Alien without suspense

WHY?

As a little boy I often stood in front of a shop window where posters of upcoming movies were displayed. That was the way things worked back then. Movie advertising didn’t flood your phone or notebook every three minutes. It happened directly in the cinema with trailers, or outside in glass cases with posters and stills. In my small village there was even a special window on a side street, reserved just for that. Sometimes I went out of my way to pass by, only to see which new movies would arrive soon. I was obsessed with cinema. I went at least once a week. If I had been able to afford it, I would have gone even more often. Not because cinema was outrageously expensive back then, but because my allowance had to be divided carefully between comics, books, candy, and tickets. Which meant I learned early on how to tell which films were worth the money and which ones I could safely let go.

And then there were the ones I had to let go, simply because I was too young. I had to be content with staring at stills, trailers, or posters. As a boy I desperately wanted to see Rosemary’s Baby. Because of the poster. Something about it pulled me in. What could be in that lonely pram on a dark rock? Or Deliverance with Burt Reynolds, muscles flexed, bow in hand. I had no idea what the story was, but I knew I had to see it. Or the trailer for The Shining, the one with the blood flooding out of the elevator. The more forbidden these films were, the more I wanted them. Not so I could brag to the boys at school about sneaking into an adult film, but because I felt deep in my chest that these were the stories that mattered. Not the moralistic children’s movies designed to shape me into a Good Boy.

And then came that poster in the window. Black background. In the center an egg, something green coming out of it. Nothing else. Its strangeness was enough to hypnotize me. I stood there longer than I had ever stood in front of any poster, staring, trying to pierce it with my young eyes, trying to see what was hidden behind. The secret refused to give itself away. And I was bitterly disappointed that I was still too young to see the film. Instead of my ceremonial initiation into Alien, I had to wait several more years.

I no longer remember the exact moment I first saw it. What I do remember is the impact. The film was revolutionary in every sense, and I tried to wrap my mind around why. It was probably the birth of my idea that a truly great movie combines every art form. No other film had ever done this more convincingly than Alien. Not a single element was neglected. At the heart of it all was the vision of H. R. Giger, whose designs gave us monsters from space unlike anything before: brutal, cold beauty, so sophisticated you might even wish to be killed by one. And then Ridley Scott, the other visionary, who fused it all together. Music. Set design. Atmosphere. Narrative rhythm. The actors. And Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. The coolest woman in film history. Did I mention the sound design? Alien’s sound was a work of art in itself, and twenty years later, when I started making my first sound collages, I naturally raided Alien samples, which every cinephile instantly recognizes.

Alien satisfied the longing in me, the not-yet-man, for serious stories. Something that did not follow the neat templates of Disney or Star Wars. I loved that Alien was dirty. The ships were damp, grimy, metallic coffins. They raised the obvious question: what exactly was supposed to be so glamorous about being locked up with a bunch of assholes in outer space, missing most of the actual journey because you were asleep in cryo-pods? Unlike Star Trek, which I adored as a child, exploring another planet was not a pleasant afternoon stroll. It was bleak, hostile, and dangerous. And I loved it. As with most so-called horror films, I wasn’t afraid. I was far too busy drinking in the details. The eggs with facehuggers. The facehuggers themselves, choking hosts when you tried to pull them off, spraying acid if you used force. Acid as blood. I nearly shouted with joy when the acid burned through the lab floor and ate its way down through several decks of the ship. Whoever had thought of that was, in my eyes, a genius.

To understand my excitement, dear readling, you need to know this all happened long before computers and CGI. As a film freak who once dreamed of becoming a special effects man, I always asked myself: how did they do that? And because everything could not be conjured at the push of a button, movies before The Matrix were watched differently. When they were good, they hit harder. And Alien hit with surgical precision.

It became clear soon enough that the creature was superior and that not many humans would survive. That Ripley did survive made the film revolutionary. Finally a woman who didn’t squeal, climb on a chair at the sight of a mouse, and wait for a man to save her. Sigourney Weaver did more for women’s emancipation with that role than Simone de Beauvoir managed with several books.