In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream: Alien (1979)

Alien (1979)
Ratings: ****
Starring: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm and Yaphet Kotto.

In the midst of space, in a far distant future, the seven crew of a commercial towing spaceship Nostromo receive a signal coming from a nearby planet. As space laws prohibit them from ignoring the signal, they have no choice but to answer it, only to find nothing but a barren, storm-ridden land littered with weird eggs and the remains of a large creature upon descending.

That ain't no heart burn...

As they investigate further, one of the eggs hatches and the alien creature inside it latches unto the face of a crew member, rendering him immobile as the rest of his companions brings him back on board the ship to try saving him. Any attempt to pry off the creature, however, proves to be unsuccessful as not only does the alien tightens its grip whenever they force it off, but it also bleeds acid when they try to cut it instead. Just as it seems this unfortunate victim will remain like this for the remainder of their trip home, the creature unexpectedly detaches itself and dies not long after, bringing the man back to consciousness.

What should have been a celebratory return suddenly goes for the worst; horrifyingly, the crew discovers that the alien laid another creature into the man, where it incubated and bursts out of his chest once it is strong enough. The new creature then scurries off before the doomed crew can react, unknown to them giving it time to fully mature and start a hunting spree, killing off the ship's passengers one by one...

Alien (1979) has all the elements of a space sci-fi flick with its shuttle settings and futuristic aesthetics, but with the movie's emphasis being more on pure horror, the lines of fantastical science gets blurred enough to give way to all things tense, grueling and horrific.

What am I looking at here, exactly...?. 

Looking into the kind of story Alien have, one will notice a lot of the basic trappings commonly found in your standard horror/slasher movies; the location, for one, is an effective comparison done to make the vacuum of space look and feel as dangerous as being stuck in a lake house with a masked maniac. The approach is strong enough to actually cover the movie's lack of any strong plotting or character development, as the large ship gives the monster all the convenience it needs to hide from its prey, making the unique setting claustrophobic and frighteningly isolated. This sense of being alone gradually worsens by the time everybody's up to their necks in danger and struggling to survive at any cost, even if it meant taking out their own.

Another notable horror element of Alien would be the creature itself; in a horror movie, the villain would always act as the running fuel of the story, may it be a creature from the beyond or a situation that no one was prepared for. The titular alien here is a combination of both; a force of nature that somehow found a way to smuggle itself unto an unknowing set of victims, its entire nature literally alien to them. Combining this fact with the creature's own pure instinct for killing makes it a terrifying menace. In a technical sense, the special effects team (headed by Brian Johnson and Nick Allder, who would later supervise the SFX of future films like Braveheart, Conan The Barbarian (1982) and even Hellboy (2004)) deserves a lot of credit for bringing this monster to life, wherein it menaced both the cast and the audience themselves with incredibly detailed grotesqueness and otherworldly strangeness.

White Space Suit+ Strong-willed lady= Final Girl

While nearly absent of proper character development, one part of Alien's success as a horror film is it's incredible casts, noteworthy among them being Ian Holm as the ship's physician and John Hurt as the victim of one of cinema's most recognizable deaths, both bringing much palpable roles. Of course, among these two and the rest, we also have Sigourney Weaver filling in the "Final Girl" status, whose awareness of the dangers this creature will be bringing would've saved them all if they just listened. In the end, it's just up to her to save herself (and the crew's local pet) from the alien's rampage, in vein of the classic tradition of  future slasher films that would later goes full scale in the 80s reign.

Though its sequels move into pure sci-fi territories with varying level of horror and action to them (this including a big crossover with the dread lock-donning Yautjas of the Predator franchise), Alien (1979), in all its grim and gruesome, is really a hack and slash film with sci-fi trappings from its plotting down to the methodic murders. If you don't agree with me, well, I'm cool with that, but a hefty seven deaths done away with stalk-and-stab antics is enough for me to list it as a slasher...

Bodycount:
1 male had an alien bursts out of his chest
1 male had the alien's inner jaw shot through his head
1 male killed offscreen
1 male android beheaded and set ablaze
1 male had the alien's inner jaw shot to his neck
1 female impaled through the alien's tail (offscreen)
1 alien shot out of space and presumably succumbs to pressure.
Total: 7