Ye Olde Staging Point

The director's cut of Alien is out, it seems. I'm going to have to make a trip to the theater for this one.

I would consider the first Alien film to be one of the most frightening movies I've ever seen. I've watched it many times over the last few years, and it retains its edge even after repeated viewings. The Alien itself has become a monster archetype, often mimicked by inferior movies (including the last two Alien films) but never used so effectively as in its 1979 debut.

It seems to combine two different sources of fear--on the one hand, it's a distant, unknowably mysterious Lovecraftian entity that inspires fear by virtue of its sheer, well, alien-ness. It doesn't think like us. It doesn't share any of our values, ideals, morals. We'll never understand it. It reminds us that humanity's knowledge of the universe is insignificant, and it makes a mockery of the idea that science and technology will bring us happiness and peace of mind. Lovecraft's famous opening line fits perfectly with the message of Alien:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

On the other hand, unlike the distant Lovecraftian beings, it's an immediate, visceral threat in the slasher-film sense: it's got claws, teeth, and it'll chase you around through claustrophobic passageways until it gets you--not to mention it reproduces in just about the bloodiest, most disturbing fashion possible. Its existence prompts many intellectual issues, but dealing with it requires tossing aside lofty intellectualisms and reaching for the nearest flamethrower. Nobody's pondering its cosmic significance when it's hammering on the airlock door or jumping out of ventilation shafts trying to tear off your face.

It blends both our intellectual fear of nature and the unknown with our instinctive physical fear of the serial killer from the news headlines. Whatever it is that makes you afraid, chances are the Alien embodies it.

Certain characters from the Alien film series would call it the "perfect being." I'd call it the perfect scary-story monster, and I'd also recommend that you take the opportunity to see it on the big screen while you can.