After running for what seemed to be an eternity she uses the ships self-destruct system, this is a slow complicated task that builds up so much tension for the audience. We see the expression of panic on her face and soon we feel the same way. Mother, the ships supercomputer then tells us that the ship will self destruct in T-minus ten minutes, the time limit adds to the tense atmosphere. Ripley then runs through even more industrial corridors, which again takes forever. She finally reaches the escape pod but before entering she backs onto the wall to see if the coast is clear – it isn’t. Dramatic non-diegetic music plays and we see a glimpse of the alien’s teeth, for me the most terrifying thing about the alien is the fact that we never find out exactly what it looks like, our own imaginations always create something much more terrifying then any film could depict. At the time the Alien was a very unconventional horror villain because since the release of Psycho all of the villains came from inside of society, the Alien on the other hand didn’t; she didn’t even come from our planet. Another thing strange about the villain in this film is that the director always saw the Alien as a female because of the way it moved and the way that it reproduced, most villains in horror films, even if they are not human are depicted as male characters.
Realising that there is no chance of reaching the escape pod now she turns back to override the self-destruct system and kill the alien some other way. She runs back and has to do the complicated task in reverse but unfortunately runs out of time and the option to override expires. She screams at the computer to help her but obviously you can never get sympathy from a computer. Conflicts between man and machine is something that is used in many sci-fi films, example; Blade Runner, The Terminator Etc. Having no other alternative, she gets onto the pod anyway and evacuates the ship. It is strange how inside the escape pod is full of bright lights and white walls; this is to show how it represents a safe haven to her.
She escapes; the ship is destroyed and apparently so is the Alien. A few minutes later she takes off her dark green lieutenant’s uniform to reveal a white shirt and underwear, this is probably the most typical horror convention shown in this sequence, horror movies use white clothes to show vulnerability but it is also to act as a binary opposition to the seven-foot tall black alien.
Ripley then walks over to push some codes into a keypad on the wall, suddenly the aliens arm swings from the wall, we all knew that the Alien wouldn’t have died that easily but it still makes us all jump anyway. We didn’t realise that it was right in front of our eyes until it moved, the aliens coming out of the walls is an idea that is explored even more in the various sequels to this film. It is so typical of horror that the monster doesn’t die the first time, if I take an example from Michael Myers in the film Halloween, the film makers have made a whole franchise on a villain refusing to die. Ripley eventually manages to blow the alien out of the airlock of the ship. There then is a short epilogue; Ripley is sending a recorded message to her corporation telling them what happened, she says ‘I should reach the frontier in about six weeks, with a little luck the network should pick me up’. This is a sort of enigma for the audience and shows possibilities of a sequel; in fact this film spawned five other films to date. The film almost ends in equilibrium in the sense that the alien is now dead however Ripley has lost all of her friends and we are not certain whether or not she will even make it back to earth. It isn’t a completely closed narrative.
Most horror films include ideologies punishing people for sex, this however is different; it punishes the characters for being too concerned about money. For example one of the characters half way through the film asks Ripley if he would get paid extra for answering a distress call from a remote planet, Ripley answers ‘don’t worry, you’ll get what’s coming to you’. That character was one of the last to die in the film. Scott was also showing anti-technology ideology. Kane the person who was responsible for letting the alien aboard the ship in the first place was an android sent by the corporation to retrieve the alien for research; according to him the crew were ‘expendable’. The film doesn’t have the same patriarchal ideology that other sci-fi and horror films have, five of the seven-crew members were men and they all died. Showing that, in this case, women have the power.
One of the horror conventions broken in this film was the fact that there were no horror icons like knifes or masks. Also most horror films seem to be quite misogynistic in the sense that we always see woman being murdered much more then we see men, this was not the case in this film.
The binary opposition in this film is quite strong; I have already discussed the conflict in imagery between the white clothes and the horrible appearance of the alien. But there are others like, good Vs evil, monster Vs girl and human Vs not human. There is a strong sci-fi convention at the start of this film, this is the short written prologue, Most sci-fi films use this to set scene because the world that they are showing is so different from hours, possibly the most famous of these is the scrolling the text in the Star Wars films.
In conclusion, this film has shown many generic and narrative conventions but also broken many of them. Alien was a very revolutionary film because of the fact that it avoided the patriarchal ideology that most other horror and sci-fi films have. In a way this film has a very restricted narrative, if the viewer was to see the film without prior knowledge of it they probably wouldn’t pick up the horror side of the film until about half way through the film when the alien first appears.
Jon Hazell
