Day 9 of 13 Days of Halloween

Alien

     Horror can be easily combined with many genres. Science fiction just happens to be one of them. Ridley Scott takes the story of a crew visiting a derelict ship and something hitching a ride back. Adding to the story is the hitchhiker is not welcome, has acid blood, and wants to kill everyone on board just adds to the suspense. And let's not forget the fact that it is set in space which means there is quite literally no place to go and no one to hear you scream.

     Normally, here is where I would talk more about the writing or the acting or some other part of the film, but that's not what I'm going to do tonight. Instead, I want to spend a brief moment talking about H.R. Giger's work on Alien. Giger created the concept art for the alien and its ship. He liked to fuse creatures and humans with machines to create biomechanical surrealism and to terrify people. Giger's original concept art for Alien can be found here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieldalton/original-alien-concept-art-h-r-giger#.wx6Py665m3 and it is much darker than the film which I didn't even think was possible.

     The film itself is almost a masterpiece in both story and set design. Sigourney Weaver is brilliant as Ripley. She can move between being scared to relieved to angry to sad and back again with an ease that I've rarely seen. My only complaint with the film is the inclusion of a killer android when there already is a killer extraterrestrial running amok. Truthfully, this is a minor annoyance as it does add to the intensity if the film. Also, my favorite character might be the cat.

Overall Rating: 4.8/5