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The “Godfather” of science fiction/horror movies, Alien showed the world what a scary space movie should be. Sigourney Weaver stars in her first meaningful role as Ellen Ripley, a lieutenant on a mining ship who is awakened with her crew from a cryo-sleep long before they reach home in order to investigate a strange distress signal from an unidentified world. The movie is suspenseful, terrifying, and beautifully filmed (for 1979 it was far ahead of its time and outshines more than 95% of the movies of this genre that came afterward).
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The “alien” referenced in the title is a magnificently adapted, vicious survivor who gets on board Ripley’s ship and begins taking out the crew one by one. The size of the ship; the scale of the production; and the dark, tropical, sinister atmosphere of the entire film make it one of the best cinematic experiences ever brought to the screen.
The sequels include Aliens (about a doomed rescue mission sent to the alien world), Alien 3 (about a deep space penal colony that our heroine crashes on during her escape from Aliens), and Alien Resurrection (a rather tongue-in-cheek extension of the Alien franchise that looks at the U.S. military’s failed attempts to harness the aliens as weapons for its biodefense systems). All of them star Sigourney Weaver, which is good for continuity’s sake, though if the makers of these films had known ahead of time how successful they would be, they might have cast a lead actress that was a bit more of a hottie. Still, Lieutenant Ripley is a complete badass, so that more than makes up for it in my opinion.