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Alien Sponsored by The Garick Group 1979 | R | Sci-Fi, Horror | d. Ridley Scott Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt 30th Anniversary Screening |
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| In hindsight, they were destined to be together – the horror equivalent of Astaire and Rogers. H.R. Giger’s skeletal alien design and Sigourney Weaver’s lean jaw structure was a match made in the cinema’s heavens. In this case, the cold, airless interplanetary space of the future, and a place where the poster warned, “…no one can hear you scream”. Despite its simple and direct title, there was little to prepare audiences in 1979 for what they were about to see. A penetratingly suspenseful film about galactic “truckers” - stuck on a hurtling automated ore ship - that get diverted to an inhospitable planet and a rendezvous with a creature of brutal simplicity. That the whole endeavor was conceived and executed in a restrained, highly-designed manner was even more a wonder. But the film delivered on its simple promise – audiences on earth had lots to scream about. Birthed in the tremendous wake of Star Wars (which was still playing around the country in re-release), Alien was a surprisingly artful project. It was neither a version of a Saturday matinee space western, nor a clinically philosophical epic like 2001: A Space Odyssey. New-comer director Ridley Scott and an ensemble cast of relative unknowns, audaciously merged science fiction with horror, gothic suspense with a futuristic “old dark house” and a gestating dread that there are things waiting in the dark places of the galaxy that mirror our deepest fears. But there was also something far more elusive at work in Alien than evocative story-telling and good craftsmanship can explain – there was a preternatural chemistry between its two “stars”. It turns out that Sigourney Weaver and the alien were meant for each other, and they would continue their deadly dance over four films and three decades. - Charles Horak | ||