Many of today’s typical horror movies are sadly the residue of empty imaginations. Normally, a supposedly scary flick is wrought with brainless women whose appearances are as hallow as those of Barbie dolls. They run and scream and die in a pool of their own grinded flesh. There is hardly any emotional connection between the characters of these horror flicks and the audience.
In 1979, viewers experienced the ravages of the remorseless beast from Ridley Scott’s “Alien”. This was the sci-fi horror that demonstrated a good flow of intellectual plot, and a whole breeding nest of terror. Unlike many no-brainer horror films today, “Alien” is unpredictable and filled with unique characters.
The story centers the seven crewmembers of a gargantuan commercial spaceship, Nostromo carrying about twenty million tons of ore. When three of the crewmembers investigated a transmission of unknown origin from a planetoid, they found a derelict alien spaceship filled with eggs. The investigation had to be abandoned because one of the three had a hand-like parasite clutched to his face. He was taken back to Nostromo for treatment. After they left the planetoid, no one was aware of a new passenger on board until it made a shockingly bloody appearance. They were now being terrorized by a fiendish monster free from “delusions of morality”.
The creature itself hardly makes a full appearance throughout the film. Nonetheless, the shadowy glimpses of it are appropriate for the claustrophobic setting of Nostromo.
Mr. Scott has chosen the perfect architect to design the beast. The award-winning Swiss surrealist, H.R. Giger has combined the elements of eroticism and bone-like morbidity to shape an elegantly terrifying monster. Black as a void, its head looks more like a gigantic circumcised penis with a mouth, and a tongue that can penetrate a skull.
The sense of fear in this movie is manifested with the flawless performance of the entire cast. Sigourney Weaver and Veronica Cartwright are notably remarkable as Ripley and Lambert. Each character has his/her own unique characteristics that it is impossible to consider them generic. They are so realistically natural it would be hard to accept at least one death.
Mr. Scott’s “Alien” is truly a triumphant exhibition of superb visual-storytelling in the realms of fear, proving that horror flicks need not require corpses of blank beautiful girls, idiotic young studs, or ridiculously elaborate gut-mincing traps to be stupendously entertaining and scary.
9.7/10
FRUIT!
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