After returning from France, having worked on an attempted production of a film version of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune in 1975, screen writer Dan O’Bannon crashed on the couch of friend and fellow screen writer Ronald Shusett. Although depressed and broke, O’Bannon went back to work. O’Bannon and Shusett pulled out an old script of O’Bannon’s entitled Memory about a space ship crashed on a deserted planet. Shusett reminded O’Bannon of an idea that he had told him about in which gremlins take over a B-17 bomber during World War II, wreaking havoc on the crew. Shusett asked O’Bannon, “Why don’t you make that the second half of your story and put it on a spaceship?” (Scanlon, 6)
While previously working on the Dune project, O’Bannon had worked with Swiss surrealist artist Hans Rudi Giger, who had shown him a collection of his paintings. They were fantastic biological and mechanical nightmares that were both disturbing and erotic – images of monsters that he couldn’t quite shake. He knew he wanted the script to be about a creature based on Giger’s works.
The completed script was shopped around, eventually winding up at the offices of Brandywine, a production company comprised of producer Gordon Carroll and writer/directors David Giler and Walter Hill. The title Alien was chosen because the word is both a noun and an adjective. A subplot about a corrupt company and an android was added by Hill. Brandywine made an agreement with Twentieth Century Fox to begin production in the fall of 1976. Because Hill was already committed to directing The Warriors, director Ridley Scott, known only for his work on television commercials and a previous feature film entitled The Duelists was brought on board.
The script for Alien is streamlined, containing very little exposition or dialogue. Most of the imagery evoked takes place in the reader’s imagination. A group of seven astronauts piloting a ship named the Nostromo are towing a huge cargo of mineral ore back to Earth, crossing a vast expanse of space that is largely unchartered. The crew is awoken from cryogenic sleep to check out a distress signal emanating from the moon of an unknown planet. The crew is under strict guidelines to check out the signal or they will lose their pay as well as their stock in the company. The ship lands on the planetoid and a search party is sent out to enter the site of the distress signal- a giant horseshoe shaped derelict space craft believed to be ancient – and alien – in origin.
The crew’s computer, referred to as “Mother”, deciphers much of the code of the transmission, finding it to be not an S.O.S., but a warning. Meanwhile, the search party, comprised of Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), and Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) find the remains of a massive life form in the belly of the alien vessel that is fossilized and somehow a part of the ship, as if biologically joined to it. A small hole is found in the floor by Kane, and he is repelled down into a cavernous cargo hold containing thousands of eggs. A spider-like creature bursts from an egg and attacks Kane. Dallas and Lambert bring Kane back to the Nostromo where Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) disobeys the orders of Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) about quarantine procedures and lets the search party back on board.
During an attempt to remove the “face hugger” alien from Kane’s face and throat, the creature’s limb is cut with a small laser. Acidic blood spews out and melts through three levels of the ship. Engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto) spouts “It’s got a wonderful defense mechanism – you don’t dare kill it.” The creature falls of later and dies on its own, Kane awakening shortly thereafter. Repairs are completed by Parker and Technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton, providing small doses of comic relief in the film), and the Nostromo returns to space.
Before going down to cryo-sleep for the trip home, the crew has one last supper, celebrating the recovery of their co-worker Kane. At the dinner table, Kane lurches about violently and a new snake-like creature is “birthed”, bursting from Kane’s chest, killing him. The small, eyeless creature issues a defiant, metallic scream, and slithers quickly away. The remaining crew members form hunting parties after burying Kane “at sea”, and formulate a plan to trap the alien and “blast it out of an airlock.” Unfortunately, the remaining crew is killed off one by one, it having grown to an 8 foot tall, black, humanoid form that is easily able to overpower them.
It is soon discovered that Ash is an android sent to recover and protect the alien from the crew, and that “the company” knew about the alien all along, rendering the crew, as we find out from a message from Mother, “expendable.” Ash is destroyed and all remaining crew, excluding Ripley, are killed. Ripley scuttles the Nostromo, escaping in a lifeboat named the Narcissus, unknowingly bringing the vicious creature on board with her. She manages to open the airlock and blow it out with a harpoon gun, but the cable gets caught in the air lock door as she closes it a moment too soon. The alien uses the cable as leverage, crawling into the tailpipe. Ripley ignites the thrusters of the craft, finally blowing the creature into the void.
Ridley Scott was directly involved in the casting process for Alien, piecing together a distinguished company of actors for his production. Tom Skerrit turns in a performance as Dallas that is both firm and sensitive. “Tom plays it cool – he doesn’t get pulled in to anybody’s arguments… He wears a beard in the film, which makes him out to be the tough guy, but he listens to Mozart, showing us a softer, more intelligent side.” (Scott, Alien Legacy) Skerrit seems withdrawn and irritable throughout much of the film; the only interest portrayed is simply getting back home. He received top billing in the film, making it quite a shock when his character was one of the first to go. In his final scene, a deadly game of cat and mouse ensues in the dark, claustrophobic ventilation system of the ship. Only then do we sense the uneasy vulnerability and fear of his character.
No one knew Sigourney Weaver when the first Alien came out. At only 29 years of age, she played a tough, feminist Ripley. She seems both strong and confident, making informed judgments about the actions of the other characters in the film. However, that side seems to crumble away when Dallas goes missing. She shows the stress on her face and in her voice, her calm demeanor passing as she is forced to command. Throughout the film, Ripley’s character is shunned by most of the crew, referring to her as “the bitch.” There are sensitive moments, with her cat as well as with Skerritt, with whose character she tries to confide. From the beginning, Ripley does not like or trust Ash. There is tension in their scenes together, especially when Ash is confronted by her after the quarantine violation.
If Ripley is the feminist, then Veronica Cartwright as Lambert is the antithesis of feminism, a gender role that her character will later be punished for in the film. You can see the anxiety and fear caving in on her; a woman who is overtaken by her emotions easily. She knows the crew is doomed from the beginning, nervously and grimly throwing a sarcastic “swell” at the crew, and doesn’t hide her reservations. During one scene in the film, Skerrit orders her to stop griping, for which she responds “I like griping.” She seems aware that something is wrong. However, she soon becomes immobilized by terror and her “female” emotions. She becomes the argument for feminism, especially when she is raped by the alien.
An African-American named Yaphet Kotto fills out the character of Parker, the ship’s engineer. The character has a working relationship with the character of Brett, who is seemingly on the same class level as Parker. Koto seems to be playing the stereotype at first – the wise cracking, tough black guy. He’s like a factory worker and a car mechanic. He has an abrupt, almost prankster like attitude towards Ripley. His performance is crucial to the feel of the film, providing a very real portrayal of blue-collar society. Both he and Brett are considered “lower class” by the rest of the crew, and Kotto seems okay with their attitudes, not caring about bureaucracy anyway, opting instead for his own agenda.
Ian Holm gives us hints of the inhumanity of Ash early on in the film, with strange glances, movements and quirks that the actor threw in of his own accord, according to director Ridley Scott. There is also a subtle hint of homosexuality in Holm’s performance, adding another interesting element to the film, especially since his he plays the sexist in his scenes against Weaver. Ash is an effeminate character, a confused mother hen. When Ash attacks Ripley and attempts to smother her with a rolled up magazine in an act of oral rape we sense a kind of jealously for the alien’s practices. This intrusion of the magazine juxtaposes the image of the face hugger on Kane earlier in the film, and Holm, with his almost gay tendencies seems to be indicating that his character’s sexuality is as artificial as his biological makeup. Interesting if for no other reason than nothing can be birthed from homosexuality, as nothing can be birthed from a machine. Acting like that mother hen, Holm also gives parental protection to the alien after its birth, his character demanding that the crew “not touch it.” In Ash’s final speech, jealousy and love for the alien are the only emotions not artificial that really bleed through. His performance is both chilling and real.
Harry Dean Stanton wears a Hawaiian shirt and ball cap throughout the film, playing Brett like a truck driver. He incessantly chews on match sticks and utters “right” in response to his crewmates’ comments. As opposed to Kotto, Stanton provides a more likeable character in his role. The other characters in the film tend to make fun of him, and he appears quietly bothered by it. We feel compelled to empathize with Brett on these grounds. His character isn’t the troublemaker Parker is, but he is still his sidekick. In most factories you will find many black males and “countrified” blue-collar laborers. The roles of Parker and Brett typify that to help identify the picture symbolized.
John Hurt is the dreamer of the bunch as Kane. He is the first to awaken from cryosleep, and in his few scenes in the film, you can see a clear portrait of wonder and awe towards the unknown. He is also the cat that curiosity kills. Hurt seems to be straining in the film, looking for something. especially in his reaction shots when exploring the derelict craft, but also when sitting quietly in his chair on the bridge. Unfortunately for his characters, the answers he is looking for come in the form of the birth of dying, and the end of dreams. At the beginning of the film Kane asserts “I feel dead.” Parker, always the jokester replies “Anybody ever tell you you look dead, man?” It serves as both a foreshadowing to his character’s demise, and to the notion that the “dreamer” has no place in this lonely universe of nightmares.
Jerry Goldsmith turns in what is considered by many to be his most original and certainly visceral score, using the echoing of bones and reverberated tubas as well as other off kilter instruments. The sad dirge of a trumpet plays as the main theme throughout the picture. It is difficult to find a distinction between where Goldsmith’s pulsating score ends, and the almost organic sounds of the Nostromo begin. The music and sound effects seem to oddly compliment each other, especially in the quieter moments, such as on the alien planet. At the opening of the film, there is a repeating two-note flute motif echoing with very deep brass underneath, making the entire sequence as if we the audience are slumbering through the ship, sleepwalking. The main theme is a mixture of foreboding and loneliness. When the Nostromo descends to the alien planet, there is a sense of hope in their journey, almost an excitement towards discovery present in the music, a slightly major-key version of the theme. Strings rise in intensity to over power the trumpet, filling out the lonely spaces in the material. During their ascension, those major notes are missing; giving us a sense that discovery was overshadowed with failure. During Kane’s “burial at sea”, the strings fall bellow the trumpet with a wind like sound and the dream rhythm returns. We are in a nightmare indeed. The theme feels lonely and sad. When Ripley is made alone at the end by the killing of the final two members of the crew, only the first three notes are played overbearingly loud, the pieces mixed and shredded, and a loud funeral bell clanging over and over at the scene’s climax. Parts of this scene, during which there is an off screen rape by the alien, are also mixed with the score from another Jerry Goldsmith composition, the theme from John Huston’s Freud, hinting at psychological symbolism while showing Ripley’s reaction in a series of close-ups.
At the end of the film, Scott threw out Goldsmith’s composition for the end title sequences. The music put in its place was Howard Hanson’s Symphony no. 2, a movement named The Romantic. This theme has a relaxing, dreamy quality that reinforced the final shot of Weaver in soft focus, sleeping in her cryotube, the image dissolving into the stars of space. Terry Rawlings, the film’s editor, re-matched the cuts with the spotting of Goldsmith’s score throughout the movie in an effort to give the film several minimalistic quieter moments. Rawlings had the background of being a sound editor that helped reinforce his visual cutting of this film. The ending shots were cut to match The Romantic for the end dissolve. After sitting through a few minutes of the credits, the audience might be able to leave the theater with nerves barely calm enough to drive home.
Cinematographer Derek Van Lint was handed only the duties of lighting, under direct supervision of the camera operator – director Ridley Scott. “Derek was with me my whole career, up until and throughout Alien. He has never worked on a film since.” (Scott, Alien Legacy). Only rims of objects were lit on the films expansive, dark sets. Also, they were lit in a way that you could never quite ascertain what the true colors of some of the derelict space craft’s interiors truly were, nor the alien, which at times appeared translucent. The Nostromo sets seem to compliment the alien – it looks like part of the ship. The rim effect has an unnerving familiarity with it in that it’s a lot like leaving the bathroom light on in a dark house. The ship looks almost like a haunted house- a combination of rusted, dark, wet places that lend themselves towards the surreal.
Set decorator Ron Cobb constructed the sets with 6’ ceilings to give it a claustrophobic look. The film feels like the cousin to Kubrik’s 2001. There are subtle hints to other Kubrik films as well. The bridge was patterned after the cockpit of the bomber in Dr. Strangelove. Mother, the Nostromo’s computer, seems like a silent nod to Hal, though doesn’t speak directly to the crew, making her a bit more realistic.
Scott wanted credits that were haunting and lonely. We are treated to the letters forming as hash marks, the first seven counting down the death of the crew before the final middle “lie” is revealed. The letters are even spaced alone - apart from each other. The pulse of the ship is very organic, like a heart beat, stirring with the score. We drift into the sleep chamber of the ship to find the cryotubes arranged like flower pedals, and as the ship awakens them, the pedals open, the lights come on, and the music sings “life” as the crew members “bloom” like seeds from a mechanical flower about to be sent into Swiss surrealist H.R. Gigers biomechanical nightmare.
Indeed, sexuality and sexual “warfare” are the major underlying themes throughout Alien. The opening of the horse-shoe shaped derelict alien craft is clearly a vaginal opening into which the crew members crawl, the ends of the craft appearing like wide spread legs. Shortly after the “seeds” enter the craft, one is dispatched into the ovary of the ship where the eggs are. Only in this universe, The female egg attacks and penetrates the man, sending a creature onto his face with a kind of forced felatio, laying the seed of death, not life, within him.
Impregnation plays heavily as a subdominant theme. This is interesting because there is no sex nor is there sexual tension between the characters themselves. The “adult” alien has somewhat of a feminine appearance in its slender build, though it has an elongated, phallic head with no eyes that houses yet another phallus – a long cylindrical tongue with another jaw full of metallic teeth. It’s a sexual weapon used throughout the film, and the entire “orifice” is dripping with slime that looks like semen. Behind the smoky helmet, you can barely make out the tracings of a human skull, a symbol for death and evil.
Each of the characters dies in what is clearly a sexually invasive way. First there is Kane’s impregnation by the face hugger and the violent birth of the Alien itself, which Ash later refers to as “Kane’s son.” We later see Brett standing before the full blown alien which is gyrating with sexual excitement about it’s prey as it thrusts its “inner tongue” into Brett’s skull, carrying him off half-alive into the air shaft system of the ship to “play” with him later. When Captain Dallas goes looking for the Alien in the ventilation system, it welcomes him eerily with open arms, as if saying “come to me… I won’t hurt you.”
There was a scene cut from Alien that has been included with the DVD release that confirms the sexual depravity of the alien. Ripley stumbles upon a room in which Dallas and Brett’s tortured, tired bodies are cocooned to the walls. In fact, they appear to be decomposing into eggs. It is like the dungeon of a dominatrix, an evil place where the slaves are imprisoned to please the alien’s sadistic, sexual appetite. Dallas begs Ripley to “kill him” and end his torment.
Lambert’s murder was of course the most gruesome and sexual. Ripley goes to the Narcissus to prepare for departure from the Nostromo, while Parker and Lambert go to the lower decks to gather coolant for the trip home. Ripley hears the killing of the two. We see Parker first “whipped” (another sadomasochistic act) by the aliens long tail, before it pins him down smiling at him, thrusting it’s appendage into his throat. Lambert is approached by the alien slowly, it rising like Count Dracula before her. It seems to smile before we cut to its tail slowly rising between Lambert’s legs. We cut away to Ripley listening in, running like hell to try and save them. Lambert releases a muffled moaning cry over the ship’s intercom, then loud repetitive tormented breathing as she’s obviously being penetrated, followed by a long , sudden shriek of pain. When Ripley arrives, we see Parker, who has been “positioned” on the floor, sitting beneath the now naked, lifeless legs of Lambert, her toes curled, dripping with blood, appearing to be hanging from the ceiling, though we can’t see how. The positioning of the corpses solidifies the alien’s sadistic intent.
In the lifeboat Narcissus after the destruction and evacuation of the Nostromo, Ripley strips to her underwear, unbeknownst that the alien crept on board before her, and has been watching her, getting sexually aroused. When it reaches for her, she rushes into the windowed closet and begins getting dressed in a space suit. We see the alien, lying on its side not moving to get her. It slowly touches itself as if aroused, showing off its tongue-appendage like a man showing off his erection. There is a reaction shot of Ripley’s blatant disgust towards the alien at this point, almost as if she’s rejecting a human male. After dressing, she ejects it form the airlock, and in essence births the “child” back into the void, another visual clue of motherhood prevalent in the movie.
Classic author Joseph Conrad was an inspiration to both O’Bannon and Scott for Alien. The final words of Heart of Darkness, “We live as we dream – alone”(Conrad, 95), describes the mood and atmosphere of the entire film. The film plays out like a dark journey that gets darker and lonelier as we go along, similar in feel to the book. Obviously, a more direct reference to Conrad can be found in the names of the vessels. Nostromo, which means “our man”, is the name of a character living in a fictitious South American country in the novel Nostromo. Both Europeans and natives populate this area, which has an economy rich from silver mining. Nostromo was the mediator between the indigenous peoples there and the colonizing Europeans. He was torn between the two worlds, teetering back and forth in his loyalties, which is his eventual undoing. The Nostromo of Alien seems to be the mediator between the locals (the crew) and the colonists (The savage alien, Ash, and the company), and is finally “undone” (through the scuttle of its engines) by the struggle within. Towards the end of the film, Scott recalls painting many of the white walls black “to show what lies ahead for the ship, and to further the tension.” (Scott, Alien Legacy). The brain of the Nostromo is the “Mother”, not of the ship’s crew, all of whom she rejects, but of the alien itself, impregnating her “womb.”
The Narcissus is based on yet another of Conrad’s works, The Nigger of the Narcissus, in which a passenger brings death on board a ship with him, “…a startling visitor from a world of nightmares.”(Conrad, 20) Ripley in essence brought death on board with her. Besides the Conrad correlation, there is also the name Narcissus itself. Narcissus was a Greek god who fell in love with his own reflection in a river, falling on his head and drowning in its waters. The alien seemed “pleased” with itself, eventually “drowning” in the darkness of space.
The film was released in the late 1970’s, when manufacturing jobs were being lost in the Carter-era recession. There is this idea of the company exploiting its workers. Class was broken down on the Nostromo, the working men inhabiting the lower levels (Parker and Brett), and the upper levels or “class” of the ship is where the scientists, managers, and “more important” crew worked, and was also where the computer was located.
It is stressed throughout the opening scenes of the film that these are workers in space, worried about losing their “bonus situation.” and their jobs if they do not follow through with whatever the company feels like forcing them into. Scott recalls that there was this “idea of corporations becoming bigger and more important than government. That is, of course, no longer science fiction.” (Scott, Alien Legacy) The ship can bee seen as a type of broken down factory that is more hospitable to the alien than its own crew. It has the appearance of a factory for which the owner knows no safety inspectors will be visiting. In fact, the only inspector on board is actually a product of the corporation, Ash.
The film itself plays out like a dream, turning into a nightmare- the nightmare of the viewer. The tagline for the film is “In space, no one can hear you scream.” The Conrad quote, “We live as we dream – alone” is almost scarier, terrifying us with the notion that we won’t be safe in our beds for many years to come after viewing Alien.
Works Cited Conrad, Joseph. The Nigger of the Narcissus. 1897. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971. New York: Signet Classics, 1978. Scanlon, Paul and Micheal Gross. The Book of Alien. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979. Scott, Ridley. Commentary. Alien Legacy: Alien. Twentieth Century Fox , 2000.
Special thank you to Mark at Alien: The Story in Pictures for the great screen captures.
http://www.markta.co.uk/alien/index.htm
All Images are © Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. The images are meant to enhance the educational value of this review only and hopefully drum up revenue for them for making such an excellent movie. Buy this movie now, unless you already own it.