Alien: The Director's Cut (Two Disc Special Edition)

Nothing much to speak of happens for at least the first 30 minutes, and that in a way is the secret of the film's success: the audience has been nervously peering round every corner for so long that by the time the eponymous beast claims its first victim, the release of pent-up anxiety is all the more effective. Although Sigourney Weaver ultimately takes centre-stage, the ensemble cast is uniformly excellent. The remarkably low-tech effects still look good (better in many places than the CGI of the sequels), while the nightmarish quality of H.R. Giger's bio-mechanical creature and set design is enhanced by camerawork that tantalises by what it doesn't reveal.

On the DVD: The director, audibly pausing to puff on his cigar at regular intervals, provides an insightful commentary which, in tandem with superior sound and picture, sheds light into some previously unexplored dark recesses of this much-analysed, much-discussed movie (why the crew eat muesli, for example, or where the "rain" in the engine room is coming from). Deleted scenes include the famous "cocoon" sequence, the completion of the creature's insect-like life-cycle for which cinema audiences had to wait until 1986 and James Cameron's Aliens. Isolated audio tracks, a picture gallery of production artwork and a "making of" documentary complete a highly attractive DVD package. --Mark Walker

Seven "space truckers" on service of the Weyland-Yutani Corporation, two women and five men, are on their way back to earth on a space towing vehicle called "The Nostromo". Their hypersleep suddenly gets interrupted by a seemingly casual signal from a nearby unknown planet. The crew decides to make an intermediate landing on the planet to examine the source of the signal. A short while later, three members of the crew - Captain Dallas, the Navigator Lambert and the 1st Officer Kane - find themselves aboard a strange looking space ship wreck that harbors a dead, over-dimensional, non-human pilot with a big hole in his chest, and a large number of mysterious looking pods or eggs. A living something within one of the eggs catches the attention of the 1st Officer Kane. He bends over the egg and, although he examines it very carefully, a nasty creature suddenly jumps right through his helmet onto his face and crams a hose-shaped trunk down his throat. Dallas and Lambert are not able to remove the alien creature from the face of their unconscious comrade, and so they carry him back to the "Nostromo" where he is brought directly to the surgery room. But even here, they can't get rid of the alien because it spatters highly aggressive, caustic blood as soon as it is scratched with the scalpel. The helpless crew backs of for a discussion how to proceed. A bit later, when someone of the crew is looking after Kane, the "face hugger" beast lies dead and rolled up on the floor. The astronaut is conscious again, however can't remember what happened. When Kane says that he feels no pains whatsoever, the crew decides to go back to hypersleep and continue their way to earth. Then, during a quick meal before the flight, the terrible happens: Kane winces and cries like mad under pain, so that the crew has to hold him on the table. The T-shirt suddenly colours red and a horrible creature bursts through his chest - a shrill cry escapes from its tooth-armed mouth and it finally vanishes lightninglike into the dark corners of the space ship, leaving behind a dead Kane and a crew that is totally stunned with horror.
What follows then is the best SciFi suspense horror-thriller that has ever been filmed. The narrow, dark spaces on the "Nostromo" suddenly become a dangerous prison for the rest of the crew as the alien grows up and develops into an incalculable, seemingly invincible enemy that has just one goal: hunt every living creature on the ship and use their bodies to multiply itself. But - as the movie subtitle says - "In space, no one can hear you scream", and so it's up to the crew to take on the uneven fight for survival and either win or lose it.

What made this film, whose story and characters look rather like those of a "Roger Corman" SciFi B-movie, so special and finally similarly famous as Stanley Kubrick's legendary "2001: A Space Odyssey" or George Lucas's "Star Wars" series? Well, I think that several things contributed to its enormous success.
There are first of all, and above all, the outstanding (Alien) artworks and designs of Swiss artist Hans Rudi Giger (short: H.R. Giger), a visionary art genius who is famous for his otherworldly, bio-mechanical designs that are frightening and beautiful at the same time. His bio-mechanical creatures and designs seem to remind us of our own overshadowed, sharp-toothed origin and our uncertain, gene-manipulated future, which makes them very authentic and timeless. Without Giger, there would have been no "Alien" - at least not such an outstanding one - and most of the film's success is due to his work. Giger, by the way, won the "Best Achievements for Visual Effects" Oscar for the design of the alien creature and scenery in April 1980.
The second reason for the success of this film is that it has probably one of the best combinations of talents that exists in film history. All key positions in the film are filled with hand-picked young talents that partly became big names later, like the lead artist H.R. Giger, the designers Ron Cobb and Les Dilley, director Ridley Scott, cinematographer Derek Van Lint, the 1st class actors Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Ian Holm, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto, the orginal "Alien" script writers Dan O'Bannon and Ron Shusett, and more. Such a combination of talent creates synergies that literally lifted the story into otherworldly dimensions, and until today, this first "Alien" movie is still considered the best film of the series. The other three films of the series are genre pearls too, but none of them reaches the authentic look and the suspense and thrill of the first one.
Last, but not least, a major part of the film's success is due to its look, which was simply "different". At the time of the filming (1979), the designs of films like "2001: A Space Odyssey", "Starship Enterprise" or "Star Wars" had basically set the standards for how a successful SciFi movie has to look. Clean, almost sterile space ships and fancy, futuristic looking crew uniforms were pretty much state-of-the-art. "Alien", on the other hand, came with a look that made the film much more authentic and real. From the dirty mining space ship to the non-uniform every-day suits of the crew members to the rough, hostile environment of the alien planet - it all resembles much more the real world we live in.

The "Alien" series has had two major DVD releases so far, the "Alien Legacy" 4-disc set (1999) and the "Alien Quadrilogy" 9-disc set (2003). Each film from the two box sets was/is also available as standalone version with the exception of the extra bonus discs: "Alien Legacy" (1999) and "Alien Evolution" (2003). So, this new "Alien" 2-disc set is 100% identical to the one from the "Alien Quadrilogy", including the theatre and director's cut version of the film and all "Alien" extras (film commentary, "Behind the Scenes" featurettes, cut scenes and photo galleries). The director's cut is a nice variation of the original film and worth watching, but it doesn't quite match the brilliant original cut. The bonus material, on the other hand, is a feast not only for fans. It is nicely done and very extensive, in fact, it is quality-wise probably the best on today's DVD market. The bonuses, including Ridley Scott's film commentary, are completely new and therefore also interesting for people who already own either the "Alien Legacy" box or the first standalone "Alien" disc. If you liked the whole series, you may want to buy the complete 9-DVD set instead of this 2-disc set as it also contains the extra disc with an additional 1-hour featurette, the cinema and TV teaser trailers of all four films (which can't be found on the standalone disc-sets), and more. In addition to either this new 2-disc set or the Quadrilogy, you may also want to take a look at the "Giger's Alien" film book, which is also available from Amazon. It's written in the form of a diary and has a lot of additional fine pictures and comments by the "Alien" father himself, H.R. Giger.


Lucas Take Note   March 11, 2004
R. L. Ricketts (South Africa)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

Quite frankly, this is the ultimate in customer care. A number of us do not want Alien 3 & 4, so did not buy the box set. by releasing them seperatley, you get to buy just the ones you want.
A very nice feature is being able to choose between the original issue of the film or the new version. George Lucas, take note of this with your imminent Star Wars releases please.
The remastered print is amazing - visual and audio quality superb.
The extras are too numerous to list here - an outstanding example of how to reissue a classic film properly.


Excellent   June 5, 2004
Gaffer (UK)
10 out of 10 found this review helpful

The director's cut of this seminal sci-fi film is only slightly longer than the theatrical release.
Notable inclusions are: the whole crew listening to the garbled SOS signal (very chilling), Ripley getting punched/slapped in a fight with Lambert because she wouldn't let the investigating party back on bord (quarantine rules), and the infamous Dallas scene where he is coccooned as either food / host material (but without dialogue).
The only problem with this last scene is that it has been argued that it tends to break up the action and suspense that has been building as Ripley messes around with Nostromo's self destruct/ runs from the alien...but I think it's paced very well.
Despite this though, there's not much to choose between both versions.
This is a visually remastered (the film's original negative has undergone some digital cleanup and restoration) attempt with DTS so it is also an excellent reference DVD with which to show off your home cinema system (the opening shots as they orbit the planet are great).
The only dissapointment is the exclusion of "original trailers" from the extra's, which is there on the "standard" single disc edition (although, maybe I simply couldn't find them :D ).
Overall though, this still doesn't detract from an excellent dvd release that includes a whole host of other great extra's like HRGiger art....
Enjoy.


'this place gives me the creeps'   September 19, 2006
recrea33 (london)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful

well if you don't like monster movies
you ain't going to like this.
because i believe this is the ultimate monster movie.

watch in awe as weird prosaic horror descends on your everyday 22nd century mining operation.

a superb ensemble cast,
set design and art direction that still looks good today,
possibly jerry goldsmith's best ever score,
and fantastic sound design that compliaments it
(i can listen to this film without pictures)

they say there are only 12 stories in the world,
and this is one of them.
the moral being, beware 'the company'

a luscious sci-fi tone poem on celluloid.

classic stuff.


Perhaps the greatest sci-fi movie of all time ?   July 10, 2000
8 out of 11 found this review helpful

Alien is without doubt one of the finest ( if not the finest) examples of intelligent science fiction film-making ever-made.

Ridley Scott's art school leanings and impressive attention to detail, coupled with Ron Cobb's stunning interiors and H R Giger's ultra-unworldly alien lifeform combine to make Alien one of the most memorable movies of all time.

From a relatively thin plot, we are absorbed by an ever-present, underlying menace, right from opening credits. You know you are going to be in for a nightmarish ride. We almost never get to see the Alien in it's entirity until the closing 'shuttle escape' sequence, just the head section and the looming bodily shadow, another directorial masterstroke from Scott.

With ahead of their time, Oscar-winning visual effects, an eerie Jerry Goldsmith score, fabulously shot visuals and realistic characters, Alien must be regarded as a 20th century classic and perhaps one of the ten most highly-regarded movies of all time.

Who's to say that Mr Scott should take on the director's chair for Alien V ?