Alien

Released: June 22, 1979

Studio: 20th Century Fox

Genre: sci-fi/monster/horror/action

Box Office (numbers in millions):

Domestic: 80.93 Worldwide: 184.93

Adjusted for Inflation:

Domestic: 286.35 Worldwide: ?

Directing: Ridley Scott

Screenwriting: Dan O’Bannon

Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton, Veronica Cartwright, Yaphet Kotto

Review:

Alien was “a grisly, futuristic, suspenseful, atmospheric, memorable and popular” ^FS “science fiction film that broke new ground by adding horror and gore and, more importantly, Weaver, as the action heroine.” ^AFI07 “Ridley Scott’s deep-space monster-slasher…[is] a movie which can handle as many re-watches as you can throw at it.” ^EM’18 “It’s so intoxicatingly atmospheric and deeply compelling, it sticks to you like a parasite.” ^EM’18

In addition to Weaver in her starring debut role as warrant officer Ripley, the crew consists of Dallas (Skerritt), Kane (Hurt), Ash (Holm), and others on Nostromo, a commercial space cargo freighter. They “are awakened from hyper-sleep to investigate a distress signal on a mysteriously bleak, dead planet with a crashed alien spacecraft.” ^FS They unknowingly take on “an alien stowaway that incubates in some humans and hunts the rest.” ^AFI07

The “lifeform with tentacles clings to Kane’s helmet/face, incubates inside his host body, and ultimately bursts from his gut. The hideous, indestructible, carnivorous creature grows in size and hides within the hyper-tech spacecraft, menacing and picking off one crew member after another until self-reliant, resourceful Ripley outsmarts the primal, lethal monster in the explosive conclusion.” ^FS

“This classic sci-fi horror flick had its roots in comedy, believe it or not. Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon made a film with John Carpenter when both were studying film at USC called Dark Star. One of the characters was an alien in the form of a beach ball. The alien got a massive reworking to become the Alien.” ^MSN

Followed by three sequels, including James Cameron’s Aliens (1986), Alien3 (1992), and Alien Resurrection (1997).” ^FS