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

posted 4 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.

[–] bobbydallas (8515) 3 years ago

great point- with little information the suspense is so much better

[–] GreenGoblinsOck8 (7699) 2 years ago

Just want to point out Psycho was first a book that came out in 1959. So if you read the novel you knew the twist already. You are right about Alien though. Too bad I saw Aliens and the Alien Vs. Predator movies before I saw the first Alien movie. But then again, I wasn't born til 1986.

[–] ecarle (14979) 2 years ago

Just want to point out Psycho was first a book that came out in 1959. So if you read the novel you knew the twist already.

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Yes, that's true. It seems to have been a best seller -- though not on the scale of the novels of The Exorcist and Jaws in the 70's. Anyway, yes, a lot of people knew both that Mrs. Bates was the "monster" and who she really was.

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You are right about Alien though. Too bad I saw Aliens and the Alien Vs. Predator movies before I saw the first Alien movie.

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Yes...they came later but I suppose whichever one was your "first Alien movie" may have kept you guessing for awhile?

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But then again, I wasn't born til 1986.

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I was born considerable earlier. I am one of the "older ones" at moviechat. There are others of my age, but we tend to keep together, stay quiet, not invade conversations made for younger groups(hence, Psycho...such an "old movie" now.) But we are still young at heart.

Part of what I try to do, from time to time, is to establish an "oral history" of what it was like to see some of these established classics "the first time." I know I always wished I could have been there to see Psycho in 1960 when it first came out and the lines were huge and everybody was talking about it. But I wasn't.

I WAS around to see the first run releases of The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Star Wars...and Alien. And each and every one of those is a great "movie going memory." And I wish to leave those memories behind for posterity.

It remains a great movie going memory that the first time I saw Alien(opening night, two years to the day after Star Wars opened), I had no concept of the Alien at all, and experienced it one great surprising scene at a time.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (9187) 10 months ago

I remember seeing Alien in the theaters too. I had no idea, and did
not even want to see it because I had heard it was not real science
fiction - it was a horror movie, which I don't care for.

There were big crowds, and my girlfriend and I had to catch it at the
Century Theater Complex in San Jose, CA, where they have these big
domed theaters. The place was almost full and we ended up sitting in
the very front row far left of screen.

It turned out pretty well though, because in the opening scene where
the camera moves through the corridors of the Nostromo it was so close
we felt like we could have got up and walked right into the movie.

Great imagery in Alien, but it was a horror movie. Still loved it even
though it was quite silly looking back - you don't really have time to
be critical while you are watching it.

[–] [deleted] a year ago

I didn't know what it was going to look like when I watched it on cable in the early 80s either. I didn't pay attention to the news, so I had no idea what was coming.

Scared me so much, but I loved it.

[–] TrentnQuarantino (9187) 10 months ago

Sad to see that movie on a TV, most of the fun was the immersive aspect of the big screen.

[–] BKB (9885) 10 months ago

And I remember the TV Commercials simply showing what looked like an Egg cracking while showing the title ALIEN.. They really did do a good job keeping this under wraps

[–] TrentnQuarantino (9187) 10 months ago

In space, no one can hear you scream