WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM | OCTOBER 29 - NOVEMBER 4, 2021 | 25
SCREEN TIME
Love at fi rst fright — three scary fi lms that left a mark Craig S. Semon Worcester Magazine | USA TODAY NETWORK
In space no one can hear you scream. The night He came home! The ultimate in alien terror. These are the taglines to the fi rst three R-rated movies I ever saw at a movie theater with a parent or guardian because I was under 17 and no one under 17 would be admitted without a parent or guardian present. Believe it or not, movie theaters were strict back then. Thinking about these fi lms the other day, I realized, in addition to the inherent, multiple connections of pairs shared by these three movies (including two having very strong female characters as their protagonist, two of the movies’ antagonists are from outer space, two pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock, two of the movies I saw at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and two were directed by John Carpenter), they are all modern classics and are good scary movies to watch during the Halloween season. Heck, even one has the word “Halloween” in its title. Yes, if the taglines didn’t give them away, I am talking about “Alien,” “Halloween” and “The Thing.” These three movies are so good that I still brag to fellow fi lm-lovers who discovered these fi lms on video or DVD that I saw them all when they fi rst came out on the big screen. And the great thing back then, we went to the movies with very little to go on other than, maybe, a spooky movie trailer, an enticing TV spot, a colorful movie poster (which, oftentimes, were better than the actual movies themselves), a scary premise, or the star or director promoting his fi lm on a late-night talk show. The only actor I knew going into “Alien” was Yaphet Kotto, who played Dr. Kananga/Mr. Big in the fi rst James Bond movie I ever saw in a fi rst-run movie theater (and the fi rst and best with Roger Moore), “Live and Let Die.” “Alien” was a revelation in the movie theater. It’s Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” in outerspace. And it was the fi rst movie I ever saw in which the main female wasn’t a damsel in distress or merely eye candy but a bona fi de action hero. Except for some schlocky revenge fl icks, it was unheard of at the time. It was totally unexpected. It was incredibly refreshing. Everyone in the movie theater concluded that Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) was going to be the hero in the movie because he’s a man. But it turned out Warrant Offi cer Ripley, played by a then unknown Sigourney Weaver, was to be humanity’s savior. And I’ve had a crush on her ever since. The visual of the derelict spaceship and the discovery of the skeletal “space jockey” are some of the best and most imaginative special eff ects I had seen since the original “Star Wars” two years earlier. But “Alien”
Sigourney Weaver outwits an evil E.T. in “Alien.” 20TH CENTURY FOX
was a far cry from “Star Wars.” George Lucas’ space soap-opera never gave me nightmares. And H.R. Giger’s alien — which is Hell incarnate, the personifi cation of pure unadulterated evil that only exists in our deepest, darkest subconsciousness — is the best movie villain since Darth Vader. And, somehow, Kenner was able to produce an 18-inch fi gure of the alien, which sold on the shelves (until they took them off the market) next to the Wayne Gretzky dolls at Child World in White City, Shrewsbury. Also, the infamous chest-bursting scene is still one of the most nightmarish, original and unexpected death scenes I’ve ever seen on the big screen. I once met Mr. Chest-Burster actor himself, John Hurt, at the “Love Ride” in Glendale, California. Being a big “Alien” fan and still buzzing from scoring the highest grade in a 400 Level college course “Orwell Seminar: 1984” at Worcester State College (it was still a college back then) and the fact that Hurt was pitchperfect as George Orwell’s doom protagonist Winston Smith, opposite Richard Burton’s O’Brien in his fi nale role, in the last screen version of “1984,” I couldn’t wait to tell him, “I cried when you died in ‘Alien.’” And, Hurt laughed and said, “Yes, me too.” The only complaint at the end of “Alien” was not seeing enough of the alien. But all that changed with James Cameron’s ambitious and original “Aliens” sequel, which is arguably one of the best movies ever made about the Vietnam War (no kidding) and one of the few sequels that is, arguably, better than the original. Leaving the theater for the original “Alien,” everyone thought Jones the cat was pregnant with the alien and that would be a sequel. A better script-writer than director (and he’s an exceptional director), Cameron is too clever for the kitty litter cop-out like that. And not only did he magically build on the “Alien” universe, Cameron gave us more scenes with the alien.
In fact, Cameron gave us a gazillion aliens, coming out of the wall and falling out of the ceiling. And he even had a humongous killer queen alien, which was not only something newly introduced to the movie-goer but the shell-shocked characters in the movie as well. “Aliens” also gave us a memorable platoon of Space Marines led by Cpl. Dwayne Hicks (Michael Biehn), Pvt. Hudson (Bill Paxton) and Pvt. Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein). But my favorite thing Cameron gave us in “Aliens” is Carter Burke, special projects director for WeylandYutani, aka the epitome of corporate slime, played by Paul Reiser. It’s an incredibly evil and ugly change of pace character for the usually likable “Mad About You” actor. Anything after in “Alien” franchise is absolute garbage. And David Fincher should have been deported into dark space after what he did to Corporal Hicks and Newt in the fi rst fi ve minutes of “Aliens 3,” off camera. For some reason, my brother and I both happened to be home, up past one o’clock on a weekday and watching “Late Night with David Letterman” when fi lmmaker John Carpenter was the fi nal guest. Carpenter was promoting “The Thing,” his inspired remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic “The Thing from Another World,” which featured the future Marshall Matt Dillon of “Gunsmoke” fan (James Arness) as a defrosted fl ying saucer pilot with anger-management issues from outer space frozen in the Arctic ice for 100,000 years. After a few minutes of banter with the maverick fi lmmaker, Letterman showed one of the most amazing movie clips I have ever seen to promote a fi lm on television, all hell breaking loose in a dog kennel with some of the most intense special eff ects I have ever seen. When the minute clip was over, Letterman quipped, “So then it’s the story about a boy and his dog. My, my, wow.” Then in unison, my brother and I looked at each other and agreed that we have to see “The Thing” the night that it opens at Lincoln Plaza. And what a movie. Besides the imaginative special-eff ects and suspenseful, tension-fi lled storyline, it is full of killer, crass and very quotable dialogue. Imagine if David Mamet wrote a monster movie, it would be something like “The Thing.” “The Thing” is very much a guys’ movie. The memorable dialogue is rough, the alien transformation scenes are deliciously gory and over the top, and there are too many cool scenes to count. Although it is minus the creatures, it has plenty of blood; the only thing I’ve seen that comes close to “The Thing,” in regards to its chilly, claustrophobic tension and edge of your seat suspense, is another Kurt Russell See SCARY, Page 28
