Monster Week: Loving the Alien

It’s 1981. I’m a sophomore in high school, sitting in somebody’s basement watching a VHS of this movie I’d somehow missed a couple of years ago, when suddenly, there it is: that steamy, goopy, translucent egg. Sure, it’s not much to look at, but what’s inside grows up to be — why not, this is my blog post– the best movie monster ever.
Thank you, Ridley Scott and company, for Alien. You gave us the perfect creature for my generation, the attention deficit disorder monster. It’s an egg, it’s a facehugger, it’s a chestburster–no! It’s a floorwax and a dessert topping. It’s the Swiss Army Knife of scaring the crap out of you.
After it explodes from John Hurt’s chest and heads for the steam tunnels (don’t all spaceships have steam tunnels?), you never get a good look at it. It seems to be evolving between scenes. Whatever is hiding in the shadows, you know it’s going to be much worse than you imagine. (Of course, the opposite is true: anything you can’t see is much worse in your imagination than when it steps into the light.)
Yet they also make sense. What other monster has such a well thought-out lifecycle? Watching an Alien movie is like sitting down for a really good Discovery Channel episode–one, say, where the meerkats spit acid and hunt humans. You root for these gals. You want their babies to find a warm chest to incubate in.
The grown queen is the scariest of all. When you see that extra jaw slide out… Wow. It’s the triple Lutz that clinches monster gold. Who else can compete with that? Don’t talk to me about Predators. Predators are Rastafarians in Boba Fett suits. And the classic movie monsters are left in the dust. Unlike mummies, the Aliens are fast. Unlike vampries, they can’t be reasoned with. And unlike werewolves, they aren’t adorable when combed.
You can’t stop Aliens with curses, crosses, or silver bullets. Mostly you just die, and hope you’re one of the leftovers when Ripley saves you.
Now, some of you out there (my wife), may point out my attraction to these monsters has been affected by my attraction to Sigourney Weaver. This is true. Watching Ripley go mano-a-mano with the queen is a guilty pleasure, like watching one of those Girls in Prison movies.
The only flaw with the queen and her brood is that they’ve been tagged with a completely generic name. Just… Alien? Why not just call it Monster? Or Oh My God it’s Going to Eat Me.
Ah, who am I kidding? An alien by any other name would still make me wet my pants in fear.
–d
When not urinating uncontrollably, Daryl Gregory writes science fiction and fantasy. His first novel was Pandemonium, and his most recent is The Devil’s Alphabet, both from Del Rey Books.