"In space no one can hear you scream."

Alien (1979): 4/10

Poster (c) 20th Century Fox

I've said this over and over, that I hate not liking classic movies. It's the whole ego thing, like I can't appreciate a good, classic movie, which isn't true. It's just that a good amount of classic movies aren't as good as they're hyped up to be. I feel that way for such movies as Halloween, The Meaning of Life, and other movies like that. Added to that list will be Alien. It's a slow, dreary, dark sci-fi saga that leads nowhere, and with just slightly better character development than most other horror movies, it's certainly nothing special, and completely undeserving of its classic status.

In the future, the space ship Nostromo, headed back to Earth, picks up a distress signal. The crew interprets it as an SOS and goes to investigate it. Besides Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, some other B-list actors here are Tom Skerritt (Dallas), Harry Dean Stanton (Brett), and Ian Holm (Ash). It turns out that an alien attaches itself to one of the crew members, therefore putting all of them in jeopardy.

I'm fine with Alien not really being an action movie, as I had expected. I just didn't expect it to be so doggone slow. Whenever something happens, it's played so subduedly (and without music, it seemed) that it almost seemed like nothing has happened. Often, when I'm watching a movie, if I start to get bored, I put the subtitles on so I have something else to do, also, taking away some of the boredom. They were on within about 10 minutes of starting it. And although I'm glad that we actually got to learn some of the characters' names, nothing really happened with them, they all sounded the same, etc., and that final twist with Ash was just plain stupid. It was unexpected, sure, but completely absurd and uncalled for. The sets were nice to look at, but did we really need to see them for two hours? There's more that could happen. The only worthwhile things in the whole movie were the alien itself and the infamous chestbursting scene.

The ending scene also came out of nowhere, making the movie go on for even longer than it should have. I mean, come on, why? We've endured 105 minutes of this, why add 10 more on? I can see how Weaver could be made a star from this movie, although she wasn't very good. In fact, none were. But what else can be expected from the vastly overrated Alien, a boring, slow sci-fi movie whose only qualities are its sparse special effects and its tagline?

Rated R for sci-fi violence/gore and language.

Review Date: September 15, 2004