Periodic “Alien” thread

One of my favorite movies. I was lucky enough to see it in theaters this year during the re-release. A great example of a tight story with zero filler.

I named my cat Jonesy; he's also a marmalade (and a badass). This movie is one of my all time favorites.

That scene was terrifying OP, I've never seen it. Thanks for sharing.

Most people think the crabwalking scene is unintentionally hilarious.

It’s like it’s wiping its anus on the carpet.

I'm glad they didn't keep that scene in. It looks like a basketball player awkwardly standing up in a tight rubber suit.

I’m still wondering what exactly the xenomorph did to Lambert. The way they showed her bare foot hanging, you get the impression she was damn near cannibalized.

[quote] I’m still wondering what exactly the xenomorph did to Lambert.

It gave her a glamorous makeover, Rose.

It made her buy tickets to Shen Yun.

I named my cat Ripley, r2. Jonesy is a better name but she wasn't orange.

Alien from 2023

R9 Ripley would have been my choice if he was a she! I love it too.

I was lucky to see Alien on opening weekend in 1979 in 70mm. It's hard to explain nowadays because the film has been imitated in so many ways and gore in movies has gone so much farther but in 1979 the horror in this movie had no parallels. People were actually leaving the theater in the middle of the movie because they could not stomach it. The chest burster made everyone scream at once. I remember reading shortly afterwards about the scene with Dallas after he was attacked in the air vents, that had been left in the cutting room floor, this time engulfed in a cacoon and begging Ripley to kill him, which she does with the flame thrower. The filmmakers had decided to remove this scene and shorten Lambeth's death because they were just too intense at that point in the movie when the audience's nerves were completely rattled. The cocoon of course found its way in all the subsequent sequels. I remember thinking I was glad they removed those scenes because I was ready to have a heart attack at that point in the movie anyway and to see that would have effectively killed me.

Sounds wild r12. I wish I could have seen it when it first came out. Much like The Exorcist.

r12, I saw it in the theaters during its original release as well. Aside from the first A Quiet Place film, I can’t recall a time I spent at least half of the time cowering in my seat. It was very intense. Director Ridley Scott seems to no longer direct films the way he did his earlier classics like Alien, Blade Runner, or even Thelma and Louise.

lol.

I saw it upon release and was absolutely stunned to learn that Ash was a robot. That was a wow! moment.

Interesting fact:

[quote] Scott had wanted the alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea, because they believed the alien should die at the end of the film.

Between that and his take on Blade Runner Scott showed some really poor judgment.

The crab walking scene is weird. It makes the xenomorph's movements look a little too human and kind of silly. Good thing it was cut.

First it’s always about my sister Ange, and then with this Weaver bitch. What about remembering ME!?

Veronica Cartwright does sound quite bitter about the film on the commentary tract of the DVD.

First she resents being the unheroic woman. Then she complains about how her original death scene was never filmed. (She was supposed to get away from the alien when Parker distracts it only to run away and hide and die of fright. That scene where the alien tail goes thru her legs is actually Harry Dean Stanton's legs.)

I kind of understand why Cartwright was bitter. She had just played the second female lead in "the Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and had won tons of props for that performance; clearly she thought she was on her way to bigger and better things. She read for Ripley, and thought she had won the cast, only to find out when she got to London she was again playing the secondary female part, and that this time it was much smaller.

She's perfectly cast in "Alien," but she was beginning to realize she was being typecast for her wonderful ability to become unhinged on camera. It was only downwards for her thereafter.

R21, IIRC they cut that scene with the legs from Stanton's death because they thought it made the killing too obviously a rape.

I guess it was okay as long as the character was female.

R23

um

the alien rapes everybody. rapes and impregnates them. male and female.

that's the point of the movie.

It's not rape-rape, though.

R24, it is not made clear exactly what the complete reproduction cycle is in the original film - to the extent that a deleted scene showed the crew members turning into egg sacks (well-near impossible and not backed up by the sequel, which quite sensibly introduces an Alien "queen" as the source). The creature does not appear to eat its victims - it's silicon-based, so presumably this would be unlikely. The attacks are to eliminate the threat posed by the human crew. The rape component is symbolic.

The xenomorphs mainly kill for the sake of killing, r26. That's why the Engineers invented the original alien monsters in Prometheus and that's why David fine-tuned them into better killing machines in Covenant. The face-huggers are the real rapists.

Alien is one of those movies that I just missed out on over the years. I recently decided, with all the hype around Romulus and since all the movies were on Hulu, to give it a watch. I am sorry I waited so long. I really enjoyed it, good suspense and scares - not overly gory (I knew enough from pop culture and Spaceballs to know about the chest burster). I ended up watching them all. The second one and Prometheus were decent. Curious to watch Romulus now when it comes to streaming.

Saw it when I was five- loved it! The part with the chest burster didn’t scare me, but Dallas in the air ducts had me sweating I was so nervous. I’ve seen the deleted scene of him and Brett in the cocoons, but I liked that they weren’t in the theatrical cut. It was scarier not knowing what happened to them.

Ash attacking Ripley was also terrifying. I wanted Parker to survive as well, he should’ve just torched the Alien even with Lambert standing behind it. Sorry, Lambert.