Alien

1979 • 116 minutes

About this movie

The terror begins when the crew of a spaceship investigates a transmission from a desolate planet, and discovers a life form that is perfectly evolved to annihilate mankind. One by one, each crew member is slain until only Ripley is left, leading to an explosive conclusion that sets the stage for its stunning sequel, "Aliens."

Ratings and reviews

It is very hard for me not to believe this is the best movie I've ever seen. Ridley Scott and H.R. Giger, along with other great artists and writers enjoying themselves at the challenge of giving an old story a new spin, created a world you can practically touch and smell. Inside the quiet reality of the starfreighter Nostromo, which has answered an apparent SOS and found a shocking dead elephantine biomechanical creature and its decadent derelict starship--with a cargo of eggs, one planting an acid-blooded Facehugger on a curious crew member who survives long enough to "give birth" at the dinner table--a horrible, demonic-looking distortion of humanity hides, a prize ordered by an earthly Company, to be delivered by the synthetic inside artificial man Ash. Scott manages to show tremendously realistic, natural human behavior, and does justice to the phantasmagoric imagination of artist/designer Giger. The scene where the crew approach the giant dead Cockpit pilot fused into its chair, fossilized or mummified, holds it's own with anything ever captured on film. Everyone who worked on this movie started with stone soup and made a dish that would impress even H.P. Lovecraft's Elder Gods. The influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey is evident, but Alien could keep a Freudian busy for years trying to decipher the clear sexual and even religious implications of the movie's biomechanical relics and phallus-headed beast springing from seed implantation through a man's throat then birth from his chest. Alien is art, and if you see this movie a few times you'll understand why Giger's creation is just too magnificent ("perfect," according to Ash) to be turned into a bug for Predator aliens to hunt in B-movies. Absolutely a movie that cannot be remade.

Well this IS a winner by Director, Ridley Scott. I watched it in HD so you really don't notice the age of the movie. You will be intrigued, scared, held in suspense, angry a couple of time and then relieved. If your a gamer...I would watch this movie first then play Alien: Isolation. They totally tie into together nearly seemlessly.

Deep space terror revolves around a doomed crew of 7 Lambert, Ripley, Ash,Cane, Brett, Parker and Captain Dallas. My sister took me to see it the night it opened in the late 70's. I believe what makes the creature so ominous is due to the fact that it doesn't have eyes.