Ellen Ripley Reviews

Played by: Sigourney Weaver

Also appears in: Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997)

Final Girl traits: Female, gender ambiguous name (Ripley), investigative, audience's point of identification, defeats killer, survives

Alien is a sci-fi thriller, not a horror film, but the first film might as well be a slasher with the alien as the serial killer. And Ripley is undoubtedly the gender-bending point of identification, and ultimately the last astronaut standing (er, floating?). Like Evil Dead's Ash, she transitions to action hero in the later films.

Honestly, I never really cared for Roger Corman’s work and I basically saw this movie because there was Jack Nicholson in it. Back then, Nicholson was really at the beginning of his career and he was pretty much unknown at the time but I thought that he delivered a decent performance. Another neat thing about this flick is that apparently a very young Francis Ford Coppola did some uncredited directing here (indeed, even though Roger Corman did shot most of the scenes in 4 days, the second-unit work was filmed over a nine month period by five different directors, Francis Ford Coppola, Dennis Jakob, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill and even Jack Nicholson himself). Furthermore, I think it was the first film I saw starring Boris Karloff. Unfortunately, like I said before, I'm not really a big fan of those Corman productions. I mean, sure, those movies have some charms and it wasn't bad at all but I can't say I really loved it though. Basically, Corman would shot a lot within a couple of days for a couple of bucks, hoping for the best, and fixing the whole thing in the editing room. Still, even though it was nothing amazing, it was still a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you wonder how Jack Nicholson started his career.