Alien Resurrection (1997)
Dir: Jean-Pierre Jeunet
"Witness the resurrection."
In this, the penultimate installment of the Alien franchise retrospective blow-out extravaganza celebration...of sleaze, I take to the stars yet again for the (unfortunate) chronologically-final entry in the series, Alien Resurrection.
200 years after the events of Alien3, military scientists aboard the research vessel Auriga have succeeded in cloning Ellen Ripley and have extracted the queen embryo from her abdomen (don't think to hard about it). A group of space pirates arrive with a cargo of kidnapped, cryogenically-frozen people, and soon the military has bred itself a squadron of aliens. Stowing away with the pirates is android Call (Winona Ryder, Beetlejuice, Heathers) who has somehow learned about the experiment and has come to stop it. Predictably, the aliens outsmart their human captors and slaughter most of the scientists and soldiers aboard the Auriga, leaving Call and the pirates to fight their way free with the help of the cloned Ripley who, thanks to some DNA merging in the cloning process, now has acid blood and superhuman reflexes. The alien queen has changed, as well; she now has a human womb and gives birth to a slimy, confused "newborn" human/alien hybrid. Can Ripley overcome the "alien" portion of her nature, kill the fuck out of this pathetic creature and save her new friends? What do you think?!
I really don't like this movie. There's some interesting drama that could be mined from the idea of a character who willingly sacrificed her life being resurrected against her will and having to deal with the ramifications of that unwanted "second life," but screenwriter Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Avengers-still very early in his career) does very little with that concept. In fact, his script isn't really about anything. NONE of the characters in the movie have any motivation whatsoever for the actions they take. WHY does the military keep the cloned Ripley alive, knowing that she's going to be trouble, when all they want is the alien? WHY are they so desperate to get their hands on the aliens that they've been continuously trying to clone Ripley (with several teams over six generations) for 200 years? How much does 200 years of continuous research cost? They only want the alien as a weapon...Surely SOMETHING else has come along in 200 years that's less costly/requires less effort? After the aliens break free, WHY do the pirates stick around to fight them/help Ripley? These are fucking sociopaths who had no problem kidnapping human beings in hypersleep and selling their still-living bodies for a military experiment...Why does any of them give a fuck about the mayhem the aliens might cause? For that matter, why does Ripley? Why does the great character actor Michael Wincott (The Crow, Dead Man) walk down a hallway alone for NO other purpose than to get killed?! WHY is a lengthy, awkward, overly-expository bit of dialogue devoted to explaining that Call is an advanced "auton (an android designed by other androids)" when it has NOTHING to do with ANYTHING else that happens in the movie? The characters are all interchangeable; Whedon's dialogue follows an exposition-one liner-exposition pattern and much of it seems randomly assigned. The first three films weren't great character studies, but we at least got the banter between Parker and Brett in the first film and Hudson's cowardly rantings and Vasquez's steely bravado in the second. Hell, even Alien3 managed to sketch a couple of memorable character with the dumb-but-earnest Aaron and the snarly, sarcastic Morse. Here, only Ron Pearlman (TV's Beauty and the Beast, Hellboy)'s Johner rises above the rest, and that's only because he's the "dumb guy." Whedon seems hell-bent on writing an Alien film for the mid-late 90s, one filled with vapid, detached "ironic" humor. He forgets, however, to give it any semblance of story.
Whedon's script isn't the only problem here, however. Jeunet (The City of Lost Children, Delicatessen) spoke no English when he signed on to do the film and had to direct his actors through a translator. Jeunet is a fine filmmaker, but his brand of dark fairytale/sinister whimsy doesn't fit the Alien universe. Cartoonish fish-eye lens shots, canted camera angles and exaggerated
POV sequences help rob the film of any sense of dread. Due to a combination of the weak script and the directorial language barrier, a great cast including Wincott, Pearlman, Brad Douriff (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Dune) and J.E, Freeman (Miller's Crossing, Wild at Heart) either flounder around looking confused or chew the shit out of the scenery. Ryder, meanwhile, cast for her "Gen X It-girl appeal," just seems bored. Because Alien3 underperformed at the box office, this film was given a lower-than usual budget (relative to inflation, of course). As such, the sets tend to look cheap and stagey and the CGI alien effects look like PS2-era video game scenes. On the plus side, ADI's redesigned alien suits are decent looking (they're browner and fleshier than usual, a nice reflection of the high levels of human DNA allegedly present in them). Their newborn design, however, is a shapeless, slimy ugly piece of shit that looks like a cancerous testicle with eyes. I hate it. As an aside, it was originally designed with visible human reproductive organs, which the MPAA demanded be cut prior to release. Some poor intern at ADI had to spend weeks on digital alien fruit basket removal...
So, yeah...This one's no good and it leaves a sour note in my mouth as the conclusion to the series. I'll end on an up note, however; Sigourney Weaver OWNS every scene in the damn movie. She plays alien-hybrid-clone Ripley with a feral grace reflective of the creatures themselves. It's a noticeably different take on the character, and it's brilliance stands in stark contrast to the shitty film around it.
Enter...If you dare!
Big thanks to "Diamond" Dave Wheeler for the bitchin' logo!
Monday, April 27, 2015
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Entry 50.3: Alien3 (1992)
Alien3 (1992)
Dir: David Fincher
"Three times the suspense. Three times the terror. Three times the danger."
After a couple weeks off (well, not "off" off; working and not having time to get to this blog "off"), I'm venturing back down to the Basement of Sleaze to spend a little time with the double-y-chromo rapists and murderers of Alien3.
Immediately following the events of Aliens, Ripley and her makeshift "family" have their voyage interrupted by a facehugger deposited by the Alien Queen. It cuts itself and causes a fire, which causes the ship to jettison Ripley and company in an escape pod. Coming out of hypersleep, Ripley discovers that Hicks and Newt were both killed in the crash and the android Bishop was smashed to bits. Making matters worse, she discovers that the planet she's stranded on, Fury-161, is a Weyland-Yutani-owned prison for male rapists and murderers; she's the lone woman on an island of predators. There is also little technology here; the prisoners use oxen for transport and torches for light. Ripley finds some comfort in the arms of sensitive medical officer Clemons (Charles Dance, The Golden Child, The Last Action Hero), but the facehugger has traveled with her and soon a new alien is born. Complicating matters, a CAT scan reveals that Ripley herself has been "impregnated" and is carrying a new alien queen. Ripley forms an alliance with Dillon (Charles S. Dutton, Menace II Society, Mimic), the religious zealot leader of the inmates, and they hatch a plan to destroy the beast using the leadworks at the heart of the prison. With "The Company" closing in to capture the queen she's carrying, Ripley is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice to rid the universe of the alien threat once and for all.
To say that Alien3 was a troubled production is like saying that winter in Minnesota is a little brisk. After the success of Aliens, Fox wanted a sequel but Sigourney Weaver was hesitant to return to the role of Ripley. Alien3 initially started as a vehicle for Michael Biehn's Hicks written by William Gibson and to be directed by Renny Harlin. When Gibson's script proved problematic, Harlin walked and Eric Red (Near Dark, The Hitcher) was brought in to draft a new script featuring an entirely new cast of characters. Red's script, set on a frontier farming planet, was awful (even by his own admission), and the project once again went into turnaround. Eventually, Fox was able to lure Weaver back with a major payday and producer credit and young, up-and-coming writer/director Vincent Ward (The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey) was hired to pen and helm the film. After "creative differences" with producers David Giler and Walter Hill caused Ward to leave the film during preproduction, music video wunderkind Fincher was brought in at the last minute, with Hill and Giler performing rewrites literally daily.
Alien3 is a movie that I admire greatly, even if I have some issues with it. It is, without question, the bleakest, most depressing film ever to be released as part of a mega-budget, Hollywood summer blockbuster franchise. In addition to the unceremonious and brutal killing-off of fan-favorite characters Hicks and Newt at the very beginning, the film is basically two-plus hours of Ellen Ripley (a character we've grown to like a great deal by the end of Aliens) being abused: she's locked up, disbelieved and disrespected, beaten, very nearly raped, literally spit upon and finally forced to commit suicide. Through it all, Ripley maintains her inner strength and grim determination; say what you will about other aspects of the film, but Sigourney Weaver is absolutely riveting, and this may be her single best performance. On the negative end, the new alien is a quadruped (it's born of either a dog or ox, depending upon which version you watch) and in order to achieve the effect of the creature running on all fours, effects house ADI used a new "Go-Motion" technique that looks REALLY dodgy and involves some extremely lousy compositing. One of the novel aspects of the script is that the planet Fury-161 is infected with lice, forcing all of it's inhabitants to shave their body hair (Weaver received a huge up-front cash bonus for shaving her head). This results in the supporting cast being made up almost entirely of bald, white British guys, making it very difficult to tell the prisoners apart and care about who's being killed. The chaotic nature of the production and the ever-changing script also results in the film (especially the shorter, theatrical version) having no strong story; it's just a loosely-connected series of events linked by strange religious imagery and an ever-increasing sense of doom. As a sequel to Aliens, this doesn't really work at all, and I can't blame audiences who were expecting more Marines vs. aliens action for coming away disappointed. In fact, the film doesn't feel like either of it's predecessors; it's never genuinely scary like Alien, nor does it contain any of the thrills and suspense of Aliens. Really, it's sort of quiet, sad, mournful and imbued with a sense of inevitable doom. Honestly, though, I think that might be the beauty of Alien as a franchise; each film is so unlike the last that you never really know what to expect going in. I discover something new every time I watch this movie and I have come to like it a lot, but there's nothing I like more about it than this: Ripley, alone once again against the Company and the alien (whose threat is internal rather than external this time), biting her lip and slamming shut the fence that separates her from the men who could save her (but would take the alien for research), then calmly throwing herself into the pool of molten lead at the heart of Fury-161, giving her life to complete the task she began all those years ago. What a fucking way to end a character! Alas, it was not to be...
Like the previous two films, Alien3 is available in two versions: the original theatrical release and an "assembly cut" put together by Ridley Scott protegee Charles de Lauzirika for the 2004 Alien Quadrilogy DVD release, then further refined for the later Alien Anthology blu-ray release. I prefer the assembly cut; it's the closest we'll ever get to Fincher's original vision for the film and restores a couple of key plot points that make for a richer, more complete viewing experience. If you've only seen (and judged) the film based on it's original release, check out the assembly cut and give it a re-evaluation.
Dir: David Fincher
"Three times the suspense. Three times the terror. Three times the danger."
After a couple weeks off (well, not "off" off; working and not having time to get to this blog "off"), I'm venturing back down to the Basement of Sleaze to spend a little time with the double-y-chromo rapists and murderers of Alien3.
Immediately following the events of Aliens, Ripley and her makeshift "family" have their voyage interrupted by a facehugger deposited by the Alien Queen. It cuts itself and causes a fire, which causes the ship to jettison Ripley and company in an escape pod. Coming out of hypersleep, Ripley discovers that Hicks and Newt were both killed in the crash and the android Bishop was smashed to bits. Making matters worse, she discovers that the planet she's stranded on, Fury-161, is a Weyland-Yutani-owned prison for male rapists and murderers; she's the lone woman on an island of predators. There is also little technology here; the prisoners use oxen for transport and torches for light. Ripley finds some comfort in the arms of sensitive medical officer Clemons (Charles Dance, The Golden Child, The Last Action Hero), but the facehugger has traveled with her and soon a new alien is born. Complicating matters, a CAT scan reveals that Ripley herself has been "impregnated" and is carrying a new alien queen. Ripley forms an alliance with Dillon (Charles S. Dutton, Menace II Society, Mimic), the religious zealot leader of the inmates, and they hatch a plan to destroy the beast using the leadworks at the heart of the prison. With "The Company" closing in to capture the queen she's carrying, Ripley is forced to make the ultimate sacrifice to rid the universe of the alien threat once and for all.
To say that Alien3 was a troubled production is like saying that winter in Minnesota is a little brisk. After the success of Aliens, Fox wanted a sequel but Sigourney Weaver was hesitant to return to the role of Ripley. Alien3 initially started as a vehicle for Michael Biehn's Hicks written by William Gibson and to be directed by Renny Harlin. When Gibson's script proved problematic, Harlin walked and Eric Red (Near Dark, The Hitcher) was brought in to draft a new script featuring an entirely new cast of characters. Red's script, set on a frontier farming planet, was awful (even by his own admission), and the project once again went into turnaround. Eventually, Fox was able to lure Weaver back with a major payday and producer credit and young, up-and-coming writer/director Vincent Ward (The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey) was hired to pen and helm the film. After "creative differences" with producers David Giler and Walter Hill caused Ward to leave the film during preproduction, music video wunderkind Fincher was brought in at the last minute, with Hill and Giler performing rewrites literally daily.
Alien3 is a movie that I admire greatly, even if I have some issues with it. It is, without question, the bleakest, most depressing film ever to be released as part of a mega-budget, Hollywood summer blockbuster franchise. In addition to the unceremonious and brutal killing-off of fan-favorite characters Hicks and Newt at the very beginning, the film is basically two-plus hours of Ellen Ripley (a character we've grown to like a great deal by the end of Aliens) being abused: she's locked up, disbelieved and disrespected, beaten, very nearly raped, literally spit upon and finally forced to commit suicide. Through it all, Ripley maintains her inner strength and grim determination; say what you will about other aspects of the film, but Sigourney Weaver is absolutely riveting, and this may be her single best performance. On the negative end, the new alien is a quadruped (it's born of either a dog or ox, depending upon which version you watch) and in order to achieve the effect of the creature running on all fours, effects house ADI used a new "Go-Motion" technique that looks REALLY dodgy and involves some extremely lousy compositing. One of the novel aspects of the script is that the planet Fury-161 is infected with lice, forcing all of it's inhabitants to shave their body hair (Weaver received a huge up-front cash bonus for shaving her head). This results in the supporting cast being made up almost entirely of bald, white British guys, making it very difficult to tell the prisoners apart and care about who's being killed. The chaotic nature of the production and the ever-changing script also results in the film (especially the shorter, theatrical version) having no strong story; it's just a loosely-connected series of events linked by strange religious imagery and an ever-increasing sense of doom. As a sequel to Aliens, this doesn't really work at all, and I can't blame audiences who were expecting more Marines vs. aliens action for coming away disappointed. In fact, the film doesn't feel like either of it's predecessors; it's never genuinely scary like Alien, nor does it contain any of the thrills and suspense of Aliens. Really, it's sort of quiet, sad, mournful and imbued with a sense of inevitable doom. Honestly, though, I think that might be the beauty of Alien as a franchise; each film is so unlike the last that you never really know what to expect going in. I discover something new every time I watch this movie and I have come to like it a lot, but there's nothing I like more about it than this: Ripley, alone once again against the Company and the alien (whose threat is internal rather than external this time), biting her lip and slamming shut the fence that separates her from the men who could save her (but would take the alien for research), then calmly throwing herself into the pool of molten lead at the heart of Fury-161, giving her life to complete the task she began all those years ago. What a fucking way to end a character! Alas, it was not to be...
Like the previous two films, Alien3 is available in two versions: the original theatrical release and an "assembly cut" put together by Ridley Scott protegee Charles de Lauzirika for the 2004 Alien Quadrilogy DVD release, then further refined for the later Alien Anthology blu-ray release. I prefer the assembly cut; it's the closest we'll ever get to Fincher's original vision for the film and restores a couple of key plot points that make for a richer, more complete viewing experience. If you've only seen (and judged) the film based on it's original release, check out the assembly cut and give it a re-evaluation.
Sunday, April 5, 2015
Entry 50.2: Aliens (1986)
Aliens (1986)
Dir: James Cameron
"This time it's war."
Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) awakes from hypersleep to discover that 57 years have passed since the events of Alien. Ripley discovers that her daughter (10 years-old when she shipped out aboard the Nostromo) has died an elderly woman and she's suffering from nightmares and PTSD thanks to her alien encounter. Adding to her misery, she discovers that the planet on which her crew discovered the derelict ship has been colonized by the sinister Weyland-Yutani corporation. When (predictably) contact is lost with the colony, Ripley, with nothing left to lose, agrees to accompany a squadron of highly-trained Colonial Marines to the planet (now designated LV-426) to investigate. Among the Marines are loudmouthed, obnoxious braggart Hudson (Bill Paxton, Weird Science, Near Dark), tough-as-nails Latina Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and quiet, capable Hicks (Michael Biehn, The Fan, The Terminator), who will become Ripley's strongest ally. Also along for the ride are android Bishop (Lance Henriksen, The Right Stuff, Pumpkinhead) and Weyland-Yutani representative Burke (Paul Reiser, Diner, Beverly Hills Cop). They arrive on LV-426 to find the colony severely damaged and deserted save for a lone 8 year-old girl, Newt (Carrie Henn), who's been hiding in the air ducts. When told that the Marines have advanced weaponry and are there to protect her, she replies "it won't make any difference." She's right, of course; the colonists did indeed locate the alien derelict and the entire colony has been used as hosts for a whole hive filled with alien creatures. After a series of conflicts that leave their numbers decimated, the colony's reactor damaged and dangerously close to exploding and reveal that Burke is a traitor hoping to bring back an alien for study by Weyland-Yutani's bio-weapons division, Riply, Bishop, Newt and the wounded Hicks manage to escape the planet, but there is one more challenge to be faced, as Ripley is forced to do battle alone with the monstrous alien queen.
Aliens is one of the all-time great sequels and, while I'm sure he'd disagree, still Cameron's finest hour (with the original Terminator being a close second). Realizing that maintaining the level of terror and dread created by the first film with the "mystery" of the alien now gone would be a difficult, if not impossible, task, Cameron instead took the film in a completely different direction. While Scott was inspired by haunted house movies and the dreadful atmosphere of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Cameron instead took his cues from old WWII combat squad movies, as well as the superheroic action movies that were starting to dominate movie houses in the 1980s. While never traditionally "scary," Cameron's film is exciting as hell; it's a slow-burn, but once it gets going, it never lets up. Cameron brought back Alien production designer Ron Cobb to maintain visual continuity, but Giger was not asked to come back, with creature effects falling to Stan Winston instead. While Winston's redesigned, more insect-like alien warriors are nowhere near as terrifying as Giger's monster, his dinosaur-like alien queen is a marvel of visual effects craftsmanship and one of the premiere movie monsters. The performances are all great, with Paxton (who gets all of the best lines) and Henriksen as particular standouts. Best of all is Weaver, who is given the opportunity to truly flesh out the character of Ripley and turn her from the "survivor girl" from the first movie into a genuine action heroine (the film is a major landmark in feminist filmmaking, as Ripley was the first true female action star. Stripped down to a t-shirt and bandolier and toting a combo machine gun/flamethrower, Ripley from the climax of this movie could eat Rambo for breakfast!). Ripley's connections with Newt and Hicks form the dramatic backbone of the movie; with them, this severely damaged and lost woman is able to find a surrogate family. That Cameron achieves this without venturing into the schmaltz that would begin creeping into his work after this is doubly impressive.
Aliens is available in two versions: the 137 minute theatrical cut and a 154 minute director's cut prepared by Cameron in 1990. The theatrical version is a leaner, better-paced film, but it criminally eliminates the sub-plot about Ripley's dead daughter, thus robbing her character of a genuine arc and the film of much of it's underlying drama. Because of this, seek out the director's cut.
Dir: James Cameron
"This time it's war."
Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) awakes from hypersleep to discover that 57 years have passed since the events of Alien. Ripley discovers that her daughter (10 years-old when she shipped out aboard the Nostromo) has died an elderly woman and she's suffering from nightmares and PTSD thanks to her alien encounter. Adding to her misery, she discovers that the planet on which her crew discovered the derelict ship has been colonized by the sinister Weyland-Yutani corporation. When (predictably) contact is lost with the colony, Ripley, with nothing left to lose, agrees to accompany a squadron of highly-trained Colonial Marines to the planet (now designated LV-426) to investigate. Among the Marines are loudmouthed, obnoxious braggart Hudson (Bill Paxton, Weird Science, Near Dark), tough-as-nails Latina Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) and quiet, capable Hicks (Michael Biehn, The Fan, The Terminator), who will become Ripley's strongest ally. Also along for the ride are android Bishop (Lance Henriksen, The Right Stuff, Pumpkinhead) and Weyland-Yutani representative Burke (Paul Reiser, Diner, Beverly Hills Cop). They arrive on LV-426 to find the colony severely damaged and deserted save for a lone 8 year-old girl, Newt (Carrie Henn), who's been hiding in the air ducts. When told that the Marines have advanced weaponry and are there to protect her, she replies "it won't make any difference." She's right, of course; the colonists did indeed locate the alien derelict and the entire colony has been used as hosts for a whole hive filled with alien creatures. After a series of conflicts that leave their numbers decimated, the colony's reactor damaged and dangerously close to exploding and reveal that Burke is a traitor hoping to bring back an alien for study by Weyland-Yutani's bio-weapons division, Riply, Bishop, Newt and the wounded Hicks manage to escape the planet, but there is one more challenge to be faced, as Ripley is forced to do battle alone with the monstrous alien queen.
Aliens is one of the all-time great sequels and, while I'm sure he'd disagree, still Cameron's finest hour (with the original Terminator being a close second). Realizing that maintaining the level of terror and dread created by the first film with the "mystery" of the alien now gone would be a difficult, if not impossible, task, Cameron instead took the film in a completely different direction. While Scott was inspired by haunted house movies and the dreadful atmosphere of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Cameron instead took his cues from old WWII combat squad movies, as well as the superheroic action movies that were starting to dominate movie houses in the 1980s. While never traditionally "scary," Cameron's film is exciting as hell; it's a slow-burn, but once it gets going, it never lets up. Cameron brought back Alien production designer Ron Cobb to maintain visual continuity, but Giger was not asked to come back, with creature effects falling to Stan Winston instead. While Winston's redesigned, more insect-like alien warriors are nowhere near as terrifying as Giger's monster, his dinosaur-like alien queen is a marvel of visual effects craftsmanship and one of the premiere movie monsters. The performances are all great, with Paxton (who gets all of the best lines) and Henriksen as particular standouts. Best of all is Weaver, who is given the opportunity to truly flesh out the character of Ripley and turn her from the "survivor girl" from the first movie into a genuine action heroine (the film is a major landmark in feminist filmmaking, as Ripley was the first true female action star. Stripped down to a t-shirt and bandolier and toting a combo machine gun/flamethrower, Ripley from the climax of this movie could eat Rambo for breakfast!). Ripley's connections with Newt and Hicks form the dramatic backbone of the movie; with them, this severely damaged and lost woman is able to find a surrogate family. That Cameron achieves this without venturing into the schmaltz that would begin creeping into his work after this is doubly impressive.
Aliens is available in two versions: the 137 minute theatrical cut and a 154 minute director's cut prepared by Cameron in 1990. The theatrical version is a leaner, better-paced film, but it criminally eliminates the sub-plot about Ripley's dead daughter, thus robbing her character of a genuine arc and the film of much of it's underlying drama. Because of this, seek out the director's cut.
Friday, April 3, 2015
Entry 50.1: Alien (1979)
Alien (1979)
Dir: Ridley Scott
"In space no one can hear you scream."
Hey ladies and gents, welcome to the moment I've been waiting for and you'll all be forced to tolerate or go find another shitty blog to read; my GIANT-SIZED, 5-part 50th entry! For this momentous occasion, I'll be looking at each film in the Alien...Saga? Legacy? Whatever the fuck Fox is calling it these days. I will, of course, be starting with 1979's Alien, which made an indelible impression upon my 9-year old psyche when I first saw it on video. It's been "with me" ever since, and is one of my Holy Trinity of favorite movies of all time. The first sequel, Aliens, is just as good but VERY different; after that, the franchise hits some rockier territory, but never ceases to be interesting...We'll get those in good time, however; tonight is all about Alien!
I should mention the slight format change first. You'll notice the Basement of Sleaze has received a bit of a face lift-that's not intentional. I encountered some "technical errors" that required reformatting/revising. As to the entries themselves, I've decided that I want to try to post shorter entries more frequently (I'd like to get to at least two, if not three, a week). Also, by popular request, I'll be embedding trailers when available. I may try to go back and revise some of the older entries with trailers for future readers...Lastly, it's too early to say anything, but be on the lookout for some MAJOR changes to the Basement in the near future. Now, grab your favorite snack, turn down the lights and journey into the darkest corner of space with Alien...
The crew of the commercial towing vehicle Nostromo-Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt, Up in Smoke, The Dead Zone), executive officer Kane (John Hurt, The Elephant Man, Hellboy), warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, Ghostbusters, The Year of Living Dangerously), science officer Ash (Ian Holm, Naked Lunch, The Lord of the Rings trilogy), navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright, Inserts, The Witches of Eastwick) engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto, Live and Let Die, The Monkey Hustle) and technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton, Paris, Texas, Repo Man) are awakened en route back to Earth in order to investigate a mysterious distress signal transmitting from an uncharted planet. Exploring the surface, they discover a derelict spacecraft filled with giant, leather eggs. One of these eggs "hatches," spurting forth a crablike monster that attaches itself to Kane's face. Back aboard the Nostromo, the creature falls off of Kane's face and dies, but, in the film's most iconic sequence, a creature burst forth from Kane's chest during dinner, layed there as an embryo by the "facehugger." This alien rapidly grows into a seven-foot monster that begins to pick off the crew one-by-one. Further complicating matters, Ash is revealed to be an android spy sent by "the Company" to ensure the creature's return for study; he has been protecting it and isn't above attempting to off one of his shipmates in order to ensure the monster's survival. In the end, Ripley is the unlikely lone survivor, forced into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the seemingly indestructible creature...
It's impossible for me to overstate the impact this movie has had on me; I first saw this movie at age nine and was both repulsed and completely fascinated by it. I became obsessed with tracking down pieces of Alien merchandise (not an easy task in the late 80s/early 90s), I'd draw the creature over my school notebooks and went through a lengthy period where I watched either this movie or Aliens every day. I credit this movie above all others for my love of the horror genre. Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shussett's script is just a pastiche of It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Planet of the Vampires, but the becomes a wholly unique entity thanks to it's design, direction and performances. One cannot over-praise the psychosexual, biomechanical alien planet and creature design by the late H.R. Giger. There is, in fact, a layer of sexual unease that permeates the film, from the "rape" of Kane to the off-camera demise of Lambert (which is heard as a series of sexual-sounding noises) to the creature's seeming fascination with Ripley's half-naked body at the end of the film. This gives the film a level of discomfort uncommon in "monster" movies, and it's regretful that the concept was abandoned to turn the creatures into so much cannon fodder in the sequels. The adult creature itself, with it's phallic, eyeless head and rictus grin, is still terrifying, despite years of overexposure in sequels, comic books, toys and video games. As frequently as Giger is praised, Nostromo designers Ron Cobb and Jean "Moebius" Giraud also deserve praise; the ship is a marvel of post-industrial, lived-in realism and, with it's cramped corridors, often-failing lights and gothic chambers, is a spooky, atmospheric locale even before the alien appears. Scott directs this like a fucking champ, filling his widescreen frame with smoke, eerie blue light, strobes and grime. With all due respect to Blade Runner, I think this is his best work. The cast give uniformly great performances, with no showboating or scenery-chewing. These naturalistic performances, coupled with Scott's
Howard Hawksian layered dialogue, give the film an almost documentary-like feel. A true classic, just as effective today as the day it was released. If you (somehow) haven't seen Alien, what the fuck are you waiting for?
As of this post, Alien is available in two versions; the original theatrical cut and a 2004 "Director's Cut," which adds originally deleted footage but removes scenes from the original, making it roughly of equal running time. Scott has stated on numerous occasions that the theatrical version IS a "Director's Cut," and that the 2004 version should rightly be labeled as an "alternate cut." The "centerpiece" of the 2004 version is the once-legendary "Dallas cocooned" scene, which is appropriately icky and provided the inspiration for the hive in Aliens, but is pretty superfluous to the overall narrative and slows down the pacing in the final act. I like both versions; neither is really preferable.
Dir: Ridley Scott
"In space no one can hear you scream."
Hey ladies and gents, welcome to the moment I've been waiting for and you'll all be forced to tolerate or go find another shitty blog to read; my GIANT-SIZED, 5-part 50th entry! For this momentous occasion, I'll be looking at each film in the Alien...Saga? Legacy? Whatever the fuck Fox is calling it these days. I will, of course, be starting with 1979's Alien, which made an indelible impression upon my 9-year old psyche when I first saw it on video. It's been "with me" ever since, and is one of my Holy Trinity of favorite movies of all time. The first sequel, Aliens, is just as good but VERY different; after that, the franchise hits some rockier territory, but never ceases to be interesting...We'll get those in good time, however; tonight is all about Alien!
I should mention the slight format change first. You'll notice the Basement of Sleaze has received a bit of a face lift-that's not intentional. I encountered some "technical errors" that required reformatting/revising. As to the entries themselves, I've decided that I want to try to post shorter entries more frequently (I'd like to get to at least two, if not three, a week). Also, by popular request, I'll be embedding trailers when available. I may try to go back and revise some of the older entries with trailers for future readers...Lastly, it's too early to say anything, but be on the lookout for some MAJOR changes to the Basement in the near future. Now, grab your favorite snack, turn down the lights and journey into the darkest corner of space with Alien...
The crew of the commercial towing vehicle Nostromo-Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt, Up in Smoke, The Dead Zone), executive officer Kane (John Hurt, The Elephant Man, Hellboy), warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, Ghostbusters, The Year of Living Dangerously), science officer Ash (Ian Holm, Naked Lunch, The Lord of the Rings trilogy), navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright, Inserts, The Witches of Eastwick) engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto, Live and Let Die, The Monkey Hustle) and technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton, Paris, Texas, Repo Man) are awakened en route back to Earth in order to investigate a mysterious distress signal transmitting from an uncharted planet. Exploring the surface, they discover a derelict spacecraft filled with giant, leather eggs. One of these eggs "hatches," spurting forth a crablike monster that attaches itself to Kane's face. Back aboard the Nostromo, the creature falls off of Kane's face and dies, but, in the film's most iconic sequence, a creature burst forth from Kane's chest during dinner, layed there as an embryo by the "facehugger." This alien rapidly grows into a seven-foot monster that begins to pick off the crew one-by-one. Further complicating matters, Ash is revealed to be an android spy sent by "the Company" to ensure the creature's return for study; he has been protecting it and isn't above attempting to off one of his shipmates in order to ensure the monster's survival. In the end, Ripley is the unlikely lone survivor, forced into a deadly game of cat-and-mouse with the seemingly indestructible creature...
It's impossible for me to overstate the impact this movie has had on me; I first saw this movie at age nine and was both repulsed and completely fascinated by it. I became obsessed with tracking down pieces of Alien merchandise (not an easy task in the late 80s/early 90s), I'd draw the creature over my school notebooks and went through a lengthy period where I watched either this movie or Aliens every day. I credit this movie above all others for my love of the horror genre. Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shussett's script is just a pastiche of It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Planet of the Vampires, but the becomes a wholly unique entity thanks to it's design, direction and performances. One cannot over-praise the psychosexual, biomechanical alien planet and creature design by the late H.R. Giger. There is, in fact, a layer of sexual unease that permeates the film, from the "rape" of Kane to the off-camera demise of Lambert (which is heard as a series of sexual-sounding noises) to the creature's seeming fascination with Ripley's half-naked body at the end of the film. This gives the film a level of discomfort uncommon in "monster" movies, and it's regretful that the concept was abandoned to turn the creatures into so much cannon fodder in the sequels. The adult creature itself, with it's phallic, eyeless head and rictus grin, is still terrifying, despite years of overexposure in sequels, comic books, toys and video games. As frequently as Giger is praised, Nostromo designers Ron Cobb and Jean "Moebius" Giraud also deserve praise; the ship is a marvel of post-industrial, lived-in realism and, with it's cramped corridors, often-failing lights and gothic chambers, is a spooky, atmospheric locale even before the alien appears. Scott directs this like a fucking champ, filling his widescreen frame with smoke, eerie blue light, strobes and grime. With all due respect to Blade Runner, I think this is his best work. The cast give uniformly great performances, with no showboating or scenery-chewing. These naturalistic performances, coupled with Scott's
Howard Hawksian layered dialogue, give the film an almost documentary-like feel. A true classic, just as effective today as the day it was released. If you (somehow) haven't seen Alien, what the fuck are you waiting for?
As of this post, Alien is available in two versions; the original theatrical cut and a 2004 "Director's Cut," which adds originally deleted footage but removes scenes from the original, making it roughly of equal running time. Scott has stated on numerous occasions that the theatrical version IS a "Director's Cut," and that the 2004 version should rightly be labeled as an "alternate cut." The "centerpiece" of the 2004 version is the once-legendary "Dallas cocooned" scene, which is appropriately icky and provided the inspiration for the hive in Aliens, but is pretty superfluous to the overall narrative and slows down the pacing in the final act. I like both versions; neither is really preferable.
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