The first Alien
(made in 1979, how time flies) was one of those outstanding films that
everyone talked about and still remembers. It was chillingly scary,
with the sort of aliens who made you actually question whether space
exploration was such a good idea. We'd gone soft, watching Star Trek,
where nothing in space was ever dangerous enough to cause fatalities
among the regular cast. Alien was a serious work of sci fi art
demonstrating just what brilliantly creative Hollywood people could
come up with, before they started cheating with computer generated images.
However, the time and money involved in design and construction of the
monsters were nothing to the man-hours lost over here. Up and down the
country, people in offices like mine endlessly discussed Sigourney Weaver's
underwear, her decision not to use make-up, which of our colleagues
might be an android and the most famous stomach upset in the history
of the Universe. Even now you occasionally hear people say things like,
"In Barnsley no-one can hear you scream."
So, we've got that tee-shirt.
There were two follow - ups made and along the way we realised that
we were boldly going where we had already been before. Now we have reached
Episode 4. We sort of know there's going to be a lot of nasty humans
attempting to use the Aliens for their own foul reasons, the Aliens
will run around the ship picking people off and Ripley is going
to have to stop them getting to earth. What will they think of next?
Enter our hero. When
he comes on we can't see him clearly but we can hear him, gibbering
like an ape on the overhead gantry. Oh no, please God, no, I thought,
but it was okay, there he is in human form, all stubble and cold eyes,
khaki and muscles. He's thrown a knife into the leg of his disabled
comrade, just for fun. Very un -PC. He's in the crew of a tramp space-ship,
a rusty bucket called The Betty . Their cargo consists of men
in cryo-tubes, frozen for a long journey and captured whilst en route
to their work planet. The captain has sold them to the Evil Bastard
Government Corporation. The Betty docks with the E B G Corp's
much larger vessel, where we discover Ripley and the fun begins.
The Betty's crew
is the captain; his girl-friend; the first mate, (a dude in dreadlocks
); a battle-scarred bit of rough called Johner ( Ron Perlman);
a cool guy in a wheel-chair and Winona Ryder. She looks so small and
vulnerable, you wonder what she's doing there. It's difficult to hear
their names, but it doesn't really matter. This film is full of strenuous
action scenes, flashing lights, the Aliens doing their thing and the
bad guys getting their come-upance from them. The most interesting parts
involve the cut and thrust between Ripley and the crew; there
are lots of pithy remarks. When the crew first meet Ripley on
the big ship, Johner heads straight for her. "I like the tall
ones" he leers but finds out too late that he's entered a testosterone
contest he can't win. She won't play ball though he does his best to
make her.
By the time the Aliens
have despatched the majority of baddies, the crew has to get back to
The Betty by swimming underwater as the mess deck's been flooded,
as they always are in these situations. Johner , the survivor-at-all-costs,
has suggested that they leave "the cripple" behind . He's told off like
a naughty school-boy. There's another gem when Johner discovers
Winona Ryder's identity and shares his thoughts on it. We get some long
drawn out sequences with the Aliens, (literally, poor things!) then
its everybody back on the bus and home to Earth in time for tea. Which
reminds me, don't plan to watch this film if you've invited the vicar
round, the coarse language count is pretty high.
So Ripley and most
of the good guys live to fight another day, thanks to the piloting skills
of the crewman in the wheel-chair. Does he get an apology from Johner
for all the cruel things he's said and done to him? Viewers of a nervous
disposition - look away now.
Rather to my surprise
I really enjoyed this film. It has been out a while on video but I hadn't
bothered with it until I realised Ron Perlman was in it; his name is
in tiny print on the back cover. He has a very meaty role with some
of the best lines in the script. He is perfect as the kind of hard man
they don't want in the Marines because he is too stroppy to take orders
and thus a danger to his own side.
It looks like a film the
cast enjoyed making but Ron has been reported as saying that working
on the underwater sequences was unpleasant and positively hazardous.
When you look closely you can see that some of them look a bit green
around the gills. Its especially worrying because under water, no-one
can hear you scream....
Maybe those computer
boys have got a point. They could practically sink the Titanic without
anyone getting wet. But real actors don't do it with computers.