ALIEN (1979)

"The bottom line is: You already know whether you want to embark on this redundancy mission without hearing a peep from me. Just know, it's watered down and blasé at this point, but fun nontheless. I personally feel it's better than the original cut."

- B. Alan Orange

(3/5 Stars)

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Hell Mission Statement #25541:

I don't need to pay someone to plant my image in the media. If you don't know who I am, then you don't need too know. Natch.

Is this still coming out? I haven't seen any ads or trailers touting the fact. Did they dupe the world's worst critics into watching another childhood dream drown in the seas of wretchedness? Possibly. The dude with the beach balls, Purple Clog Man, "I wrote an episode of Quantum Leap" Lady, and SJR were all there, so yeah…Maybe they did. (This shock-core group looks like Cocytus' own bizarre version of the Wizard of Oz. Belial sh*ts you not.)

I have it on good authority that Tupac is going to resurrect himself from the grave this Halloween Eve. Thus proving once and for all that the man was never dead, only hidden away in some marketing genius' desk drawer. It's to coincide with the release of his remix album that's currently molesting shelf space as we speak. Yes, he's throwing his busted black ass back to the masses. He's CGI'd in some of those less attractive character traits with cartoon-like buffoonery and added a whole new back-story to his resume, just like Too Short did when we were kids. It's supposed to be "the" event of our spook-sparked season. The very next evening, Ridley Scott is going to dig up his own unsoiled backyard and toss a few untilled seeds into those unsightly plugs of dirt. You guessed it, the man is going back to his visionary well one more time in a last ditch effort to screw up every lasting endeavor. This only begs one question…

Why do they have to go and ruin our favorite shows?

Would you pick a piece of chewed gum covered in pubic hair out of a urinal and stick it in your mouth just to see the new Star Wars or Matrix movie three months early? Maybe. It all depends on how big of a cinema fangeek you are. Would you do it for an advanced screening of Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien? Of course not. You've already seen it. 100 times. 25 years later, it holds the same intense thrill quota as saying the f*ck word. It's watered down and blasé at this point, but fun non the less. Though it fails at extracting any newborn screams, it still holds true as a legendary horror epitaph. Doesn't matter; today's ADD riddled cinematic society won't have the patience to sit through the monotonous opening shots. And its scare tactics are about as affective now as Vincent Price's The Fly was when Alien originally opened to quivering audiences.

The only reason they're throwing this blockbuster back on our big screens is to show us just how yellow teeth were back in the days before White Strips and Night Effects. Each actor smiles, showing off glorious chunks of cheddar cheese. It's possibly the most frightening aspect of having this back amongst theater seats. And the late-70s interior of the spaceship does little to justify it as a viable enterprise worthy of re-instating itself amongst its peers. All the little blinking lights, and the ionized walls, and the shag carpeting, and the 186 computer that runs an entire city-wide ship is pretty laughable and better hid on a twenty-inch television screen. Don't get me wrong. This seat is spiked with ease, and I love the last forty-five minutes of it. But the thing, steeped in 70s folklore, reeks like folds of antediluvian foreskin. It's a black and white classic up there with Frankenstein's Monster and the Wolfman. It's harmless.

The frights here are origin plot points that have been utilized and vandalized to the point of exhaustion. We know what to expect at every twist and turn. Each "boo" concerto is so big and extracted, there's not a lot of depth behind them once you've watched the movie 20 times. That fact alone renders this vehicle a little less proficient then when it first cracked open its egg in buckets of sliming ooze and battery acid. "No one can hear you scream in space" is a great tag line. They don't come up with one-liners like that anymore. Nor do they make genuine movies like this. It's from another era all together. And for me, it plays better on the small screen. Alien is basically the Egg Boards worst nightmare, and its reappearance at the Maitreyaplex might account for all the EB commercials we're seeing at this current point in time.

Don't get me wrong.

This isn't your usual hyped-up regurgitation of a classic. Ridley Scott doesn't rape his material in a means to squeeze out one more quarter. There are no added CGI effects pasted in and glued on top of his material. Nor are there any added scenes that were originally excised like the now infamous "Spider-Walk" feverishly spit back into The Exorcist, or the Han and Jabba dialogue reenacted for Star Wars: A New Hope, or the notorious E.T. takes a bath. If you own the Alien DVD release, you know there any number of hackneyed, dreadful, abandoned moments to choose from that might attract interested viewers, but anyone willing enough to go out of their way to see this at the theater has probably already seen any available extra tidbits. And they instinctively understand that none of them would work in the context of making this a better visual story.

Both Steven Spielberg and George Lucas ruined once great thematic works of literature and turned them into something ugly and unwanted. Scott's smarter than that. Sure, he's got the scene where Ripley, Ash, and Lambert discover a Kid 606 album playing on the mysterious facehugger planet of origin (Good god, that doesn't sound like any radio signal I've ever heard), and the scene where Lambert bitch-slaps Ripley and knocks her about the ship. Thank God Ridley gratefully skips over these obtrusive mess-ups. What is added comes short and sweet, generating neither length nor nausea to the proceedings at hand. Duct taped back in is one quick glimpse of the Alien dangling from rafter chains moments before he kills everyone's favorite Dream a Little Dreamer Harry Dean Stanton. And there is an added quick glimpse of the Nostromo crew glued within a slime cocoon moments before Ripley jettisons herself into the lonely reaches of outer space. I say this doesn't add any additional length to the film itself, because what Scott has done here is very smart. Possibly the smartest thing I've yet seen done with a motion picture that's previously played to larger audiences. He's trimmed several frames off of almost every cut. This works in making a tighter, more dexterous project without loosing any of the film's original integrity. It doesn't compromise the piece in the least bit. Sure, the beginning comes on as protracted and monotonous as it always has, but once the momentum starts to gather, this means of shaving off a few strayed edges is a masterstroke that actually works. As far as "Director's Cuts" go, this is one of the best retoolings offered up as of late.

Still, that doesn't mean I want to pay twelve bucks for it. I've seen the movie too many times. And, oddly enough, I've never seen it on TV, even though I own the DVD. It seems widely available in theatrical form. In fact, I saw it last Halloween somewhere near Garden Grove, before I died. It only cost me two bucks. I enjoyed it more. This current release is all shiny and new, each of its frames scrubbed-up and given that protractible blowjob. 20th Century Fox wants to insure longevity; but there's just something honest and reassuring about a print pockmarked with green scratches and muddy audio. That textural age waxes the gates, creating this off vibe. It's like seeing a hidden treasure covered in grateful dust. For me, that's the better experience. This new sheen looks like a street corner beggar harassing us for a few more coins when his cup is already overflowing in a waterfall of George Washington heads. I mean, we pay to see it at the theater. Then we fork over another nineteen bucks for the DVD. And this is after we've already spritzed the thing with dollar bills over the course of two decades. They're pretty much nailing us time and again. That's a scam, plain and simple.

In purchasing the golden ticket, I'd rather see Greg Beeman's 15th Anniversary Director's Edition of License to Drive. The quest rests within which version he's more willing to stand behind? The original theatrical cut or the video release that sees some minor changes in dubbing and over-score? That's the mystery of the century. And, oh, those glorious deleted scenes. Remember, in the trailer, when Feldman gives his desertion about the joys of getting your license outside Shakey's pizza? I want to see that back in the film. In all honesty, I'd rather have the Coreys highjack my well-earned loochie than Ridley Scott. That just goes to prove one thing. I'm gayer than any science fiction faggot with preordered Return of the King tickets. I'll gladly take that cut to the lip. Thanks.

The bottom line is: You already know whether you want to embark on this redundancy mission without hearing a peep from me. Just know, they didn't really screw with this one too much. I personally feel it's better than the original cut in its new, tasty slimness. Go ahead and call blasphemy, bitch…

That's your prerogative.

An added bonus this week: With last Tuesday's release of the Indiana Jones series, DVD's top ten most wanted list has seen almost every film to life in digital bits with the exception of Star Wars and the OT. That's why, fondly remembering License to Drive, I've come up with a new "Top Ten" most wanted DVD list. Here it is; we've gotten Back to the Future and Grease laid onto the format, let's help push these to the other side…

10) Pufnstuf the Movie
9) Young Einstein
8) License to Drive
7) They Call Me Bruce
6) Night of the Lepus
5) Alex Winter's Freaked
4) Scavenger Hunt
3) Terror Vision
2) Little Darlings
1)TIE: Super Fuzz & Rubin & Ed

F*ck, I really am gay. Maybe that's why Mark Walter Day keeps asking me to picnic at the City of Dis.