ALIEN: The Director’s Cut – This Weekend at Midnight – Reel Late at the Tivoli

¨It’s got a wonderful defense mechanism. You don’t dare kill it.¨

Oops! I usually get these posts up on Monday but I’ve been on vacation!

Ridley Scott has had a great career and has made many fantastic films, but ALIEN (1979), only his second, may arguably be his best.

It may be one of those films where everything fit perfectly. Direction, cast, visuals, score, atmosphere, editing, pacing. It’s hard to believe it was made 34 years ago it holds up so well. Made two years after Fox’s license to print money after STAR WARS, their next big sci-fi hit couldn’t have been more different. Much like STAR WARS, ALIEN drew on older movies for inspiration, such as IT THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE, PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES, FORBIDDEN PLANET, THE THING, etc. And like STAR WARS, it presented B-movie thrills  with an A-picture budget, treating its material seriously. If you could liken STAR WARS to a cliffhanger serial for modern kids, ALIENis like the old B-movie space monster films for a modern adult audience.

Now you’ll have the chance to revisit ALIEN in all its big-screen glory when it plays midnights this weekend (August 16^th and 17^th) as part of the Tivoli’s Reel Late at the Tivoli Midnight Series! Even better, this will be the ALIEN “Director’s Cut” that actually debuted in 2003. The “Director’s Cut” restored roughly four minutes of deleted footage while cutting about five minutes of other material, leaving it about a minute shorter than the theatrical cut. Many of the changes are minor, such as altered sound effects, but the restored footage does include the scene in which Ripley discovers the cocooned Dallas and Brett during her escape of the Nostromo.

Don’t miss ALIEN this weekend!  I’ll be there with ALIEN trivia and prizes! Be sure to check out We Are Movie Geeks next week when we’ll announce the latest slate of movies that are part of the Reel Late at the Tivoli Midnight Series.