JAWS IN SPACE

FORTY-FIVE YEARS ON FROM ITS ORIGINAL RELEASE, ALIEN CONTINUES TO TERRIFY. WE DISSECT WHAT ARGUABLY REMAINS THE MOST CHILLING INSTALMENT IN THE SAGA

- OLIVER PFEIFFER

THE SEVEN-STRONG CREW of the commercial mining spacecraft the Nostromo seal their fate after reluctantly responding to a mysterious distress signal on a hostile planet. Here, a face-hugging alien from a derelict ship impregnates and later kills executive officer Kane (John Hurt) after its offspring is birthed onboard. After being unleashed, the fearsome newborn with acid for blood proceeds to dispatch the remainder of the crew.

Ridley Scott's much more convoluted prequels have yet to reveal how the knowledge that led to this initial interception was acquired. However, the premise of the original Alien is perfect in its uncomplicated purity.

"It's an amazing script, very simple and beautifully written," agrees Roger Christian, the Oscar-winning art director behind Alien who carried across the worn, lived-in look he perfected for the Millennium Falcon as set decorator on Star Wars.

"Ridley wanted the ship like a space truck. He said, 'I want that look'. The Nostromo was already built when I came onboard, but it needed to be dressed. There was a snake-like structure that went over two stages. Ridley needed that to do all those amazing tracks of the interiors in the opening sequence to get that claustrophobia."

Indeed, part of the haunting beauty of Alien remains its progressive claustrophobia - the fully enclosed set was shot with a widescreen anamorphic lens and had its ceilings continuously lowered to make the vessel appear to get increasingly confined as events progress, and the titular alien becomes monstrously bigger.