ian-433
Joined Jan 2004
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ian-433's rating
An austere, despairing vision that far from finding any wonder or beauty in space instead dares to find a universe of limitless horror. 'Alien' remains the ultimate fusion of the horror and sci-fi genres.
Its underlying fascination lies in its keynote title. No film has ever imagined anything as uniquly, unsettlingly 'alien' as this. Not just the monster itself - a parasitical predator that has fine-tuned Darwinian adaption to the ultimate in survival - but also the derelict spaceship which harbours the egg from which it springs, after waiting millennia in gestation. No one has ever bettered designer HR Giger's concept of complete non-human otherness.
This was only Ridley Scott's second feature. His highly acute visual style (developed after years as a leading director of UK commercials) brilliantly establishes mood. His direction of drama is detached, almost eavesdropped in snippets, not allowing the audience to get too close to the protagonists. It's an approach that keeps the narrative single-mindedly on track.
And the tone is relentlessly bleak. The Nostromo's crew inhabit a dehumanised industrial complex of a spacecraft with few concessions to comfort. Among them there seems to be little more than indifferent companionship. The planet they visit is a hellish world of ferocious storms, smothering vapour and barren terrain. Jerry Goldsmith's music is correspondingly sparse, almost grudging in conceding any high notes.
Everyone remembers John Hurt's famous stomach-churning demise. But perhaps the most telling shot in the film is the one of Jones, the ship's cat, peeking out from behind a corner as the Alien devours a victim, feline eyes glinting in wary fascination at a primal scene it can empathise more instinctively than its hapless companions...
Its underlying fascination lies in its keynote title. No film has ever imagined anything as uniquly, unsettlingly 'alien' as this. Not just the monster itself - a parasitical predator that has fine-tuned Darwinian adaption to the ultimate in survival - but also the derelict spaceship which harbours the egg from which it springs, after waiting millennia in gestation. No one has ever bettered designer HR Giger's concept of complete non-human otherness.
This was only Ridley Scott's second feature. His highly acute visual style (developed after years as a leading director of UK commercials) brilliantly establishes mood. His direction of drama is detached, almost eavesdropped in snippets, not allowing the audience to get too close to the protagonists. It's an approach that keeps the narrative single-mindedly on track.
And the tone is relentlessly bleak. The Nostromo's crew inhabit a dehumanised industrial complex of a spacecraft with few concessions to comfort. Among them there seems to be little more than indifferent companionship. The planet they visit is a hellish world of ferocious storms, smothering vapour and barren terrain. Jerry Goldsmith's music is correspondingly sparse, almost grudging in conceding any high notes.
Everyone remembers John Hurt's famous stomach-churning demise. But perhaps the most telling shot in the film is the one of Jones, the ship's cat, peeking out from behind a corner as the Alien devours a victim, feline eyes glinting in wary fascination at a primal scene it can empathise more instinctively than its hapless companions...
Modest Hammer potboiler with all the studio's virtues intact: good acting, economical direction, neat photography, an unpretentious script and tight pacing. Edward de Souza and Jacqueline Daniel are the English honeymoon couple menaced by a chateauful of vampires led by Noel Wilman. Clifford Evans does a forceful job as the grizzled Van Helsing figure; it's just a pity they didn't develop his character a bit more. Befanged Transylvanian minxes Jacqueline Wallis and Isobel Black add to the sex quotient. Director Don Sharp gets right down to business from a splendid opening sequence set in that oh so familiar graveyard at Bray Studios. The trusty forest location at Black Park - another familiar day's outing for the Hammer crew - is well used, too. If only the bats at the climax looked a bit more real. Not a full-blooded Hammer classic, but quite perfect in its own minor key.
Jack Nicholson, Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick sounded a teaming to die for when announced in 1979. But King's straightforward horror premise has had to bear the burden of Kubrick's portentous cinematic self-importance.
Still, he builds up the atmosphere pretty well at the beginning with those majestic helicopter shots of the Rockies, and of the lonely hotel beset by winter silence, given even more eerie dissonant resonance by Bela Bartok's music.
The technical mastery, always Kubrick's forte, is there indoors, too. The immaculate camera-work (by John Alcott, who lensed 'Barry Lyndon'), with its severely symmetrical compositions and long flawless tracking shots, sets up the scenes superbly, especially when Nicholson meets or imagines the satanic bar-tender Lloyd.
The problem is that as the story progresses it becomes worryingly clear that Kubrick has no firm idea of how to direct a horror film. When it comes to actually delivering the shock moments, all he can manage is a quick melodramatic zoom-in to try and startle up scenes that just fail to exude the frisson intended (the first appearance of the twin girls, the word 'Redrum' on the mirror, the ghostly guest who says "Great party!", or the clunking flashback images of the butchered twins). And was anyone sitting in the director's chair when Nicolson indulged his ludicrous, eye-rolling "Little pigs, little pigs" moment?
Like virtually all of Kubrick films it's undeniably watchable. It's his most commercially successful film and, after shaky reviews, has gained a reputation as a genre milestone. Except it's really just an elaborate dead-end.
Still, he builds up the atmosphere pretty well at the beginning with those majestic helicopter shots of the Rockies, and of the lonely hotel beset by winter silence, given even more eerie dissonant resonance by Bela Bartok's music.
The technical mastery, always Kubrick's forte, is there indoors, too. The immaculate camera-work (by John Alcott, who lensed 'Barry Lyndon'), with its severely symmetrical compositions and long flawless tracking shots, sets up the scenes superbly, especially when Nicholson meets or imagines the satanic bar-tender Lloyd.
The problem is that as the story progresses it becomes worryingly clear that Kubrick has no firm idea of how to direct a horror film. When it comes to actually delivering the shock moments, all he can manage is a quick melodramatic zoom-in to try and startle up scenes that just fail to exude the frisson intended (the first appearance of the twin girls, the word 'Redrum' on the mirror, the ghostly guest who says "Great party!", or the clunking flashback images of the butchered twins). And was anyone sitting in the director's chair when Nicolson indulged his ludicrous, eye-rolling "Little pigs, little pigs" moment?
Like virtually all of Kubrick films it's undeniably watchable. It's his most commercially successful film and, after shaky reviews, has gained a reputation as a genre milestone. Except it's really just an elaborate dead-end.