Alien (1979)
Despite HR Giger's alien creature being possibly the most convincing er' alien, in screen history, Ridley Scott's classic film still leaves me a little cold at times. Mainly in it's first hour. It's clearly a very good film and it's mixture of sci-fi and dare i say it, Gothic horror, works quite well, i do think it tends to plod along, albeit around tremendously designed sets, with for the most part under written characters - I mean, let's be honest. In a cast of just seven people, both Yaphet Kotto (Practically a crime when you consider his scene stealing villain in Live and Let Die a few years prior) and Veronica Cartwright are instantly forgettable. The same could also be said of John Hurt up to the fifty minute mark when he features in the movies' best known scene.
Giger's alien creature is fascinatingly hideous. The fact it's merely a man in a rubber suit is superbly hidden by both Scott and the behind the scenes crew thanks to eerie lighting and ingenious photography, but when we are afforded glimpses of the creature in full focus it really is a thing of beauty. If the first half of the film moves at a crawl the second half is pure cat and mouse horror (especially cat in the case of ginger moggy Jonesy who definitely has more screen time than Cartwright) and touches on both our sense of horrified wonder at the creature itself and our morbid fear of the dark and what may be lurking in it.
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