Alien [VHS] [1979]

Quite frankly, this is the ultimate in customer care. A number of us do not want Alien 3 & 4, so did not buy the box set. by releasing them seperatley, you get to buy just the ones you want.
A very nice feature is being able to choose between the original issue of the film or the new version. George Lucas, take note of this with your imminent Star Wars releases please.
The remastered print is amazing - visual and audio quality superb.
The extras are too numerous to list here - an outstanding example of how to reissue a classic film properly.

Director Ridley Scott once said of the film Alien that he wanted it to "Be like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre of science fiction".Alien though is way better than even that premise. The most singularly memorable experience i have ever had at a cinema( i tend to go to watch the films) i went to watch Alien in 1981 ( i was 17 ) some two years after it,s original release and even though it was in a local fleapit long since closed down i left the cinema reeling .This was the film i had waited all my life to see. A horror/sci-fi hybrid that was genuinely original and startling.
The idea for Alien came from the film "Dark Star -- 30th Anniversary Special Edition [1974]" which had been made by Dan O,Bannon and John Carpenter in 1974 . The film had an alien ( not a very scary or convincing but then it was that type of film ) invade a space ship and O,Bannon wanted to use that premise to make a new film but as a horror instead of a comedy. Years later working on the story for the film , provisionally entitled "Starbeast" ( luckily they abandoned that idea) he joined up with Ronald Shusett and through a number of differing ideas( usually filched from other films like "Forbidden Planet - 50th Anniversary 2 Disc Special Edition [1956]" which they freely admitted) they came upon the basic premise of Alien .
At that time science fiction was , thanks to Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (Limited Edition, Includes Theatrical Version) [1977], all the rage so they had little trouble securing a deal to make the film with Brandywine productions aligned to 20th Century Fox. Brandywine led by Walter Hill and David Giler re-wrote the script making the dialogue more naturalistic ( one of the films great strengths it must be said) and introducing the character of the android Ash ( Ian Holm) with connections to the "company" who want the murderous alien taken alive for research purposes - something , which given that the ship "The Nostromo" ( named after a Joseph Conrad novel ) is returning to earth on a commercial venture, certainly rings very true.
Several things make the film work so effectively. The obvious one is the design of the alien itself - a truly shocking creation - but not just that but the life cycle of the creature, which has precedents in nature with it bursting forth from a living host exerts a truly primal fear of our bodies being invaded by a remorseless voracious entity. HR Giger , the Swiss artist who designed the overall look of the film had come to O,Bannons attention when he did pre-production work on a film version of the novel "Dune" ( later made by David Lynch) and once he showed Gigers work to director Ridley Scott they agreed that the films biggest problem -it,s look - had been solved. The bio-mechanical look
Scott was given the directors job because the studio wanted the film to be more than just a b grade creature feature and they had been impressed with his film "Duellists, The [1977]" .Scott,s approach to the film with detailed story boards led to the films budget being virtually doubled. The film was shot using old style models and Scott gave certain sections of the Nostromo a grimy industrial look , as befits a working environment.
This also tied in with the use of an older cast with Veronica Cartwright (Lambert) at 29 and Sigourney Weaver as Ripley at 30 the youngest. Tom Skerritt( Dallas) was 46, John Hurt (Kane ) 39, Harry Dean Stanton (Brett) 53, Yaphet Koto( Parker) 42 gave the crew a realistic working frisson ( especially as there was on set tension between the less experienced Weaver and other cast members) and aided the concept that they were looking for as "truckers in space". It also made the characters like ordinary working men & women( Brett and Parker griping about money and contracts) and therefore more likely to gain the audiences empathy.
The other notable departure for Alien was , of course , making one of the female crew members the heroine of the piece. The decision to make Ripley the most adaptable and one surviving member of the crew ( apart from Jones the cat) was a masterstroke creating one of the most iconic female characters in cinema history and giving subsequent sequels a defining story arc. Ironically Scott wanted the Alien to kill Ripley at the end of the film but he was overruled by the studio ( an all too rare case of them getting something correct ) who felt the creature had to die.
This DVD offers the viewer the choice of watching the original cut of the film or the directors cut complete with the much hyped Dallas cocoon scene. This cut is actually slightly shorter than the original release cut and i must say i prefer the original. There is also an excellent commentary by a cigar chomping laconic Scott and deleted scenes. This is a quality release in every way.
Alien is a film superb in every style of it,s execution. Scott gives us a faultless display of how to create terror and build tension. The use of light/ shadow and sound is exemplary proving the old maxim that in making an effective movie monster is about what you cannot see as much has what you can....although a good monster helps too.Has there ever been a better movie monster than the nightmarish xenomorph that stalks the Nostromo?Usually we wake up from a nightmare but in Alien the crew of the Nostromo are woken up by "Mother" and find themselves in one. The tag line for Alien said "In space no one can hear you scream". But we heard them alright and we joined in.

Fans of Ridley Scott’s 1979 science fiction classic ‘Alien’ could surely not ask for a better DVD release than this. The ‘Star Wars’ films and Tim Burton’s ‘Planet of the Apes’ may surpass this release in sheer quantity of extras, but you really feel than time has been taken over making the contents of this DVD as interesting as possible.

I must confess to not finding this film scary in the slightest scary. As a result, I have been more interested in the first half, in which Scott deftly creates atmosphere and foreboding, and the intelligent script sets up the relationships between the characters with great subtlety. The film becomes a little more formulaic after the ‘chest busting’ scene, but there are still surprises, and I admire he way that Scott is content not to play all of his cards at once, never really revealing the alien completely. The film’s originality and brilliance are undoubtable.

The picture and sound on this DVD are uniformly excellent. The picture has been specially cleaned up, and the refined sound allows us to appreciate the dramatic contrasts that are created with the minutely detailed sound effects, particularly in the contrast between the noise of the planet, and the eerie silence of the ship.

Ridley Scott provides an interesting and informative commentary, in which he explains technical aspects of the film, as well as explaining how certain problems were solved within the budgetary constraints. He is full of anecdotes about the shooting of the film and about working with the excellent actors.

Other extras include some deleted scenes, most interesting of which is a scene in which Ripley visits the alien cocoon. It is easy to see why many of the scenes were left out of the finished film, as many are slightly superfluous, and in many cases, the characterisation which they were intended to bring is easily achieved in the completed film.

As well as some slightly repetitious trailers, there is some brilliant conceptual art work from H R Giger and others, and perhaps most surprising of all is the amazing set of storyboards drawn by Ridley Scott, which were good enough to convince the studio to double the film’s budget. There is also a set of production stills which effectively show the process of making the film.

Another rarely encountered feature is the option of isolated music track, which showcases the wonderful score by Jerry Goldsmith (although its similarity to his score for the same year’s ‘Star Trek: The Motion Picture’ did put me off slightly), as well as the option for production sound track, which includes eventually unused music and pre mixed sound as the actors heard it, and it throws up a few previously unheard surprises.

Overall, this is a very good DVD of a very good film; perhaps my only wish is that there had been a ‘making of’ documentary. Ah well, you can’t have everything.