It’s difficult to really formulate, in one’s memory, just how that quality we now know as “buzz” was generated in the days before this mess we’re all in now, but my recollection is that Alien DID indeed have some buzz about it before opening, despite the fact that it was a film that had no stars and its director was a relatively unknown quality. I and my collegiate pals were somewhat aware of The Duellists, but hadn’t actually seen it. But we did know that this picture was coming and it was supposed to be something. There was a production story about it in the issue of Rolling Stone dated May 31st, which would have been on newsstands about a week before the film’s May 25th, 1979 opening (Wenner’s magazine was then, as now, a biweekly). I’m not sure if we had seen it or not.
But for whatever reason I was there for it on the afternoon of the opening day at the then-majestic (and now completely nonexistent) Stanley Warner Theatre on Route 4 in Paramus, N.J. Among my “posse” was the now-infrequent-SCR-chimer-in Joseph Failla, who’s been my moviegoing companion since third grade, and My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg™, soon to be the keyboard player and composition maestro of the now-reformulated Haledon rock legends Artificial Intelligence. We went in with a very “bring it” attitude. And I left with the conviction that it had not, in fact, been broughten.
I’m not entirely certain whether or not I was under the influence of cannabis during the viewing (it’s not unlikely, frankly) but I can tell you I was feeling pretty feisty. When the spawn of the face-sucker burst out of John Hurt’s chest, unhinged its jaw, screeched, and scurried away, I actually tittered, and then sputtered, rather loudly, and with no small amount of what I then considered punk-rock indignation, “It’s the Eraserhead baby with teeth!” Yes, I was pretty much the guy that you and everybody else in the sentient movie-viewing universe wants to pummel. And when the picture was over, I shrugged and seethed “That’s IT?” My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg™ semi-fumed “It’s just a slicker remake of X! The Terror From Beyond Space.” And then we all went to the Forum diner and then maybe back to Ron’s parents’ place in Clifton to listen to King Crimson’s Red and watch the pretty blue volume-level lights on his amplifier, or something.
I did not write up Alien for my college paper, thank God, or doubtless I would have puked up something daringly righteous and contrarian and dumb. I was 19 years old and although some will attest that I was a nice and amusing and even charming fellow on some levels, I was also an opinionated loudmouth asshole who thought he knew everything and that if you didn’t grok Henry Cow you were an individual of entirely subpar intelligence and not much worth my time. (Of course I was also canny enough not to play Henry Cow records for all that many of the women I dated, but we’ll get into that some other time.) I did not really come around to Alien until maybe the mid-80s. What turned me around was…well, it was a few things. I saw more movies, learned about form, and started—I can’t emphasize enough the importance of that verb being “started”—to try and look at movies with respect to what was actually on the screen and with less of an urge to outsmart what I was looking at. The evolution of home video was one of the factors that turned Alien into an enduring classic rather than a sleeper hit. The respect it was accorded by subsequent acquaintances who clearly knew better than I did was also influential. For instance, Michael Weldon in the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film: “Of course it’s an expensive B‑movie, but it’s also fascinating, well-made, and the scariest science-fiction film in ages.” (Interestingly, though, as B‑movies go, it wasn’t THAT expensive. Still. Michael was conversant with the work of Andy Milligan.) I’ve since rewatched it, enjoyed it, and been frightened by it, a number of times. But I have to confess I felt no reverence to it on my first.
Point being? I’m not entirely sure. Except that when the next Alien comes around, it’s not going to be made by the people who made the first Alien. It’s gonna have been made by a bunch of people we’re not all that familiar with. And when and if it comes around, I hope I have the eyes to see it for what it is, and if not quite that, to actually enjoy it.
UPDATE: The aforementioned Mr. Joseph Failla has some thoughts for me, and you:
I really like this post. That last paragraph, in particular, is something I need to print out and keep in my wallet so I can consult it when I watch new movies.
I was 32 when I first saw “Alien.” it was in San Francisco and I went with my friend filmmaker Wrren Sonbert. We both enjoyed it – especially for its production design and lighting. I’ll nver forget that weekend because it was when I discovered AIDS. A friend of Warren’s dropped by his house that day. He was rail thin, bald and wildly distracted. He borrowed an opera recrd and lfet. Warren said he’d been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that none of the doctors he’d seen knew how to treat.
Warren himself died of AIDS in the mid-90s.
Not only was this a great memoir, but the headline made me laugh. I took a quick look and thought that it was a The Onion headline.
“And when and if it comes around, I hope I have the eyes to see it for what it is, and if not quite that, to actually enjoy it. ”
This reminds me of The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, when I almost wasn’t ready to take it seriously because of the original (and the *shudder* remake) and the sequels to the original that I’d seen.
It’s a funny thing that brand recognition does to color someone’s anticipation (indeed the whole experience), and I’m not sure anybody’s properly figured out what to do with it and how it works. Well, one movie at a time I guess. Hopefully at least some of the people who made this movie will make the next one in the franchise.
“Interestingly, though, as B‑movies go, it wasn’t THAT expensive.” I believe in the DVD commentary, Ridley Scott says one of the film’s most beautiful shots, a glowing sun rising over a silhouetted alien landscape, was merely a stage light turned directly at the camera.
I haven’t seen “Prometheus” yet, but I enjoyed your comments, Glenn, and I’m reminded that both of Scott’s earlier (now routinely christened) “SF masterpieces” were roundly dismissed for years; it wasn’t until the ’90s and beyond that “Blade Runner” was widely described as anything other than a muddled, overproduced, box office flop. I happened to be an early devotee, and I vividly recall watching the critical tide shift on that one.
“…try and look at movies with respect to what was actually on the screen and with less of an urge to outsmart what I was looking at.”
One of the key critical attributes that separates the wheat from the chaff. Sometimes I can be well into a movie before realizing it’s been ahead of me all along, and that moment is always equally thrilling (for the movie) and embarrassing (for myself, still tripped up by juvenile superiority). Like Alvin says, words to live by.
My mom actually saw ALIEN while she was pregnant with me, so it might be said that I saw the movie from the alien’s perspective. She later took me to see ALIENS in the theater, so I like to think I have a well rounded perspective on the franchise, untainted by grown-up cynicism (?).
I think ALIEN differentiates itself from the likes of IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE not only in terms of budget, but in terms of character, creating claustrophobia, and in establishing and then constraining physical space. I don’t think that calling it “a generic B‑movie with a bunch of money pumped into it” is fair. I think HALLOWEEN did something comparable to a generic slasher script, but without needing the budget to do so (in fairness, it took place in the suburbs and not on a spaceship).
I find it amusing that Andy Milligan has now become a point of reference for normal people. Ten years ago or so, if you tried to engage someone on the topic of Milligan’s films, you’d probably be dismissed as a glue-huffing cretin.
@ Thomas D: Ha! My mom and dad saw “Psycho” at a drive-in, with nearly one-year-old me sitting between them, and my mom pregnant with my sister. This has been consistent fodder for a lot of family humor.
Re Milligan: Yeah, cinephilia marches on, huh?
Well, you win. I did see ROCKY HORROR at a drive-in with my parents when I was 5, and I think “awkward” is the only way to describe that experience.
Speaking of which, I have the BFI NIGHTBIRDS Blu-ray sitting on top of my “to watch” pile. I’d have sooner thought we’d see a blu-ray of THE DAY THE CLOWN CRIED with a drunk Jerry Lewis commentary before we’d see that.
ALIEN freaked me out so much I was convinced the cat was going to burst open and a baby creature come out and kill Sigourney Weaver during the end credits.
I do remember being rather underwhelmed by BLADE RUNNER though, and it’s current status irks me a little. It does look fantastic obviously and has gotten better since they got rid of Ford’s “hard-boiled” voiceover but I can’t escape my memory of groaning over it the first time.
I like “Blade Runner” okay (Scott’s cut, I mean), but that was, or was close to, the beginning of fanboy profundity. All that breathless speculation about whether Deckard was human or not, and what does everything mean if he IS human or if he ISN’T–it’s like, man, what the fuck have you people been *drinking*! Get off it, right now! If that crap could’ve been toned down in the ’80s and ’90s, maybe we wouldn’t be mistaking The Dark Knight for the return of Wittgenstein today.
I don’t remember any big buildup for “Alien”. Maybe there was, but I was following the buzz religiously back then and don’t recall it. What I *do* remember was being surprised 2–3 weeks into its run when people kept telling me about this amazing scene in it I just HAD to see–something that impressed them more than Sigourney Weaver in her tank-top and panties. Anyway, I just love the low-key way the actors talk to each other and the convincing sense that they’re blue-collar shlubs who just happen to work in space. It felt like Scott had been pigging out on a steady diet of nothing but Hawks/Nyby for weeks.
I saw it in NYC with a bunch of friends, either day one or close enough thereto. One was a budding special effects technician, the other was a devotee of Starlog, and we all three of us loved SF. There was buzz all right – I think there was a comic adaptation being serialized in Heavy Metal. (I used to have my YOU ARE MY LUCKY STAR button, which was handed out at the theater.) I thought then, and I still think, the second half fails the creepy originality and brilliant design of the first half. I wanted something better than the standard funhouse routine where the heroine sets the ship for self-destruct, then has to run down a long corridor full of blind corners, steam jets, and strobe lights apparently designed to make sure nobody will make it off the ship alive. I think James Cameron’s retooling was good enough to improve the first movie in hindsight.
I, too, was frequently an asshole back then, but not where “Alien” was concerned. Brilliant opening, barely adequate conclusion. Thought it then. Think it now.
First saw ‘Alien’ on 4:3 Fox video(crudely pan and scanned with a third of the picture brutally sawn off as Jim Cameron used to say)and it was pretty amazing, my first encounter with sci-fi art cinema. A later viewing of it in 2.35:1 took my breath away, the widescreen compositions were a marvel. Next time I watch it i’m going to try and forget that the space jockey is just a suit and underneath is a cross between Molasar from ‘The Keep’ and the blue dude from ‘Watchmen’.
Good stuff, Glenn. And I so much agree with your point (or what I think is your point, or part of it) about these loudmouth, bully “tastemaker” bloggers. Not saying everyone needs a film PEDIGREE to write intelligently about film but life experience never hurts. It’s not all about this is GOOD or this SUCKS. But since that’s never going to happen…
I’m running through the ALIEN franchise before my PROMETHEUS viewing this weekend and I’m pretty hung up on ALIEN and what it’s various insightful essays really *mean*, especially the ones about the sexual signifiers and the feminist slant on the film. I haven’t watched the film in a good 10–15 years and since that time have (hopefully) gained more insight into cinema, psychology, philosophy and all that stuff. That being said having watched it again, there is SO MUCH sexual innuendo in ALIEN and I KNOW it’s there. It’s clear as day (sphincter muscle air vents, Lamberts death/rape, Ash’s android juice facial…just to be crass) but part of me simply cannot believe Ridley Scott MEANT these things.
I mean, I think Ripley as a feminist hero needs zero discussion and I think the politics of that in the late 70’s informed that. But the rest of it? I just don’t buy that Scott *meant* it. But yet, it’s there. Yet Ridley Scott isn’t much for the subversive or the allegorical, I don’t think. Why would he do such a thing ONE TIME? Or, did he? I guess I don’t buy it is what I’m saying.
Before Glenn and I became blogemies these were the kinds of questions I have about film in general and few writers that are still working are as capable or “willing” to discuss such things as Glenn was/is. It’s what drew me to your work at Première and that kick-ass blog that evolved. But that history is neither here nor there.
My question is: Is ALIEN truly a deep exploration of feminism or did some production designers have some fun behind Sir Ridley’s back? If he “meant” it, why didn’t he continue exploring these ideas since ALIEN was so successful? Ugh.…I hate film criticism.
At the height of puberty, I sat between my mom and dad at a drive-in showing of THE LAST PICTURE SHOW. Full-frontal 21-year-old Cybill Shepherd. I’m surprised I didn’t spontaneously combust…or something.
I think I’m no more than a couple of years older than Glenn, and I remember liking ALIEN pretty well right off the bat. I don’t think I fully appreciated it, however, until a midnight showing back in the late 90s or so. I haven’t warmed to much of Scott’s other work though. I’ll try to check out PROMETHEUS.
@ jbryant, I don’t know if I’ve told the story of my GRANDMOTHER taking me to see “Frenzy” at my request when I was twelve. Most awkward. Car ride home. Ever.
@Don Lewis, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I’m willing to put our blogemies thing behind us if you are. For real, no relapses, I won’t do a Lucy-with-the-football act on you. Just putting it out there.
For some reason, I associate Alien with the first time I saw the Siskel and Ebert show, back when it was just starting on PBS, Alien was one of the movies they reviewed, I think it has stuck with me because their show seemed such a fresh idea. (they did like Alien I seem to recall) I also note that I’m 5 years older than Glenn.
This is one of my biggest frustrations with modern movie ‘criticism’ – the ‘fanboy absolutes’. This movie is awesome or this movie sucks. Reading responses to Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood was bewildering. What movie was everyone else seeing the ‘sucked’ so much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Sure it was a bit silly towards the end but, for the most part, it was an enjoyable new take on the myth, very well made, and not aimed at 14 year old boys. ‘NO’ apparently I’m incorrect, it ‘sucked’. I throw my hands up.
I have always liked ALIEN, and it keeps rising in my estimation – my recent encounter with the Blu-ray confirmed that. It’s really beautifully made. It’s interesting to me to look at each ALIEN film not as a part of a franchise (well, okay, yes you do, duh), but as a demonstration of what each director was like – at least at the time they made their film. Cameron’s rarely shown an affinity for horror, or “space horror,” but in his film you’ve got the Space Marines and unmanned (deep-space instead of deep-sea) probe-bots, and isn’t Ripley a lady-from-yesteryear, telling her tale, at the beginning? And I’m sure he couldn’t wait to improve those low-altitude aircraft for AVATAR.
It’s hard to connect the Ridley from ALIEN to the director of ROBIN HOOD – a film I maintain is pretty good for about the first 40 some-odd minutes – but there seems to be a stronger connection to the Brit cinema of its day, just getting into the shaky-cam, very much under the influence of the Roeg-Lester takeover… not at all a feeling I get from Cameron’s sequel.
Of course if we are talking “authors” you have to follow the path of HR Giger and Dan O’Bannon as well. http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/feature/shock-value-dan-obannon/265
And, in the larger picture, Ridley Scott’s “first three” unquestionably eclipse his later work, although lots of movies he’s made since are good, really good, or (weirdest of all) start out well but inevitably nosedive in their second or third acts…
Note! Hate to be “that guy” but it’s IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, not X! Unless there’s an alternate title or that’s just what your friend said, etc.
And on that tangent, IT! is on Netflix Instant for any know-something-ish 19-year-old or seen-almost-everything 50-something to check out. While it doesn’t stack up to ALIEN, it’s really good in its way – the best film that I’ve seen from “micro-auteur” Edward L. Cahn. Under its no-budget constraints it is a graceful, supple little hunk of sci-fi.
“Fanboy absoules” are playing a mjor role in the reaction to the Scot/Car contretemps as reflected here –
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2012/06/ao_scott_on_criticism_this_is_.html
Truly depressing. Anti-intellectualism is now regarded as a badge of honor.
I remember seeing Alien in the cinema when I was, what? 12? 13? and next day begging my parents for some extra pocket money so I could go back and see it again. They refused and I never really forgave them. It lives in my mind much more so than the experience of seeing Blade Runner (though THAT I did manage to go see twice in one week). Alien is somewhere buried deep inside me and it’ll never go away, not even after the horrible disappointment of Prometheus, which I take as an illiterate attempt to mutilate everything beautiful about the earlier film.
Oh, and at one point I lived in the same London apartment that Andy Milligan lived in when he made Nightbirds. It came as quite a shock to me to find that out. He left some strange, spooky vibes after him, too.
For me, Alien just continues to get better and better with each passing year, and I still consider it to be Scott’s best film to date by a country mile. I remember first seeing it at about 9 or 10 with my parents on TV when we were on vacation and not being able to sleep for the entire remainder of the trip.
With all the attention paid to the production design and visuals, how come the sound design is so rarely mentioned? I’ve always considered it to be the film’s strongest aspect and, more than anything, the one that contributes most consistently to its overwhelming sense of dread.
Don:
Recall that Scott *did* make G.I. JANE and THELMA & LOUISE, two of the better films with explicit feminist themes to come out of mainstream Hollywood in the 1990s. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your skepticism re: ALIEN’s feminism, but it’s not inconceivable that Scott had feminism on his mind even at that early date.
Why does it matter whether Scott intended the film to have a feminist theme or not, or whether he was consciously orchestrating such a theme via the art direction? The first thing one learns in Film Analysis 101 is that intentionality is completely beside the point. The issue should be what’s up there on the screen, not how it got there.
Dan:
You’re correct to an extent. Yes, authorial intent doesn’t *really* matter in Film Analysis 101, as you say, and if one wants to craft a feminist analysis of ALIEN, one can certainly do that, regardless of what Scott or any of the other filmmakers involved “really” intended.
However, I was responding to Don’s assertion that a feminist reading is arguable silly, since Scott has exhibited no subsequent interest in feminist themes. And that just seems counter-factual, given, again, G.I. JANE and THELMA & LOUISE. (And, to an extent, HANNIBAL and MATCHSTICK MEN as well.) So, yeah, perhaps we’re arguing about something that doesn’t really matter in the realms of rigorously text-centered criticism. But it still raises a red flag for me when whole swaths of a director’s oeuvre are disregarded for convenience’s sake.
Ridley Scott may or may not have “meant” the feminist/sexual power subtext in ALIEN but HR Giger knew what he was doing.
Having attended one of those august institutions where “film analysis” serves as one of the support beams, it might interest some of you to know that, in such places, “what’s up on the screen” takes a reclining backseat to feminist readings and gender “performativity” and all that wot. Artist intentionality tends to be passed over with little comment.
Of course, being a cro magnon auteurist critic then as I am now, I fled that community just as soon as I had my diploma in my (knuckles-to-pavement) hands. But that’s another story.
Was talking the other day about the first truly shocking film I ever saw, in terms of sex and blood onscreen, etc. and realized it wasn’t MASH (which I saw as a sheltered Catholic teen thinking it would be like the TV show) but rather ALIEN, when I was about 12. My little brother and I were invited to an elderly neighbor’s house to watch it via their brand-new cable access. The neighbor didn’t quite realize the film might not be appropriate for an 8‑year-old and 12-year-old. It was the first time a movie really frightened and shocked me, although I didn’t tell anyone that at the time. Probably the first unedited-for-TV R‑rated movie I saw.
Years later, I was in a screenwriting class and the instructor told us we were about to see a movie about the power of corporations and how they affect the working class (or something like that) and surprised us with ALIEN. Less shocked, but more entertained than at age 12.
Funny you should say that, Jette – I revisited ROBOCOP the other day (it’s aged better than many other blockbusters from the same period), and while its depiction of violence (and the ’80s Alpha Male attitude that underwrites it) in the corporate workplace has a deliberately over-the-top edge, part of me kept thinking, Hey, just another day at the office at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce.
Dan/Andrew-
I guess my point was more aimed at MY issues with film criticism and how alot of it seems like sticking a square peg in a round hole for the sake of forcing film to be art. I’ve got a masters in film studies and throughout my time in school I had more “oh, that’s bulllllshit” moments than “wow, how insightful!” ones. Not to say film cannot be art and that politics, social attitudes and all sorts of other things go into creating a film but much like that brilliant doc ROOM 237 on the various “meanings” of THE SHINING, it’s pretty easy to slap a meaning on any old thing and claim it right due to intellectualism.
To be clear- I DO think ALIEN is a nod to feminism and that THELMA AND LOUSIE and GI JANE comment was well played, I forgot about those. But all the weird sexuality stuff in ALIEN, like I said, is clearly there.…or is it? Did Scott mean it to be and if so, what’s he really saying? Etc.
And Glenn, I’m totally down for a truce. Fighting on the internets is silly and a huge waste of time and energy.
As all good film critics say – ‘You just make the movie, I’ll tell you what it’s about’.
@Don, as LondonLee posted above, even if Ridley Scott didn’t fully intend all the sexual imagery in Alien, H.R. Giger certainly did. I’d have to imagine that Scott was aware of what Giger was doing and agreed to go along with it, even if it wasn’t his idea first.
Considering that Scott’s new prequel features a scene where a not-subtle-at-all albino penis hisses at two of the characters, I’d say that he’s fully on board with the sexual imagery in the series now.
@Josh – I had to laugh at that scene (stupid character actions aside) when the Rafe Spall character says ‘clearly it’s a girl’ …?…I looks like a big penis!
Love this, Glenn. You inspired me to add something about it to my own post, since my first encounter with “Alien” was memorable in a totally different way… (P.S. I’m usually well-behaved once the lights go down, but I’m horrified to think of the pompous windbaggery I released into the air before the movie started and after it was over, just for the sake of making conversation…)
Just read some of the other comments and would like to chime in:
Shane: “You just make the movie, I’ll tell you what it’s about.” True! Any filmmaker can tell you that’s true of all audiences, not just critics. Once the movie is released, it no longer belongs to its makers. Whatever’s there on the screen for people to react to and interpret is fair game. Who can say what everyone’s intentions were? (The more instinctual filmmakers, like maybe David Lynch or Terrence Malick, might admit they aren’t sure themselves; they do what feels right to them without overanalyzing it before they do it.)
Speaking of that: Your story, David, reminds me of the response to Cronenberg’s “The Fly” in 1986. Most of the people I knew who died of AIDS did so in the mid- to late-80s. It was so much on people’s minds that many saw “The Fly” as a metaphor for AIDS. Cronenberg later said he didn’t think of it that way (he’d just been thinking of an accelerated version of natural aging, the invariable “betrayal” of the body that everyone goes through as they age, not an immunodeficiency virus). But, he acknowledged, the metaphor works.
Don R. Lewis: I can’t speak for Ridley Scott, but the sexual metaphors are so organic in “Alien” (in the story, the design, the effects, the way it’s shot) that if Scott wasn’t aware of them consciously, he was sure working with them subconsciously. (Remember, too, that in 1979, we didn’t KNOW that the aliens impregnated humans and used them as cocoons – that was in the script, but not in the released version of the movie.) Years after “Alien,” Dan O’Bannon said: “One thing that people are all disturbed about is sex… I said ‘That’s how I’m going to attack the audience; I’m going to attack them sexually. And I’m not going to go after the women in the audience, I’m going to attack the men. I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number.” So, what “Alien” does with that is open to interpretation… but there you are.
Tom: re “beginning of fanboy profundity”: Thank you for this: “If that crap could’ve been toned down in the ’80s and ’90s, maybe we wouldn’t be mistaking The Dark Knight for the return of Wittgenstein today.”
And Jaime: Those “first three” are the ones, all right. I’ve always felt that “Blade Runner” was less than meets the eye (as some auteurist critic once said…), but it improved quite a bit when they jettisoned that horrible narration that Harrison Ford said he delivered under duress. For me, everything since has been a letdown, as you say. Sometimes you can just feel the movies falling apart before your eyes – just when they should be coalescing and gathering momentum…