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Bookmark this pageAlien (1979)
Director: Ridley Scott
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
In the wake of the huge commercial success of Alien, almost all attention has perversely focused on the provenance of the script (was it a rip-off of It, the Terror from Beyond Space? Of Van Vogt's fiction? Was former John Carpenter collaborator Dan O'Bannon sold out by producers Walter Hill and David Giler's rewrites?). But the limited strengths of its staple sci-fi horrors - crew of commercial spacecraft menaced by stowaway monster - always derived from either the offhand organic/ Freudian resonances of its design or the purely (brilliantly) manipulative editing and pacing of its above-average shock quota. Intimations of a big-budget Dark Star fade early, and notions of Weaver as a Hawksian woman rarely develop beyond her resourceful reaction to jeopardy. At least Scott has no time to dawdle over redundant futuristic effects in the fashion that scuttles his later Blade Runner.Author: PT
User reviews of this film
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- ffelix said...
- Posted on Jul 08 2008 22:58 Unbelievably good. This film does an excellent job of vacillating between the sheer boredom & monotony of blue-collar work [this time in space] & the adrenaline poisoning of abject terror & dread. The absence of information is stunningly powerful & lends force to the H.R. Giger monster designs when she finally shows herself well into the film. The soundtrack to this film is amazing, though seldom mentioned.
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- Magmabulle said...
- Posted on Jun 08 2008 20:08 Some scenes have not aged with much dignity, but all in all it is as frightening as it was when it was released.
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- Cole said...
- Posted on Jan 26 2008 15:03 Alien put simply is a masterpiece thriller.
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- Tina said...
- Posted on Aug 15 2007 13:33 Aliens is a good film, although can be very slow in places. There are a couple of fantastic scenes which have made the film stand out and probably made it as famous as it is. I much prefer the sequel Aliens though.
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Cast & crew
Director: Ridley Scott
Producer: Gordon Carroll, David Giler, Walter Hill
Cast: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Yaphet Kotto, Ian Holm full cast
Genre(s): Science Fiction
Duration: 117 mins
US Release: Jul 10 2009
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