"In space no one can hear you scream," read the Alien tagline that was fortified by two hours screen time aboard the space freighter Nostromo. Set in motion by the ship's crew being forced to investigate a remote planet, the terror begins in earnest with the probing of another world's surface crags.

On this other planet Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt) finds an alien spacecraft of larger-than-human-life proportions. While speculating on the alien carcass left behind for their inspection, crewmember Kane (John Hurt) is attacked by a parasitic animal that threatens his life. Rushed back to the Nostromo he is looked after by the ship's medical officer, Ash (Ian Holm), until the creature dies and slides of Kane's face.

Seemingly unharmed the crew makes ready to continue their return trip to Earth when Kane convulses during dinner. His chest breaks open and releases a snake-like creature that disappears into the ship's vastness leaving him dead and the crew terrified.

Without weaponry as a mining transport ship, the Nostromo is a city-sized hulk of cavernous storage space. Knowing their survival depends on killing the castaway monster the crew arm themselves with blowtorches and makeshift tools to search room by perilous room for a monster with acid blood and uncanny killing prowess. Lt. Ripley (Sigourney) is then left in charge when the rapidly maturing monster kills Dallas.

Tension mounts and Ash is uncovered as being a cyborg designed by Nostromo's corporate sponsor to maintain the alien regardless of consequences for the ship's crew. Intending the beast as bio-weapons engineering source material, the corporation has in fact written off the crew in exchange for a potential military edge.

Disregarding this corporate mission Ripley sets to destroying the monster with her remaining crewmembers, Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) and Parker (Yaphet Kotto). Together they fail to execute their plan as the alien picks off each of Ripley's subordinates, one by one.

Left alone aboard Ripley takes on the alien, arms an escape module and blows up the Nostromo. Strapped into her seat she then becomes a lure for the monster that has evaded all her plans before finally being ejected from her ship as she sets course for Earth and falls into deep space slumber.

Budgeted at $11 million Alien spawned a four-film franchise that has since earned over $600 million at the international box office. A hit by any twist of box office mathematics the series original grossed $78 million domestically and $104 million internationally, with the first sequel, Aliens, following in 1986 with earnings of $85 and $94 million, respectively. Third was Alien3 in 1992 with $55 and $103 million in gross earnings and a final chapter in 1997's Alien Resurrection that grossed $47 million domestically and $113 million internationally.

Even with these attractive numbers, 1979 was the year of Kramer vs. Kramer as Best Picture winner and a box office take of $106 million among several other notable hits. The Amityville Horror earned $86 million in domestic grosses, Star Trek: The Motion Picture $82 million, Apocalypse Now $78 million, The Muppet Movie $76 million, Moonraker $62 million and Meatballs scored as a comic classic with $43 million.

What distinguished Alien from these other commercially successful titles was its combination of generic patterns and word of mouth popularity that made it an instant, cult-like favorite within circles that could withstand its brief bursts of intense gore and prolonged sequences of tension and terror. Combining elements of the science fiction movie with clear structures from horror films Alien was also an antidote to the relatively simple and clean future worlds proposed by films like Star Wars.

With its creaking space freighter Nostromo playing host to all screen activity once the face hugger attacks, Alien's worldview is decidedly less optimistic than many other cinematic versions of the future. The crew is sharply divided along class distinctions that make Dallas and Ripley clear leaders, Brett and Parker blue collar workers stuck below quarters near the nuts and bolts of the ship's engines with Lambert, Kane and Ash somewhere between employed in variously important specializations. Likewise Nostromo is personified through its on-board computer called "Mother" (voiced by Helen Horton) that greets the crew, conceals the alien threat and partially hinders their efforts at survival similar to Hal's malfeasance in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Partially accentuating the class and gender distinctions is the historical note of how Ripley was originally conceived as a man. Once rewritten as a woman there was a scripted sexual interlude between Dallas and Ripley, although it was never filmed just as Sigourney Weaver, just then starting off in Hollywood, replaced Veronica Cartwright as Ripley.

Originally the directorial vehicle of co-screenwriter and co-producer Walter Hill, Ridley Scott was tapped to direct based on his career in British advertising that had been buttressed by a debut feature in The Duellists in 1977. Adding to Scott's richly produced images and affinity with the moody landscape of the film was the eerily machine-inspired, and highly erotic, creature design of conceptual artist H.R. Giger. Under his guidance the eponymous alien became a monster of unrivalled aggression with three phases of physical development that culminated in an eight-foot tall adult monster with a head molded from the cast of a real human skull.

Beginning with the "face hugger" phase first introduced through Kane's parasite, the alien life force is seen implanting an egg into its host. Figured along the life cycle of the tsetse fly, the implanting face hugger dies once its deposit is made thereby giving rise to the more vulnerable, and spectacular, "chest burster." Once broken free of its host it consumes living pray and achieves its adult size with a characteristically small set of retractable jaws set within a larger pair clasping, razor sharp outer jaws.

Roger Dicken, who designed and operated the face hugger and chest burster props, originally wanted the second phase creature to have hands of its own. It was his feeling that such an invention would cut down on the gore of the film's chest bursting sequence while still heightening a much more horrifying effect.

Regardless of this differing intention, the chest-bursting scene of Alien is one of the most memorable sequences in American movies. Rumor holds that the cast, save for John Hurt who co-starred as Kane, did not know what would happen. In truth the scene had been explained although the specific effects technologies weren't demonstrated in order to ensure spontaneity. As perhaps the most memorable reaction from the sequence, Veronica Cartwright wasn't expecting to be sprayed with blood in Kane's dying moments and is now immortalized on film squirming with terror, confusion and discomfort as the chest burster surveys its meals-to-be and scurries into the darkness of Nostromo.

When given the film's small cast, reliance on futuristic production design and stock scenes employed in countless B-movie horror shows, much of the movie's charm comes from its actors and their largely ad-libbed dialogue. Their world is filled with day-to-day working boredom, internecine tensions and claustrophobic circumstances, all of which are well demonstrated in the first third of the film before the alien encounter. Some years after Alien was released certain other such detailed scenes that were shot but excised from the release print showed up in a special edition.

Originally cut from the film as pace killers these extras include a scene where Ripley finds Dallas and Brett cocooned by the monster. At Dallas's request she kills them with a flamethrower so as to avoid their continued torture. Ripley and Lambert are also seen talking about whether or not Ash has sex and there was an alternative death scene for Brett where Ripley and Parker find him being taken by the alien rather than being simply killed on sight as he is in the finished film.

Not entirely convinced of Hollywood's penchant for optimism, or of the film's scripted conclusion, Scott was reportedly interested in an alternative ending that was more obviously suggestive of a sequel. Accordingly the alien would have caught Ripley in the escape module and killed her only to use her voice in a message to Earth where the monster, like Ripley, was headed. Twentieth Century Fox wasn't fond of Scott's plan so the scripted version was filmed even if this now possibly apocryphal story demonstrates one of the existing strands in Alien fandom since 1979.

Because there is a faceless corporation running the Nostromo's beacon-response to the alien spacecraft, and because this corporation is made out as the truly inhuman villain in subsequent Alien movies, numerous alternative stories exist about how the alien finds its way to Earth. Among the more entertaining stories is the intersection of Alien and Predator mythologies whereby an alien race of sport hunters (Predator) pursues the double-jawed monster on Earth as an accidental ally to humankind. Since the late '80s such a comic book has existed with an accompanying script that has shuttled through Hollywood looking for the right combination of talent and money to enact on-screen.

The lasting effect of Alien, aside from the active life it has enjoyed as a legend for other pop cultural creations and as the source of its own franchise, is the way it scared moviegoers of 1979 to the very core of their being. People emerged from the theater with a sense of being violated from the inside out just as the face hugger did its dirty work to destroy a living host in a most disagreeably painful way. Then there was real fear about things going "bump" in the night and there was considerable praise for the way the film's hero ends up being a heroine.

Gore and left leaning gender politics aside, Alien was also spectacularly successful in making its setting the physical manifestation of dread. Darkness is everywhere along with smoke, odd shadows and the filth of technocrap discarded for its uselessness and piled high as the safe haven for an alien killer. Jerry Goldsmith's score is ominous, suggestive and tension building with bursts of sound to accompany chaotic action along with near silence in moments of perceived safety. The cast also exists in their roles as three-dimensional people despite a narrative requiring nothing more than cardboard cutouts.

The film is a clinic in directorial style based on rather broad horror genre tropes with the look and feel of science fiction movies. As such there was a lawsuit filed against the filmmakers by A.E. van Vogt who claimed they plagiarized his 1939 story "Discord in Scarlet" that was incorporated into his 1950 novel "Voyage of the Space Beagle." Though the lawsuit was settled out of court it does suggest a startling lack of original thinking at the level of plot and story even within the equally startling originality of the film's form and mood.

As far as a good bang for your buck goes Alien is a largely unprecedented carnival ride well worth the time spent reviewing it in its entirety. Filmed with Panavision cameras and lovely to the eye, it's a movie worth seeing, experiencing and fearing, especially among similarly minded fans willing to scream out loud when it's appropriate.