FilmBlather.com

"I admire its purity. A survivor. Unencumbered by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."

Ridley Scott's Alien is a crucial film, a unique meld of genuine science-fiction and hardcore horror. Its method of building suspense -- slow, deliberate, using silence and an intricate soundtrack -- influenced countless imitators and put the film a notch above most entrants into the genre, though it was immediately abandoned by James Cameron, whose hyperactive sequel Aliens was excellent in its own way. Maybe more significantly, it launched the careers of director Ridley Scott and star Sigourney Weaver, who became regarded as the only female actress who could open an action film.

The film comes to us now as a limited Halloween rerelease touted as a Director's Cut, but this isn't an instance where a filmmaker had the opportunity to significantly rework his studio-butchered original cut. No, there is only one noticeable alteration to be found here, that being the addition of a brief late film scene. It is an interesting few seconds, though it does screw with the chronology of the ticking-clock climax.

Doesn't matter. The new scene is not the reason to pay for a ticket to Alien this year, but if that's why you're going, more power to you. The importance of seeing the movie on the big screen cannot be overstated. My first viewing took place on a 27" television with a crappy pan-and-scan VHS. The lack of scope made for much fidgeting and impatience; I mistook deliberate pacing for dilly-dallying and suspense for boredom. A big screen monitor and a widescreen DVD takes care of a fair portion of that discrepancy, but a theater viewing on film and with an audience eliminates it entirely. Let the images envelop you; the movie just doesn't work if you're squinting at a postage stamp.

But watching a pristine print in a large auditorium, it is remarkable how well it holds up some twenty-four years later. Most impressive is the unexpected effectiveness of the villain -- I say unexpected because it is rare that a wordless, nearly shapeless alien that has no motivations other than to kill is this compelling. The key, I think, isn't the creature design (though it is menacing, without a cheesy bone -- or even a bone -- in its body) or back story (there is none) but the way it is treated by the film's human characters: with grudging, terrified respect, and sometimes admiration. The attitude is contagious. We do not see the creature as merely a monster to be destroyed, but a being whose very existence is to be feared.

Part of the reason for Alien's initial popularity was its willingness and ability to genuinely shock. The impact of the famous embryo-through-the-chest scene has worn off, mostly because it has entered general pop culture, but it still packs a wallop when unleashed on the uninitiated (trust me on this). And there is something tremendously, almost indescribably grotesque about the alien pod attaching itself to John Hurt's face; it's the kind of unsettling that makes you shudder, stays with you, comes back with a vengeance at unpredictable moments.

Watching the 1979 film's imagining of future computer technology is both amusing and chilling -- the character's call the ship's main computer "Mother," and rather than chuckling, I thought yeah, that's about right, though it would be more appropriate in a movie today than it was in this one. "Mother" does not, in fact, fulfill that role in Alien: they consult her on occasion, but mostly rely on other implements, such as torches, futuristic firearms and the navigation of claustrophobic tunnels.

The ending, tough, abrupt and unsentimental, fits the movie like a glove. Ridley Scott wasn't playing around.