The film is set in the year 2122. The Nostromo, a commercial towing spaceship, is on a return trip to Earth, hauling an extremely valuable cargo comprising a mineral refinery and twenty million tons of precious ore. The film opens with the Nostromo's seven-member crew in stasis, a condition whereby a deliberate coma is induced in order to control bodily processes and manage travel across huge distances. The crew members are awakened and are simultaneously frustrated and bemused to find that, rather than being on the final leg of their journey home, the ship's computer (known to the crew as "Mother") has intercepted a transmission, possibly as S.O.S., and has diverted its course automatically to investigate the source transmission, the moon LV-426. After some initial resistance, the crew is persuaded to land on the moon with a promise of hefty bonuses for doing so. Dallas, the ship's Captain, Kane, Executive Officer, and Navigator Lambert set out to investigate the signal's source while Warrant Officer Ripley, Science Officer Ash, and two Engineers, Parker and Brett, stay onboard the ship to monitor their progress and make some minor repairs.

Of course, films of this type live or die on the basis of the realism of the eponymous creature. Though clever direction and careful timing can be utilised to ensure that tension is built gradually and deliciously throughout such movies, no amount of acting or cinematography can save a movie if the cast are picked off by something resembling a 6 foot roast chicken. Creature design then was fundamental. The production crew dragged out the heavy artillery in this respect by recruiting H. R. Giger, an infamous Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set-designer, to design the Alien and key movie sets. His creation is eyeless, disturbing and utterly believable. A seven foot, two inch tall Masai tribesman, Bolaji Badejo, was cast to don the Alien suit which was constructed from latex, car-parts and plasticine. Alien won the 1979 Academy Award for Visual Effects in no small part due to the Alien itself.

Cast list:

There's one more cast member worthy of a mention but whose name I can't find anywhere! "Jones", the ship's cat. He is responsible for providing several scares himself and his acting is very natural and unforced. He does the entire range of cat-emotions; "scared", "aggressive", "annoyed" and "contented" with aplomb! Apparently, in order to provoke the necessary level of aggression the poor cat was exposed on a regular basis to a German Shepard dog (on a lead, of course). The cat and dog became great friends post-filming. Or the dog ate the cat. One of those two is probably true.

Although it certainly has its blood-soaked moments, Alien is not an out-and-out gore-fest. It's much more intelligent and scary than that. It relies on building tension over drawn out periods, prolonging your unease until you can't help but let out a yelp when the creature finally and dramatically appears. Or is that just me? In fact, thinking about it more deeply, although the creature design is fantastic and the sets and models for the ships are also similarly amazing, sci-fi is also incidental to the plot of Alien. In that respect it shares more in common with the likes of Halloween or Friday the 13th than Star Wars or even its own amazing sequel, Aliens, which was a wholly different film. True, immediate comparisons might not be obvious but all movies make use of careful timing, brief glimpses of the killer and a carefully paced soundtrack to ratchet up the tension. At heart then Alien is a slasher flick of the first order, set in a futuristic environment and with a slightly uglier Michael Myers/Jason Vorhees doing the cutting. Jaws in space, if you like.

Sex undertones feature heavily throughout the film. It's refreshing to see Sigourney Weaver as the heroine of the movie alongside the androgyny of the Alien (which in its 'facehugger' incarnation resembles a very specific piece of female anatomy), and even the ship's computer, Mother. If you think about other movie franchises these days it's still somewhat of a rarity to see females in proper lead roles in action movies. You have the likes of Lara Croft in the Tomb-Raider series, Sarah Connor in T2 and Angelina Jolie in the more recent "Wanted". But Ripley is still the icon to which the rest of those ladies must bow down and pay homage. Set designs featuring the Alien spaceship are also suitably sexual and perverted if you take the time to study them. I haven't, of course. Well, just a bit maybe...

Current price: £4.98 (Amazon); also available in a variety of boxset options together with various combinations of its sequels