ALIEN: 4K UHD Blu-ray (2oth Century-Fox, 1979) Fox Home Video

“In space, no one can hear you scream...” or so it would appear in Ridley Scott’s sci-fi/horror classic, Alien (1979) – a movie that not only reestablished the genre but set the tone for virtually all like-minded fare yet to follow it. Few films of such ‘then’ experimental approach have become as revered, renowned or renewable in popularity – rife for imitation (still, the cheapest form of flattery) and parody (its inevitable bastardization). Scott’s vision of the future belies the glossy and domed adventurous ports of call, with their brightly clad civilizations teeming in color-coordinated geometric conclaves of commerce, looking more like an extended vista from the 1939 World’s Fair or Disney’s pipe dreams for Epcot. No, Scott’s future is ugly, dark, depressingly gritty, and, in many ways, a quantum step back into the mire from which man emerged eons ago. The salvage vessel, the Nostromo, is a labyrinth of tightly intertwining, dimly lit and dank tunnels; the luxuries of interstellar travel, promising visions of man’s superiority in conquering the deepest reaches of the universe in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) herein, reduced to technologically advanced, though antiseptically stripped down, and cluttered-up representations of discord and grunge run amok. Scott would later carry these oppressively careworn and bleak impressions of tomorrow into his menacingly envisaged sci-fi opus magnum, Blade Runner (1982).    

Alien continues to fundamentally rattle our fears to their core, perhaps because Scott is unrelenting in his pursuit of its disturbing subtexts that cause not only the ‘alien’ entity to invade and destroy our human crew, but manages even at the outset to stir the age-old conflicts and dissent from within this tightly knit community, slowly to erode their solidarity and emasculate their ability to successfully fight this formidable foe. This sense of dread comes rushing forth for the audience long before the alien has wiped out all but its post-modern feminist champion, Ripley (intensely portrayed with gutsy resolve by Sigourney Weaver).  In later installments of what would eventually become one of filmdom’s most lucrative franchises, Weaver’s heroine butches up and breaks down, adopting a decidedly male physicality and traits to meet her otherworldly threat in a full-on war. This miscalculation, increasingly, became personalized all out of proportion. Scott’s vision for Alien is not nearly as insular. And although most of the action herein is confined to the bowels of this recovery vessel, with a brief exploration of a remote and desolate planetoid (achieved mostly, and quite successfully through a series of gorgeous, if disturbing matte paintings), Alien’s primary strength is that it is far more an ensemble piece than the ‘star vehicle’ slanted towards the ambition of sequels (although Brandywine, the production company that made the picture, fervently hoped for at least one follow-up). Virtually none of the players featured in Alien possessed any great heft to ‘carry’ a picture in 1978 – despite each being an accomplished actor.  And although Weaver would distinguish herself as ‘the star’ in subsequent sequels, herein, she too plays second fiddle to the alien creature as the real ‘box office’ draw.   

Chief to the picture’s success is the evolution of the creature, conceived by sci-fi surrealist, H.R. Giger, with its smooth-skinned reptilian fetish. Gone is the amorphous depiction of ‘little grey men’ chronically exploited in the genre. Giger’s concept is more primary in nature. Indeed, it appears as both futuristic and yet an evolutionary holdover from the Paleozoic period. And this alien preys upon our innate fears of the unknown, augmented with skin-crawling arachnophobia. It slithers and slimes its way through the bowels of the Nostromo, incubating a ferocious demon seed deep from within like a malicious tape worm that bursts forth, bloodily to birth itself from its human hosts. Like the best – or perhaps, most ominously efficient of horror’s memorable evils – this alien has no concept of morality or remorse. It cannot be reasoned with or even taken hostage for curious study. Its sole purpose is to renew itself by whatever means and to decimate other unsuspecting forms of life. As such, no true understanding of its will is, in fact, possible, as mankind’s’ fundamental flaw, as always, is to search for logic and meaning to link the next great evolutionary hurdle set in its path. Add to this already paralytic and heart-palpitating threat an evisceration of man’s intuitive nature to kill what it cannot comprehend (you cannot kill what you cannot see, and even more pointedly, within the confines of a ship in outer space, without first defying another of humanity’s built-in reactions – that of self-preservation) and…well, Alien ratchets up the fear factor with excruciating precision.   

In hindsight, the epoch depicted in Alien is one of the picture’s oddities. For although technology has decidedly advanced (we still do not have intergalactic salvage operations or isolated pockets of humanity conducting ‘mining’ experiments on remote, mineral-rich planets far beyond the farthest reaches of our solar system), the characters as depicted, and, more directly the situations they find themselves in, share much in the 1970’s cinematic verve for unkempt tales of the macabre. Perhaps most telling of all, Michael Seymour’s production design and John Mollo’s costuming are very much a byproduct of the seventies, with bandanas and leggings still very much ‘in vogue’. Apparently, mankind has managed to break the space/time continuum, enough to explore previously uncharted regions on behalf of large corporations, still raping the universe for essential minerals and nutrients. These natural resources are then loaded onto titanic space refineries and towed back to Earth. The Nostromo is returning from just such an operation when its super-computer intercepts a distress call from a nearby planetoid. Stirred from their hyper-sleep, the Nostromo’s crew is ordered to investigate this transmission signal. Shortly thereafter, the vessel’s captain sends part of his crew to this desolate wasteland – only to encounter a vast alien spacecraft, incubating a new life form, ready to pounce and devour its unsuspecting human explorers.

In hindsight, the 1970’s were a period of seismic adjustment in the film industry. The Hollywood of yore, under the creative aegis of moguls, intent on making pictures with a personal imprint and style, distinct from one another, was over. While newbies to the art form had been weaned on these classical models, corporate takeovers since had broken these venerable institutions down to bedrock, already managing to siphon off most, if not all of the elusive magic in the picture-making biz. Distilled into a dollars-and-cents-driven prototype, where only quantifiable results on a spread sheet rather than the spark of ingenuity were increasingly valued, the movie industry struggled to redefine itself in the seventies. Save the justly deserved resurrection of nostalgia for the MGM musical in That's Entertainment! (1974), the decade illustrated a painful divorce from this fabled ‘glamour’ ideal that had once been Hollywood’s main staple. This identity crisis was compounded by declining profits and rising costs, forcing tighter budgets; also, a general disregard by the new ownership of the majors, resulted in less moneys being spent on actual product and more on marketing its grittier realism. Ironically, this scaled down imitation of reality was ideally suited to horror and science fiction - two genres, long considered red-headed stepchildren that only a C-grade company with B-grade ambitions would tackle. However, in the seventies, horror and sci-fi emerged triumphant, not simply as a way to make a quick buck off the Saturday matinee crowd, but as the streamlined and preferred film fodder for the masses, even by those companies that had once billed themselves as ‘respectable’ ‘dream factories.’

In retrospect, a lengthy period of gestation seems to have benefited Alien immensely. Alien began as a screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, later fully fleshed out with an assist from Ronald Schusett. Making no apologies for borrowing ideas and plot devices from practically every influential sci-fi movie from the preceding four decades, O'Bannon and Schusett's screenplay was cobbled together from the best climactic scenarios that creative plagiarism could buy, and, shopped around ad nauseam; alas, to very limited interest. The property was eventually sold to 2oth Century-Fox, whose management immediately hired writers, David Giler and Walter Hill to give the screenplay a refresher. This would backfire and boil over into legalities when O'Bannon and Schusett accused Fox and its writers of attempting to steal their project outright. For all this legal haranguing, Fox's executive brain trust remained fairly unconvinced of Alien’s salability. And thus, after the dust settle on this private creative war, Alien entered a fallow period of stagnation. It might have languished indefinitely as just another acquired script in perpetual turnaround, had not the overwhelming success of Star Wars (1977) heralded Sci-Fi’s coming of age with audiences. Even with Star Wars’ colossal success, finding a director for Alien proved elusive. After mandarins in their craft, Jack Clayton, Peter Yates and Robert Aldrich all turned it down, Alien was offered to relative newcomer, Ridley Scott whose early enthusiasm along with some high concept art, produced by Swiss painter/sculptor H.R. Giger, coaxed the powers that be into doubling Alien’s budget to $4.2 million. Although the picture was funded by Fox, it was actually made by Brandywine, a Brit-based subsidiary, to keep costs down.

As it creatively fermented, the great success of Alien relied on Scott’s ability to quantify and capitalize on an ever-constricting sense of claustrophobia. Apart from its few truly ‘gut-wrenching’ thrills, much of the movie is sustained at a glacial pace, building upon the advancing dread as Ripley and her cohorts gradually come to realize they have inadvertently brought a diabolical and nameless entity aboard the Nostromo to their own detriment. Scott’s approach to the material is, first and foremost, to establish mood. Far from the accepted notions of outer space as arid, antiseptic and brightly lit by a celestial body of twinkling stars, Scott’s reinterpretation is visually oppressive, realized as smoky, stale, perhaps slightly frigid, and, very, very damp – almost swampy.  In recasting the lead protagonist as a female (in the original, Ripley is a man), Alien also made its progressive stab at the postmodern feminist heroine. Save a few initial establishing shots depicting the Nostromo floating in the boundless ether beyond the stars, much of the narrative is confined to its cavernous tunnel-like interiors.

The vessel is en route to earth after a lengthy mining operation in deep space. Under corporate orders, the crew is stirred from hyper sleep and instructed to investigate a weak distress communication signal beamed in their immediate proximity. A small contingent from the Nostromo lands on a small and seemingly uninhabited planetoid to investigate the signal’s origins. Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) takes Executive Office Kane (John Hurt) and Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) on this expedition, leaving Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) and Engineers Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto) on the Nostromo to monitor their progress. Regrettably, their mission goes horribly awry when Kane is attacked by a bizarre alien 'face hugger'. Returning with their fallen colleague, Ripley at first denies Dallas, Kane and Lambert permission to re-enter the ship on the assumption Kane's attacker may pose other infectious contaminants, lethal to the rest of the crew. Smart cookie, that Ripley. Not that it does her or anyone else any good.

After a few taut moments, Ash overrides Ripley's authority and Kane is brought aboard, taken to the infirmary for treatment. The alien, however, is unwilling to surrender its prey, spewing highly corrosive blood when Ash attempts to cut it loose from Kane’s face. Determined to return to earth for further assistance, Ash is ordered to keep watch over Kane’s progress. But only a few hours later, Dallas returns to sick bay, discovering Ash has left Kane alone.  The alien, no longer gripping Kane’s face, falls from the ceiling, frightening Ripley. Otherwise, it appears to be quite dead. Miraculously, Kane begins to show remarkable signs of improvement. Ash conducts a series of rudimentary physical tests. These show no abnormalities. However, as the crew gathers around the dinner table with Kane, prepared to rejoice at his full recovery, the real threat makes its presence known. Kane becomes violently ill. The face hugger, having used him as its host to incubate an offspring, now has a new alien burst forth from his stomach, killing Kane instantly. As the horrified crew look on, the alien offspring darts like a rabid cobra across the room, burrowing deep into the bowels of the Nostromo.

The rest of Alien is essentially a 'race against time' as the fast-maturing alien attacker picks off the Nostromo’s crew one by one. Brett follows his terrorized cat into the ship's loading area and is devoured by the creature, dangling in wait from the rigging in the ceiling. Dallas attempts to force the alien into the ship's airlock where it can be expelled into space. But the creature ambushes him inside one of the air ducts. Lambert encourages the remaining crew to board Nostromo's escape shuttle - a decision overruled by Ripley, now, awkwardly in command. Accessing classified computer files, Ripley learns Ash was assigned to the Nostromo by the Corporation to apprehend the alien and return it to earth for study - even at the expense of Nostromo's crew. This revelation is short-lived as Ash attacks Ripley, but is decapitated by Parker instead, revealing him to be an android. Realizing their only chance is to abandon the Nostromo, Ripley initiates its self-destruct sequence, instructing Parker and Lambert to incinerate Ash before making ready to join her in the shuttle. Regrettably, the alien kills Parker and Lambert and narrowly misses Ripley as she boards the shuttle with Brett's cat. The Nostromo is blown to bits. Believing she has survived this hellish ordeal, Ripley now prepares for hyper-sleep aboard the shuttle, only to discover the alien, having reached its full maturity, has also managed to attach itself to the ship’s oxygen tanks. With nowhere left to hide, Ripley narrowly avoids becoming the alien’s final victim by initiating the shuttle’s decompression. Unprepared, the alien is sucked into outer space, momentarily clinging to the shuttle’s hatch, before being expelled, seemingly to its death.  At last, free of its terror, Ripley comforts Brett’s cat, prepares her chamber for sleep and drifts off, leaving her solitary destiny open-ended.

When it debuted, Alien was not the summer blockbuster 2oth Century-Fox had banked on.  Indeed, many critics poo-pooed the picture as a cheap ‘bag of tricks’ feebly attempting to mask an ‘imaginative poverty.’ Roger Ebert famously chided Alien as an ‘intergalactic haunted house thriller set inside a spaceship.’  An initial screening in St. Louis was a disaster. Two more previews in Dallas fared slightly better. But the picture’s ‘R’ rating in the U.S. (‘X’ in the U.K.), promoted to encourage Alien as above average in its gross-out thrills did not bring in the horror aficionados - at first. Owing to Fox’s inability to perceive it as anything better than a B-flick in A-list garb, the studio passed on preparing a formal premiere. Even so, word of mouth began to stir the buzz, with lines forming outside of Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. In Britain, the picture was afforded a proper debut at the Edinburgh Film Festival, with an exclusive engagement at the Odeon Leicester Square in London.  Commercially, Alien made money - $80.9 million in the U.S. alone, with a world-wide gross that has since been estimated between $104 and $203.6 million. Curiously, Fox claimed Alien as a $2 million deficit on their ledgers, their ‘creative accounting’ used to limit payouts to the production company, Brandywine – responsible for actually making the movie.  Unable to mask this insult entirely from prying eyes, Fox readjusted its initial figure to show a $4 million profit. But this too was similarly refuted. Brandywine sued Fox – a nightmarish legal case, eventually settled in 1983 with Brandywine getting Fox to commit to a sequel – initially titled, Alien II, but eventually rechristened as Aliens (1986).

Today, Alien’s reputation has matured beyond all this critical doubt, also, the complications endured in bringing it to the screen. And, in retrospect, few – if any – sci-fi/horror movies made in the last 40 years have so completely come to typify a certain style for this hybrid genre. Scott’s low-key approach to the unforeseen perils of outer space builds on a genuinely disconcerting fear, cleverly manipulated, mostly in shadow, with sparsely parceled gross-out effects. Arguably, Alien is at its most effective when we do not actually see the Alien in its final form. Giger’s sculpted creature body – from Plasticine, no less - reveals reptile-like vertebrae made from the cooling tubes of a Rolls-Royce. Independently, the creature’s head, with its distinct double-set of heavily salivating metallic fangs, was the work of Carlo Rambaldi, following Giger’s original charcoal renderings to a finite precision. With few exceptions, the full-body alien was realized in movement by Bolaji Badejo, whose angular body, just shy of 7-feet, was molded into a latex costume. To achieve a certain foreign fluidity to the alien’s graceful stealth, Badejo enlisted in t'ai chi and mime classes. And while his efforts proved quite convincing, for the more aggressive stunts (as with the moment when Brett is killed by the alien lowering itself from the rafters in the cargo bay) stuntmen, Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell were called in and suspended on wires in an unfurling motion to simulate the attack. In the end, Alien has remained a truly scary science-fiction masterpiece; the definitive proof, beyond the movie’s widespread ‘cult’ following, is in Giger’s original concept for the creature, now a permanent exhibit at the Smithsonian Institute.

For this new 4K release, Alien has been afforded a meticulous restoration and remastering effort supervised by Ridley Scott. As it was shot photochemically on 35mm Panavision, the theatrical cut has been scanned in native 4K from original camera negatives and graded in HDR10 and HDR10+ (the latter, seemingly a bit overkill as HDR10+ is, as yet, a rarity in the home). But hey, Fox is presumably thinking ahead and future-proofing this release. The 4K disc includes both the theatrical cut and 2003’s director’s cut. However, the director’s cut added footage appears to be upsampled from 2K source materials, rather than remastered in native 4K. Perhaps, no such rendering is possible. Moving on: there has been some talk as to how effective HDR is when dealing with ‘vintage’ movies. And, at first, Alien would not appear as a viable candidate for the upgrade. However, shadow delineation here is superb, allowing for a maximum amount of fine details to emerge, even from the darkest portions of the screen. The color gamut remains subtly nuanced, while looking indigenous to the time in which Alien was made. This just looks like a product of the seventies…only, more so. Image resolution takes a quantum leap forward. There really is NO comparison here between the Blu-ray and the 4K UHD Blu-ray. Facial textures and refinements in cloth, hair, sweat, etc. really deliver the added pop we expect from native 4K. Grain structure ranges from moderate to heavy, but again, is indigenous to its source. Fox has cut a corner on the audio: the same 5.1 DTS used for 2010 Alien Anthology Blu-ray box set. This is not as bad as it sounds, as Scott paid a lot of attention to mixing the original elements for this 2010 release.  We also get a 4.1 DTS, closer to the original 1979 audio experience. Comparing the two, the 4.1 sounds more strident and less immersive.

The 4K disc also includes extras ported over from the previous Blu-ray set, including the cast and crew audio commentary from 2003’s DVD release (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!), another track from 1999, exclusively with Ridley Scott, an isolated score track, another ‘composer’s original score (both in Dolby Digital 5.1, on the theatrical cut only), plus 7 deleted scenes. The commentaries are the real stars of our show, with the collective 2003 effort slightly etching out Scott’s solo turn, if only for the obvious camaraderie on display, as well as diversity of perspectives on the making of the movie. Fox has also included a Blu-ray copy of Alien, but it is derived from elements mastered in 2010. Fox has elected to jettison the extensive extra content that jam-packed the Alien Anthology Blu-ray. So, please, do not get rid of this box set as, most likely, none of these extras will ever be made available on disc again. If anything, they will be marketed as ‘digital only’ copies.  Bottom line: Alien is a seminal sci-fi movie that has been given the utmost care and prep in 4K UHD from Fox. This one needs to be in your collection!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

3