Alien (franchise) (allthetropes.org)
A multimedia franchise and the first to successfully combine science fiction with Body Horror and actually make it scary, instead of cheesy. The franchise spans several comic books, video games and foremost a tetralogy of films, each with a different visionary director and all starring Sigourney Weaver.- Alien (rogerebert.com)
At its most fundamental level, “Alien” is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in “Jaws,” Michael Myers in “Halloween,” and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks’ “The Thing” (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see “Alien” in embryo.
- Alien (film) (Wikipedia)
Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O’Bannon. Based on a story by O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, it follows the crew of the commercial space tug Nostromo, who, after coming across a mysterious derelict spaceship on an undiscovered moon, find themselves up against an aggressive and deadly extraterrestrial set loose on the Nostromo. The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. It was produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions, and was distributed by 20th Century Fox. Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The Alien and its accompanying artifacts were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the more human settings.