There are three films, more so than any other, that typify modern genre cinema. Ken Begg (over at Jabootu) calls them “template” films, and while that’s a damn good phrase (with more than enough truth to it) it falls short of describing the true end result of Hollywood’s slavish corpse eating. I hear “template” and I think of this massive assembly line, stamping its way to entropy. But the creative process isn’t quite like that. If it were, there’d be a lot more good movies out there.

Instead, over the last twenty years, we’ve drowned in a seemingly endless barrage of rip-offs, plagiarisms, and bastardizations. It’s almost like a virus: latching on to hundreds (if not thousands) of creative minds, churning out volumes of absolute shite that then go on to spread and mutate, each time loosing just a little bit more of what made the original so…well, original.

Because with any virus you have your Patient Zeros. And for the purposes of this article (and hopefully other, future articles with much more coherent opening paragraphs) we’ll be examining one such Patient. In case you haven’t bothered to read the heading in the upper left corner of your screen, that Patient is Alien.

Alien is one of those great movies that we amateurs absolutely loathe to review. You fall into a cycle of Jesus, what could I possibly say about this that hasn’t been said a million times before? It’s a hard bit to carry and for a small timer like myself to take this one is about as arrogant as George W. Bush running for president. But that didn’t stop Dubbya and look where he is now. So I hope this will be interesting. Or at least functional.

Since so much of Alien comes from the film’s environment, let’s have some stage setting. Star Wars (Episode 4 – A New Hope) came out in 1977 and suddenly Science Fiction was back in black. More than that, it was finally recognized as a genuine money engine. Hollywood looked across America and saw millions of twenty-something baby boomers who’d grown up cherishing visions of flat-chested heroes blasting giant rubber monsters with ray their guns. They went to Star Wars (over and over and over…) and got their asses handed to them by the revolutions of a young George Lucus.

Two year’s later, after Close Encounters of the Third Kind kept the hope alive with it’s saccharine-sweet, cross-species patty cake, everyone was talking. The Empire Strikes Back was due in a year, as was Star Trek: The Motion Picture. On the DVD featurettes, writer Dan O’Bannon keeps repeating it—at that time, any script with a space ship was getting the green light. His just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

It’s one of those ideas that just seems foregone to us now—the sci-fi picture as horror movie. Because you have a great old horror movie set up inherent in all space-adventures: a small group of people in a contained space assailed by the unknown. It’s an idea as old as cave dwelling that any space, which on the one hand shelters and protects, can quickly become a death trap with just a smige of bad luck and good old human stupidity.

Thus, Alien.

Instead of my normal thing (the quick, shoot from hip, intro-body-conclusion shtick) I’m going to do this one slow and low. It’s the least this film disserves, after the crimes committed in its name.

Watching it again, especially after this year of hollow studio blockbusters, you realize just how far things have fallen. It’s like New Orleans: dreary and depressing. Which fits perfectly with the tone of this picture. From the opening shot of the Nostromo, this vast, unesthetic heap of technology, we know that this is not a fun future.

Dan O’Bannon’s phrase is “the used future” (emphasis mine), and we can all thank the Gods director Ridley Scott had the depth of vision to appreciate such an idea. Rather than try to top Star Wars and build something even grander, more elegant, we have this ageometric hulk of a thing; this space-born oilrig. And after the obligatory pan over its vast and carefully crafted flank, we cut inside.

Welcome to the Commercial Towing Vehicle Nostromo*, bound for Earth after a long haul through the cosmos. After passing over several honey-comb corridors (and pausing as two pre-digital computers yatter at each other) the camera comes to the cryogenics chamber, where our crew wakes from suspended animation…only to discover that home is still quite a ways away. Instead, Mother (the ship’s computer, as voiced by Helen Horton) has detected a transmission from a nearby planet. Company policy dictates that the crew must investigate, or lose their much-talked-about bonuses. So they (grudgingly) go.

*[A not-so-subtle reference to the Joseph “Heart of Darkness” Conrad story of the same name.]

Now, everyone and their mother knows this is a bad idea. Even in 1979 I’m sure it sent bells ringing through people’s heads. But whereas other SFs prop up their stories with some grand cause (“We must do this for science!”) Alien takes a more everyday route and succeeds where others fail. Not just in terms of set-up, but in terms of character as well. We hear the crew’s debate around the dinner table and we know these people. They aren’t scientists (save one), they aren’t explorers, and they certainly aren’t adventurers. These are working stiffs long used to a set routine. You do the job, you get paid, rinse, repeat. No deviations. No surprises. Until now, of course.

After a hard landing (as opposed to the millions of pillow-soft touchdowns in dozens of other pictures) damages the ship our crew finds themselves stranded ‘til repairs are complete. With nothing better to do but sit around and smoke*, Captain Dallas, Navigator Labert, and XO Kane go EVA to find the transmission source and maybe make this whole trip worthwhile.

They soon discover this is a planet of surrealist nightmares, complete with its own hulking derelict craft. Inside they find the operator—a desiccated corpse in a gigantic chair straight out of H.R. Giger’s Necronomicon. And then Kane does what we were all waiting for someone to do: he finds a hole in the floor and decides to have a look inside, only to discover a gothic chamber filled with leathery eggs. As everyone in the audience (past, present or future) shakes their heads in frustration, Kane just gets ever closer to one of the eggs…until its occupant gets even closer (and much more personal) with him.

Despite Warrant Officer Riply’s misgivings, Kane is brought onboard, thing-on-his-face and all. Attempts to remove it are balked by the creature’s death-grip on Kane’s face and its acidic blood. So the crew does the only thing it can and continues repairs, leaving well enough alone.

The Nostromo leaves orbit and, eventually, the creature detaches itself from Kane and dies. Kane wakes a few scenes later. Everything’s fine and dandy, with the crew gathered for one last meal before “bed time.” They’re laughing, joking, eating, smoking…then Kane begins to cough…and gag…and scream. His shirt—hell, his entire chest, it seems—bulges out, before giving way in a marvelous explosion of wet red. And out pops Our Villain, the true Alien of the piece, dripping with pieces of Kane’s chest. It snarls once at our crew of stunned humans before scampering away. Then the fun really begins.

Any film, good or bad, rests its weight on a good story, and you can’t get much better than this. As Ridley Scott says, it’s the ol’ “Ten Little Indians” gambit in space. We follow this single group of hapless homo sapiens as they wind through their beehive of technology, getting picked off one by one.

Certainly nothing new here, right? Hell, we saw this back in ’51 when The Thing From Another World thrilled and chilled an entire generation of bored kids with a little free time and some spendin’ money. Including the likes of John Carpenter, James Cameron…and Dan O’Bannon.

It’s really all in what you bring to the table, especially in film. The execution. If you can think up a good idea, that’s fine, but originality is not required.

Still, it’s nice to go back to a time when this plotline—Hey, let’s put X number of people in a space ship and have them die horrible deaths—was still a fresh idea. And it’s nice to see it brought to life so well. But let’s step away from that and talk about the essentials. The ideas.

To begin with, there’s the Alien, which sparked a genre-wide revolution in itself. While the aliens of the 50s and 60s were always physically imposing monsters, few had the real umph. Sure, they were nice and all, but they were always aloft from the main characters. Nine times out of ten, killing humans wasn’t even their main objective. Hell, why kill us when you can conquer us with superior technology, mind control or the help some fool scientist collaborator? And even if they did manage to take someone out, the poor sap usually died a quick, bloodless death by strangulation, neck-breaking, or some other low-key way that the censors wouldn’t balk at.

So there’s the feeling of a threat in some of these old monster flicks, but no real terror. As a result these movies (which were mostly sold as “horror” films) do nothing to scare you and very little to entertain.

Alien solves this problem by crafting one of the most unique monsters in sci-fi history: a living, growing organism with a biology crafted for killing. While other aliens come from without (usually in paper-plate space ships) these xenomorphs come from within, implanting seeds that literally must eat their way out of the host. So even as they’re born they kill. Death is their sole purpose. That’s fucking scary, man. I’ll take that over a flying saucer any day. Which option gives you more shivers?

With a monster like this driving things, a lazier writer would be content to leave it like that. To an extent, that’s exactly what Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett did. You want Alien today and you keep expecting someone to launch into some cliché-ridden expository speech. Something to “define” their character and let the audience “know” them. It seems movies today just have to pause and give everyone a history, regardless of how it plays into anything else.

On the other hand, Alien could give less of a shit about its human’s backgrounds. They’re here, now, and there’s a fucking monster on the loose. Who in this situation would stop and take a moment to chat about their childhood? Instead of hurting the film, this decided lack of back story keeps things moving briskly, despite long periods of literally nothing happening.

Odd seeing this much nothing in a movie, isn’t it? But Ridley Scott has always been a laid back sort of director, and he was in full form on this, his second film. All you first timer’s out there should be prepared for long, lingering shots of characters moving through this vast, yet claustrophobic ship of theirs. That feeling in your gut, that crawly sensation? It’s called “tension” and it’s what happens when a director doesn’t cut away, whip-pan or wipe every two seconds. Instead, Scott’s camera feels like a floating eye roving through a charnel house and it works perfectly for this movie.

There’s no flash, no pop, no bang. This movie doesn’t work on bangs. Alien’s strengths come from darkness misdirection. That feeling that the monster is out there, crawling around the vents…waiting…hell, it could be anywhere.

And yet, Alien avoids the hair-pulling practice of off-screen teleportation. Scott assures this by providing a good sense of the size and geography involved in our environment. This is especially important when all your corridors look the same and your characters do what all character’s do in these situations: i.e. split up and die.

Except, of course, for Lieutenant Ellen Riply.

Ah, now we come to it; this movie’s only real creative thought. The one shinning idea that set this thing apart from all that came before: The female protagonist. The woman survivor. The woman warrior, no less, though that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.

It’s strange. Again, after twenty-five years of desensitization, it seems like a foregone conclusion. After all, why shouldn’t there be more strong woman characters in American science fiction movies? But the way Dan O’Bannon tells it, this paradigm shift was made on a lark. Just a couple a’ writers sittin around playin’ toss with an idea. Hell, the whole thing was written for an a-sexual cast anyway. Why can’t we make Ripley a woman?

One must recognize that most of the sympathies for Riply comes, not from this movie, but rather from its three sequels. Watching this thing again, you keep waiting for Riply to do…well, something proactive. But no, Warrant Officer Riply is the (ahem) straight man in all of this. She’s the one who quotes procedure, relies on precedent, and tries her damndest not to explode when no one listens to her. It’s these six other clowns who keep fucking up and dying horrible deaths.

Actually, the blame sits comfortably on the shoulders of both Captain Dallas and Science Officer Ash. Dallas brings Kane back on board, and Ash lets him in. This singular incident (where Riply and Dallas face off from opposite sides of the ship) is the only real clue that, yes, Riply will be our hero, if only by default once the top-billed star gets hisself et.

Compare this to any number of rip-offs where the hero is instantly identifiable, either by virtue of hish star status, or by simple horror-movie conventions. Conversely, Sigourney Weaver was an unknown Broadway player before her service on the Nostromo. And while her character takes charge in the face of adversity, Riply is poignantly not the rabble-rousing, slang-talking nay sayer she would no doubt be were this movie made today. Nor does she have any kind of vestigial love-interest clouding her judgment. Unless one counts Jones the cat.

But let’s not talk about The Cat. You can read Lyz Kingsley’s review if you want to hear about The Cat. Right now, let’s wind things down with a firm promise from me to you: from now on, I’ll be sticking to that quick, shoot from the hip, intro-body-conclusion formula. It’s a shore sight faster then these half-assed attempts at in-depth analysis. To say nothing of the coherence factor.

The other night, I showed Alien off to my girlfriend. Regina (who, during her formative years, spent all the time I allotted to movie viewing in fruitless pursuits like “school”) had never seen the film before.

About halfway through, after she jumped at that part where everybody jumps, I came to a conclusion. It’s not very revolutionary, and it’s not nearly what I hoped it would be. But so what? We’re all trapped in a meaningless, nihilistic, Darwinian nightmare anyway, right? If nothing else, the Alien series has taught me that.

So here it is. The Big Conclusion: That Alien is a real classic. That there are damn good reasons it (along with its big brother Jaws and little sister Halloween) have inspired so many sequels, Xeroxes, and cheep knock-offs. That it still has the power to do those things it does so well. That you should all run out and steal it from your nearest Corporate Whore-Mart. That as soon as I’m done coding this, I’m planning to watch it again. And it's three sequels.

What can I say? Santa was good to me this year. And besides, Aliens vs. Predator is coming.