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With this Halloween movie marathon, I’ve tried to compile a list of movies that were obscure, fit my criteria for a holiday-appropriate film and, most importantly, were films that I either hadn’t seen before or had only seen parts of, in order to have a fresh experience. Alien is one of the most famous horror movies ever made (even more so now that the new game by Sega is out) so I’ve completely failed on the obscurity front, but I put this on the list anyway because I had never seen it before and because I felt like it. Yes, this is the first time I’ve ever seen Alien, even though I’ve already enjoyed Aliens and yawned through Prometheus. I also saw Ghostbusters 2 before Ghostbusters and Army of Darkness before Evil Dead. Didn’t plan for it, that’s just the way she goes.
If you’ve seen Alien here’s the synopsis: Deep in the bowels of outer space, thousands of miles from Earth, the crew of the mining ship Nostromo are awakened from hibernation by a distress beacon transmitting from a nearby planet. Because the beacon is of unknown origin the crew is forced to investigate, whereupon they find the remains of an alien spacecraft that had crash landed on the planet. While investigating inside the spacecraft, one of the crewmembers (Caine, played by John Hurt) is attacked by an unknown organism, which attaches itself to his face. After returning him to the Nostromo, the alien (known today as a Xenomorph), eventually grows and tears itself out of his chest in a blatant display of symbolism. The rest of the crew are understandably a little freaked out, but now the alien has matured into its’ iconic adult form, and the first order of business is to find every human on board and tear their intestines out through their asshole. Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and the rest of the crew are going to need to be pretty damn lucky if they hope to get off the Nostromo alive and with assholes intact. Because in space, no one can hear you scream. #catchphrase
Part science fiction, part slasher movie, Alien was not only a breakthrough, it’s just a damn good movie in general. Because Ridley Scott knew that however scary the monster is (and the late great H.R. Giger’s design for the Xenomorph is indeed amazingly horrific), however gruesome, the scariest parts of horror movies are when you don’t know where the monster is or when he’s going to appear. Paranoia is the gateway to fear, and Alien engenders paranoid feelings like a damn boss. If you haven’t seen it yet, why not put on your Halloween watchlist this year?
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