The Prescient Politics of Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ [Horror Queers Podcast]

The Perfect Organism.

After kicking off May with discussions of Stephen Sommers’ The Mummy (listen), Trace and I have checked out Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark (listen) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Gregg Araki‘s Mysterious Skin (listen).

Now we’re crossing a classic title off our list: Ridley Scott‘s Alien.

Alien tells the story of the crew of the Nostromo as they’re awoken from stasis to answer a distress beacon on a nearby planet. When Kane (John Hurt) is attacked on an alien ship, Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) refuses to let Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) and Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) back on board with quarantining.

Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) overrides her command and brings them inside, but as the alien creature on Kane’s face evolves, it becomes clear that there’s more than one antagonist on board the ship and everyone, including Engineers Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), are in danger.

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Episode 283 – Alien (1979)

Grab Jonesy the cat and prep the explosives because we’re celebrating the 45th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979).

This film is all about reproduction and gender (roles) from Sigourney Weaver’s iconic performance as Ripley to the male rape of Kane to the evolving form of the Alien.

It’s also an incredible technical feat, a take-down of capitalism, and a reason why you should never trust Ian Holm when he’s dissecting.

Cross out Alien!

Coming up on Wednesday: After missing it years ago, Trace finally crosses off a bucket list teen girl coming of (r)age film with the Swiss mermaid movie, Blue My Mind (2018)!

P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 311 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Hannibal Season 1 Episode 5, a double feature of Sting and Infested, Tarot and The Strangers: Chapter One. And our audio commentary for the month will be on Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, just in time for its 15th anniversary!