It jumped out of an egg and facehugged John Hurt before bursting out of his chest, skitting off, "like a penis on a skateboard", got big and took out Harry Dean Stanton with an excellent head-shot before fucking up the rest of the crew of the Nostromo 30 years ago.
Yep, it's been that long since things first got Gigeresque on our pop-arses.
You have to be impressed.
Firstly, with Ridley Scott's film of Alien and what it established. That being a new future visual, the workman like world of grunge space. Also it established or, more fairly, reestablished a style of haunted house horror and in the process elevated its stature to mainstream Hollywood. And most importantly, it was the first serious vehicle of Scott's efforts to almost single-handedly create a new film aesthetic.
The second thing to be impressed with?
H R Giger's Alien, of course.
It isn't hard to see it as a guy in a suit, but Giger with Freudian finese and a damn lot of latex and spraypaint, made it transcend such cheap filmmaking notions and become and remain a major pop-cultural icon of symbolic horror and death fetishism. A mascot for what lurks menacingly in the dark in the world of Cinema Ephemera.
Giger's Alien, we salute you.
Now please, don't stick your scary jaws in my skull.
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