10 Best Alien Moments
8. Space Jockey
Executives at Fox were worried throughout the shooting of Alien that Ridley Scott was spending far too much money on what was, essentially, a man in a costume chasing people down hallways. Upon visiting the massive sets that designer H.R. Giger was creating in his signature biomechanical style for the alien spaceship, the executives increased the budget substantially. One of the biggest sets and props shown to them was that of the strange, skeletal, pilot-like figure nicknamed the Space Jockey.
An idea taken from the finding of a massive skeleton in the 1965 film Planet of the Vampires, the exploratory team emerging into this space is both jaw-dropping and horrifying. It is tremendous in scope, the camera craning back and away to see the cast dwarfed by the thing’s size. Yet it also raises more questions the instant we see it: What is it? Why is it still here? Is this where the signal comes from? Why does it appear to have been broken out of from the inside? It is as mysterious as it is impressive, something bordering on religious awe. It’s no accident that the origin of this strange being is where Scott would turn to for his prequel film Prometheus in 2012.
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7. Ash: Priority One
Managing to completely take an audience by surprise is one thing. Doing it in such a way that it makes perfect sense is quite another. The reveal that Ash is a robot working for the Mining company to bring back the alien alive, as priority number one, with all crew members deemed expendable, certainly ranks up there even just in this film.
The warm, womb-like pod of Nostromo’s command centre, ‘Mother’, is an ironic place to hide a robot’s commands, but here it is. The whole film is a play on the line between machine and flesh, between human and inhuman, and the financial consequences of choosing one over the other. This sequence sums it up with aplomb. Ash’s attack on Ripley is horrific, his strength coming from out of nowhere – and his head being whacked off is a moment for the cinematic ages. Yet it also explains his curiosity of the creature, his disobeying of orders to let Kane back onboard, his little speed-running on the spot from very early in the film, and a host of other bits and pieces throughout. In this one scene, Ash becomes the template for all the other androids in the franchise, and dozens in science-fiction beyond.
6. Facehugger
One of the most recognisable aspects of not only this first Alien film but the whole franchise, the ‘facehugger’ is what truly begins to show off the strangeness of this alien creature. Fully clamped over Kane’s (John Hurt’s) face, smothering him, it is irremovable. It bleeds acid. It strangles the host if someone attempts to pull it off. And what exactly is it doing forcing something down his throat? Is it giving its host oxygen, or something worse?
Glistening and slimy, it is horrific to look at and plays on our fears of creepy crawlies, the little things that should stay in the ground. We imagine it smothering us, and as such it is a creature that harnesses all of our basic fears of disgust and repulsion that theorist Noël Carroll discussed in his 1990 book “The Philosophy of Horror“. And worse, we can’t escape from it. Seeing it properly for the first time is a thing of wonder because there’s as much confusion as disgust, given how strange and different it is. When we find out later in the film what it’s doing there, it becomes even more horrifying. Despite being a part of the creature’s lifecycle, the facehugger is an icon in its own right.
