It seems we're gonna now have a sci-fi holiday every few months, this latest being 4/26, in honor of the planet LV-426, where the Norstromo set down in Ridley Scott's sci-fi horror masterpiece, Alien.
I'm not due to watch the movie until a double-bill tomorrow night with pal SimonUK, but see both of the first two Alien movies I shall.
I saw Aliens the first time when I was in middle school when I was at an all-day Saturday academic competition and a parent accidentally put it on a video player in a "relaxation" room. Something like 4 dozen kids silently agreed not to tell anyone we were watching a Rated-R action/ sci-fi/ horror film so we'd all get a chance to watch an R-Rated movie on someone else's dime. Jason was there, so I assume it was when I was in grade 6 and he in grade 8.
I loved it. I still recall that I came home, admitted to The Admiral that I'd seen this rated-R movie that he would totally dig, and we went and rented it, and, indeed, we all dug it together. I then recorded the film off HBO, and proceeded to watch it a grand total of 32 times in one calendar year. I could quote it line for line.
Weirdly, I wasn't that interested in Alien. I finally watched Alien in 8th or 9th grade, and I liked it. A lot. But I wasn't much of a horror film guy, and the horror overtones never grabbed me in quite the same way that Ripley v. Alien Queen had captured my young mind.
Kind of an odd thing, in retrospect, that I never thought twice about our lead as a woman the same age as many-a-teacher or mom, who wasn't asked to do the Sybil Danning bit, but was exactly what she was supposed to be. A competent do-er, the person with a head on her shoulders when the shiznit hit the fan. And for a long time, when the question would come up "why aren't there more women in action roles" it wasn't that we'd point to Sigourney Weaver as proof that there were, but proof that "yeah, I dunno. Sigourney Weaver is an exemplar of what an audience finds perfectly reasonable in a movie. More of that, I think."
But, man, those Giger visuals, the pounding score, the phenomenally envisioned sets... it's a hell of a movie. A little startling when you go and watch Them! and realize Cameron more or less ripped off a lot of that movie for his picture, but both still work. Especially when you get that last, unexpected battle with the loader and Alien Queen.
That's the stuff, right there.
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