Alien + Aliens are definitely in my top 10 movie list
Apart from being one of the scariest horror movies ever made, it is also one of the most convincing science fiction films ever produced. Rather than the cartoony, fantasy-driven sf full of super-hi-tech gadgets, weaponry, and fancy interstellar travel, Alien (1979) quickly illustrates a realm much more mundane, even earth-bound, in its social hierarchy, salary disputes, malfunctioning machinery, even the laboured operation of the weathered freight ship Nostromo and its 20,000,000 tonne tow of mineral ore.
The disgruntled crew is summoned from their hyper-sleep by a distress signal. It turns out, however, to be a warning signal. Of course, in traditional horror movie fashion, the crew doesn’t realize this until it’s too late. And one by one they are dispatched by a seemingly unstoppable alien beast they have unwittingly brought onboard their ship.
The most fascinating element to Alien is its use of symbolism; male and female sexual imagery and the powerful cycle of birth, life and death. There is much repetition of these symbols, appearing in both subtle and overt ways.
The ship’s computer is called Mother. The crew emerges one by one from their nest-like pods. Slowly, tediously they descend to a desolate planet. The captain Dallas, first officer Kane, and navigator Lambert don soft-fabric spacesuits and head off toward a derelict spacecraft. It looks bizarre, like a giant horse-shoe, which they enter through a vaginal-like orifice.
Inside the skeletal interior they climb up onto a huge platform and discover a dead, almost fossilized alien space jockey astride some kind of enormous gun turret or driving console. It’s a very phallic image. Kane investigates further, traipsing down into a massive cavern where he finds hundreds of large leathery eggs.
As Kane peers closer one of the egg splits open and in a flash a creature has sprung out attaching itself to the face of his helmet. Kane is quickly rushed back to the Nostromo where it is revealed that the crab-like face-hugger has some kind of umbilical tube down Kane’s throat, apparently keeping him alive.
After the face-hugger expires and Kane and the rest of the crew are enjoying a meal, all hell breaks loose. A throbbing phallic-like creature bursts from Kane’s chest spraying the crew with blood. It vanishes into the ship’s hold.
So, already there has been much symbolism involving the visceral nature of intercourse, incubation, and birth. This continues when the alien creature is revealed to have grown to eight feet tall in a matter of hours complete with huge penis-like head. Whenever it attacks the creature’s first set of jaws open wide, where upon a second set of jaws thrusts out in a violently sexual motion dripping with thick viscous saliva. This is possibly the film’s most overtly sexual image, horrific as it is.
Intriguingly there is no love interest or sexual shenanigans between the humans. Much of the film has its characters, including the alien, passing through orifices, or having to make their way through claustrophobic tunnels. At one point Ash attempts to suffocate Ripley by jamming a rolled-up magazine into her mouth, strangely ineffective, yet disturbing nevertheless.
When Ripley is attempting to scuttle the ship and is initiating the ship’s self-destruct sequence, she has to pull out long tubular pistons (more phalluses). She is armed with a flame-thrower, which in itself is a large phallus spurting fire.
Eventually she manages to trick the alien and it is sucked into the airlock and out into the path of the ship’s thrusters where it is obliterated. This is a final blurring of penetrative violence; a *cruiser* you to this very masculine parasitic monstrosity, which although it was only following the imperatives of its nature – survival of the species, incarnate, it has almost single-handedly managed to wipe out that which enabled it to survive.
