The four-film Alien series—the ones with Sigourney Weaver—easily merited a couple of posts, which I first presented back in 2012.
Alien, the 1979 gem that successfully crossed science fiction with horror, is a super movie and easily in the top fifty to sixty films that comprise my Top Ten. And its 1986 sequel, Aliens? It ranks even higher and is arguably the BEST SEQUEL to a movie ever made. Many fans agree on that one.
As for Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection: well, they weren’t so great. More about them next time.
“IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM…”
The Oscar-winning Alien (Best Visual Effects) had a great pre-release studio buildup, which included that tagline, and it paid off big-time, both artistically and at the box office. The writers, Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, took a time-worn haunted house/murder mystery plot and moved it into deep space. The towing vessel Nostromo (the old haunted mansion) is on its way back to Earth pulling a valuable load of ore. The seven crew members (the mostly obnoxious family gathered for the reading of their late uncle’s will) are awakened from hyper-sleep by the ship’s computer, MUTHR, after it intercepts a possible SOS signal from a nearby planetoid. The science officer, Ash, played by Ian Holm, tells the others that they must investigate, so down they go.
On the surface they locate a huge derelict spacecraft, and Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), and Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) go off to investigate. They first find a huge, fossilized alien in the pilot’s seat. By this time Warrant Officer Ripley (Weaver) has figured out that the signal was a warning, not an SOS, and wants to call them back, but Ash talks her out of it. Kane has since found a huge chamber filled with what look like eggs, and as he studies one of them a crab-like creature leaps out and attaches itself to his face. Ignoring a quarantine restriction they return to the Nostromo and resume the voyage, with Kane unconscious.
The “facehugger” creature appears to be keeping Kane alive. They try to cut it off, but it secretes deadly acid. Eventually it falls off, and Kane seems fine. The crew shares a meal, during which a small, nasty-looking creature—in one of the film world’s most memorable and imitated scenes—explodes from Kane’s chest and scurries off. Kane does not survive.
The crew hunts for the “chestburster” creature, and a technician, Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), finds it—only it’s not little anymore. End of Brett. Ditto Captain Dallas, who chased the Alien through the air ducts with a flamethrower. (In later restored scenes Dallas shows up cocooned for bearing more aliens.)
“Uh-oh, that’s not the cat…”
Ripley learns that Ash, an android, is under orders from The Company to return the Alien to Earth for possible use in weapons and warfare. The orders include the disturbing note: “Crew expendable.” She confronts Ash, who tries to kill her, but he/it is disabled by Lambert and Engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto). Ripley reconnects Ash’s head to learn if they can defeat the creature. No way, they are told. They fry what’s left of him.
Time to go. Ripley looks for Jones, the ship’s cat, while Parker and Lambert perform other tasks. Ripley also sets the Nostromo’s self-destruct mechanism and then hurries to help the others, who are in trouble. Too late; they’re toast. She and the cat board the shuttle and make a frantic escape as the countdown continues. They are barely at a safe distance when the ship is vaporized.
Ripley confronts Ash, the android.
But Ripley is safe, right? Wrong. The Alien has boarded the shuttle. In a classic scene where you can smell the tension, Ripley dons a pressure suit and manages to blow the Alien out into space, though not without a battle. Then, after making a log entry about being the sole survivor of the Nostromo, she and Jones go into hyper-sleep. End of story.
As I said, Alien proved a box-office smash, so it surprised everyone that seven years passed before a sequel hit the silver screen. But what a sequel Aliens turned out to be!
“THIS TIME IT’S WAR…”
Aliens had a few other taglines, including, “The bitch is back” and “This time there’s more.” Boy, were there more! Where Alien skillfully blended sci-fi and horror, Aliens added extreme action-adventure to the mix. Director Ridley Scott cooked up the first stew, while the breathtaking sequel fell under the magic of James Cameron.
Ellen Ripley’s drifting shuttle has been found—fifty-seven years later. She and Jones are still alive. Recovering on an Earth-orbiting space station owned by The Company, she learns this from slimy Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), a Company stooge. The revelation leaves her with some bad nightmares of chestburster creatures exploding out of her. She tells Burke and other corporate types about the Alien, and that many more might exist on the planetoid where they found it. The suits only care about the gazillion dollar ship and cargo that she destroyed, and the six people that she “abandoned,” and they suspend her flight license. Burke also tells her not to worry about the planetoid, called LV-426, because it has been occupied for over three decades by families of terraformers without any problems. Ripley is stunned that people, especially children, now live there.
I have to insert this thought here, because it bugged me for many years. The incredible last twenty or so minutes of Aliens is predicated by Ripley’s fierce desire to save and protect Newt, an orphaned girl that she found on LV-426 only a day or so earlier. I’d always wondered about her motivation. Then, I bought the “Alien Triple Pack,” which included bonus scenes for each of the first three films. In one added scene, Ripley asks Burke about her daughter, whom she’d left back on Earth when she made the ill-fated voyage on the Nostromo. Burke shows her a photo of an old woman, who had aged and died of cancer. Ripley is devastated. Now it made perfect sense why she felt so protective of Newt. Poignant scene, and I can’t imagine why they cut it out.
Anyway, Ripley is working on the station’s loading dock and still having nightmares when Burke tells her that all communication with LV-426 has been lost. (Based on Ripley’s story, Burke had ordered people to investigate the derelict ship, something we don’t learn till later.) The Company is going to send a bunch of space marines there, and it wants Ripley to go along as a “consultant,” just in case her Alien story is true. She first refuses, until the nightmares grow worse, and off she goes.
As the transport ship nears the planetoid, Ripley is brought out of hyper-sleep and meets the marines, a kick-butt troop of bad-asses that toss around every bad-ass marine cliché in the book. Standouts include Cpl. Hicks (Michael Biehn), Pvts. Hudson (Bill Paxton) and Vasquez (Jennette Goldstein), the baddest bad-ass of all. When Ripley tries to tell them about the xenomorph that she encountered, Vasquez only wants to know one thing: where to aim.
But all of this changes when they land on LV-426 and begin looking for survivors in the main complex. First they discover facehuggers in stasis tubes. Ripley also finds Newt (Carrie Henn), a girl of about eleven whose family was killed when they went out to investigate the derelict spacecraft. Then, they find cocooned colonists, all but one of them dead. A chestburster emerges from this woman, and she, along with the others, is torched. This alerts the warrior Aliens (the plural is now apparent; potloads of them!) concealed in the walls and ducts, and all hell breaks loose. Both Aliens and marines are killed in large numbers.
Ripley and Newt
Homing devices indicate that the terraformers are gathered in one place, in a lower level of the complex. Ripley knows they’ve been cocooned. Her suggestion: call the drop ship to pick them up, return to the transport ship, and nuke the planetoid from orbit. Everyone agrees—except the sleazy Burke, who represents The Company. The facility, he tells them, represents a considerable monetary investment. Ripley’s awesome reply: “They can bill me.”
But an Alien has gotten aboard the drop ship. It kills the pilots, and the ship crashes, leaving them stranded. Newt warns that the Aliens mostly come out at night, so they’d better make ready. They fortify the barricades around the med lab and prepare for an assault. When it comes, they manage to survive, but barely. Also, damage to the nuclear reactor will cause the complex to be destroyed in a matter of hours. Bishop, an android, sets off through a tube for the outside, where he will attempt to remote-pilot a second drop ship to the surface.
Ripley puts Newt to bed and tells her about her long-lost daughter (another added scene). She also puts a locator around Newt’s wrist, saying that she’ll always be able to find her. She then learns that Burke gave orders not to destroy a couple of the facehuggers. He wants to take them back to Earth. By this time she’s checked the colony log and learned that it was Burke who brought this horror upon the colonists by ordering them to investigate the derelict spacecraft. She swears that she’ll take him down.
Ripley rejoins Newt, who is now asleep under the cot. She puts her pulse rifle on the cot and falls asleep. When she awakens, the two facehuggers are in the room. Her rifle is gone. Burke has trapped Ripley and Newt with the hope that the facehuggers will impregnate them. The few remaining marines rescue them and are now ready to execute Burke.
But the Aliens attack again. Burke escapes and locks the others in the lab. He finally does get to meet one of the Aliens up close and personal. It ain’t pretty. Hudson is also killed, but Newt leads the rest through a series of air ducts. The remaining marines, aside from Hicks, are killed. Newt falls into a storm drain, and as Ripley and Hicks try to reach her, Newt is snatched by an Alien. Ripley knows they won’t kill her but cocoon her first, and she’s bound and determined to save her. But she needs weapons. She and Hicks hurry to the surface, where the drop ship awaits them. Hicks is injured by an Alien and cannot help. Bishop says that the whole complex will soon blow up—a countdown begins shortly after—but Ripley warns him that he’d better wait for her.
At this point, one of the most remarkable sustained scenes in all of filmdom begins. I won’t put in every detail, but you’ve likely seen it, and if you see it another hundred times in your life it won’t be enough. Ripley arms herself to the max and descends into the bowels of the crumbling complex, tracking Newt with the locator and killing Aliens left and right. With the girl in her arms she enters the egg chamber and confronts the monstrous queen Alien. She destroys the eggs and heads for the surface, the queen right behind, the countdown continuing. They make it to the drop ship and take off, the complex soon vaporizing. Safely aboard the transport ship, their ordeal is over—NOT!
Bishop has seen better days…
The pissed-off queen Alien, hitching a ride on the bottom of the drop ship, first cuts Bishop in half, then turns her attention to Ripley and Newt. Diverting the queen’s attention from the girl, Ripley dons a robotic powerloader, shouts, “Get away from her, you bitch!” and proceeds to kick the crap out of the queen, eventually driving her out into deep space (yeah, just like in the first one). She then tends to Hicks and prepares all of them, including the still-communicative pieces of Bishop, for hyper-sleep. End of story—and probably the first time viewers were able to take a deep breath in at least half an hour.
Sigourney Weaver should have won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Ripley in this film. At least she was nominated. But our favorite genres tend to only win awards for special effects and such. (Thank the Great Spirit for Silence of the Lambs!) In any case, Aliens is an absolute gem of a movie, one that I occasionally watch out of sequence, all by itself.
Next time I will talk about the awful, heartbreaking transition from Aliens to Alien 3, and why neither of the last two movies come even close to the original and its sequel. You’re welcome to add any thoughts about the “Alien Quadrilogy.”