After making his first film in 1977, The Duellists, Ridley Scott was given the chance to direct Alien. Given Scott was such a small name in that day and the other directors that passed on the film (Robert Aldrich, Robert Altman, and John Boorman), it’s clear that 20th Century Fox considered Alien to be B-movie schlock instead of the pillar of science fiction it is considered today. In the studio’s defense, this was only two years after the first Star Wars film was released. To this point in history, sci-fi was Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Ed Wood, the schlockiest of schlock, and until that first Star Wars film, there was no precedent for a big, blockbuster sci-fi film. The beauty of Alien is that it crosses genres. It’s not just a sci-fi film like The Incredible Shrinking Man, but it’s also a monster movie, like Jaws or the Universal Horror films of the 1930s. In its defiance of its genres, it elevates itself to a different kind of movie – one that can look incredibly detailed and expensive but also be very simple and cost-effective. The film only has two real set pieces: the alien planet and the spaceship, Nostromo. When you think about it like that, Alien is like 12 Angry Men in a way.

The spaceship, Nostromo, is carrying its crew back home. Aboard the ship are Dallas, Kane, Ripley, Lambert, Ash, Parker and Brett. The ship’s computer, called Mother, awakens the crew after receiving a distress signal from a nearby planet. Dallas, Kane and Lambert explore the planet, finding an alien ship with a dead alien inside. The alien happens to have a huge hole in the middle of its torso. They continue across the planet, and Kane discovers a chamber with hundreds of eggs inside. He touches one of the eggs and out pops an alien creature that latches on to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry Kane back to the Nostromo where Ash lets them inside, despite Ripley’s objections over quarantine regulations. As the ship takes off again, Ash attempts to remove the alien from Kane’s face, but discovers that its blood is incredibly acidic and could kill Kane or destroy their ship if he’s not careful. However, when looking in on Kane later, the crew discovers the alien has detached itself and died, and Kane wakes up, seemingly normal albeit with a bit of memory loss. The crew enjoys a meal together before they return to sleep for the remainder of the trip, and suddenly, an alien creature bursts forth from Kane’s chest and runs away. The crew attempt to find the alien and destroy it before anything worse happens. Using the computer, Ripley discovers that the company they work for has instructed Ash to bring the alien back for research at all costs and considers the rest of the crew as expendable. Before Ash can kill Ripley, Parker bashes Ash’s head with a club, revealing that Ash was actually an android. The remaining crew decide to self-destruct the Nostromo and escape in the escape pod, but the alien picks them off one by one until only Ripley remains, and the alien blocks her path to the escape pod. However, while she is able to get into the pod and ship off just before the Nostromo explodes, its revealed that the alien stowed away on the pod and attacks her. She shoots the alien out of the pod by opening the airlock and returns home.

Alien is an interesting pairing of a 50s B-horror film, such as Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Though there’s little mystery to it, the film’s slow loss of crew member after crew member is terrifying, and the relative simplicity of it all makes it feel incredibly fast-paced. Therefore, it gets the heart racing, gives you hardly any time to breathe, and makes you feel like more is happening than what really is. Despite the initial critics, Alien has become a staple of sci-fi cinema and is considered one of the greatest films of all time. A lot of this can be attributed to that simplicity. It also feels more believable than some other sci-fi films. Yes, it involves aliens, and it’s set in the future, but take out the outer space location and replace it with an 1800s logging camp in Minnesota and take out the aliens and replace them with wolves, you’re well on your way to a very grounded and potentially award-worthy period film. All that to say, whether it’s the iconic scene where an alien pops out of Kane’s chest or it’s easily accessible premise, Alien is a classic for good reason.

Bonus Review: Tremors

Now, if Alien is a good sci-fi monster movie, then Tremors is a terrible one, but it’s incredibly entertaining all the same. Roger Ebert, in his review of the film, says he felt “embarrassed” by how much he enjoyed the film, and also pointed out that the success on the film was focusing on the fun, goofy characters that make up the town of Perfection, rather than the creatures that were after them. I have to agree. There are some very entertaining characters in this movie, particularly Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward), the two handymen who discover the creatures and help the rest of the small town escape, and Burt (Michael Gross) and Heather (Reba McEntire), a married couple that are well-loaded and well-prepared for the end of the world and would feel right at home as my MAGA next door neighbor. The beauty of Tremors, however, is that it knows what kind of movie it is and it doesn’t try to be anything beyond that. It wears its B-movie status as a badge of honor.

Val and Earl work as handymen in the very isolated, very small town of Perfection, Nevada. They decide one day that they’re tired of the town and their work and make for the next nearest town, Bixby. As they leave, they find a dead body sitting on top of an electrical tower and the severed head of a nearby farmer. Thinking there’s a serial killer on the loose, they turn back to Perfection to warn everyone. They even warn a couple of construction workers on the side of the road as they make their way back, but their warnings go unheeded, and the two construction workers are also killed by something, and that something also causes a rock slide, blocking the exit out of Perfection. Val and Earl try to make a call, but discover that the phone lines are also down, and, just as something grabs ahold of Val’s truck, they hightail it back into town. They alert the town, who only believe them when they see what remains of the creature that grabbed on to Val’s truck, and then attempt to get to Bixby for help via horseback. However, they are waylaid when from the ground explodes a giant worm-like creature. It chases them across the desert, but since it does not have eyes, it run headfirst into a concrete aqueduct, killing itself. Rhonda, a student conducting seismology tests in the area, looks over her results and determines that there are three more of these creatures around and that they hunt by detecting the seismic vibrations coming from above ground. To avoid making any vibrations, the three of them pole vault from boulder to boulder until they can get to Rhonda’s truck and back to Perfection. In town, everyone gets on their rooftops to avoid attracting the worms. Burt and Heather successfully kill one at their bunker by unloading round after round of heavy gunfire into its face. The two remaining worms follow the townspeople as they attempt to escape on a single track loader. However, the worms force them on to some boulders out in the desert. Burt has made some pipe bombs for a rainy day and they use one to successfully kill another worm. When they attempt with the last worm, it has grown smarter and sends the pipe bomb back at them. They duck and cover, but in the process are down to one last bomb. Val decides to run towards a cliff and uses the last pipe bomb to distract the worm into charging through the cliffside and falling to its death hundreds of feet below.

Like Alien, Tremors has created a successful franchise for itself, though the quality of the subsequent films certainly declines with each new movie. Tremors, I think, is also partially responsible for the rise in purposely-bad sci-fi and monster movies, such as Sharknado, Sharktopus, Megaladon, Ghost Shark, Shark Night, Planet of the Sharks, Dinoshark, Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Piranhaconda, Lavalantula and Anonymous Rex (that sure is a lot of shark-related movies). There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and these franchises surely define what that looks like incredibly well. Alien, Tremors and Sharknado are all basically worthless after the second movie, and I don’t even want to get into some of these other spinoffs and cheap imitations, but for those first few movies, there’s something genuinely enjoyable there, and it makes the existence of the sequels worth it.