that really shocked me, save for the one where the crew finds out Ash is a robot. I really enjoyed that twist, especially adding in the fact that it was the government who had known and wanted the alien all along.

The alien itself was perfectly terrifying. I still don’t really understand it’s reproductive and incubation methods, but whatever. The facehugging scene creeped me out, as Ash describes what the alien is doing to Kane’s body. And of course, the chest bursting scene was gross but I had seen it parodied so many times that it didn’t bother me. There were parts of the movie that made it really hard to comprehend that Alien had been made in 1979. It’s amazing to see what special effects had to do to portray certain things, without the aid of computers to just draw it in.

Overall, I can’t really say much about this movie that hasn’t been said a billion times, and for good reason. Alien is the very definition of a ‘classic’ film that will live on for many more years. Although I wasn’t scared at any point, I enjoyed myself immensely and being able to watch it on the big screen made the experience even more enjoyable.

I was so excited to come up with this observation, only to find out that people already beat me to it.

Final review: 5/5. A perfect movie from beginning to end.

Nightmares: none this time, which kind of surprised me. I had a huge fear of aliens back when I was a kid, thanks to that show, Sightings, that would air late at night. Living in a rural area, I truly believed I would be abducted at any second.

Up next: Horrorfest continues!