Ridley Scott – ‘Alien’
“In space, no one can hear you scream,” the tagline for Ridley Scott’s iconic science fiction movie Alien reads, providing even those who are yet to see the film with a rather ominous reminder of the enigmatic nature of outer space. Following in the footsteps of the innovative marketing sentence, the movie itself defines a whole new direction for the genre, focusing on the slimy otherworldly horrors of the cosmos rather than its bombastic fantasy joys.
Emphasising horror over fantasy, Scott Texas Chainsaw Massacre-inspired science-fiction takes Tobe Hooper’s filthy, gritty cat-and-mouse and places the intense situation onboard the metal hallways and ventilation shafts of a solitary spaceship. The mortal Leatherface is, too, replaced by an ethereal jet-black alien made up of a slippery outer shell that exudes large drops of translucent ooze. Lurking in the dark, murky corners of the ship, in the pipelines and beneath the floors, the alien ‘Xenomorph’ could be anywhere.
The presence of the practically invisible beast psychologically suffocates the crew on board the ‘Nostromo’, who unknowingly brought back the alien when they went investigating a distress transmission from a foreign spacecraft. Led by Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the eccentric team of futuristic explorers includes Ash (Ian Holm), the ship’s android science officer, and John Hurt’s Kane, whose chest bursts to birth the parasitic monster in one particularly spectacular scene.
Initially taking the form of a small critter as it triumphantly emerges from the chest of Kane and extends towards the light, the Xenomorph gradually evolves into something far more monstrous. Indeed, as it prowls the industrious deck of the ship, it’s never quite clear what the crew are looking for, or are even looking at when they come face-to-snout with the creature. Keeping most of the Xenomorph’s body in mysterious shadow, Scott creates a heightened sense of terror, asking the audience to sculpt their own image of the titular alien, even though nothing we can conjure can compare to the creature’s nightmare-inducing gaze.
The slow, graceful pirouettes of the alien allow it to take on an ethereal presence exaggerated by its strange, oily design conjured by the mind of the great H.R. Giger. Where previously cinematic alien beings had been overly exaggerated or simply humanoid, Giger’s fleshy imagery well presents the Xenomorph as something hideous and mystical yet still biologically conceivable. From the alien’s first phallic form, when it bursts out of Kane’s chest, to the walls of the extraterrestrial spacecraft, which mimic a splayed skeleton, Giger’s vision of otherworldly life is a nightmarish malfunction of our own.
Penetrating the fears of the subconscious, the Xenomorph’s appearance and the initial form of the creature speak to an innate primal fear of the intricacies of one’s own inner bodily functions. Contributing to the genre conversation of ‘body horror’, Scott’s film joins the work of David Cronenberg in his gruesome existential crisis discourse. Just like Cronenberg’s Videodrome suggests a synergy of man and machine, Alien synthesises the boundaries between man, and extraterrestrial life, with the crew of the Nostromo being attacked in a number of psychosexual ways.
The greatest strength of Ridley Scott’s sci-fi classic is that it remains abundantly mysterious what the Xenomorph is or where it came from. As such, screenwriters Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett waste no time in conjuring a complex tale, allowing the simplicity of the ingenious sci-fi nightmare to breathe, a decision which helps to make the protagonist, Ripley, one of cinema’s greatest heroines. Leading the crew without any outside influence or the barking orders of a male superior, Ripley charges the story forward with dogged courage, with the film becoming a personal battle between herself and the titular alien picking off her team.
There’s no time for an elaborate redundant back story, Scott and his team are too focused on creating an insular, catastrophic tale of extraordinary science fiction tension. Don’t think. Don’t breathe. Just watch.
