ALIEN (1979)

You know, you think you know a movie. I’ve seen this before, and the sequels, but I forgot just how scary this movie was. The sequels tend to be a lot of action, especially the first sequel, but this one is just all tension. You know the story: cargo ship picks up a distress call, tracks it down, winds up bringing a deadly alien back with them that kills everybody one by one. There’s the “chest-bursting” scene where the baby alien hatches out of John Hurt’s chest. There’s the evil android robot guy played by Bilbo Baggins. But you forget how slowly the movie goes, but never gets boring. There’s always this atmosphere of tension in every scene, like anyone could die at any time. And then there’s the sets! I’d never noticed them this way before. The ship where they find all of the alien egg things is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It looks like it’s some kind of living thing, like it grew. They were all designed by this Swiss guy named H.R. Giger. I looked him up on the internet, and his stuff ALL looks like this. It’s all scary, and like some cross between living things and mechanical things. But back to the movie. I know most of you have seen it before, but you really need to watch it again.