You might think that my first significant encounter with an alien happened in 1982. This was, after all, the year of E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. And yes, I was very much enamoured of the little wrinkly one. Not only did I see E.T. at the cinema, I collected the stickers, begged for the toys, and acted out scenes from the movie in the playground with my friends. E.T., however, didn’t get there first. Another alien had all ready caught my eye. This other alien came from a movie released 3 years earlier. It came from a movie I hadn’t seen. It came from a move my parents wouldn’t allow me to see. No points for guessing that this other alien was the alien, from the science fiction horror movie Alien directed by Ridley Scott. Maximum points, however, for anyone who can explain why I would fall so hard for a 7-foot, drooling, biomechanoid with paternity issues.
When Alien came out, I was too young to even be aware of its existence. My cinema-going experience at that point was limited to Disney’s The Rescuers. For me, nerve-shredding terror was Madam Medusa’s pet alligators Brutus and Nero, a frightened little girl clutching a teddy bear, and the possibility of seeing of 2 heroic mice eaten alive (and they call it a children’s film). It certainly wasn’t a movie about an unsuspecting crew picking up an alien lifeform, a movie in which very little happens for the first hour and a movie in which very little is seen of the titular beast in the second hour. In fact, I doubt that my love affair with the chest-bursting, acid-dripping, and suspiciously phallic-looking organism would have been ignited at all if I’d known what the movie was really like. So how did this obsession with everyone’s favourite xenomorph, and the movie that spawned it, come about? Well, it all started with a book.
You don’t see them very much nowadays but when I was growing up movie photobooks were all the rage. Between flimsy covers would be a treasure-trove of images chronicling the movie in question. Grease had one. Rocky had one. And Alien was no different. Of course, my parents would never let me have access to something like this. As far as they were concerned, The Rescuers was and would remain the limit of what my innocent young eyes should see. Fortunately, a school friend’s parents were more accepting of what little boys were really interested in. And my school friend was more than happy to let me skim through his copy of the Alien photobook during school lunchtimes.
While friends would be off playing football, British Bulldog, or Cowboys and Indians, I would sit alone on a bench in the corner of the playground. I know how that sounds but I should state that I was never lonely. How could I be? I was on a spaceship with 7 other crew members, including a ship’s cat and a talking computer. There was the laid-back Dallas, the mysterious Ash, the intimidating Parker, the funny Brett, the emotional Lambert, the inquisitive Kane, and, of course, the seemingly fearless Ripley. They may have been two-dimensional images in a book but they were very real to me.
Of course, I’m not about to suggest that it was this motley crew of fascinating individuals that kept me coming back for more. Interesting as they were with their various little foibles and, in Ash’s case, shocking secrets, they really were as nothing when compared with the titular beast. From the moment the creature made its first horrifying appearance, I was hooked. It was the alien that had me coming back time and time again. Watching it descend from unseen heights, raise its saliva-dribbling head, reveal its shattered-glass teeth, and reach out with splayed, claw-like hands, I was as entranced as poor, unfortunate crewmember Brett was. The look on Brett’s face as he was confronted by the alien, a mixture of terror, revulsion, and bewildered fascination, was not so different from my own as I pored over each of its appearances.
In the photobook, the alien’s passage through the ship was represented by a series of still images. This might seem a bad thing as the stills could hardly do the creature justice. The truth, however, was quite the opposite. The stills meant that I could study every line of the creature’s nightmarish form. From its obscenely extending jaw to its suggestively rising tail, from its from its bizarre, six-fingered hands to its strangely spiked feet, from the pronounced ribs of its chest to the never-explained pipes extending from its back to its smooth, glassy, sightless cranium, every inch of it was subjected to my fanboy scrutiny. Yes, my obsession had begun.
How many precious hours did I spend in the Alien’s company at that tender age? I have no idea. What I do know, though, is that my fixation on the movie’s imagery would have a lasting effect. The sight of the alien itself would be so ingrained in my mind that I could draw accurate representations of it from memory years later (much to my art teacher’s chagrin). And my fascination with all things monstrous meant that I was soon developing an intimate knowledge of science fiction (well, the movies of Jack Arnold), Greek myths (well, the movies of Ray Harryhausen), and various literary classics (well, the movie versions of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Hound of the Baskervilles ... you get the idea).
When the belated sequel Aliens finally arrived in 1986, my interest in all things Alien wasn’t so much rekindled as sent into the stratosphere. This time I was old enough to see the movie (well, see it on video). I was also able collect the trading cards, buy the toys, and write elaborate fan-fiction. It was like the summer of 1982 all over again. Aliens was like the second coming, only with more guns, more action, and more aliens. And don’t get me started on the alien queen! Of course, none of this will come as a surprise. But what might come as a surprise is what happened when I finally got around to seeing the original 1979 movie Alien for the first time a few months later. After the non-stop action of Aliens, with its rocket-speed pacing, relentlessly graphic gunfights, and all of those aliens, so many aliens, my reaction to seeing the original was one of shock ... for all of the wrong reasons. So, what caused this strange response to a movie that I thought I knew so well? A whole other story ...
'til the next time ...