Kenneth Stegmann

It's the old story of finding an alien, taking it home, and it winds up being monstrous. You saw it before in 'The Thing', the difference in 'Alien' is that now we watch the same thing going on in space, with an alien who is more satisfied with its own body. Remarkably, by swapping characters and backgrounds, 'Alien' turns into 'The Terminator'. Another swap could be with either 'Halloween' or Friday the 13th'. The problem with 'Alien' is that the space ship on which most of the activity takes place is too large to seem scarily too confining. And the ship's cramped hallways are too small to give a fear of the unknown. That's another problem visually: it gets boring watching the characters walk through miles of tread plates and wall piping; might seem new and intriguing at first, but it gets old very fast. H.R. Geiger was lauded for his set and monster designs, and the alien does look fairly interesting. The film's execution of the designs is problematic: you can't tell if the pilot of the ship the alien comes from has legs, is welded to his lazy boy combo command chair, or not. Plus, those scenes certainly blow a hole in any continuity with the many 'Alien' sequels and spin offs. On the bright side: Hollywood is a little like fashion: you wouldn't want to wear the same clothes everyday. Actually, although Mr. Geiger's designs are at first fun to look at, gradually, certain details become annoyingly silly.