“It’s a disaster, people are feeling sick”: This is how this science fiction classic was received at its premiere – Cinema News

Ridley Scott’s classic hit viewers’ memories in the most brutal way possible.

Nowadays, Alien, the 8th Passenger (1979) seems like a lukewarm film in its most visual aspect. Or even elegant, because of how little it shows the monster and the intelligence with which it uses out-of-frame deaths. At the time of its release, however, the film was received in a very different way: horrified spectators and the most sensitive even feeling ill at the cinemas. Those were the times when a film like this or The Exorcist could still make audiences swoon.

No wonder: Star Wars had hit theaters just two years earlier and had established an infinitely gentler vision of the future, of spaceships and alien creatures. In Alien, we see, half an hour after the beginning of the film, a slimy and ferocious creature crosses the chest of what appears to be one of the film’s protagonists and exits to the outside.

Terry Rawlings, editor of Ridley Scott’s film, tells the documentary The Beast Within: The Making of Alien how he saw firsthand the audience’s initial reaction at one of the film’s first screenings: “We arrived at a cinema so luxurious that you could eat on the floor. The sound was great. It was the most incredible premiere I’ve ever seen: people were screaming and running out of the theater.”

The scene of the blow to the chest during breakfast on the Nostromo was too strong for many viewers. Rawlings continues:

The theater management was telling us, ‘This is a disaster. People are feeling sick’. And we thought, ‘That’s great.’

And it’s normal for them to think like this: an impact like this can’t be bought with an advertising campaign. At that moment, the team knew they had a film on their hands that would remain in viewers’ memories. The ingredients of a classic.

*Translation from a partner website of QuandoCinema.

*Stay up to date with news about films and series and receive exclusive opportunities. Listen to OdeioCinema on Spotify or on your favorite audio platform, Join our WhatsApp Channel and be a Card Adorer!