The Home of the Creative Mind

Welcome to PooBahSpiel, the online voice and home of the creative mind of Mark Monlux, Illustrator Extraordinaire. Prepare yourself for an endless regaling of art directly from the hand of this stellar artist. And brace yourself against his mighty wind of pontification. Updates are kinda weekly and show daily sketches, current projects, and other really nifty stuff.

Monday, April 23, 2012

The Comic Critic Reviews Alien

I saw Alien in 1979 when I was a foreign exchange student in Japan. Because we attended school six days a week, the only time I went to the movies was Sunday afternoons. You’d think that the theater would be crowded, but such was not the case because our hamlet got only one new movie a month. By the time I had a Sunday afternoon to myself, Alien had been in town for a while, and I was one of half a dozen people there. Some might describe Alien as a “horror” film, but I classify it as a “terror” film. I remember walking out into the bright sun, my skin still buzzing from the chills and thrills of the movie, feeling very disassociated from the warmth of the day, oddly enhanced by feeling out of my element in a foreign country. I’d felt this way once before. I was eight or nine and had just seen an afternoon television broadcast of The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price. As the blue skies tried to warm the deep chill in my bones both times, I thought, “So this is what it means to have the friggin’ daylights scared out of you.”

5 comments:

P.M.Law said...

Hi Mark-You didn't know this but I was one of the colorists for the Alien graphic novel. No, my name is not on the credits, I was asked to help after that page was all set.... I did most of the really gory stuff...
I was at the preview showing of the movie, my seat was in the back row next to an exit. 3 people ran out that door when the alien popped out of John Hurt's chest.

K.D. Boze said...

"Alien" scared the ever-lovin' cat pee out of me. I saw it at the base theatre at Goodfellow Air Force Base the week it came out. I told people, "I flinched so hard, I think I ended up three rows back from where I started." My heart was in my throat. My pulse was pounding. And I couldn't wait to see what happened next.

In general, the film has aged well and is one of my top-drawer picks to watch again and again. The Christmas-tree light dodecahedron that is the "brains" of the ship is a tacky joke by today's computing standards, but the rest of it is pure cinematic gold.

Kev Brockschmidt said...

I concur with your rating of 10. This is one of my all-time favorites. When I was in Jr. High a bunch of friends and I re-enacted the chest-bursting alien dinner scene as a class project. I made the alien out of foam, painted blood all over it, and attached it to a string so it could be yanked out of the kid's shirt. I really don't know why they even let us do it, but it was fun!

PooBahSpiel said...

I'm definitely going to put this movie in lineup for my next book. Do you have a favorite "blockbuster" that you would like to see included?

Glenn Buttkus said...

ALIEN is certainly one of the greatest of Sci-Fi classics, and the first sequel, ALIEN 2, directed by Cameron is great too. Love you rendition, chuckle. Excited about Ridley Scott bringing out PROMETHIUS.