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The Really Great Thing About Alien The Week It Came Out in 1979 was...(SPOILERS).

posted 3 years ago by ecarle (14979)
56 replies | jump to latest

..that nobody knew what the "Alien" monster was going to look like.

With "Jaws," the movie poster itself showed us: the monster would be a shark.

With "Psycho," if you read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review(among many others), you would know that the monster was "an old mother who proves adept at creeping up on people with a big knife, drawing considerable blood."

But with Alien, if you read the first reviews on the first weekend(and I did) and saw the movie that weekend(and I did)...you went in really wondering what the heck this monster was going to BE.

And there were surprises there. For awhile, the alien is the crab-octopus-like creature that hugs itself around John Hurt's face.

Then, the alien is about the size of a large rat when it bursts out of Hurt's chest(killing him) and rushes across a table and out of the room(we ALL jumped at the "birth" -- but laughed a little as the little critter ran the hell out of the room.)

Later..when killing next victim Harry Dean Stanton, the alien reveals itself as much bigger now -- human-height-plus -- (what a quick birth-to-growth cycle!) and we are shown its key 1979 "surprise": a set of hydrolic teeth WITHIN its outer teeth, and those hydraulic teeth are powered to fly right out and smash through the victim's forehead. We'd never seen THAT before.

The movie keeps the glimpses of the grown-alien sparing of the movie goes along -- it is seen in full but for less than one second when it kills Tom Skerritt and then is only glimpsed in later killing moments and then...

...finally at the very end with Sigourney Weaver we get to see the creature "up close and personal" and at length ("sucking in" those hydraulic teeth in a moment of repose).

..and then, at the very, very, VERY end, we get to see the Alien as a cross between a rubber dummy and a man in a suit(which it often was) when the creature is tied onto, and then blown out of the rocket booster shaft.

Within two weeks (one?) I believe that Newsweek magazine or Time magazine, or both, had an Alien cover story and a photo of the fully grown creature within but -- on that opening night in 1979, part of the great fun of Alien was to finally SEE what the Alien looked like, and how it functioned, and how it killed.

We were not disappointed.

[–] Gd5150 (11049) 3 years ago

And trust me the ending shocked people. Everyone thought it was over. People were leaving the theatre. The cat was safe and all was well with intergalactic space.

[–] diezman (1823) 2 years ago

Still one of the scariest movies ever in my opinion. So much unnerving atmosphere and tension throughout!

[–] SandyR (7388) 2 years ago

Just a great, imaginative movie. What kind of movies would we have today if Hollywood had shown Dan O'Bannon an ounce of the respect he deserved?

[–] ebhaynz (3537) 2 years ago

Part 1: Yes, you're absolutely correct. I was only 14 years old that summer. My mom and dad saw Alien first..if I was going to see it alone or with similar underage friends(I was 14) it was going to involve some "trickery" for me to get into an R rated movie like Alien.

Up to that time I had snuck(sp?) into at least one R rated film, and that was the year previous when I snuck into Animal House. However, I had to buy a ticket to a PG movie and then sneak in..and as such I missed the first 20 minutes of the Landis classic, but at least nobody got decapitated..yet.

From what I remember in late May I had seen the Alien movie poster and probably the movie trailer(with a terrifying "scream") and my friend Allen's dad had a copy of the Alien novel by Alan Dean Foster. I was still riding high from my Animal House achievement but I wasn't really interested in sneaking into Alien as 1. I probably didn't want to get scared out of my wits and 2. As a 14 year old teen, I was mainly interested in boobs.

And 1979 was a weird year for me, I wanted to see ALL the movies but the trouble was still that pesky age of 14. That meant unless I broke the rules I had to see PG or..G..ugg. I think 1979 was a down year for movies as well, I only saw Agatha earlier in the winter..then after school got out I got sent down to Springfield to stay with my Grandma/Grandpa, a year or 2 prior they dropped me off at Tower Theater to see For the Love of Benji. I stood outside in the hot sun looking at a "Coming Soon" poster of an unknown movie with the title "Star Wars. Once I got seated inside to watch Benji I really didn't pay attention, I just sat in the theater alone eating Chuckles, waiting for it to be over.

In late June I got back home to Independence..I tried hard to catch up with my movie watching. I'm pretty sure I saw Meatballs, it was close to R but really a hard PG. Alien had opened in late May and wasn't on my radar at all. However, Alien had legs, literally and figuratively. End Part 1

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

And 1979 was a weird year for me, I wanted to see ALL the movies but the trouble was still that pesky age of 14. That meant unless I broke the rules I had to see PG or..G..ugg. I think 1979 was a down year for movies as well, I only saw Agatha earlier in the winter..then after school got out I got sent down to Springfield to stay with my Grandma/Grandpa, a year or 2 prior they dropped me off at Tower Theater to see For the Love of Benji. I stood outside in the hot sun looking at a "Coming Soon" poster of an unknown movie with the title "Star Wars. Once I got seated inside to watch Benji I really didn't pay attention, I just sat in the theater alone eating Chuckles, waiting for it to be over.

In late June I got back home to Independence..I tried hard to catch up with my movie watching. I'm pretty sure I saw Meatballs, it was close to R but really a hard PG. Alien had opened in late May and wasn't on my radar at all. However, it had legs, literally and figuratively.

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Some great movie memories there.

By the time Alien came out, I was well "of age" to see R movies and it wasn't a problem, but earlier in the decade I went through similar adventures trying to see the "R' stuff.

It was really a historic time. In the 50's and early 60's, most movies were made "for all ages" even if some of them would bore kids.

But that R rating in 1968 turned the 70s into a "time of sneaking in" if you were under 17. Or , in my case, persuading my father to take me to an "R" -- which usually ended up embarrassing both of us. (With sex scenes, he would have enjoyed the movie better if I WASN'T there, I would have enjoyed the movie better if HE wasn't there.)

There was a little of this trouble in the 60's before the R rating. I negotiated to see Bonnie and Clyde" -- and got to.

Before my time, I've read of lots of kids having to sneak into Psycho in 1960...even though there was no R rating at the time. It was the PARENTS who forbade those kids to go see that movie, even as other kids were allowed to walk right in. I read an article about Psycho sneak ins, two little girls dressed up in their mother's hats, dresses and make-up to sneak in! There were also a lot of kids sneaking out their bedroom window to go off to see Psycho with their friends.

Anyway, for Alien, I was plenty excited for it, and it was plenty scary, but...I walked right in.

[–] clashwho (746) 2 years ago

I remember my parents coming home from the theater after seeing it and trying to describe what it looked like to five-year-old me. I was fascinated. It definitely made quite an impression on them. I attempted to draw it based on their description. It ended up looking like a big monster with a bee hive for a head.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

I remember my parents coming home from the theater after seeing it and trying to describe what it looked like to five-year-old me. I was fascinated.

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That's another great "child's movie memory." Getting your parents to describe the movie to you when you could not see it.

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It definitely made quite an impression on them. I attempted to draw it based on their description. It ended up looking like a big monster with a bee hive for a head.

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Well...you had it about RIGHT!

[–] Gd5150 (11049) 2 years ago

My dad took my bro and I to see a double feature of Alien and Hangar 18.

Even after you saw Alien you really didn’t know what it looked like.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Even after you saw Alien you really didn’t know what it looked like.

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That's a good point. During most of the killing scenes -- like of Harry Dean Stanton and the two-fer of Kotto and Cartwright -- you only saw it in bits and pieces for very short shots.

On one of the DVDs, there is deleted footage where you can much more clearly see the alien as it attacks Cartwright -- but it looks more like a man in a rubber suit MOVING like a man in a rubber suit...so it was cut from the movie.

[–] Tommy (185) 2 years ago

This is one of those movies I wish I could have seen in its original time, having seen none of the sequels, nor even any other movie made in general after it’s release.

I’ve always appreciated this film even though I saw it for the first almost two decades after its initial release (I was born in 1986), but having “been there” would have been a treat.

[–] spurtle467 (1501) 2 years ago

I agree. I guess if it were released now with social media and the endless trailers, it wouldn't take long for an image, leaked or otherwise, to come out before the release.

They got the look of the alien just right as well. It actually looks terrifying, the kind of thing you could have nightmares about. If they had got that wrong then it could've come off as silly, and as such Alien wouldn't have made anywhere near the long lasting impact it did. So props to Geiger for that.