History Film / Alien

* NeverGiveTheCaptainAStraightAnswer: Ash actually does this to Captain Dallas '''twice''' in fact:

* InLaymansTerms: A slight example. When Ash is trying to figure out how to get the facehugger off Kane, he says something about moving one of the digitals. When Dallas asks "You're gonna do what?", Ash clarifies that he's going to try to move one of its fingers.

* NoGearLevel: The ''Nostromo'' is a freight ship, not a military vessel or even a security vehicle, meaning the crew isn't armed, and have to cobble together what they can from the equipment they have.

* DwindlingParty: The lone alien takes out one under-armed crew member after another.

* LightIsNotGood: [[spoiler: Ash]] wears a bright blue and white Science Officer suit, and turns out to be anything but a force of good.

* SensorSuspense: While Dallas is tracking the alien through the ventilation system. Unfortunately, the sensor doesn't take multiple floors into account.

* BreastAttack: Parker tries to stop [[spoiler:Ash]] from suffocating Ripley. [[spoiler:Ash]] responds by putting his hand on Parker's breast and giving it a painful squeeze.

!! ''Alien'' provides examples of:

** The famous chestbuster scene bears a remarkable resemblence to Walter Gilman's death in [[Literature/TheDreamsInTheWitchHouse the Dreams in the Witch House]].

** The famous chestbuster scene bears a remarkable resemblence to Walter Gilman's death in [[TheDreamsInTheWitchHouse the Dreams in the Witch House]].

* CatchPhrase: Brett says "Right" a lot. Ripley and Parker rib him over it in one scene.
-->'''Ripley:''' Whenever he says ''anything'' you say "right." Like a regular parrot.\\
'''Brett:''' Right.\\
'''Parker:''' Yeah, shape up, man. What are you, some kinda parrot?\\
'''Brett:''' ''[clearly amused]'' Right.

In the year 2122, the crew of the commercial freighter spaceship USCSS ''Nostromo'' sidelines their trip back home to Earth when they pick up a DistressCall from an uncharted moon. While searching for the source of the signal on the moon, one of the crew members is attacked by an alien organism which forcibly attaches to his face and puts him a coma. The next day, [[ChestBurster an alien embryo explodes from the crewman's chest]] -- and rapidly matures into a savage monster. As the alien stalks through the ship, the crew desperately tries to find a way to fight back.

Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon based the film on a BlackComedy sequence from his previous film ''Film/DarkStar'', in which a beachball-shaped alien runs amok on a spaceship and tries to push an astronaut down an elevator shaft. O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett drafted a script called ''Star Beast'' -- later changed to ''Alien'' -- and sold it to Brandywine Productions, who had a distribution deal with [=20th=] Century Fox. Creator/HRGiger designed the Alien, among other elements of the film; his sexualized [[OrganicTechnology biomechanical]] style influences science fiction movies to this day.

** A lot of information about the ''Nostromo''[='=]s crew members exists only in supplementary media. The novelisation also explains why the Company used the ''Nostromo'' to bring back the alien -- as bringing a hostile alien organism to any inhabited world is strictly forbidden, it had to look like the Company had stumbled on it by accident.

* AnyoneCanDie: The characters died in more or less reverse order of how famous the actors playing them were (in 1979) - Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, and even Veronica Cartwright were all familiar to audiences, while Creator/SigourneyWeaver was the only entirely unknown actor in the cast, with just four minor credits. The deaths of the characters felt like a downward spiral, and Ripley's demise seemed inevitable. The tension of the last ten minutes (with the ship's computer voice counting them off) was almost unbearable. Ripley's survival was, for the era in which the film was made, shocking (a ''lot'' of 70s-era horror movies had {{downer ending}}s, and some critics even argued that horror movies ''had to'' have downer endings to be proper horror movies), and until the end credits rolled, the audience still expected the alien to pop up somewhere. This was actually Ridley Scott's originally intended ending -the alien was going to bite Ripley's head off in the shuttle and make the last log entry in her voice--but ExecutiveMeddling insisted that the monster had to die, so Ripley was spared.

** An early draft of the script includes a scene where the crew investigates the ship's food stores, discovering them dangerously depleted as a result of the alien raiding the provisions -- justifying its offscreen growth.

* BigBadEnsemble: The Alien terrorizing the crew [[spoiler:and Ash, who's acting on behalf of [[GreaterScopeVillain the Company]] to ensure the Alien is brought back alive, thus endangering the lives of the crew. The Alien becomes the sole antagonistic force when Ash is destroyed before the climax.]]

* BizarreAlienReproduction: A deleted scene restored in the director's cut shows Ripley finding a nest that the Alien created on the ''Nostromo'' and shows that some of its victims have each been turned into some kind of alien egg. This implies that the alien is capable of asexual reproduction, which somewhat defeats the concept and purpose of the Alien Queen from the sequel, though it might also supplement it by allowing an unaccompanied drone alien to engender a Queen facehugger egg that can then do a proper job of forming a colony.

* CanonDiscontinuity: Of the Director's Cut sort. Since the Director's Cut was never used, Creator/JamesCameron was able to do his own reproductive cycle for the Aliens (Queen-Egg-Facehugger-Drone/Queen) instead of the original (Egg-Facehugger-Drone-Victim Becomes Egg).

* ChekhovsGun: {{Defied|Trope}}. The film was made ''cinema verite'' style. Very little is explained for the benefit of the audience, and it ignores typical screenwriting structure in favor of that documentary feel. Events that happen, like the damage the USCSS ''Nostromo'' sustains on landing, don't contribute much to the overall narrative besides the verisimilitude of life as a space trucker (though it's implied, and made explicit in the novelization, that things like "being blind on B and C decks" makes it harder for the crew to track the Alien), and things that ''are'' important such as the existence of Androids, the ship's self-destruct system, etc. aren't mentioned at all until they're necessary for the plot. The characters just take these things for granted and don't spell them out for the audience's sake.

* ClosedCircle: Barring the exploration of the alien ship on the planet and discovering the space jockey, the film takes place entirely on the ''Nostromo''. It's a fairly large mining ship, but it's also made clear they are ten months away from Earth, meaning help is not coming. The movie doesn't spell it out, but the novelization makes it clear that the ship is designed with the idea that the crew will spend the bulk of the journey in hypersleep, meaning they have to deal with the alien quickly to avoid using consumables they'll need at the end of their journey, adding a present but not pressing time factor.

* ContinuousDecompression: As part of the FinalBattle, when the alien is ThrownOutTheAirlock by Ripley.

* CoversAlwaysLie: A downplayed example. The film poster and the original trailer implies that the alien hatches directly from the large, cracking egg prominently displayed, but the egg is merely a part of the cycle (Egg->Facehugger->Host->Alien).

** Played straight when Captain Dallas goes into the air ducts to try to drive the alien into an airlock and blow it into space as he carries a radio with him to talk to the rest of the crew, and they use a tracking device to let him know the alien is getting closer and closer to him until it attacks and kills him off.

* DeerInTheHeadlights: Lambert suffers from this when facing the Alien. It leads directly to Parker's death and consequently hers, as he can't use the flamethrower on it without killing her off.

** Dallas insists on being the one to go in the air vents to flush out the alien, even though Ripley volunteers.

* {{Hypocrite}}: Ash. He's quite quick to remind the crew [[EncyclopaedicKnowledge of the clause in their contract requiring all transmissions of alien origin to be investigated]], with failure resulting in total forfeiture of shares. Yet as a ''Science Officer'', he conveniently violates Science Division's basic quarantine laws to suit his own agenda. He's a borderline StrawHypocrite also. He disturbingly [[AdmiringTheAbomination admires]] the Alien's hostility, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality. [[spoiler:As a self-aware android he ''hates'' the fact [[ThreeLawsCompliant he's mostly held in check by programmed safeguards]] and adores how the alien is free to kill indiscriminately.]] However, given that he was actually ordered - ''programmed'' - to deliver the alien by any means necessary, this is probably a subversion.
* HystericalWoman: Lambert (Veronica Cartwright). She's by far the most terrified and emotional member of the crew, and [[spoiler:completely freezes up when the Alien confronts her]].
* IfMyCalculationsAreCorrect: Lambert has such a line when calculating the return time to Earth - 10 months. Nobody on the crew is happy with that answer, even though they're all going to be sleeping during the trip. The book notes that the mind operates on linear time making 10 months ''feel'' worse than say, 6, and implies that the crew was looking forward to a summer holiday, which they would miss out on.
* ImpliedRape: Lambert's fate is one of the film's most ambiguous topics. Some claim she died of fright, but her dangling unclothed blood-streaked leg indicates the alien realised what female humans were used as. Even the novelization is discreet:

* MinimalistCast: Only 8 crew members (7 humans and 1 pet cat), and to a lesser extent the Space Jockey, "Big Chap" aka "Kane's Son" the lone Xenomorph Drone, and a computer voice by the name of "MOTHER" appear in the movie.

** The xenomorph's secondary jaws.

* PuzzleBoss: The xenomorph is easily a famous non-video-game and also even {{justified|Trope}} example. The horrifically ineffective nature of the few manmade weapons seen throughout the film necessitates the heavy usage of the general environment against it, ultimately culminating in Ripley [[ThrownOutTheAirlock throwing it out of the airlock]] seen aboard the ''Narcissus'' during the film's PostClimaxConfrontation.

* ExpospeakGag: The gadget Ash makes to track the Alien detects "micro changes in air density". In other words, it's a microphone.

** Used to excellent effect for the infamous Chestbuster scene, subverting the conventions of monster movies and body horror. The first appearance or first attack/victim of the monster in most films will take place secretly in isolated, often dark places, preserving the in-universe mystery until later in the story. In ''Alien'', the violent first appearance of the Alien takes place in a well-lit, group situation over dinner, invoking DaylightHorror and violating what felt like a "safe" scene.

* TheDissenterIsAlwaysRight: Ripley at first seems harsh and wrong for refusing to let the crew in when a face-hugger attacked one of them, coldly citing quarantine procedures. In the end, it turns out she was entirely correct, and had they listened to her : she might not have been the only survivor.

* ChekhovsGun: {{Defied|Trope}}. The film was made ''cinema verite'' style. Very little is explained for the benefit of the audience, and it ignores typical screenwriting structure in favor of that documentary feel. Events that happen, like the damage the USCSS ''Nostromo'' sustains on landing, don't contribute much to the overall narrative besides the verisimilitude of life as a space trucker, and things that ''are'' important such as the existence of Androids, the ship's self-destruct system, etc. aren't mentioned at all until they're necessary for the plot. The characters just take these things for granted and don't spell them out for the audience's sake.