Alien (1979)

Every few years, I like to revisit some old favorites.  I actually watched this one twice in the span of a week because I ran into one of those sheltered bunker babies that had never seen it.  You know I had to remedy that.  It's the type of film you can do that with, too, because it is damn near perfect.  I think the extended director's cut is the way to go as a connoisseur, but as long as you're watching it I'm happy.  Originally posted 10 Dec 2011.    This is the original, the one that started it all.  Not as flashy as its sequels, but a damn solid movie.  It's been years since I've seen it and I had forgotten a lot of the suspense.  The way I remembered was that the first half was pretty slow, then chestburster, then Ripley moving through a bunch of steam vents with a flamethrower.  The End.  Rob had never seen it at all, even though he has seen all the other spin-offs.  He bought the new blue-ray anthology recently, though, and we cracked that bad boy open today.  It's way more intense than I remember.

The crew of the Nostromo is deep in hypersleep when their course back to Earth is rerouted by the computer.  It detected a signal coming from a nearby planet and the crew is obligated to check out any signs of alien life.  The team lands, damaging their ship slightly, and three of the crewmen head out to the signal's source.  It's a downed alien ship with a clearly long-dead alien at the helm.  In the hold are a ton of what appear to be eggs.  Kane (John Hurt) leans down to investigate...  Violating quarantine protocols, his body --with its weird facehugging creature attached-- is brought onboard.  The science officer, Ash (Ian Holm), wants to study it but Lt. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is in favor of jettisoning the entire body into space.  This proves to be an excellent course of action in hindsight, after the alien lifeform explodes from Kane's chest and escapes into the ship.  It grows into a killing machine and the remaining crew members find themselves at a severe disadvantage.

Seriously, I can't believe there are still people who have never seen this movie.  It's a classic in both sci-fi and horror.  Hell, when I was a kid, I couldn't even go through this portion of the Great Movie Ride at Disney World with my eyes open.  People can argue that the second one is really the better film, and I do love that one, but it's not a better movie.  It has more quotable lines and it is more like a straight-up action film but it cannot hold a candle to the sheer spine-crawling terror of the first movie.