Dan O'Bannon, writer of Alien, said that he likes "Alien" as the title because it is both a noun and an adjective¹. This sort of double meaning seems relevant also to the way it affected its 1979 audiences. A compliment that only the greatest of any type of horror film receives, there are stories of viewers, and even ushers, fainting and throwing up in theaters. Supposedly even Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty screamed "like two little boys" throughout the whole second half of the movie². There were obviously alien movies before this, but it is good that this one took the title "Alien" before any others got it because this is the best alien film there is, and it spawned a pretty darn good franchise as well.

The story takes place mostly aboard the Nostromo, a cargo-carrying space shuttle. The seven crew members have been woken from their cryogenic sleep in order to investigate an SOS signal coming from a nearby planet. They reluctantly do so, and they find that the signal is coming from a ship of another race and possibly another time. What is even stranger, though, is the cargo aboard this ship: dozens of leathery eggs. What happens next has become one of the movie's several famous scenes, but I won't spoil it for those of you who don't know the movie yet. It's best experienced on your own. From here on, the crew is forced to grapple with something unlike anything they have dealt with before -- something thoroughly alien.

What makes this film so effectively scary is the way the tension is built up. The entire experience is paced to perfection. The film spends about the first thirty minutes developing the characters, but, more importantly, it also establishes an overwhelmingly foreboding and desolate atmosphere. Of course this is appropriate for a space movie, but even when they set foot on the planet, the only feeling is one of vast emptiness. From then on, whenever the tension is released, it is only so that a new tension can build. Another movie that did this was The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), a horror film that boasts the very same in-theater "compliments." And that doesn't mean Alien lacks in Boo! scares, either. It has plenty of those, too, and while they can be distinctly unfulfilling on their own, they are plenty welcome in a film that has the basics to back them up.

The characterization also fits perfectly, and is just what is needed to carry the story along. The characters in Alien are everyday people, asking if they can finish their coffee rather than forcing biomechanics into casual conversation. Sure they work aboard a spaceship, but, as their attire confirms, there's nothing fancy about space travel anymore. For them it's just a job. These ordinary characters are not that far displaced from us, so we can relate to them. This makes their horrors that much scarier to witness.

Underneath all of this is a sort of inherent subtext, too. Going back to the ever-so-appropriate title, the literal alien can also be seen as a new idea, or a new social element, which our characters are forced to confront. The overeager scientist ignores protocol, allowing the infected crew member back on board without taking proper precautions. They soon pay the consequences of accepting this new concept too readily. Now they have either to kill, contain, or flee this new thing, and all of these possibilities seem increasingly unlikely. If they fail at these, it will destroy them.

There is also a pet cat aboard the Nostromo. In one crucial fake-out scare, the film draws a parallel between the cat and the alien. The cat is a sort of idea, too, but it has been domesticated; it is something we know and have comfortably incorporated into our way of life. The alien is . . . alien; we do not fully understand it and cannot control it. Therefore, when we allow it into our system too quickly, it wreaks utter havoc, doing whatever it takes to survive in its own way. In this light, it is no wonder that Ripley risks her life to go back for the cat near the end of the film. It is her connection to stability

Amongst the rest of the its facets, the film also has a knack for playing around with gender roles. We have a reversal of the birthing role in the famous chestburster scene, a female as the hero and strongest character, and a strong sexuality given to the alien itself, which also happens to be somewhat androgynous. There is one more interesting place where sexuality is unpredictably placed, but it would be a spoiler to tell (hint: the character with porn on the walls). This doesn't seem to be a feminist film so much as one that just likes to mix things up. Perhaps this view can excuse Ripley's near-strip-tease in the film's final scene. She's a female, but her objectification as such has been leveled away.

Whether you're looking for genuine scares or something a little deeper, Alien delivers, while providing our culture with at least four famous cinematic images -- the egg, the facehugger, the chestburster, and the alien itself -- a large accomplishment for a single film. Perhaps due to the film's basic realism, established from the start with coffee mugs near the controls, trucker caps on the characters, etc., Alien is a great movie and one whose potency still shows little sign of dwindling.