"Alien is all about “the dark side of technology, of science,” says David J. Skal, author of “The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror.” “Despite all the things we’re told that will make the future a better place, what happens in Alien is our worst nightmare.” That’s exactly what Dan O’Bannon was thinking when he set out to write what he calls “a scary spaceship movie” in the mid-1970s. Influenced by 1950s sci-fi films like “The Thing,” O’Bannon was determined to make a “monster thriller about a monster from outer space, done with the style and technology that had accumulated since the 1950s.” This merger of horror and science fiction proved extremely fortuitous. There had been plenty of monsters in movies before Alien, but mostly they had been of the “man in a rubber suit” variety. Thanks to the creepy vision of Swiss artist H.R. Giger, the extraterrestrial monster in Scott’s film, with its insect-like body, acidic blood and knife-sharp teeth, was truly nightmarish."
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. It follows a commercial starship crew who investigate a derelict space vessel and are hunted by a deadly extraterrestrial creature. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet K
"Alien is mostly in the business of thrills, and on that level it did provide more than a few. I looked away from the screen during its most gory scenes. Even more enjoyable, though, was watching the film debut of an actress who should become a major star, Sigourney Weaver (she probably changed her name from Alice) makes an auspicious debut as one of the sturdiest crew members.”"
"“It’s an impossible nightmare, this fusion of technology and vermin, death and sex,” he says. “It goes back to what monsters are: They’re always a fusion of contradictory aspects. They’re things that don’t exist and can’t exist, but they work on a dream level; they capture our imaginations.”"
"Alien’s visual centrepiece is the alien itself, inspired by Giger’s 1976 print Necronom IV. It’s a truly hideous creature, replete with a long, smooth phallic skull, a set of razor-sharp teeth and a second set of pharyngeal jaws similar to those of an eel, which shoot out, stabbing and penetrating flesh. The creature also appears to have no eyes, but we know it sees, and its gender is never revealed, though it displays both male and female characteristics. The creature’s hands are monstrous and dragon-like, with long fingers and claws, but its body resembles the cross-section of some complex industrial machine, with human-like ribs lying externally over a mass of coils, springs and what look like hydraulic mechanisms."
"Areas of the Nostromo are reminiscent of various blue-collar workplaces, a counterpoint to the sleek spaceships imagined in much science fiction before Alien. In his article ‘The set design of Ridley Scott’s Alien, Christopher Aguiar explains that this approach had rarely been seen in science fiction before 1979, which adds to the quality of trepidation: “Fear is built largely from the camera prowling around the empty spaces of the Nostromo ship – a battered, truly ugly spacecraft, unlike the Death Star or USS Enterprise… instead of being outside and exploring the world as sci-fi often wants us to do, we’re largely stuck inside the rundown, twisted corridors of a ship. That immediately works as a way of Scott installing fear and uneasiness.”"
"Its plot is a kind of nightmarish allegory for the socially conservative backlash, in which a gender-egalitarian and sexually liberated future is torn apart by a monster whose only concern is impregnating everyone against their will. The gender politics of Alien are shockingly progressive, even now."
"I left Alien feeling contentedly manipulated, but not in an unparalleled entertaining panic. The monster’s one blood-spattered attack will probably become the most talked-about sequence in Alien. The climactic episodes are a rather more impressive cinematic achievement.”"