In space, nobody can hear you scream

One of the all-time great movie tag lines, by the way.

I'm not a fan of scary movies. The whole 'horror' genre leaves me cold, both in books and on film. Not to mention the latest torture-porn stuff, ala Saw and Hostel. Pathetic.

But there are scary movies, and then there are scary movies. Alien combined a great science fiction look with a monster to really sink your teeth into. Or vice versa.

I found out later that there was a person inside the alien suit: one Bolaji Badejo, 7 ' 2 " and thin enough to fit inside and play convincingly non-human. Yes, the alien was not some mechanism like the shark in Jaws. Or all CG.

And I agree with those who've argued that the monster was a lot more frightening in the first movie, when you barely saw it, than it was in the sequels. You didn't know what was going after the crew; that was the genius of the thing.

So we have an unknown planet, with atmosphere so thick you can barely see through it, a bunch of strange eggs, and another alien, but this one with his chest ripped open. Setting us up for the (arguably) most famous scene in the movie: John Hurt not quite getting through his spaghetti dinner.

I can't say too much about that scene; I've seen the movie several times, but always have my eyes covered at that point.

But the alien is only one of the scary things that the people of the Nostromo are faced with. They are, in fact, dupes. They've been set up by the Company, which has sent an android along with the crew, presumably (some of this was a little hazy before the Aliens sequel) to discover potential alien weaponry, biological or otherwise, and return it to human civilization.

This being the part where human beings stupidly get way in over their heads, and possibly a commentary on messing with weaponry that could kill us all.

At the end, only our kick-ass heroine (Sigourney Weaver, on her way to becoming a major star) and the cat survive. She had argued against bringing the alien into the Nostromo in the first place, she had discovered the androids machinations - and now she's in hypersleep, heading back to Earth.