As a kid, we had a VHS player for the sole reason of taping one thing on one channel, whilst watching something on the other. Which was pretty common back then. I had a habit of looking through the paper to see what was on and then setting the channel accordingly and sneakily setting the button to record before heading to bed. Then I'd get up at 5 in the morning and sit and take in the forbidden delights of late night TV before anyone was even up. I saw many of my favourite films for the first time that way. One of those films was James Cameron's Aliens. Aliens being an action, SciFi, Horror wasn't something that I found to be scary, it was quite simply awesome. However I was aware that it was sequel and my quest began to repeat the trick and find original. I tried every week, scanning the paper in the vague hope that the first film would be shown and after months of hoping, I found that it was on. In Wales. sigh. I was ready to give up, when I was talking to a friend at school one day and he boldly stated, "My mums got it".
A crew of a towing ship awaken from their hyper sleep to a distress signal from an alien planet. They head down to investigate only for one of them to be attacked by as strange alien creature. They bring him back on board only for the alien to die and later erupt from his body and disappear into the ship. The crew are now trapped with a hungry alien monster they try and survive in the confines of the vessel deep in outer space.
I remember the sleepless nights after, It doesn't make much sense now as it was an alien... from space, but the idea of the creature terrified me. It could be its well thought out organic lifecycle or its horrific eyeless appearance, but it gave me nightmares for a long time. See what Cameron did for the military genre in Aliens, Ridley Scott did for the haunted house genre in Alien. It works on so many levels, but the main one for me being that quite simply, in space no one can here you scream.
See You tomorrow
MJ
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