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rrorALIEN starring Tom Skerritt,Veronica Cartwright. John Hurt. Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton. YaphetKotto and Sigourney Weaver: Dannplay by Dan O’Bannon; produced by(kirdon Carroll. David Giler and CjIfCWalter Hill; directed by Ridley Scott.______A 20th Century Fox release. Rated cjjpp critic R. ^ ^ ^'Close Encounters. is taken offcourse while the crew rests in hypersleep to investigate a mysterious SOSfrom a distant planet.THE CREW AWAKES in time to explore the origin of the message in an ancient spacecraft found nestled between the rocks on the planetshor all that Alien is — science fiction, horror story, suspense tale, mystery — above everything else it is a welcome throwback to the good old-fashioned monster movies of the1950s.Hollywood has run its course4Klthrough the different themes that outer space could offer. In Star Wars'’ it was adventure Close Encounters of the Third Kind portrayed friendly, civilized intellectual alien life. Buck Rogers took outer space on a trip through farce. Now the trend has come full circle back to the da vs when aliens were not intelli-wgent, comical or friendly.ALIEN” MARKS the return ofextraterrestrial life as amoral creatures existing only to kill and spread terror like the great white sharkfrom JawsAmazingly, the film is rich in design and satisfying in story despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing new about any of it.The storv bv Dan OBannon and Ronald Shusett is almost a rewrite of an old Marshall Thompson film. It, the Terror From Beyond Space,” in which a rubber-masked creature sneaks into the cargo area of a spacecraft while it is on another planet One by one, the astronauts tall victim to the alien until the chilling finale in the control room.“ALIEN” ALSO recalls the terrorizing mood of the science fiction classic The Thing”(1951), which featured James Arness as an extraterrestrial organism bent on destroying a human outpost in the Arctic.Many things are responsible for making “Alien” a superb horror story m outer space. Ridley Scott, the maker of countless numbers of TV commercials and the director of only one other feature, The Duellists,” handles the lighting in a most bizarre fashion. Lighting is placed at the sides and near the floor where the crew of the starship “Nostromo liveand work.The vessel, a commercial space tug resembling the oil-drilling rig appearance of the mother ship inScott's diabolical lighting — glowing pockets of swirling mist —shroud the organic sets, props and costumes, most of which came from the imagination of R H. Giger. aSwiss surrealist painter who created the chilling image of the alien itself. The ship's interior, the abandonedspace craft found on the planet andthe suits worn bv Nostromo's crew bear an uncanny resemblance tohuman organs. .In a particularly memorablescene, one crew member (John Hurt)is lowered into the bowels of the disabled alien spacecraft where he enters a gigantic storage compartmentlooking suspiciously like a large stomach. The tunnel he descends takes on an almost esophageal quality in light of the organic comparison.It is there the unfortunate spaceman finds a cluster of eggs and provokes one into hatching a squid-like creature that attaches itself to his helmet, rendering him into a coma. Hurt, creature attached, is taken aboard the Nostromo for medicalaid.AFTER A LONG time of resisting removal eflorts by the crew, the creature apparently dies, leaving its larva implanted in Hurt's stomach. In the middle of supper, the unknowing Hurt is seized by spasms as thecreature tunnels through his stomach ripping away the flesh with razor sharp teeth. There are two or three exceptionally gruesome scenes like this in “Alien” and they're definitely not for the squeamish.The alien escapes, growing by the hour and beginning to seek out the humans.We know what is going to happen. As the crew searches for the alien, one becomes separated from tiie rest(Continued on Page 3)
Newspaper Details
Arlington Heights Daily Herald Suburban Chicago
Arlington Heights, Illinois, US
Fri, May 25, 1979
Page 29
Full Page
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USA 06 Oct 2022
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