TAKE ONE Presents... - The Xenopod 1: ALIEN (1979)

Episode Date: April 26, 2023

A leathery egg opens before you. You peer into its organic depths to see what be moving within and are assailed by a podcast full of information, contextualisation, and thematic analysis of the 1979 film, ALIEN. Listen as Simon and Jim embark on the first leg of their journey through the Alien franchise.Content warning: body horror; rape and sexual violence; sexual imagery; death; space travel.Our theme song is Alien Remix by Leslie Wai available on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/lesliewai/alien-remix

Get away from her, you bitch away from her, you bitch! Hello and welcome back to the Xenopod, where we're watching all the alien franchise films in order and contextualizing them, criticizing them, thinking about their place in film history and their place as a franchise. I'm Simon Bowie, and joining me is Jim Ross. Hello, Jim. Hello there.

you're excited for Alien for starting this franchise yeah well I think I think we discussed in the intro episode how arguably

depending on your relative opinion of alien and aliens arguably you started the hat the high point in it's just a very slow decline maybe more peaks along the way but yeah I don't think we're going to get

I am excited for this and I enjoyed re-watching this I've watched it quite a few times over the years but I think the viewing I did in preparation for this is probably the first time I'd watched it in about eight or nine years actually I think Wow Yeah because something I'll mention on the next episode

was I went to see aliens I actually went to the theatrical showing of it and I think it was 70mm meter I might have been 35 I need to look that up but in preparation for that I took my now wife along to that. She'd not seen any of these films at the time and I'd re-watch Alien with her

for that. But as I say, that was about eight or nine years ago at this point. So, yeah, it was good to revisit it. Yeah, I was going to ask, do you know, could you remember the first time you'd seen it? I think the first time I saw it was actually on DVD.

Yeah. Because I think in terms of, I probably shouldn't mention this in the intro episode rather than the first one, but here we go, but I think my introduction to most of these films was home video. I mean, I remember renting

Alien Resurrection on VHS with my mum out of Blockbuster. Oh, wow. That's how, that's how... This is a contextualisation. This is going back through film history. Yeah, exactly, right?

So that was how I saw that one. But I think the other ones, you know, well, the ones that kind of came out as I was born before I was born, I saw on DVD. That's certainly how I saw Alien. I actually saw aliens on television, I'm pretty certain. You know, terrestrial television, you know, back when people watched these things

on terrestrial television, was how I found aliens. But alien, I don't think I watched on, until I bought kind of a DVD box set, which broke my DVD. The menus were so ridiculous. They broke the DVD player. I was trying to watch the one. I remember super complicated menus. The quadrilogy.

On the quadrology box set. Yeah. Which isn't a word. it's tetrology for a block of four but yeah this quadrology box set has super complicated menus with like you know layers you could put layers on the film like you could have mother mode to watch it in a kind of interactive way there's commentaries there's all kinds of bonus stuff

and I've got the Blu-ray version of that now and I'm happy to say they've simplified the menus considerably yeah no they're hot to I remember because I was a student at the time, so I had a, like, yeah, the cheapest DVD player you could possibly imagine. I mean, like, this thing sounded like a jet engine taking off. And then these DVDs had these, like, absurd, elaborate menus. And I literally could not watch the film. I had to go and buy a different game player. So anyway, that's actually how I watched Alien the first time. So I think I probably would have been like, I think I'm in 19, early 20s, maybe, was when I actually

finally managed to see this for the first time. The first one the franchise I'd seen was aliens, but it wasn't until I got that DVD box it. I actually managed to see this. I feel like, well, this is the kind of film that I watch every two years. Like, I either go to a screening of it happening near me, or I'd just get the urge to watch the Blu-ray of it or whatever. As for first times, I feel like I must have been, I feel like I was a teenager, kind of into films and kind of getting with my subscription to Empire Magazine and going through all the films that Empire Magazine

thinks are the greatest films ever made. So we're talking like the Hollywood blockbusters and films like Alien. Which was probably going to be a better list when you were a teenager. I think it's a good list when you're a teenager. I think you're not going straight to you on that list. You're not going straight to the site and sound list when you're 16 years old. But yeah, going through the Empire.

films, going through like Scarface and whatever, Goodfellas, what teenagers like. And coming to Alien, and I don't remember it making a huge impression. I think when I was younger, I was probably more interested in what Aliens was doing, which we'll talk about next episode. But over the years, I've come back to Alien more and more often. And particularly after, I remember coming back to it after Alien isolation, the video game, which is a kind of video game that goes back to this film in getting back to... I haven't played that.

Am I right in saying that the protagonist's that is Ripley's daughter? It's Ripley's Daughter, which I imagine we can talk more about in terms of canon with the next film. But yeah, it's Ripley's daughter, and it kind of strips it back to being chased by an alien through a space station. Which is kind of where this film... It's in this film's wheelhouse. And going back to Alien after playing Alien isolation, I think I really appreciated it as a horror film, as a horror in space. And I think it's just really effective at that. We'll get into all that, of course.

But yeah, I think that's my history with it. Yeah, I think just to start off the conversation on it, I think something you touched upon there is really what strikes me about this film going back to it. because I think when I first watched it, I'm similar to you, and I appreciate it. I definitely thought it was a good film. I thought it was very effective. I think I was probably more into aliens, right? You know, which is, you know, I don't want to go too deeply into that film before we go deeply into that film, right? But it's definitely a louder, more bombastic film. Yeah, it's bigger, it's a blockbuster, it's... Yeah, right? And it, you know, it's a lot more whiz-bang, shall we say.

I think I appreciate it, like, you know, like, I've done this whole kind of, like, you know, the whole film writing, film criticism gig for like, you know, I mean, basically 10, 11 years now. And I think since I got through my 20s

and I've watched a lot more film and I've been doing that over the past 10 years, I think I appreciate this film a lot more. In the sense that, you know, if I was, you know, if I was, you know, I was trying to introduce somebody, like me when I was like 19 or whatever, to the series. I think Aliens is a good one to go with.

But Alien, as a film, and again, when we're talking about contextualising these films and putting them in their kind of historical place you like, it's very easy. I mean, it sounds really a ridiculous thing to say, right? but it's very easy to forget now sitting here what 43 years later yeah right it's very

yeah I mean just think about that for a minute it's very easy to forget that this film you know it didn't have aliens attached to it it's not it wasn't it wouldn't have appeared

with this kind of like ridiculous lore and you know I mean the thing was just called an alien creature like it wasn't called a xenomorph or it didn't know no no

I'm not even sure anybody actually does. I don't think they say it in this film. Right, but the thing is, when you put it in that context, and you think about what this film was trying to do, it does it superbly. I mean, it's, it's really, when you think about taking a film on its own terms and what it's trying to achieve, this does that extremely well. And it's quite, it's especially funny to think about it, now putting it into the context of the whole series. It's very, very, very, it's very, it's very, funny to think about things like Alien Coven

for instance, right? Where basically the poster for the film, the money shot in the trailer, is a xenomorph. Yeah, it's just the alien, like, standing on a ship or a train or something. Yeah, right? And that's kind of, that's kind of like the iconic image of the series

and that's what they use to push that film, right? Here, like, the actual amount that you see the alien. Well, by... It's really pretty... By contrast, I'm looking at the poster for Alien, the theatrical release. It's just, you know, it's that egg.

Yeah, we'll say, it's the egg, it's kind of got a greenish, glowish, crack in it. Other than that, the poster's entirely black. Yeah. You know, you don't see the alien. It's funny to think about that, because, like, the actual glimpses you get of the alien here are... They're pretty fleeting. So, the amount of screen time is very... is very small. It's far more

something, like, so, you know, to go back to the filmmaking of the year, it's far more like Jaws, you know, where like the actual, you know, this, this thing is more of a kind of like a menacing, looming threat than, you know, chasing

people around, like something out with a Benny Hill sketch. You know, it's, a little bit pre-comventry on Covenant. Yes. But, so it's just funny to think about it. in that sense, when you think about where it went, but to dial it all back to

this film on its own terms, it's far more about tone, yes, and then rupturing that tone. You know, like, we'll talk about some of the more famous scenes in a bit, and kind of, like, you know, how you can look at the film as the whole, but basically it does, what it does really well is it sets a tone, and then

it just pulls the rug out from under you, right? because we start off with this fairly kind of like work-a-day scenario you know and albeit a slightly you know a space-agey one but like we're talking about a crew of mine you know I mean this is a workplace right yeah like haulers truckers yeah exactly right it's not you know it's not like something in Prometheus where it's like people searching for the you know the origins of humanity and kind of the outer reaches of space and you know you know the whole Star Trek thing you know the final front you know

all that sort of thing. It's not. It's workadie. It's stripped down. It's a very stripped down film when you get right down to it. I read Ros Cavanney's essay in her book from Alien to the Matrix. She writes an essay on each of these first four films. And for this first film, she says, similar to you,

it's hard to strip this film back and imagine what it would be without the big franchise context and to imagine how an audience might have seen it when it first arrived. and how surprising it must have been back then because we've got all this baggage around the early in franchise now. It's hard to imagine it. But let's get into it. Let's talk about this film came out in May, 1979 was its premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival.

It was released widely in America on June 22nd. And then there was a gap, which was, I think, fairly standard at the time for films before it was released in the UK. It had its premiere actually at the Edinburgh Film Festival in the UK, but then came out in September in the UK. So there was quite a gap, but that was fairly standard back then. You know, it wasn't the kind of international release window we have nowadays. The film is from a script by Dan O'Bannon, who had previously done some science fiction work

and had been working on Alejandro Yolorski's June in Paris, and he'd just moved back to. to LA and was living on his pal's sofa when he bashed this out. It was picked up by Ridley Scott, who at this point had only directed one of a film. He directed the Jewelists, but he directed, he'd had a career in music videos. So I think he was 40 or something by the time this came out by the time he took this on, but he'd had a long career in... I forget how old Ridley Scott actually is. He'd had a long career doing music videos, done one feature, like I say. but this was kind of his first hit, really, his first film hit, anyway. Which even though it's his second feature, it's actually an interesting little parallel

with David Fincher there in Ealing 3. Yes, early directors taking this on. It's kind of an interesting theme that will emerge. The film sort of starts with a black screen. It's Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack in the background. It's very slow. We slowly paneled. an image of a planet

like a big gas giant while the text emerges on screen which turns into the word alien. Which in a way actually, that title sequence it was only re-watching it that's kind of struck me. It's actually a nice little sort of typographical metaphor

for the actual creature to be honest. It's kind of slowly emerging and you don't really see its structure until... You don't really know how it's evolving. Yeah. I like that. We'll get into that when we talk about the, but I think stripping it back to the context of the original film, that is one of the interesting things about it is the fact that you don't, if you're coming into this cold without knowledge of the franchise, you don't know what the hell this thing is. You don't know where it's going. And I think that that unsettling tone is set really, really well to start simply by that title sequence, you just mentioned. And it was something that struck me rewatching it, actually. Yeah, I was struck by how it sets itself immediately apart from Star Wars, which had come out two years before in 1977, because instead of, you know, scrolling text across the screen, we just have this one word appearing.

And we don't have the kind of bombastic Star Wars theme. We have this slow, haunting kind of score. And then in the next shot, the Nostromo passes overhead like the Star Destroyer at the very start of Star Wars as well. It's funny though actually you mentioned that because I don't know why but it hadn't really occurred to me that parallel but as we go through this something that's actually quite interesting about this is obviously it is at its core a small horror film but there are these little touches every so often that's probably the you know the first one in like the first shot or something where you can see the influence of the sci-fi of the time and kind of in the previous you know a couple of decades or something and it's just it's interesting where it kind of like notes those things but then does something completely different with them or it kind of subverts or undermines that image in your head in a way and I think that's probably the first example of it it's not bombastic it's not got a stream of text about kind of like oh you know this wonderful

amazing and fantastical thing is happening it starts out very eerily it slowly reveals the title and then the first piece of information we really get beyond some basic credits is that we're going aboard a commercial towing vehicle yeah we're about a towing vehicle it's it's X amount it's like million amount of tons you know it's yeah you know where it's not in a galaxy you know a long time ago no it's not a dramatic kind of mythological story it is these are the specs of this truck that is being hauled through space yeah exactly yeah so yeah I think very much this first film and I think the second film as well it is

is kind of in dialogue with Star Wars in an interesting way, particularly this one, because I think it comes out only two years after Star Wars has, you know, dominated the box office. So I think a lot of studios that were looking at that and thinking about getting into science fiction. How do we change science fiction? You know, how do we move away from the kind of creature features of the 1960s, the kind of cheap science fiction,

into this era where science fiction is going to be a big blockbuster cinema. There's a shot of the Nostromo. We're told that this is a truck hauling all through space. It's a spaceship hauling all through space. And the camera takes us inside. It's all quiet. The camera goes through the cockpit. We get introduced to these kind of corridors of this spaceship

and the camera slowly takes us through it. In the cockpit, a computer screen flashes on, which triggers some kind of routine that turns on the lights and opens up cryogenic pods. So I find interesting, which is another thing I didn't notice in Do a rewatch. One of the things that I find interesting about this opening sequence, right?

So beyond the kind of like shown as the geography of the ship, right? Because I think, again, that sets tone very well because it's just this eerie kind of like wandering around this, to this point, kind of deserted-looking vessel. But what I found interesting is when we get to the, we get to these cryopods and they start to open up and, you know, kind of like the crew start to get out sort of one by one. I think what's interesting is, again, to strip this back away from the kind of the iconography of the franchise, right? You know, Ripley has

become kind of, you know, the icon of this franchise from a human perspective, right? which one could argue that that's maybe why some people are maybe less interest in some of the newer films in this franchise but what I find interesting about it is you do you don't there's no huge amount of emphasis on her in the opening of this

no absolutely if anything the emphasis in the opening which is kind of which is an interest in what I was talking about in terms of like pulling the rug from under you the emphasis in the opening stretch of the film particularly around here is very much on John Hart's cane right he's the first one to emerge from the pod

he's the one that we see kind of getting up first and all the rest of it like and it's just I think it's just an interesting thing to notice about this sequence especially in the context of this film and so on it's not it's not obvious that Ripley is

the protagonist like the central figure and will ultimately end up being the one that does like an entire franchise is built around for this film she's very much just one of this crew for yeah quite a lot of this running time and that's set up pretty well here. When the pods open up

I don't think you can actually even see her. I think she's on the pod. I think she's in the pod that is on the reverse out of shot. Absolutely. I think as the pod's open Kane, played by John Hurt gets up first. He will also be the first character to die.

But there's no clear main character for a good long stretch of the film. I think we've got like half an hour where there's no clear main character. It kind of sort of positions Kane as perhaps the protagonist. Maybe it's Captain Dallas. It's not

at all clear. And I think Roger Lookhurst makes that same point in his book on Alien that there's no clear protagonist. You know, Ripley isn't Ripley doesn't emerge as a kind of final girl until much, much later in the film. And I think there's a similar parallel to Halloween, John Carpenter's Halloween, which I think came out the year before maybe. Anyway, Jamie Lee Curtis emerges in that film as a final girl, and then the entire franchise is kind of built around that character, especially the kind of revival films that have come out in the past couple of years. They're all about Jamie Lee Curtis's character.

so I think there's a similar thing where the final girl takes over the franchise in a way but in this first film in Alien there's certainly no sign of that kind of main character yeah actually I mean if anything not to not to jump too far ahead here but when we eventually get to the point where and I think in the initial stretch is yes I think if you were going to pick out any character as the main one I think the best case in that opening I think, whatever it is, half hour or so up until the facehugger sequence, which we'll talk about. I think it would be John Hart's cane, you would probably pick out, right? He always wants to press on, he always wants to explore, he is the one pushing them to go into the alien ship.

Which, if anything, is actually, it's actually the opposite of what they set Ripley up to be doing. Like, particularly once that sequence goes down, actually, it points that it sets her up as a bit of a job's worth, actually. talking about breaking the rules and quarantine procedures yeah it's actually to a certain extent in that segment of the film it sets her up as the pain in the ars character

actually like you know you know I mean it's kind of a class of the you know if they'd listen to her then you know in the fictional universe of the films they'd listen to her they could have averted any of any of this at all right but it's just it's interesting

to see how the character and the way the film position that character develops over time, right? Because the main focus shifts and the person that actually ends up with at the end of the film is actually set up, I wouldn't say as an unsympathetic character, but is set up as, you know, being by the book

and a job's worth and not wanting to kind of like, you know, go with the flow in the team, you know? Yeah. And it's, again, it's interesting to view that looking back and just see how that develops sort of the course of this kind of opening stretch at the film. So as the pods open, the crew get up.

There's a breakfast scene where they're all eating around eating breakfast. I was reading in Ros Cavaney's essay that Ridley Scott did the sound mixing here so you can't pick out any particular characters' dialogue. It's just like a mess of characters improvising over one another and chatting away. You know, it's a friendly crew.

They live and work together. they try and get along. Captain Dallas goes off to see Mother, which is the name of the onboard kind of ship's computer. And at this point, we're introduced to Parker, played by Yaffa Koto, who's talking about the bonus situation. He and his kind of working class partner Brett wants to talk about the bonus situation

and how they don't get paid as much as the officers on the ship. And this kind of introduces a theme that will run throughout the film of kind of labour disputes this distinction between the kind of labourers and the management class on the ship in kind of Marxist terms the film's really good at

kind of representing how capital exploits labour which it sets it up it sets up very nicely here and it is right and I was aware of this reading of the film anyway but it's when you watch it again

it becomes I think it's pretty explicit to be honest with you and this segment here is setting that up it's kind of setting up the idea that these characters again and we've mentioned this before how the film sets us up with its opening sequence it now sets it up with its kind of like first extended set of dialogue with the characters

where these are not spacefarers right these are not astronauts and explorers there's no bravado here no right it's just people wanting to know am I getting paid for the work I'm doing? Am I getting paid fairly for the work I'm doing? I don't think I am, so I'm going to shout about it. And it's just, it kind of sets up this idea.

There's no, you know, there's a lack of heroism here, right? This is not the driving idea behind why these people are here, right? You know, a little bit unlike the second film, right? These are not space marines, right? They are workers and they are doing this for a day's pay. And I think this sets it up nicely

and it comes back in at different points and I think you can look at it and we'll get into that with a couple of the lines that the captain Dallas has later on when you think about how it pitches the Ash character played by Ian Holm and kind of the company's role in this. I think it's a very clear

line through it and this is where it's teaed-on. This is where it starts with Parker and Brett asking about their fair share and challenging the officers on the ship who have a different uniform. They're clearly distinguished from Parker and Brett. So Captain Dallas goes off to see Mother. He learns as well as the others that they're not near Earth. They expected to be close to Earth by this point, but they're not anywhere near it. They can't pick up any satellites or kind of space transmissions.

So they discover that they've been brought out of hypersleep early because the ship has triggered a protocol. If they discover a distress beacon, the ship has to stop and go investigate it. They've come near a planet, LV426. Actually, I don't know if the planet's named in this one. Maybe it gets named in the second one. The planet's LV426. I think it gets named in the second.

I think it's just an unknown planet at this point. Yeah, or I mean, if it is named in this one, it must be on a screen or something. Certainly, nobody there. I don't think anyone says it. But they have to go down to investigate. So they enter, the spaceship can kind of detach from this big plant section of it and go into orbit and land on its own. So they take the lander down to the planet's surface.

There's a kind of crash landing, which again emphasizes this kind of space trucker's theme. that's going on. This space travel is complicated, it's hard, it's, I think what George Lucas refers to as the dirty future in relation to the Millennium Falcon. It's a kind of, it's a space truck, it's falling apart at the seams, you know? The company's got the cheapest bidders to build this thing, and it kind of falls apart as soon as it starts landing on the surface. There's a nice little scene here where the ship's just crashed on the surface. and Parker and Brett go down to the engine rooms to kind of figure out what's going on. Dallas asks how long it'll take to fix.

Brett says 17 hours. Parker, who's on the com with Dallas, immediately bumps her up to 25 hours. Like he is, he's the union representative, making sure that Brett's not overworked. I like that. A nice little character moment. As we move through this sequence, I think something that's, interesting about it and links back to what we were saying in terms of

the character's relationship to their situation, let's say, is they're not doing, so I mean, essentially they're investigating like an SOS, a distress beacon, but they're not going out of a sense of heroic duty or

like, you know, responsibility as spacefarers or anything like that, which is a theme in some of the later films, right? And particularly, particularly the one that springs to mind here is actually probably Prometheus in this sense, right? But what's interesting about this is the reason

that they have to go is it's in their contract, right? And it's explicitly laid out that way. It's a contractual situation where they will lose the bonuses that they've spoken about if they don't do it. You know, their feet are being held to the fire. It's not something that they want to do and quite a lot of them basically question

whether it's a sensible thing. They don't want to do it. Unfortunately. Parker says, like, why should we do this? Like, this is going to delay us getting home. Why would we want to do this? And Ash, played by Ian Holm, I think you've mentioned, Ash, like, immediately cites what part of the contract says, you have to do this. Like, it is in your contract. You'll forfeit all your shares if you don't. Because Ash is kind of emerging, obsequious little, kind of annoying, annoying, weird little guy. Which is the context of who he's played by, actually, I think, and kind of like just vocal demeanour, shall we say, maybe, in kind of like Ian Holmes' accent.

There's an interesting kind of series of contrast going on there. You know, when you think about the demographics, the... Well, the demographics as the crew, they appear, and the fact that, you know, Ash is played by Ian Holm is something. I think one thing that stood out to me a little bit in this sequence, actually, is... So as they kind of go down to the planet, like it's a very desolate, dark, howling wind, you know, it's not a pleasant situation. But one thing that really stood out to me, I was re-watching this, is Ash, who, of course, as we said, is kind of like, you know, at this point it's very much getting set up as the, you know, he's the science, obviously, he's been set up as the company man to a certain extent, right? And it clearly has privileges and privileges on information beyond that. the crew. It cuts back and forth between him and the crew on the ground. And I just found it

very interesting because they've got their spacesuits on and they're grimy and even kind of like the, you know, the front of the helmets that they look out. They look like they've been cleaned a million times and are covered in grime and there's this howling wind and it looks horrendous. And it cuts back to ash who's just kind of like, you know, serenely gliding in a chair to like some kind of like console or something, almost complete silence. He looks very composed, he looks very calm, and it's just that contrast between what they're being subjected to in the name of their contractual situation,

versus what he's having to deal with, is just quite, it's quite something. He's almost more, he's in a more comfortable position even than the captain of the ship, which I think kind of relates to his position in, position with the company, his position in relation to the company, because he seems at this point even more of a company man like you say than Dallas who he's kind of the reluctant boss

like oh the bosses say we have to go check this out so we better get it done but Ash seems to actively want what is in the company's best interests and given how it develops it's interesting that the film takes that to you know without dialogue without like confrontation

just set up that oppositional quality It very much takes ash and separates him out from the rest of the crew that way before we even get to really any of the inciting incidents it sets up the idea that this guy is slightly apart from the rest of them we don't really know why yet but he's definitely not quite...

He doesn't quite fit. He's not quite part of the collective in the same way just before he glides over to his chair his kind of suspended chair he does a weird little motion where he kind of pumps himself up and he kind of does a little run on the spot like he's pumping himself up and it just makes him look like such a weird little guy

I love it so they're on the way to investigate this beacon and through the howling winds and rocks of the planet and they discover this derelict ship which is pointing out of the out of the planet's surface like a horseshoe shape

It looks so alien, it's not even clear where the front of the ship is, it feels very, like a very different sense of geometry and spatial reasoning to how we normally imagine things. And I think this is a good point as any to talk about the production design of the film, which is terrific. I think really makes the film because we've talked about the interiors of the Nestromo, which looks. great but the interiors of the derelict ship as well looks so alien so overworldly that it really makes the film like it is it makes the title of the film work because it's it feels so lovecraftian it's so unknown space is mysterious it's a place where things we can't even conceive lurk and live and i think a lot of this comes down to how scott hired entirely different people to design the human ship

which was designed by Ron Cobb who was known for his kind of spaceship designs and he got H.R. Giga to design the alien and the alien ship and it works incredibly well. Dan O'Bannon had worked with

H.R. Giga on Alejandro Yodorowski's June which didn't come about but Geiger had done these weird unhinged designs for that film that never got used. And some of the concept, some of the concept art for this as well, I mean, it's, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, a lot of the fable designs that are used are pretty terrifying in their own right. But some of the, some of the concept art stuff from HR Geiger is like, it is horrific. Like, I mean, it makes it, like, it makes me ill to look at. A lot of it was based on, he did a book called the Necronomicon, which is kind of comes from Lovecraft. And but this is a book of like, biomechanical designs. He called them his biomechanicals, which is a kind of weird fusion of

biological and mechanical entities. It's very sexual. It's very sexual imagery. There's a lot of phallic imagery, a lot of vaginal imagery. It's all very out there in a way that really makes the film. And perhaps my favourite design, I think, is, so Kane and Lambert and Dallas come to this kind of central room in the spaceship where there's a creature in a chair question mark there is a creature doing something it's either a chair or a gun turret

or a telescope it's not even clear what it is it's not clear where the creature ends and the chair begins I think it's called the space chockey in kind of the design documents and stuff and that name's kind of stuck with it but

it's such a great design look at, because this, this, I mean, the design, the design, as you say, it's really, it's really striking and it's excellent. I think it's kind of, it's that good, that basically, it's basically this actual scene in the film that's the jumping off point for Prometheus, actually. Yeah. Really. You know, because if, like, the picture of Prometheus really is kind of, you know, who or what is that, what are they doing, and what the hell happened to its chest. Yeah. I think all of this works better as a mystery.

in this film. I don't want to explain because it's so alien and weird, and we can talk about that in, you know, years when we discover Prometheus, but I don't think it works at all well in that film, and I think it works great here. Yeah, I'd agree with that. Kane discovers a hole underneath the kind of dais where the creature is and goes down into what might be the ship's hold. It's certainly a large space and he discovers a kind of blue, an alien blue laser field and a load of eggs. He disturbs one of the eggs. The egg opens in a kind of cross shape. And again, in terms of production design, the inside of the eggs look so much more organic and so much real than they will in later films. In terms of, um, in terms of like tone setting and the,

using the visuals to do it. I think re-watching this again, it's become another one of these kind of iconic images of the series, right? You know, the egg opening up, a face hugger leaping out of it, everybody thrashing around it, right? That's become kind of like one of the

tropes of you know, the alien films. But re-watching this, and again, the idea of this film just being a little bit more quiet and unsettling, the thing that I actually find the most disturbing about this on a rewatch, and the thing that really kind of heard me going, oh, dear God,

is actually when Kane takes his light and he kind of shines it into the egg, and you can kind of, you can see there's something in there. I notice that as well. They're vaguely translucent, which I just don't think they are in later films. I think they'd just got this kind of plasticy look in later films. They just look like solid eggs, but here there is this translucency and there is this organic nature to them that is just so weird. You know, and it's interesting when you then compare it with later ones where kind of like, you know, these things open up and then people kind of like go and peer over the top of them and it's like, you know, like things that real human beings are just not

doing. But what's interesting in this one is because that's been done, because you've seen this thing kind of like moving in there and it's kind of got this, you know, it's this light going through it and it's got that weird kind of refracted quality where you can't really see what it is, right? All you know is it's probably not pleasant, right? So as soon as this thing kind of like spontaneously opens up, it's already set the idea that this is not going to end well. This is not good, right? And it's again one of these instances in the film where it's not making it

obvious what's about to happen I think later films in the series rely on this sequence to make this event an egg opening up unsettling but this film actually in reality

by taking its time and being visual about it it already sets up that this is unpleasant this is unsettling I don't want to be near this thing and I find that interesting it doesn't go straight to, you know, opens up, thing jumps out.

It takes time to set up, there's something in here, and it's moving, and it's alien. Yes. Yeah. So Kane looked into the egg, and something jumps out and hits him in the face. It cuts from there to Ripley, who is back on the ship. She's kind of, they kind of cede Ripley's distrust of Ash early. She goes to translate the warning beacon on her own, because she kind of doesn't trust. Ash to have done it and yeah she discovers it is a warning telling them to keep away explicitly

and Ash says doesn't matter by the time you get out there the Lord you be on their way back and they are on their way back they come to the ship and there's some discussion about whether they should be let in or not and Ripley says no you can't come back in that's a breach of quarantine protocols if Keynes infected with something and Ash overrides that by opening the door manually. Kane is rushed to the med lab to the sick bay, a scene of him and Dallas trying to get the creature off. He's covered with a kind of crab-like creature

that has put its fingers entirely around Kane's head and he's covering his entire face, but Kane still appears to be breathing. He still appears to be alive. They try and get the thing off, but it just goes tighter around Kane's neck. That's a lovely... to me that's a lovely little

that's a lovely little touch it's a nice visual way to do that it's a visual way to represent that just to give you the idea this thing this thing is alive and it is yeah you know it's doing something we don't know what it is yet but just as they get the helmet off

kind of like you know the tape its tail is around his neck and it just kind of like slitters and tightens slightly right and it's just it's little there's little things like that and we'll probably cover more when we talk about or certainly I will be talking

about Ashley or in the film, but there's certain kind of like effect moments there where it's just a little thing like that, which really kind of like puts you in the film and it makes these things feel real and organic in a horrible, disgusting way, and it's just such a little thing. It adds so much to that sequence. Yeah. They do an x-ray. They discover that it's a supplying cane with oxygen, so he's technically alive, but they still need to get it off. They try and cut a leg off with laser, and the blood spurs out it turns out to be molecular acid

it eats through a couple of decks of the ship it is again an emphasis on the weird in the alien I feel like this detail where it has acid for blood gets lost in later films when you've got xenomorphs getting shot and run over and spurting blood everywhere without any consequence

I don't know interestingly I mean anybody who's seen the films probably knows there is one there is one interesting use of this in later films actually so it's funny, like you're right it is something that gets lost in later films but there are

a couple of times where it shows up there's a couple of times when the writers remember yeah yeah exactly when they remember so they leave Kane on his own Ripley talks to Ash about the quarantine breach and Ash is kind of awkward and kind of weird about it again he is painted as a weird little guy

but he essentially says you know it was the only way to save Kane's life. I'm loving our characterisation of Ash here. It's just, it's a weird little guy. They're kind of like the popping himself up, but just the idea. He's the kind of guy that's just a weird little guy. Yeah, you have to work with him. Like, you make chit-chat in the staff room, but you don't really get on with him. You don't invite him to the pub afterwards. Oh, that's sequoious, absolutely. Yeah. There's a brief scene of Dallas in what we later learned to be the escape shuttle. Roger Lookhurst in his book speculates that

Dallas is plotting an escape at this point, or at least getting away kind of visually and representationally from his responsibilities as a captain of the ship, because Dallas doesn't seem that into it. He's not as much of a company man as we discussed. But Ash calls him up and they say, we have to go look at Kane. Something's happened. They're going to look at Kane. They don't close the door of the med lab behind them for a stressfully long amount of time. Ash eventually does it, but, you know, I've, I've lived in London, I've been in flats where you know there's a mouse in the room and you close the door behind you so the mouse can't get out. That's the first thing you do. They look around them...

It's like I didn't see happening in this pod. Mouse facehugger apparel. Yeah, same thing, same thing. They look around the med lab for the facehugger. It eventually falls on Ripley. And again, every aspect of the facehugger and the dead facehugger looks really organic. It's just great production design, great design. It just doesn't surprise me actually this thing. So we kind of get after this when they start investigating it, we get an angle of it, right, that we haven't seen before. Because we've only really seen the back of it, you know,

or kind of like the hard kind of like shell carapace type bit of it, right? And we now see it the other way, the way up. And this thing looks gross, right? And it is very... It's superbly done, you're right, it's very organic and fleshy and horrible looking. Like, I read it. It was done with kind of like, you know,

I think a kidney and like bits of shellfish or something. Yeah, they'd get fresh fruit de la mare, like oysters and, you know, bits of seafood delivered to the set every day while they were filming that scene. Yeah. So, like, it is... You know, this thing doesn't... look

rubbery it doesn't look like a prop it really looks like something disgusting and organic you know so again it's kind of like that you know it just small touches they make it unsettling

right you know the the light through the egg for the egg sequence and now with the face hugger kind of like the sliddering of the tail when they get it when they first get the helmet of cane and now now the face hugger is as it appears at this point dead just even it's corpse just looks

and like you know it looks and sounds horrible yeah basically you know it is very kind of like

unsettling just in its appearance and the wood you know the textures that you can see basically yeah

yeah there's a brief scene of Ripley confronting Dallas I think at this stage Ripley wants to burn the creature

get out of there there's a brief discussion where they talk about how was brought onto the ship as a replacement science officer just a couple of days before they shipped out then they are sitting around in the in the kind of mess hall area neat little character bit with Harry Dean Stanton where he's rolling his

own siggies and smoking his rollies all the time like he just he has an endless supply of his own hand-rolled cigarettes great stuff but they're called to the med lab because something's happened to Kane can has woken up he says he's had some horrible dream about smothering. But he's hungry. They're about to bug out. They're about to go back to sleep for their journey back to Earth. And they decide to have one last meal together. So they're sitting around where they had breakfast earlier and they're just eating, chatting away. When suddenly Kane has some kind of seizure, some kind of fit. He falls back on the table, an alien burst out of his chest, blood spatters everywhere, the crew is shocked.

and this little creature emerges from him screams for a little bit and chitters zooms away and this this scene again it's just fascinating

to be in a couple of levels firstly it's another one of these scenes where the film completely pulls the rug from you right in the same way it does in a few different ways

later on but this is and at the start it's shot very similarly the same as that kind of that breakfast scene where, you know, as you say, you can't pick anybody out, it's just people on breakfast. And it is ultimately a very main, the first one in the film is a very mundane sequence, right? This one is kind of set up to be similar, and then just the shit hits the fan, right?

It really, it really just, you know, and this is, if there's any scene from Alien that people know about, it's this one, right? and I think maybe the reason that it became kind of like the breakout scene of the film is because it's so shocking. But the reason it's shocking is not, I mean in my view, right, the reason it's shocking is not because an alien bursts out of John Cain, John Hurt's chest, right, as shocking as that is. It's because this is set up in the same banal way that that breakfast situation is. and then it just is absolutely punctured by the most sort of like violent presence of something alien that you could come up with. If I'm going to give this film, it's one, the one criticism I'm going to give the film at this point. This is probably the one point for me where like some of the special effects don't quite. Or like when, for me when the alien kind of runs off, it is a little bit like, I don't know if you've seen the, um,

I don't know if you, I can't remember the name of the episode, but basically, I mean, basically it's the episode of Red Dwarf, which is ripping off alien, right? Like, when the alien kind of like, you know, when the chest bursor kind of like runs out across the table. And don't be wrong, it's a very fleeting glimpse. It's more of a kind of like an establishing this thing has run off and they don't know where it's gone shot. It's not really lingered. Yeah, you get a shot of the alien comes out of the chest, looks around for a bit, that shot kind of lingers. then later there is a shot, which I think you're talking about, where it zooms off. It's off, like a mouse.

It's off like a mouse into the bowels of the ship. And yeah, it's a bit... That one little mini sequence, it did have a bit of a low-budget Red Dwarf quality to it. And I love Red Dwarf, don't give me wrong, right? But that's the only point where the effects... If there's any effects part of this film where I think I would benefit from being redone, It's just that one bit, right? But it's just, I think the fact that you don't really care about that in the moment

speaks to how unsettling this sequence is. Yeah, I think the film relies on you being so shocked by the preceding moment that you don't notice that. How it was done is that the little creature was mounted on a small dolly on a model railway track and just kind of pulled along by string. which is just off camera it's just out of frame I think for that part

I think it shows I think it looks like something being pulled along on a little piece of string on a railway track but if anything it speaks to how effective the rest of the sequence is

because I mean I think the way the way they did it before you know when it's actually bursting out of John Hurt is there's kind of a mechanical torso and then he's placed above it

so it really does look like it's bursting out of him and it's a shocking sequence I would say it's probably the first genuinely gory violent sequence in the film

you know I mean there's a certain amount of violence and kind of like how the hate the facehugger attaches itself you know there's a whole level of subtext there as well but here just the way it just so violently undermines that very banal scene from early on this is when the film

then kind of kicks up into a different gear at this point basically so this scene is basically iconic for the film and the franchise and you hear maybe apocryphal stories about people fainting at early screenings or vomiting with fear when this scene happens and there's there's stories as well about the crew

not even knowing that it was going to happen on set and being so shocked by it that all their reactions were genuine I don't think any of that's true as far as I can tell I think they knew it was going to happen obviously they knew it was going to happen because presumably there's a lot of special effects set up that needs to happen before you film that. But I don't think Veronica Cartwright, who plays Lambert, knew how much blood there would be. So there's something of an actual shocked shot of Veronica Cartwright reacting to it,

but they knew the alien was going to come out. Like, this is in the script. It would be astonishing if the actors didn't know that. But there was a steady heartbeat throughout the background of this scene as well. And this is something that I hadn't picked up on in previous viewings, that came out here, there's often a slow heartbeat sound on the soundtrack on scenes of particular tension around the alien. So this alien's out in the ship now. They take some time to send Kane out in the airlock, just blast his body out into space. No one says anything. This isn't

Star Trek. There's no long speeches. There's no bagpiping. And there's another kind of sense of this loneliness, of godlessness, of empty space. Space is alien, it's out to kill you. Capital's here to exploit you in this alien space, but you are ultimately expendable, which is a theme that will get picked up on later. And it's been, it's already been re-emphasized. In this kind of like entire sequence from the face hugger through to the chest burst of season, it's been re-emphasized, like, because in that confrontation you mentioned between Ripley and Dallas, like, I mean, it's made very explicit. I mean, basically, you know, like when Ripley's kind of questioning why we should

why this should be done like literally Dowell says that's what the company wants to happen like it's very it's very explicit and then you know you do you know why you do what they tell you to like it is very clear that this is particularly for the you know the the Dallas's and the the Parkers and the Ripley's right

maybe not so much the ashes right which will come to this is this is very much happening under duress you know it's not a voluntary thing it is basically and the fact

that one of them is now dead it's a kind of really hammers home the fact that this is they are being

they are subject to a very exploitative act right this has not come about through their own hubris

it has come about through you know I mean maybe some poor decisions have been made but

like it's not come the entire driving factor behind this is not their own personal hubris or arrogance or anything like that it's the company mandating what they need to

under financial duress they were pushed into it so they improvised some weapons and ash improvises a kind of detector for the alien it detects microchanges in air density an explanation which Ripley doesn't particularly like as she says microchanges in air density my ass Parker Brett and Ripley go out in the ship hunting for the alien only to stumble on Jones the Cat Jones the Cat Jones the Cat has a lot to answer for in this film re-watching it

that cat has caused so many problems to this crew There is a piece of fiction by a poet and writer that reimagines the film from the cat's perspective and it's just called like My Day by Jones because the cat has a particularly busy and eventful day

this cat doesn't yeah it does have a very meaningful dude it's the true the true survivor of this it is the cat will come back later on but essentially it's just a ship's cat like you'd having a pirate ship to catch mice mice again

but yeah it's just a ship's cat Ros Cavaney actually has a kind of speculation about why it's called Jones and she says it might be based on the Bob Dylan song ballad of a thin man so Parker goes out searching for Jones, because they tell him, if we don't catch Jones, we'll just pick him up on the scanner again. So we need to catch him, so we're not getting double negatives.

And Parker goes out searching for Jones. This is a real wet scene. So Harry Dean Stanton's face is all sweaty from fear. There is water dripping from the ceiling of the spaceship. There's damp chains swinging back and forth. Brett ultimately finds Jones. Jones is afraid of something behind Brett. Brett turns around.

It's the alien. You don't get a good look at the alien. You sort of just see its teeth, it's wet teeth, and a kind of inner mouth, suggesting it's got two mouths. But yeah, that first view of the alien is really good. You don't see a lot at all. And I think something else that's interesting, because it actually reminded me of a shot in aliens, actually,

which I'll come back to when we talk about that film. But I think what's interesting here is the kind of, explicit image that we see of the alien at this point is very fleeting. But what's actually quite interested is the fact that we do get quite a good look at it in here, but it's out of focus, right?

It's out of it. It's behind Brett, right? And it kind of appears in that way where you can't really see what it is, but again, you're kind of looking at it, because at this point, right, and again, because this is something else that's kind of set up in this film, is this kind of like this fast, you know, it's a very quick

life cycle of these things. Yeah. right? Because, you know, the amount of time is not, at this stage anyway, I don't think the amount of time is kind of like, you know, 100% clear, but it's very, it's very clear that we're talking about a short period of time. So at this stage, if you don't know about these creatures, it's still the tiny wee thing, right? You know, it's this thing that, which shouldn't be wrong, it's deep. Well, that's what they're looking for. They've got like, that's what they're looking for. Yeah, they've got a tiny net. Yeah, they're looking for this small kind of like rat-sized thing. So, and then, so to all. all of a sudden have this, like, monstrous, sort of, like, you know, human size, greater than human size. I mean, you're thinking about the guy who was in the suit. I mean, he was enormous, right? So bigger than human size thing appear from nowhere, right? It is, again, very shocking.

And I think it's one of these things where, I think, later films, and we'll talk about them when we come to the other films. They kind of start to take advantage of this a little bit, right? I mean, I think in later films, these things, they grow so fast. They grow super quickly. It's ridiculous. I think, but in later films, I think it sometimes used as a convenience. Here, it's used to horror effect, right? Because it is immediately undermined what it is they're looking for.

It's immediately made it a lot more threatening, and it's immediately made it unknown again, right? because we've evolved from the egg to the facehugger to a small thing which has burst out of Kane's chest to now this kind of like this enormous creature. So again, it's just completely pulling the rug out from you as you go along. And I think later films play especially fast and loose with this and take advantage of it. But in this film, it doesn't logically necessarily make any more sense than in later films. I mean, after all, it's an alien creature. I mean, you can have it grow as fast as you need it to. I mean, in that sense, it's a plot convenience which actually works.

But here, it is used to a tonal effect. It's not done to kind of like set up a set piece or, you know, something which is a further plot convenience. It's done to, again, hammer home this idea of you don't know what you're dealing with. The rug has been pulled out from under you. This thing is terrifying. We don't know what it is. Is it going to be the same in the next scene? We don't know.

So I find that an interesting thing, because it's another one of these kind of like things about the creature, which is established here, which shows up in many later films, but the use of it here is a lot more, it's a lot more economical, basically. It's a lot more towards the actual tone of the film and how you feel as it confronts the characters rather than kind of, you know, setting up further plot conveniences off the back of it. Yeah, yeah. By this point, you've got some eyes. idea of what the creature's life cycle is, but like you say, it could pull the route under you at any moment. You don't know what it could be next when you look at it. By this point, it's clear that it is like a man-sized kind of being. The aliens actually played by a Nigerian student, Balaji Badeo, who was discovered in a bar by a member of the casting team.

Just because he's 6 foot 10 inches, like he was a huge guy who was able to to fit into the costume. And yet, it's partly his presence and it's partly the design, which sort of came from Geiger, from plans by Dan O'Bannon, the screenwriter. And yeah, it looks alien, it looks overworldly. And I think in this first instance, I think the first thing, I think the first thing that you that sticks with you from this scene is probably or at least for me anyway is the mouth

and the teeth right there's a lot of kind of iconic bits of this creature and I think kind of the the head design is probably what most people kind of think of but the first thing that really sticks to mind is probably the mouth and the way that it's got that sort of like liquid dripping from it and the way to

kind of like yeah like that and the way they pull back and you're not quite sure whether it has a metallic look or it's like some sort of weird mercury type liquid dripping from it like it's a very again it's a very unsettling appearance in that design and it's interesting

the way the design here there's sort of like this sort of like biomechanical idea right it's the go go to word for this design but there are a lot of things in this film and we're going to when we come to the conclusion I'll come back to

this where they work because of that design or the design heightens it right it's not just a sort of like cool badass thing right it really it really blends with the film in a way that it doesn't

in some future ones yeah right but again here contributing to that kind of like sense of the unknown and not really knowing what you're dealing with that design really blends with that and the production design of the rest of the film really pretty well yeah it's it's kind of a mix

of gigas idea of biomechanicals which you mentioned and Scott really Scott says in the commentary which must have been recorded years after so I don't know if this was his thinking at the time

but he wanted to reflect that this was a designed creature like this creature was manufactured and designed rather than evolved which we can come back to when we get to Covenant years from now when did he say

well exactly so this is whenever the DVD commentaries for that quadrology box set that we were talking about comes out so maybe it's 2000s and he has in that context that's I feel like that context is interesting

it feels a little bit like it feels like a little bit of a retcon yeah I feel like that's around 2002 2003 and that's definitely when the director's cut was made so I imagine he's doing commentaries around then but yeah

we'll get into that so there's another scene of team coming back to regroup. Ash, weird little guy, he refers to the creature as Kane's son, which is just weird. Ash speculates that fire might harm the creature or at least scare it. So Dallas rigs up a, uh, Parker rigs up a flame thrower for Dallas and Dallas prepares to go into the air vents where they speculate the creatures moving about the ship. He goes to consult mother and mother basically says nothing like I can't compute. He asks

So what are my chances of survival? And Mother says, can't compute. And Dallas goes into the vents to look for the creature. And there's a tense scene of the radar going off. Lambert's looking at the radar to determine where it might be. Dallas is in the vents. It's all dark. He's only lit by the fire of the flamethrower and maybe a little torch.

And this started me thinking about where I saw elements of alien first in things like the Simpsons. because there's definitely a scene where Santa's little helper gets lost in the vents of the school and groundskeeper Willie goes in to get him and it's just like a straight parody of this scene so like The Shining this was sort of a film that I'd experienced

through The Simpsons before I experienced actually seeing it so Dallas is crawling about the barrels of the ship and there's kind of these sphincter-like openings and apertures which kind of gets into the biomechanical stuff of the derail. alien ship as well. Asch is watching, he's just watching impassively, as Dallas is

ultimately consumed. Like Dallas just disappears off the radar. There's a flash of the creature from Dallas's perspective, but none of the other crew know what's happened to him. He's just gone. He's just gone. Ripley is now in charge. Ripley's now the commanding officer of the ship, and she asks Ash, what can we do? Like, why isn't science, the science officer giving us any recommendations Ash says that he's still collating to the very cold and weird response

but Ian Holmes' performance in this sequence he's terrific, it's fantastic I just love it like the whole kind of like as we said the weird little man thing like the it's this given what happens after this it's really

it's just a really superb little foreshadowing kind of like him being calm to a non-human extent Yeah. Right? That's, you know, it's a, it's a very, you know, you've got to pitch that performance very carefully. And I think Ian Hohen does an absolutely superb, superb job here. I like this scene, seen a lot for its performance, isn't it?

Yeah, so Ripley now, as the commanding officer, has access to Mother, the onboard computer, and she goes to talk to Mother to determine what they can do, if anything, why the science officer hasn't been able to help. why he's still collating. And Ripley proves to be a lot better at communicating with the computer than Dallas was. She discovers Special Order 937, which says that the company wants the crew to go get a specimen, a living specimen of this creature and return it to Earth. And the crew is expendable for this special order. And I think this is where we get into the real kind of capitalist marketing.

readings of the film. The company has just determined that the creature must be obtained and that the crew are entirely expendable. The labour force is entirely expendable to that one kind of corporate aim. There's a lot of... Yeah, this is basically the payoff of the stuff that we've mentioned. I think the thing that then really hammers at home is... what then happens with

the Ash character immediately after this and as we get into the well yeah let's get into that um with them Ian home discovers that Ripley's discovered order 937

and confronts her basically violently confronts her at this point becoming more than a weird little guy he's got like creamy sweat coming down his face he's like sweating milk and he's behaving very

strangely he beats up replay tears out of hair and is displaying at this point like strength beyond that of yeah a regular human man the weird little guy that we think he is up to this point

you know as this as this confrontation develops right and I think you know Parker gets involved he's you know he's holding multiple people off with this kind of like weird super huge maybe not quite superhuman, but kind of like strength way beyond this kind of, you know, the

appearance that he has. Yeah, there's one shot of him kind of digging into Parker's chest as if he is like a mechanical claw, like tightening around Parker's skin. But he's trying to kill Ripley. He's trying to kill Ripley by shoving a magazine down her throat. It's a porn magazine and there's kind of images of naked women. on the side of the bunk where he's got a pin down. It's kind of a symbolic rape.

It is, yeah, a violent and gross scene. But Parker comes along and knocks, like, hits Ash, knocks his head off because Ash turns out to be an android. He turns out to be a robot. Ash is a goddamn robot, says Parker. They managed to overpower Ash, but by this point, he's spurting his kind of milky blood all over the place. They knock him out and they managed to hook up his head

so that the rest of the body isn't working, but his head can still talk to them. He talks about how he admires the creature, how it's a structurally perfect creature, it is a savage creature, it cannot be killed, he doesn't rate their chances, they're not going to survive, and he admires it, he admires its purity. Yeah, and this is the line of his that really, and again, when you put it in this context of kind of like, you know, capitalist greed and corporate malfeasance and all the rest of it, it really sticks out. Because at this point, obviously, like, you know, Ash is very much established as the company's representative. He is the robotic non-human, you know, who is the, you know, the wolf and sheep's clothing here, right? So when he says, you know, I admire its purity, is the line after that really sticks out for me in this context.

It's like, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. Yeah. And I think when you put it in the context of why they are there and the objectives of the company that have led them to this point, it's not, to an extent you can say, you could probably say it's not ash talking there, it's the company, right? it's this it's an opportunity for them to kind of find out about something potentially kind of like you know commercialize weaponized whatever this is a theme in later films which you know are done to kind of like you know mixed effect but it's not just ash saying that right this idea of delusions of morality and that underpinning the entire idea of why they're there is it's to me that's quite a

powerful moment and I think that that there's a reason that basically we are lingering on Ian Holm and it's just his head there's a reason that this is given as much kind of like room to breathe as it is. It's a very powerful moment

in underscoring just quite how reprehensible it is why they find themselves in this situation. Yeah, it definitely draws a line under that capitalist Marxist reading of the film where the company has explicitly exploited

these people for its own ends entirely for its own ends as Ash says and Ripley at this point mentions the company's weapons division and it just seems uncontroversial to them that

this haulage company would also have a weapons division because it is a massive corporate entity like we've been calling it the company all the way through that's how the crew refer to it as well it is just the company like capital key capital t capital c i think there is is it given a name is well there is one shot where you can see on a screen the name whalen dutani corporation

um but it's whalen without a d so it's not quite developed at this point i i think it's maybe it's named in the novelization of the film or in the script but it's not it's just the company here which I quite like again it's just it's a funny thing to think about actually when you put into the context of later films and Prometheus

we're not only we're not only we're not only is the corporation a huge part of it once you get to later films the guy that the corporation is named for is a huge part of it it's just it's another

example about like little tiny what are effectively tiny details get drawn out are then spun out into these these like you know these plot points and stuff you know, which I think we'll cover when we get to them

or of mixed success, shall we say. Yeah, I like the references to the company as if it's the only corporate entity left in the world, as if it's like a super Disney that has eaten everything else and it's the only giant corporation left and nothing else exists outside of it. I think that's a really nice metaphor for capitalism. Canonically, that is not the case.

I know, for example, in alien isolation, the Space Station in that film is just owned by a different company. So it's, in that game, rather, is owned by a different company. So it's not canonically the case that it's the only company, but I like that imagery. And I think that's why this first film is so strong for me, because it alludes to these massive things, but it doesn't linger on them. And I think that's cool. Yeah, in terms of, so Ash has this response to the xenomorph, where he kind of admires it.

He admires its purity. I think we'll just note that for now, because we can compare that to other Androids and how they respond to the alien further down the line because this is a constant theme that will come back to across the franchise. And yet then Parker Burns, Burns Ash, and his face kind of melts away,

and he looks like the androids in alien isolation, which are kind of blank featureless, uh, androids. They're suggested to be earlier models of what eventually turns into ash. At this point, we've got Ripley, Lambert and Parker left. They decide, we're done here, we need to get out of here. Let's just go to the shuttle and blow up the Nostromo, self-destruct it. We'll get on the shuttle and we'll get out of it.

For some reason, Lambert and Parker need to collect a load of coolant, a load of fuel. So they go off in one direction to do that. Ripley goes off to initiate the self-destruct. but she also starts looking for Jones a cat as well she hears Jones meow I told you this cat was a lot to answer for and the cat's delaying the search because she needs to get him in his little space carrier and Lambert and Parker are down collecting coolant like I say

at this point we get our best look yet at the alien because there is a shadow on Lambert Lambert turns around and she's faced with it in a shot that lingers for quite a while, and we see the alien in all its kind of iconic glory. You know, big black, smooth head, teeth, mouth inside a mouth. It's got kind of ridges all over its body. It's vaguely humanoid in shape. It's got arms and legs and whatnot, but it's also got a huge spiky tail and these kind of ridges,

kind of pipes coming out of its back. It's actually ironically probably the most. the most humanoid it looks in this series I think I'll need to rewatch some of the other films as we go through this whole this whole podcast series but certainly compared to you know I mean like the very explicit

brightly lit instance you get in Covenant for instance and you know some of the pseudo things in Prometheus and certain you know you kind of get a little you kind of get variants of it in Alien 3 and, I mean, okay, there's probably one clear example in resurrection that we'll come to when we come to that film, but this is probably the most humanoid that actually looks, just in terms of how it moves and general kind of like, like it's very clear at this point, it's effectively bipedal, for instance, you know, which is not always the case in later films.

And I think this is where they start to play with the biology of it and what leads to the biology. of it and maybe where we get into that kind of like Ridley Scott idea about it being designed right but at this point I think it it's more it's more kind of it's an augmented human frame basically which it is of course I mean you know you've got the you've got the Nigerian fella in the in the suit right so it makes sense but yeah you're right this is this is the best look we get it get of it um probably in the film actually I mean like there are there are there are as we get to inclusion there's others but like in terms of kind of like it a front on shot of it yeah kind of

getting ready to attack you get a good look of it at the front of it um so roger lookhurst in his book talks about the uh kind of influences on this design there's uh wasps there's francis bacon a francis bacon triptych which all influences this kind of alien kind of phallic design how it's got a long kind of smooth shaft for a head, essentially. Yeah, I think the alien has a real kind of, if we're talking in terms of sexual stuff, it's got a real phallic design, which kind of contrasts with the kind of vaginal spaces of the ship

and the egg, which I think there's a lot of readings of the film. I think it's Barbara, Barbara Castle has a, Barbara Creed, sorry, Barbara Creed has a very famous reading of the film as a kind of monstrous, feminine film where you're kind of afraid of pregnancy, of the man getting pregnant,

and creatures bursting out of the man rather than the woman, and this kind of reading of the creature as feminine and attacking the men on the ship, leaving only Ripley to survive. I don't entirely buy into it I think a lot of that feminine stuff will come in later films when we're introduced to like the queen

and the matriarchal structures here but I don't think you get a lot of that gender stuff I don't think you can gender the alien in a specific way I don't think so or at least I think it's hard to I think you would struggle to pin one day I think there are elements

at different stages of its life cycle where I think you could perhaps like attach some sort of gendered image to it right and let's say the most interesting part to kind of go back in the film

but just because this is where it kind of comes full circle because certainly the alien at this point the good look we get of it the head in particular is very phallic looking right and that's that's even more apparent in the you know the Geiger print necronome for, where the design is based, right? The kind of the head of the thing in that,

like, it's even more phallic looking, right, when you look at it in that. So you could perhaps attach, like, a gendered idea to it at this stage. I actually think in the earlier part of the film, ironically enough, even though kind of, you know, it's impregnating cane and all the rest of it, it's a little bit harder to pin it down there, I think, but this is maybe where this kind of like monstrous feminine thing maybe comes more in because once the facehugger is dead and it's lying there I mean certainly when you get into that part of it where they're kind of investigating its anatomy it certainly doesn't look anatomically male I would say at that point right I think there's so you could put and then when you put that into the context of it attacking a male

member of the ship and it kind of getting into these these male fears of pregnancy are being violated now. Yeah, the kind of symbolic way. I can kind of, I can perhaps see that reading in that moment, in that instance. I don't think it holds up across the entire film. No. And I think even when you think about the manner in which it attacks, you know, with the mouth protruding out of a mouth and things like that, I don't, I don't think that reading holds up across the whole film. I can see where it maybe stems from, but I don't think you could, I don't think you can apply it to the entire cycle of the film. Yeah, I think there's perhaps more of a monstrous feminine reading to be had in the ship's

computer being called mother, like this kind of matriarchal sense of, of the company representing itself through a gendered, a gendered computer construct. And arguably, as we've discussed, the company is the real monster of the film. you know, capitalism's a real baddie. But, yeah, I just don't buy this kind of gendered reading of the alien. Certainly not in this film. Like I say, we'll get into more of that in aliens. But in this film, I think it's just overworldly.

And it is, I think there is a lot of sexual imagery around it because of Garga's preoccupations. But I don't think you can pin it down. It's just alien. It's just unknowable. Certainly not the creature is. I mean, I mean, the fact that it comes about as a result of basically a parasitical gestation, really, right? I think that that very much undermines the idea of being able to attach a gender or any sort of gendered sexual reproduction ideas to the creature itself, you know, I mean, you know, beyond what we've mentioned about the idea of the face hugger and the symbolic rape that kind of kicks the whole thing. thing off, but the fully grown creature

itself, I think you would struggle to attach any of those sort of notions to that in and of itself, I think. Yeah. So Lambert is killed by the alien. Parker is also killed by the alien. It's worth mentioning that Yaffet Koto

got really into his part. On his last day on set, he was pitching Ridley Scott for Parker to survive. And, I don't know, go off in the shuttle with Ripley. Ripley is all on Now, she goes down and discovers Lambert and Parker dead and tries to undo the self-destruct. But she can't undo it, it's already too late. She calls mother a bitch, again getting into these monstrous feminine readings,

and has to run for the shuttle because there is essentially no choice at this point. Self-destruct can't be undone. We don't get a lot of exterior shots of the ship, but there's one when Ripley is trying to undo the self-destruct, and these shots always make the ship look like some vast cathedral. some vast cathedral I think they're really effective but there's not a lot of them like I say it's mostly confined to within the ship

like it's a haunted house a haunted house in space this is another one of those points actually that exterior shot and going back to the start of film where I see the see the influence of other sci-fi of the time right because I will get into this a little bit

when Ripley launched I mean it's not a spoiler right okay we're reviewing this from a you've watched it perspective. When we get to the point where Ripley launches the escape shuttle, I'll come back to this, but I really see the influence, as with so much, science fiction of the time silent running here, right, in terms of the ship's playing how they're shot and kind of like that effect there. And I always take the opportunity to mention silent running, because it's one of these films

where lots of people know it and lots of people seeing it, but then, like, you know, 10 times as many people haven't. And I think the influence of that film is really strong across. just so much of science fiction particularly around this period, right? So if you don't know, it's directed by Douglas Trumbull, he was the special effects

supervisor for 2001, which we'll come back to in a second. But I think in particular where I see it prop up the most is really the exteriors of the ships. And Alien is one of them, and then there are a few other films where they are kind of like these just

hulking masses in space, right? They're not the sort of more agile, nimble things that you'll see in Prometheus, for instance, actually, you know, and several other ones. And that influence comes through pretty strongly there, and you're right, I think they're very effective and kind of getting across our setting here. Yeah, the Nostromo is not sleek at all.

It is not like the ships in Star Wars episode one. It is like a factory in space. It is like a power plant, an ore refinery floating through space. And we talked a lot about H.R. Giga's designs and how good they are. But Ron Cobb's designs for the spaceship are also very striking. So Ripley is escaping. She's really chucking about the carrier with poor Jones in it. Like she is throwing that cat into the shuttle by this point.

You know, I was watching this with one of my cats. Very distressed. But she gets onto the shuttle, she launches, flies away. Nostromo explodes in a huge explosion because there's two million tons of, two billion tons of ore in there or whatever. And she settles down, she puts Jones down in his little pod to go to sleep, and she gets ready to settle down her stealth, strips down to her undies. and he's just about to settle in when a part of... We're looking at it for a long time it just looks like a part of the ship

it suddenly starts moving because what we've looked at as a pipe is actually the alien's head and a little claw comes out the alien at this point seems a bit lephagic it's as if it's settling down to hibernate but it's still on the shuttle

so Ripley runs to a little closet it is very afraid, obviously, and starts to put on a space suit, to put on some protection. I think at this point, this is a fantastic reveal, right? Because, now, obviously, if you're watching the film, you kind of know something's going to happen, because, like, the film wouldn't be still going on if something wasn't about to happen, right? But I think it's a really, really good example of just how, how well thought out the design of this film is, because the reason this sequence works or the reason that reveal works is because of the harmony or the just kind of like not quite harmony

between the design of the ship and the design of the creature, right? And it's quite funny. I find it hard to put myself back in the position of watching this for the first time. But because I hadn't watched it in eight or nine years, you know, you forget little bits and pieces. and it was when Ripley's investigating that bit I was like, you know, you see it and then if you know what you're watching

I was kind of like, oh, holy shit, yeah, I remember this now and it's just, it's like you say it looks like a part of it, and even as it's kind of coming out, there's bits of it that look like parts of the ship and that's where this design really, really works.

I mean, it's been a terrifying thing at this point, up to this point rather, but it's really in this moment where the known quantity such that it is now, right, really blends with the design of the film because that's why that

reveal works, it's because it looks the way it does it can blend in there and conversely, you know, the ship and kind of like, or the escape shuttle in this instance, and the bits and pieces. So I think this is really, again, it's kind of the payoff of the design of it

and how it can blend into these environments, but it still doesn't quite, once it appears and it's a really really quite it's something that it's interesting because the franchise later films have done reveals of the creatures and there's one particular moment in aliens I can think of

that we'll talk about in the next episode where it does it really well and it kind of like makes you go oh Christen you know it's a jump scare in a good way this is the only one I can think of at the moment ahead of rewatching most of these where it's the design of the creature leads to it right

there are other instances where it works and where doesn't work in later films. This is really the one where the design of the creature is used to make that reveal. Yeah, yeah. It's coming back again to the biomechanical nature of it. The kind of artificial

designed look of the creature. And it's funny, you should mention the kind of false ending part of it because to contextualize it in 1979 when the film was released. Whereas Cavaney says that the idea of a false ending was less of a cliché back then.

So audiences may not particularly have expected it. They just expected the film to end, to have an ending. Whereas in the ensuing decades, it's become more of a cliche and more expected in a lot of films, particularly in horror films, I think. So at this point, the soundtrack drops away. It's virtually only the sound of the lower. heartbeat, which we had in the chest burst of scene, and Ripley singing to herself, providing her own soundtrack by singing, You Are My Lucky Star. She settles in the space suit, and she sits down in the shuttle's chair, buckles herself in, and flushes the creature out with gas,

flushes it out into the open, and opens the airlock to the shuttle. The creature's pulled backwards into space, it grabs onto the door and Ripley has a little harpoon gun, shoots it so it blasts out the door. It still seems to be crawling around on the hull of the shuttle, but Ripley turns on the engines and it gets a blast of engine exhaust and flies off into space, either dead or going to die in the vacuum of space. Ripley's safe, she takes off her space suit, settles down to do her last log. as the last survivor of the Nostromo apart from Jones who is also there but gets ignored

and that's the end of the film the credits run yeah it is quite remarkable like we kind of got to the end of it is quite remarkable to think about all the films that now spin out from this right because it is

you know when it comes down to the end of this film is one woman and this creature and Jones the cat hanged around right it is quite incredible thing I think it's it's a good jumping it's a fun

jumping off point for what we'll talk about in later episodes because the way the way this has spun out is it goes off in multiple directions right because you end up with aliens you end up with going back in time in the kind of the fictional

world of the film with Prometheus and Covenant and it's just it's quite interesting to see the way that this is all spun out from what he's essentially just a very claustrophobic horror film yeah you know I mean it's a slasher film but the slasher film is this horrible phallic monstrous

it's a very straightforward a very straightforward horror story sat in space it doesn't I think if you're viewing it in its context it doesn't need a sequel it doesn't need it can just stand alone

and if you are thinking of a sequel, there are multiple ways it could go. You don't have to focus on Sigourney Weaver's Ripley at all. But, as we'll see, historically that is what happens. Yeah, I think this is, I mean, I sort of alluded to it at the start. I think it's almost a perfect film. It's one of those films where you can't see the seams, like you can't see how a filmmaker put it together. it is so complete and so of itself, it's so evocative of a unique

world and aesthetic it just feels so one of a kind and you know, so we've spoken about the film in of itself, right? I think I would agree with you and I think of all the films

that we are going to go on to speak about I think this is probably my favourite one of them, right? I think if you catch me on a different day, I might make a case for aliens but by and large particularly from a film making perspective this is really the one

for me and I it's it's funny to look at it now and see what influence or actually you could argue what little influence it actually has on its own sequels you know like you've got the design of the alien

of course you do and there are certain things you know like rewatch it there's similarities between the space suits and some of the ships and stuff when we come to Prometheus when Ridley Scott actually comes back to the series but you could argue a lot of the films

after this and I'll be interested to see if I think this as we go through and re-watch these and think about them in that sort of context it's interesting how much seems to spin from aliens rather than alien so it's just it's quite interesting to look at it from that

perspective, but this on its own, I think it is the most effective film for what it's trying to do. I think that there's films after this where they try something different, and for my money, they don't quite manage to achieve their aims. There's, you know, with probably the exception of aliens, but then other films, the cues they're taking, is actually surprising how few of them are from this film. It's a very, like, it very much stands alone even in its own, you know, franchise that has built up around it, is really the only one, which has this stripped back idea about what it is, what it is it's trying to do. A lot of the other films, you could argue, are a lot more ambitious. In that sense, this film, narratively, you know,

I mean, obviously in terms of production design and various sorts of things, it's a very ambitious film and it pulls all that off spectacularly well but in terms of kind of the story structure what it's trying to do with all these elements that aspect of it isn't particularly ambitious but it's to the film's benefit because it then pulls this off extremely effectively and all the elements where it is being extremely ambitious like the creature designs and the production design and you know some of the undertones of the film that we've spoken about they all come together and are given appropriate focus, I think. And that's what makes it, ultimately, I think,

the more memorable film and the more impactful film as you're watching it, certainly. Yeah, I think, as well as the kind of lack of influence it has over its own franchise, I think there's a lack of influence over filmmaking as a whole as it would develop over the next 40 years or so. For the power that this film has, I think I would expect like H.R. Giga to do more production design in Hollywood, which just doesn't happen.

Maybe he's too weird. Maybe he's too sexual. For whatever reason, it doesn't come to pass. And I think kind of this horror with this kind of, as we've talked about, this capitalist critique, which I think is so strong in this film doesn't happen again particularly. it certainly doesn't come through in the rest of the alien films. And I think, yeah, it makes this film particularly interesting. So Roger Lookhurst in his book refers to this as a, refers to Alien as a boundary fiction. It's a film on the cusp of a number of moments. So it's kind of, it's between Star Wars and yet it has some element of the new Hollywood

of the 1960s and a kind of European art house sensibility. it's between the kind of labor disputes and the kind of issues around the 1970s and the Reaganism and factuism of the 80s that's to come and I think it kind of for me this film represents a path not taken by Hollywood filmmaking and by culture in general I think this kind of art house sensibility that it has, this kind of stripped back focus on production design, on capitalist critique, just doesn't take off. And instead, it gets exploited into aliens, which we'll discuss in the next episode,

and the further films beyond it. And it becomes just another franchise. it is subsumed by the Hollywood capitalist machine in a way that's kind of disappointing

when I think about how strong this film is on its own merits Yeah which when we get into those later episodes you know

and we talk about some of the the way in which this series develops when you think about some of the readings of the film that we've spoken about here

it's pretty ironic really and what's even more ironic is I can this reading of the film you know the you know the lack of morality

attached to you know capitalist endeavours if you like it's a thread which actually they try to keep up through the films you know or some of them not all there's a few where that's very obviously not the case I think there's some of like an alien resurrection as well

which will yeah exactly right so it's it's kind of interesting to see how it develops and how it kind of tries to keep this thread going but in a way it's kind of undermining its own point in the very way that some of these films are being made it's it's you know and like obviously we'll get into this more as this um as this series goes on but that's that's part of the there's part of the reason it's such an interesting franchise to me because you look at this film you look at what it does and you look at where it went from here and it's just it feels in a way

when you take a step back and like stop thinking about the relative quality of the films which is important in this context, but when you take a set back from it, it's just fundamentally weird that it's developed this, right? It's a very strange thing to think about in that regard. Yeah, it didn't have to be this way. It is a contingent thing that has developed from a series of material factors, and it's strange to look back on how that could have been different, maybe. I think that about wraps up the summary of alien. I want to do a brief feature at the end of each episode called Xenobiology

where we look at what we learn about the alien in that film and to speak to what we just spoken about this will get more and more and yes exactly but straightforwardly

in this film what we learn is the basics of the creature's life cycle it is an egg and then from that egg emerges a facehugger the facehugger attaches

to a host in this case a human host It lays eggs Well I don't think it's explicit But in Dano Bannon's notes to Giga He says it lays eggs in your tummy And then those eggs turn into The small version of the creature

Which grows into the large version of the creature Oh at one point Brett discovers the discarded skin Of the small version of the creature It looks like a serpent skin or like a condom it's yeah kind of plasticy and what else do we learn

the creature has acid for blood the only other thing that I think I noticed on this watch beyond like the stuff you mentioned is when it attacks Lambert you kind of see that its tails kind of got a sharp

oh yeah it can control its tail yeah it's got a prehent and that's the only that's the only real hint you get that here and I think that's really the only thing you see of that part of it actually I think beyond kind of the stuff that we've mentioned around, you know, the shape of his head

and the jaw and the acidic blood and kind of like the weird kind of like drooling on the mouth. That's the only thing that I noted that I didn't think it was in this film, it was only that I saw on the rewatch, this manipulation of its tail and the fact that it's kind of got this

sharp hook on it. Yeah. Ash speculates that the creature might be afraid of fire, but given what we learn about ash, that might not be entirely reliable. Because I don't think we actually see it being scared of fire. I think... No, you see Dallas has a flamethrower,

but... There's no evidence. There's no evidence that it is actually afraid of fire. And frankly, given that he dies, I think it could probably be a assumption. Maybe fire's not it. Yeah. And that's it.

It crawls around on the outside of the spaceship, but I don't know if it's surviving in the vacuum of space, or just flailing about instinctively. And I'll be interested to see how that develops in later films. But yeah, that has been Alien. So, join us for the rest of this journey. In the next episode, we'll be watching Aliens by James Cameron.

So do watch along with that. Get in touch with us. Think of this episode as the leathery egg opening on this podcast series before the facehugger then just kind of like, you know, delivers a whole mountain of information about the alien franchise. to you metaphor. Exactly. This is a levery egg.

So thanks for listening to this levery egg. And thanks for joining us. Please follow us on Twitter at the Xenopod. Follow us on there, talk to us on there, tell us we're wrong about alien,

tell us we're right about alien, tell us what you think about alien. Yeah, please join us on there. And please join us next time when we discuss aliens. So we'll leave you by saying, I can't lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathy.