In Space No-one Can Hear You Scream (Alien (DVD))

Member Name: stevepeto

Product:	Alien (DVD)
Date:	29/08/08 (201 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Story, Acting, Everything

Disadvantages: the UMD format, no extras

This is a review of the Alien film on the UMD format, this fomat uses a much smaller disk and is viewed on a Sony PSP, this fact should not really alter the review by about the movie itself and would only really affect the sound and picture portions of the review.

Movie:
I have owned Alien (and others in the series) in many guises, from VHS Tapes, The Alien Legacy boxset and the Quadrilogy Boxset through to now having the movie in UMD Format for the PSP, so yes you could say I am a fan of the films, and although the subsequent sequels (bar Aliens) has diminished in quality, I still enjoy each and every one of them.

It was on the year of release, 1979, when Ridley Scott's Alien first hit the cinema I was a young lad (12 or 13 years old) and I tried sneaking into the Odeon in Lewisham with my mum and dad to see it. I got caught and sent away with my tail between my legs but I always swore that I would get to see it, and I think I had to wait until I was 18 before I did, but it was so worth the wait. So what was all the fuss about?

The Nostromo is a deep space towing vessel on its way back to Earth with an incredible twenty million tons of Ore, silently ploughing through deep space with a sleeping crew, the ships computer awakens them from Hyper-sleep to check out a repeating signal that it has detected, possibly an SOS. They land on a planet [LV426] to investigate and three of the crew leave the Nostromo for the 2000 metre walk to the source, discovering (too late) that the signal is in fact a warning.

With events set in motion one of the crew is attacked and brought back to the ship where the Alien is born and the crew have to tackle an ever evolving creature throughout the dark, cold steel caverns of the massive vessel.

Although released in 1979 the catalyst for Alien or Star Beast as was the original working title (aren't we all glad that the name changed?) came 5 years previously when Dan O'Bannon (Writer) worked on the screenplay for Dark Star with John Carpenter, where, although a totally different movie, showed us the dirty reality of space, no clinical 2001 here. And that is one of the main plus points of the movie, the fact that this isn't all gleaming teeth and Buck Rogers but the fact that you could relate to the characters at the most basic level. We see for example the two engineers Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) alienated (Pardon the pun) from their fellow colleagues, not only with arguments about pay and shares but also by almost being relegated to the bowels of the ship where no-one else goes. It all adds to the sense of realism that the film portrays. The other thing that this achieves of course is that once the Alien does make an appearance we are prepared to actually believe that this could happen for real and we accept it without question.

Looking back on it now Alien was a low budget movie costing around $11 million to make (compared to Star Wars Episode 1's estimated $115 million), but you would never think of it as a low budget movie. The beginning scenes where the camera passes throughout he ship shows immense details, the views we see of the Planet and the Alien vessel are superbly teasing. These are just a few examples, but then there is the real star of the movie the Alien itself. Created by H R Giger the creature is both phallic and deadly with Ash (Ian Holm) referring to it by saying "I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality." and that sums it up perfectly. For me though it is this realism in the locations, the characters and the Alien and the way it evolves and moves, the idea and notion that this could actually happen. The dirtiness and everyday issues and problems that pull you into the film make you care about all the characters.

Another point to note is that it was vastly different to a lot of the other films around at the time (or just before/after) after all Star Wars was more at the fantasy end of the Sci-Fi scale, and although there are bad guys in that, they don't even come close to the Monster in Alien, Close Encounters was more a cuddly third person perspective kids movie and Blade Runner was still three years away, which again portrayed the future in a bleak, dirty way and yet again was a Ridley Scott movie.

In real terms Alien doesn't do much new, ideas were borrowed from numerous films, it was not the first time that people had been hunted down one by one and it was not the first space monster, but Sigourney Weaver was the first female lead in such a film, and it showed that Ridley Scott was destined for great things, as this was only his second directorship, the true measure though is that 27 years on I still dare you to watch the film with the lights out and not be scared.

Picture and Sound:
I found the picture really crisp and clear, colours seemed natural and the shadows were deep and inky. However I did detect that the film took a nanosecond to refocus after the camera had panned across. Sound was pretty good, the PSP speakers are of crap quality to be fair and so I used headphones, the volume level was pretty good and I soon found myself immersed in the movie.

Overall
This is one of the best Sci-Fi movies ever made, if you have never seen in then buy it...buy it now. The film plays out pretty good on a PSP, a good film to watch in bed with the lights off as it is dark, although not as good as a full DVD watched on the TV, but then I don't think any UMD movie will be. The screen is just too small. But I thoroughtly recommend this film.

© This review is entirely my own work but may have been cross posted elsewhere. Also published under the name sjp1966 on Ciao UK and also under sjp1966 on the Digital Lard website to which I am a contributor, as well as cross posted to IMDB external reviews. 2008

Summary: one of the best Science Fiction films of all time.