n space, no one can hear you scream. That's too bad, as the seven crewmembers of the massive mining vessel Nostromo, on its way back to Earth, are awakened prematurely from hypersleep by a distress call from a remote, supposedly uninhabited planet far from home.
Setting down on LV-426, a rocky planet with a hostile environment, the Nostromo sustains some damage, disabling it for the time being. While the bickering mechanics Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Stanton) begin repairs, mission commander Dallas (Skerritt) orders a team, including Lambert (Cartwright) and Kane (Hurt), to investigate the source of the SOS signal. Science officer Ash (Holm) will monitor their progress. Dallas leaves warrant officer Ellen Ripley (Weaver) in charge.
Dallas and his team stumble upon an unearthly sight: what appears to be a massive alien spacecraft, derelict and ancient. "I've never seen anything like it," Ash says dispassionately.
Inside, the team discovers more wonders: the huge remains of an alien pilot, killed by some kind of eruption from his chest. And more bizarre: a field of egg-shaped leathery objects, resting beneath a humming blue mist.
Kane lowers himself into the egg chamber, where he discovers that something is alive inside the objects. Peering over one, he is attacked suddenly by something horrible.
Rushing back to the ship, Dallas orders Ripley to open the door. She refuses, citing quarantine protocol. But Ash overrides her order, opening the airlock. Kane has a clawed, leathery creature fastened firmly to his face. When Ash tries to cut it, a noxious liquid oozes out, drips onto the floor and begins to eat through the bulkhead. But that's only the beginning of the horrors.
Changes aren't great, but the movie still is
Alien: The Director's Cut comes on the heels of successful anniversary releases of classic films such as E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial and The Exorcist. Such reissues are an obvious attempt to cash in on a valuable property—sometimes with unnecessary enhancements (a la E.T.), sometimes in a version that heightens the original film's effectiveness (The Exorcist)—but they nevertheless offer audiences a chance to relive (or see for the first time) these classics as they were meant to be seen.
In this case, audiences have a chance to re-experience this mother of all alien/haunted house movies in its full cinematic glory. Seeing Alien again on the big screen, a viewer is struck by the beauty of Scott's exquisite visuals, the groundbreaking production design, Jerry Goldsmith's haunting score and, especially, the creep-inducing sound design, enhanced here in a new, six-track digital stereo mix. The viewer also has the pleasure of watching a well-told, well-acted story unfold with suspense and deliberation, something that would not be tolerated in today's climate of frenetic cross-cutting and MTV-influenced quick edits.
That said, viewers should not be fooled into thinking they will be seeing a radically transformed version of the movie, as with Scott's earlier "director's cut" of his seminal Blade Runner. While that movie was considerably revamped to remove meddlesome studio "improvements," Alien: The Director's Cut is almost identical to its original theatrical release back in 1979. The only changes are the cleaned-up visuals, enhanced sound and the addition of only six minutes of new footage. Otherwise, Scott has imperceptibly tinkered with his scenes: shaving an entrance here, leaving a scene a few beats earlier there.
The new footage adds a bit of edge to the movie that may not have been tolerated back in the 1970s. In particular, a fight between Ripley and Lambert is allowed to play out a bit longer, resulting in actual fisticuffs. The most notable addition is the final "nest" sequence, in which Ripley discovers Dallas' ultimate fate. Scott cut the scene in the original release because he felt that it slowed down the final climax. Viewers may disagree. (An interesting note is that the scene appears to posit a breeding mythology of the alien species that differs from the one established as canon by James Cameron in his 1986 sequel Aliens.)
