In 2122 the star freighter Nostromo is on its way back to Earth from a mining mission in space. On board, the crew of seven is in suspended animation. The crew consists of Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt), warrant officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), executive officer Kane (John Hurt), navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), engineering technician Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), chief engineer Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and science officer Ash (Ian Holm). With them is the crew’s pet, an orange tabby cat named Jones.
Halfway home, a transmission from a nearby planet causes the computer to activate and awaken the crew. The ship’s computer, Mother (voice of Helen Horton), informs the crew of the transmission. Protocol designates that they investigate in case there is intelligent life on the planet. They land on the planet to investigate. On the surface, the crew finds an alien spaceship. Dallas, Kane and Lambert investigate the ship.
On board they find a dead alien. A hole in its chest reveals that something burst out of it. In another room they find what appears to be hundreds of eggs. Kane sees movement in one of the eggs. The egg opens and a tentacled creature flies out and onto Kane’s helmet. Kane is brought back to the ship and examined. When they try to cut the creature off, they realize that its blood is a corrosive acid. After a while the alien falls off and dies. Kane seems to recover until, at dinner, he gets spasms, and an alien entity bursts from his chest. In shock, the crew watches helplessly as the alien flees from the room.
The alien grows at an accelerated rate and begins killing the crew members. As the dwindling crew tries to hunt down and kill the alien, they learn that Ash is actually an android assigned to retrieve the alien and bring it back to Earth. The crew also learns that they are expendable.
“Alien” was released in 1979 and was directed by Ridley Scott. It is an American and British science fiction horror film. There are nine movies in the Alien franchise. The original film spawned three sequels, two crossovers with the Predator franchise, two Prometheus films and a spinoff, “Alien: Romulus”. Not to mention an array of comics, video games and books.
The alien was played by Bolaji Badejo, a 26-year-old graphic design student. Badejo was 6’ 10” tall, a full 7’ tall in the alien suit. In some scenes the alien was played by stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell. The alien or xenomorph in the film had four stages, egg, face hugger, chestburster and finally adult. It has a paralyzing tail stinger and acid for blood. They are parasitical and require a host to reproduce. The eggs are laid by a queen xenomorph.
The Nostromo was a space tug owned by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation. Its purpose was to tow a giant refinery through space from Thedus to Earth. The Lockheed CM 88B Bison M-Class starship was built in 2101 and retrofitted in 2116 for commercial towing. Named after a character in a Joseph Conrad novel, the ship was 243.8 meters long, 164.6 meters wide and 72.5 meters tall.
Four cats, trained by Animals Unlimited, played Jones the Orange Tabby.
In 2002, “Alien” was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.