Ridley Scott’s sci-fi thriller Alien is in theaters for its 45th anniversary. Here’s why H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph still ranks among cinema’s scariest monsters.
This feature on Ridley Scott’s Alien and the franchise it launched was originally published as part of a package on the most beloved villains in science fiction. It has been updated and republished to celebrate Alien returning to movie theaters for an anniversary run.
By the time the Xenomorph officially shows up in Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien, the audience has already watched it evolve from foreboding egg to suffocating face-hugger to a tiny, pale critter that’s ripped its way out of John Hurt’s bloody torso. That last scene, destined to show up on Scariest Horror Movie Moments lists until the end of time, cements many of the big conceptual horror movie fears that made Alien famous — the terror of the unknown, the danger lurking both outside and within us, and the anxiety around intercourse, pregnancy, and forced birth.
With such an accomplished first half, the appearance of the full-grown alien toward the end of the film seems destined to disappoint the audience. Scott builds so much tension around these little nightmares and traumas that it’s a shame to have to boil them down into the purely external threat of a stuntman in a costume.
The reveal of the mysterious monster has doomed an awful lot of horror and science fiction. The cinematic history of both genres is full of clunky creature outfits that chuck any ounce of atmosphere in a film out the door. But the Xenomorph, conceptualized by Scott, artist H.R. Giger, and special effects technician Carlo Rambaldi, is an exception to the rule. Through all the Alien franchise’s sequels and multimedia mutations, the Xenomorph has remained singularly potent. Its design and its grisly introduction have made it eternally malleable and ripe for horror.
Roger Ebert maintained that a chunk of the original power of the Xenomorph lay in the fact that “we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do.” Alien is a far cry from previous sci-fi films, ones that often revealed extraterrestrials that looked humanoid primarily so they could be played by a man in a suit (something Scott took pains to hide by hiring Nigerian performer Bolaji Badejo — a 6-foot-10, unusually thin and long-legged actor — to play the alien). But even after its evolution is complete and the adult creature begins chasing people around the spooky spaceship, the Xenomorph retains its mystique, thanks to its eerie details: the multiple jaws, curved head, horned spine, webbed fingers, bony appendages, and muscular tail.
