Posted on by Jeremy Bugay

One of my favorite creations is a mainstay high water mark for the Horror genre.

I think the defining factor, for when it comes to discerning if something is original or not, is the unwavering notion that it’s completely unforgettable. I may have been a young impressionable little boy when I first saw Alien, but I’ll be damned if I’ve ever seen a design quite as primordial as H.R.Giger’s svelte, caustic, sexually charged design. This erotic design is one of my favorite creations and has had a lifelong impression on me. I’ve never seen a design as creative or monstrous as this. Ever.

Oh yes, once you see the Alien design, you’ll never forget it. It takes only one time, one static hissing shot before its second set of slobbery tonsils rapidly flash out with all of their juice and eviscerate your organs. Ever since Alien, no gothic design has been so powerfully seared in my mind. It’s one of those horrific things that’s both simultaneously beautiful, and terrible. It’s so foreign and endearing; I’ll be hard pressed to find a design as compelling and unforgettable as it in any monster movie. It has this wonderful mix of Lovecraftian lore, mixed in with other byzantinan art. It’s no reason it’s been one of the high water marks for horror films for nearly 33 years. It’s also strangely sexual.

Take a look at an image taken straight from one of Giger’s compilations of the Alien. If I’m not mistaken, it’s head is shaped exactly like male genitalia. If that doesn’t make this creature scarier, I honestly don’t know what does. The metaphor of a giant penis chasing a women has been done to death ad nauseum. I’m sure somebody much smarter than I could make an amusingly polemic case for why the Alien (male) is at odds with Ripley, who is most notably one of cinemas great heroines. Whether or not the film has something to say about gender differences in art is something the film doesnt really seem too interested in answering, but that’s really not the point of the movie. Just an oddity. Maybe it’s a Freudian slip on Ridley Scott’s mind – we’ll probably never know. If you were to research deeper into the mind of Giger, most of his stuff is sexual anyways.

The thing about Alien that makes it so intriguing is how so very little is actually known about the creature. But one thing that is very striking, is just how it reproduces. It uses humans, (or the Space Joke) as hosts. So technically you could probably get away with calling it a biological parasite, or even a symbiotic derogatory *pushes glasses up*. Regardless, it comes from an egg, and gestates within the host for a matter of hours, before it explodes from the body. The scene in Alien, where the audience learns the deadly truth of what Kane has been harboring, is one of the most horrific scenes in cinema.

To be fair, I’d much rather give birth to a baby that way than … “the other way.” Never the less, I don’t think audiences were prepared for such a unique way for a creature to destroy them. It was fascinating to see the haunted house horror films of elder get the science fiction treatment.

Alien is also significant because of how many different films, comics, video games and other media that it has spun off. It did manage to start a franchise with Aliens and Alien 3. The former being one of the greatest action films of all time. The later being incredibly divisive within the fan base. I love Alien 3, but for my own personal reasons. I wouldn’t argue with someone if they made a case with it being a bad movie. To me, it’s just simply misunderstood. It has it’s own rightful place within the Alien universe. I still give Fincher a lot of credit for making one of the riskiest and polarizing films of the bunch. In fact, the Dog Alien might be one of my favorite incarnations of the creature.

Even greater, the mastermind behind Alien (Ridley Scott) is returning with a prequel this summer, Prometheus. Even though the Alien won’t supposedly be apart of it, I’m sure it has at least something to do with it. I’m excited for some other mysteries to be revealed. It’s been 33 years, it’s about time. Do the egg’s produce a mist? Did the Space Jokey harvest the Aliens as a weapon? Why is it that they have acid for blood? So many tantalizing questions. I’m hoping that these and other questions will be answered in the prequel Prometheus that hit’s this summer. But until then, here’s a nostalgic trailer.

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Filed under: Throwbacks | Tagged: horror, movies, Throwback |