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ON THIS DAY IN HORROR - May 25th

"ALIEN" released in 1979

After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as a distress call, its landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious life-form, and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun, in Ridley Scott's cult sci-fi chiller, Alien!

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The commercial spacecraft Nostromo is on a return trip to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis: Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt), Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm), two Engineers, Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and also a cat named Jones. Detecting a mysterious transmission from the nearby planetoid LV-426, the ship's computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Company policy requires crews to investigate such transmissions so they land on the planetoid, sustaining damage from its atmosphere and rocky landscape. Parker and Brett repair the ship while Dallas, Kane and Lambert head out to investigate. They discover the signal comes from a derelict alien spacecraft and head inside it, losing communication with Ash. Exploring the spacecraft, they find the remains of a large alien creature whose rib cage appears to have exploded from the inside. On Nostromo, Ripley determines that the transmission may be a warning, not a distress call. In the alien ship, Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large egg-like objects. As he inspects one, a creature springs out and attaches to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the Nostromo. As acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash ignores Ripley and lets them in. The crew unsuccessfully attempt to remove the creature from Kane's face, discovering that its blood is an extremely corrosive acid. It later detaches on its own and dies. With the ship partly repaired, the crew lifts off. Kane awakens, dazed but otherwise unharmed. During a final crew meal before stasis, he chokes and convulses in pain. He dies as a small alien creature bursts from his chest and escapes out into the ship. The remaining crew attempt to capture the alien, but are dispatched one-by-one by the ever evolving - and increasing aggressive - creature, until only Ripley is left to face the terrifying Alien!

TRIVIA:  During early development, Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett ran into a writing impasse while trying to work out how the alien would get aboard the ship. Shussett came up with the idea "the alien fucks one of them," which was eventually developed into the facehugger concept. This method of reproduction via implantation was deliberately intended to invoke images of male rape and impregnation, so both writers were adamant that the facehugger victim be a man: firstly because they wanted to avoid the horror cliché of women being depicted as the easy first target; secondly because they felt that making a female the casualty of a symbolic rape felt inappropriate; and thirdly, to make the male viewers feel more uncomfortable with this reversal of genre conventions.

Top:   The Xenomorph literally bursts from Kane's (John Hurt) chest... and later grows into a highly aggressive creature which dispatches the crew of the Nostromo one-by-one!

To commemorate the release of Alien, IHdb presents the brilliant feature-length documentary on the making of the film, The Beast Within: The Making of 'Alien'. Produced in 2003, the documentary features interviews with director Ridley Scott and master designer H.R. Giger, as well as with star Sigourney Weaver and other members of the cast and crew, who share their experiences from working on the project and discuss the special efforts that went into bringing it all together.

Enjoy!

ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE:   97%

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