They couldn't hear me in space but they heard me loud & clear on 86th street.

The sad news of the death of H.R. Giger led me to reminiscing about the day my dad & I ventured off into Manhattan (86th street to be exact), to watch what was then an unknown entity to all of us. That entity was a film called simply "ALIEN" and the titular creature was designed by the late Mr. Giger, but more about him later.

I vividly remember waiting to see this film for months. The trailers & posters had been around for a long time and they all basically told us...nothing. The director of the film (Ridley Scott) was a master of style but wasn't a very well known director at the time. The cast members was a who's who of relatively recognizable character actors (Tom Skeritt, John Hurt, Veronica Cartright, Ian Holm, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, and one newcomer (Sigourney Weaver). The plot was pretty much a mystery as was the meaning of the title. I mean to say that while everyone knew that there was some type of creature to be found here, no one knew what it was gonna look like. All we got was a shot of that lumpy grey egg with a eerie green light emanating from a crack running across it. Well, we got that and the (classic) tagline: "In space, no one can hear you scream".

One of the best casts ever assembled for a sci-fi/horror film.

I wore my excitement on my sleeve as we queued up to buy our tickets. As a lifelong monster movie fan, this was the kind of film that got my blood racing. Back in 1979, multiplexes weren't in existence so people had to line up outside of the theatre well in advance of the film's scheduled show time if they wanted to see it early in the day. And since 20th Century Fox was pushing this as one of their prestige films of the year, the line was very long indeed. Everybody wanted to know what comes out of the damned eerie egg.

And not long after being seated, we all found out...

The theater fell silent as the film began. There was no sound at all coming from the screen as we watched that long opening shot depicting the vastness of space. And the odd shapes that began to form the title of the film was something I'd never witnessed before, I felt like I was watching a foreign film for a few seconds. Then we witnessed the space freighter Nostromo slowly cruises across the screen in all of its grungy glory. This was no sleek starship, it wasn't built for speed. It didn't have a phalanx of weaponry adorning it either so it wasn't built for battle. In essence, the Nostromo was just an intergalactic garbage scow.

The Nostromo in all it's greasy glory.

Scott's camera then floated across the interior of the Nostromo, giving the audience a view of the inner workings of the massive vehicle. Lights are silently flashing as we're given a quick tour before the camera stops on a monitor that suddenly comes to life, like a really expensive alarm clock. Then we're taken to the stasis chambers where the crew members have been hibernating for god knows how long. They slowly rise out of their pods, one at a time, before they wash up & prepare for their first real meal in a long time.

Mind you, this was like nothing I'd ever seen in a film before. The visuals were so pervasively convincing that I was convinced that all of this was quite real. Production designer Michael Seymour had performed a miracle by making the Nostromo look both futuristic and retro at the same time, it had a lived in feel to it, as if the crew had been there for a long time and had settled into a mendacity that mirrored their actual lives on earth. It was clean but dirty, sleek but slimy, shiny but dull - all at the same time. It's still a marvelously designed series of sets that's still being co-opted in films to this day.

Various interiors of The Nostromo

But all of the best production designers in the world wouldn't have made much of a difference if there wasn't

a good script propelling the visuals along. Luckily, Scott had an amazingly taut & terrifying script written by Dan O'Bannon to nudge it all along. At times the script feels extremely derivative of Jerome Bixby's script for "It! The Terror From Beyond Space" (1958) but O'Bannon's script stands leagues above that (Admittedly) exciting story by adding a generous dollop of characterization & heaping dollops of violence. Unexpected violence.

I recall the audience just sitting there in rapt attention as the film proceeded. I know everyone was feeling the same way I felt, we were all amazed and nervous at the same time. The film begins so slowly & deliberately that it was a foregone conclusion the shit was gonna hit the fan eventually. The question was when...and how? Not too long afterwards, we all found out. "Alien" transitioned from a intergalactic potboiler into a terrifying horror film unlike anything I'd ever seen up to that point in my life. I was under the impression that a lifetime of watching films like this would lend me a sense of confidence so great that I would be able to handle whatever was gonna get thrown at me, but I was wrong. Dead wrong.

I'm not gonna get into the particulars of what happened next (If you haven't seen ALIEN by now then you really need to stop reading this and get busy watching it). But what you're looking at above is one of the most oft copied scenes in cinematic history and although it isn't the first view of the alien we see, it's the far more visceral one. It's been said that none of the cast members (Save for Hurt) knew what was actually going to transpire in this scene, so the looks of terror and shock on their face when the chestburster made its appearance were genuine. The shrieks from the audience (& from me) were just as genuine. It's a scene unmatched either before or since in its power to shock whomever's watching it into a state of apoplectic shock. What makes it all the more terrifying is the idea behind it, the idea that something was growing in this poor man's chest, waiting for the right moment to burst forth into a world that it has total dominance over (Although it doesn't know that just yet).

Needless to say that I was just gob smacked at what I was witnessing. I remember covering my face with my hands, with just the tiniest sliver of space between my fingers giving my eyes a slightly distorted view of what was happening with the film. My dad, macho prick that he fancied himself to be, pried my fingers from my face and quietly complained that he "Didn't pay for me to not watch the movie". Didn't matter much to me, I put my fingers back up to my face. Complain all you like - I was fucking terrified & didn't care who knew it.

See that image above? That's an example of H.R. Giger's art for the film. Look at the pics at the beginning of this post and tell me if you guys don't think that the design of the alien is just all kinds of sexy. That's right, I said SEXY. There had never been a creature that looked anything close to this ever before (Although sadly, there were dozens of copycats forthcoming). It's a sleek, sensuous, alluring & deadly creation that fascinates us with its mystery as it eviscerates us with its claws. There's no denying the impact Giger's creature design had on sci-fi/horror films in general, after decades of uninspired creatures on parade in genre films, Giger had quietly & without warning, given us one of the most iconic characters of all time. And I daresay that his genius served to inspire others to think forward and design fabulous new creatures to inspire nightmares in al of us. Do you really think Winston's Predator or the various forms that Bottin's Thing took would have existed without Giger's Alien? I find that doubtful. Giger inspired the industry and it's birth led to the creation of many inspired creations.

I've since seen ALIEN & it's 4 sequels dozens of times each and while I find myself leaning towards Fincher's ALIEN 3 as the best film in the series (Despite its myriad naysayers), it's ALIEN that remains the scariest in the ALIEN canon for me. It reminds me of what a shark attack must be like: A shark, silently cruising towards its prey, waiting for just the right moment to suddenly and ferociously strike with reckless abandon. Sinking its razor sharp teeth into smooth, giving flesh - rending said flesh asunder in seconds. The attack is seemingly over before it really began but the damage is done as frothy red blood stains the sea water, bits & pieces of flesh mingling with it. And then the shark is gone, and the eerie silence returns - just like Giger's Alien. I get chills just thinking about it.

Don't you?