MMR #2, Alien

Movie number 51 on the IMDB top 250 when I started this project was Alien. I had seen this movie when I was younger, but didn't remember that much about it. There is a good reason for that....there wasn't too much to this movie.

The plot is very simple. 7 crew members on a cargo ship bound for Earth carrying a bunch of intergalactic ore are awaken from their "cryo-sleep" early when the ship's computer receives a transmission from another ship nearby.

They go to a planet which seems uninhabitable where 3 crew members stumble onto a
crash site and find a bunch of pods or eggs or something. One of those pops open and the entity inside affixes itself to the face of a crew member. They take him back to the ship where the ship's 3rd in command, Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) refuses to let them past the airlock without being quarantined for 24 hours, in an effort to protect the others on the ship. The science officer takes it upon himself to override the airlock door and let them in.

After a little while the alien on the face of the crew member shrivels up and dies, and the crew member wakes up. Before going back to their cryo-beds for the rest of the trip home, the crew decides to have dinner together. This is where the infamous scene of the alien busting out of the guy's stomach takes place. After that a whole lot of cat and mouse takes place trying to find and kill the alien.

When the crew has only four of the seven still alive, everyone finds out that the science officer isn't really alive after all. He's a robot that was ordered to get the alien back to Earth alive at all costs, even if it meant the entire crew had to die. The three remaining crew members "kill" the robot and decide it's time to get in the shuttle and blow up the ship with the Alien still on it.

Only Ripley makes it to the shuttle alive before the ship blows up, and after a gratuitous underwear scene she realizes she's not alone on the ship. Somehow the alien snuck onto the shuttle while her dumb ass was chasing a cat around the mothership.

Of course she outsmarts the alien and ejects him from the shuttle, sends a message out to any ship in the area that could rescue her, and gets into her cryosleep chamber.

Overall this was a pretty good movie, but seeing as it was made in 1979 the special effects are very dated. I certainly wouldn't put this movie in the top 52, but considering I am too young to remember how other movies were in 1979, maybe it's deserving. Overall I would rate Alien a 7 out of 10.

Tonight I'll be watching A Clockwork Orange, which I've never seen and am excited to check out. The review should be up in the next couple days.