Do you think Alien is scary?

[Water Bob]

I'm watching this documentary on the making of the four Alien films, and of the first one, they keep going on and on about how it was such a scary movie.

Did you ever think it was scary?

I've always looked at like a monster film. Godzilla never scared me, and never did the Alien. One review of the film back in 1979 compared it to The Exorcist.

Now, The Exorcist is a damn scary film. It scares the heebee jeebees out of me.

But Alien?

No way. Not even a goosebump.

Am I alone?
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[jonesy]

I thought it was mindblowingly frightening. But I was something like five or six when I saw it. I think it might have been the first scary movie I ever saw.

That part where one of them goes into the ventilation tunnel (or whatever that was) to look for it and you see the adult alien strike is great.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Alien came out in 1978- coincidentally, the same weekend as Halloween- and I was 11. I didn't see it in theaters, by I saw it as soon as I could.

I SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO wanted the action figure. Only $25 dollars a the PX. Biput I kept having visions of itin my room at night, in the dark. I couldn't tell my parents to buy it. Too scared.

There was just something about it that set it apart from other movie monstersfor me. I think it was the realism of it compared to creatures like Godzilla, the Wolfman, and the rest.

 

[Kramodlog]

There are moments of tension. Can't say I saw a film that was scary since I was a teen though.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

At the time it was released, yeah. It was insanely intense and terrifying. It was not like a classic so-called "horror" film. It got you invested in sympathetic characters and used its claustrophobic setting to maximum effect. And it had blood and guts. Not at all the same thing as Bela Lugosi and "I vant to dreenk your bloood!"

In the last 30+ years everything that made it so scary has be re-used and badly done and OVERdone. You can get the blood and guts on network TV now. Its iconic scenes are now practically comedy punchlines by comparison since even Mel Brooks spoofed it on screen.

When it first came out I went to see it with a friend who'd already seen it. HE spent the movie watching through his fingers. It was far and away more intense than anything I'd seen up to that point (next closest was probably Jaws, and no comparison) and I had to insist that he start warning me when the real scary parts were coming up. If I went to see it now for the first time having been very well inured to all of its techniques, yeah I'd say that it had a couple good "gotcha" moments but I would have likely wanted more action.

 

[Deset Gled]

Different types of movies scare different people. Personally, I found almost nothing scary about the Exorcist, but I can see how it could be. I found Aliens to be much scarier than Alien, but I also saw Aliens first.

As an avid horror and sci-fi fan, I absolutely love Alien (and Aliens and Alien Resurrection and Prometheus, and I tolerate Alien 3 and AvP). Even thought it's been a really long time since I was truly scared by a movie, H.R. Giger's artwork in Alien still brings out an emotional reaction. Not fear, but a weird and wonderful combination of awe, beauty, and attraction, combined with utter grotesqueness and repulsion.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, it was scary. The horror genre of the 70's was pretty different then what we see now. It wasn't just the alien but the setting and the characters that really sold the tension. It does depend on when you see it. I would not have found it nearly as scarey watching it today after seeing many other horror movies that have copied so much from it.

 

[Morrus]

At the time, yes. Not now (whether it's because I've seen it so many times, because I'm older, because standards for 'scary' have changed over the years etc). I still view it as a very well made sci-fi movie.

 

[Jet Shield]

A lot about what made the movie (at the time) scary/suspenseful has been lost through sheer exposure. These days everyone knows what the alien looks like and what it's capable of, at least more-or-less. Even people who have never seen the movies recognize the alien when they see it. When the movie released, that wasn't the case.

While filming, the alien was a guy in a rubber suit. In order to keep it from looking like a guy in a rubber suit, they intentionally kept most of it in shadow. The audience had to use their own imagination to fill in most of what the creature looked like. That was a masterful technique for building the terror/suspence factor. People, when their imagination is allowed (or forced) to run wild, are very good at inventing horrifying details to frighten themselves. Just knowing what the alien looks like in advance is enough to move the movie from the "terrifying" column to the "meh" column, because your own imagination isn't in overdrive trying to fill in the blanks.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I was around 11 when I saw Alien in a theatrical re-release I think.
It's all well and good to see a movie after the fact, after it's been around for years, decades even and declare that it's not this or that.

It's another to see it at the time of release or close to the release when there were no easily accessed documentaries or the Internet.

Im someone that really believe that movies, that film needs to be EXPERIENCED. Not through proxy but you should go in as cold as possible. No hype, no spoilers.

When I saw Alien in grade school I only had a few friends and their parents tell me how terrifiying it was and that made me want to see it. When I saw it, well I can tell you that to this day one of the only movie monsters that scares the dogsh*t out of me is the original Xenomorph from ALIEN.

Alot of it is the way the Scott builds from a place of normalcy and routine with these working class stiffs to dread to outright horror. For me the true mark of a horror film is the point where the audience realizes that the protagonists are well and truly screwed before the protagonists do. For me that point is after the sequence with Dallas and the vents. That coupled with's Ash's revelation and his final words to the others always haunts me no matter how many times that I've seen this movie. and I've seen it PLENTY.

ALIEN is still effing terrifying to me because it's a solid movie with a great cast with characters who are put in a truly horrible situation with no real way out. They are dealing with something that is beyond them in every possible way.

I'll also point out that the Xenomorph is a miracle of modern monster design. It's alternate bipedal / Quardraped form is alternatively familiar yet not. The pure invasiveness of it's form ( the prehensile tail, the second inner mouth, the idea that the facehugger basically mouth rapes you) and the fact that it's first victim is male and is effectively face raped and impregnated doesn't help. Yeah this movie hits you in all the right bad touch places if you think about it for more than half a minute.