Alien (DVD) > Reviews

Advantages: A true masterpiece of sci-fi horror which will never be bettered
Disadvantages: Will probably affect you for life

...a screenplay by Walter Hill, Alien is a film that was pretty much unique for its time: a sci-fi film that didn't portray a happy, all-is-well antiseptic version of the future. Right from the opening shots of the film where we are given a guided tour of the Commercial Towing Vehicle Nostromo, you can see that the future is ever-so-slightly dirty, and possibly depressing. We are told that the Nostromo is returning to Earth towing a refinery which is ... Read review

Advantages: Story, Acting, Visual Effects, Everything
Disadvantages: the UMD format, no extras,

I have owned Alien (and others in the series) in many guises, from VHS Tapes, The Alien Legacy boxset and the Quadrilogy Boxset through to now having the movie in UMD Format for the PSP, so yes you could say I am a fan of the films, and although the subsequent sequels (bar Aliens) has diminished in quality, I still enjoy each and every one of them. The Review It was on the year of release, 1979, when Ridley Scott's Alien first hit the ... Read review

Advantages: a fantastic looking and atmospheric film
Disadvantages: not for the faint hearted

...a long way from home, Alien offers us a futuristic world but with all the grime and dirt that you find in today's world. The ship Nostromo for all its futuristic nature is a factory ship, populated by people just doing their jobs for the required rate of pay. No light sabres, no vast ships saving the forests, no teleports and no psychic powers and no one boldly going anywhere, just a possible slice of future reality. The ship is dirty, wet and unpleasant ... Read review

Advantages: Brilliant
Disadvantages: I prefer the sequel

...find a derilect spaceship of alien construction and investigate. While looking round Kane enters the cargo hold and finds a mass of eggs which were being transported, one of these eggs hatches and he is attacked by the creature inside. The trio return to the ship with Kane still having the 'facehugger' attached to him. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is the first officer and doesn't want to let them in, instead preferring to quarantine them but the doctor, ... Read review

Advantages: IT DOESN'T GET BETTER THAN THIS
Disadvantages: NOTHING

...they can about the weird alien ship. But what they find is the stuff of nightmares. With a superb cast of; Sigourney Weaver ... Ripley John Hurt ... Kane Ian Holm ... Ash (My Precious) Tom Skerritt ... Dallas Veronica Cartwright ... Lambert Harry Dean Stanton ... Brett Yaphet Kotto ... Parker Soon the horror will spread throughout their ship and people will start to die OR WORSE! With acid for blood and ... Read review

Advantages: Good story, full of tension, direction and cast
Disadvantages: Can be scary for some

...nest for some strange unknown alien creature. After the landing party crew has landed, the ship’s computer then manages to decipher the distress call as being a warning rather than an SOS. One of the landing party disturbs one of the eggs and is apparently attacked by whatever was inside. On returning to the ship the crew are unaware of the terrible danger they and the rest of humanity could now be in. CAST PERFORMANCES AND OPINION Tom ... Read review

Advantages: Scary, compelling - a haunted house of a movie
Disadvantages: Not for those of a nervous disposition.

Alien burst onto our screens in 1979, dripping with goo and introducing HR Giger's gruesomely imagined montrous alien. Giger's alien is still very much present in the rest of the Alien series - as is Sigourney Weaver. The future mapped out by Alien is one where self-interest is foremost. The Nostromo is a cargo ship, one of the worker bees of the human conquest of space, and carrier of the spoils of other worlds. When the crew of the Nostromo ... Read review

Advantages: Scott's direction, Giger's monster, the horror, the suspense
Disadvantages: Not a one

...was 12-years-old in 1979, when Alien first came out. I loved horror movies and I loved science-fiction. I wanted to see this movie sooooo badly. Instead, I had to content myself with reading the newspaper reports about people actually running out of the cinema, they had found it so scary! I read all the magazines with their tantalising photographs of the film’s terrible secrets, and I also read the novelisation by Alan Dean Foster. My family ... Read review

Advantages: see review
Disadvantages: see review

...screaming since its original release. Alien is the movie which spawned numerous sequels and set the first benchmark for others to follow. Its getting on a bit in years now but the effects, the tension and the general clastrophobic sense of futility still remains, and whilst if you have never seen this movie before you will probably recognise many of its elements from thsoe movies which have followed since, they have never met up with the power o the ... Read review

Advantages: Looks great, mixes genres perfectly. DVD features excellent
Disadvantages: Will not appeal to everyone, some special effects are not believable

...has been released in cinemas, Alien was not among the very first films to be transferred to the DVD format, but was relatively early on. It was certainly among the first wave to be packaged in what are now called 'DVD cases,' rather than those cardboard things. The film will be familiar to countless people, whether you liked it or not, and is essentially a science-fiction-suspense-shocker where an entire crew, except one lady, are wiped out by ... Read review

Advantages: It's the original..got to watch em
Disadvantages: Big scary ugly Alien

Originally released in 1979 Alien was to be the first of several sci fi/horror films featuring both ugly salivating Aliens and Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. The film is notable for being one of the first films to have a strong female heroine/protagonist along with being a huge box office success. The Plot The crew of the spaceship Nostramo are supposed to be going home after collecting minerals however the wake to find that they have been ... Read review

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Disadvantages:

...Nostromo, who discover a crashed alien vessel on a desolate planet. Unfortunately for the hapless crew, one of the killer xenomorphs gets loose aboard their ship and goes about making sure that none of them are going home alive. Whilst the idea of a man-eating monster killing people was nothing new even at the time (1979), this film was packed with enough original ideas to create a whole new sub-genre - the science-fiction horror. The very concept ... Read review