Word: alienation
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that classic device of the horror genre, the haunted house. Instead of being a Gothic pile isolated on a bleak moor, it was a spaceship visiting an unwelcoming planet in an obscure corner of the universe. But the situation was the immemorial one: a monster, in this case an alien life-form requiring human hosts for gestation, is stalking the spaceship's endless, ill-lighted corridors, picking off victims one by one. But there was only one creature, six frightened earthlings and little more subtext (or, for that matter, dialogue) to the film than there was to Friday the 13th...
...premise is a straightforward one. As Ripley was drifting through space after her previous close encounter of the unspeakable kind -- a flight that used up the equivalent of 57 earth years -- the alien planet was colonized. But now, suddenly, it has fallen silent. Is it possible that this wild tale of rampaging monsters she keeps telling is true? A party of Marines is sent out to investigate, and Ripley reluctantly accompanies them as a sort of Cassandra-cum-consultant...
...fact, Cameron and the idea, then known as Alien II, met when both were more or less unloved orphans in the industry. The 1979 Alien had turned a good profit for 20th Century-Fox, but not enough to create a compelling desire among the studio's management for a sequel. In any event, various alien life- forms kept coming and going in the executive suite. Some loved the "concept" while others deplored it, citing declining grosses for horror films...
...Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese had done their early professional work. There he also met his future wife, who was Corman's executive assistant. Cameron left in 1982 to direct his first feature, Piranha II. By 1983 Cameron and Hurd had written an original script called The Terminator, and Alien's proprietors were impressed with it. They called Cameron in to discuss another project, about which they could not reach agreement. Before he left, however, Producer David Giler threw out the possibility of working on a new Alien. "I felt like he was digging out an old bone...
Nobody but Cameron, that is. He thought Alien was the best science-fiction horror film ever made, "a high-water mark in the genre . . . There was a total philosophy in that film -- the way the actors were cast, the costumes, the way the sets looked functional and used and a bit grungy, the sounds of clinking chains, dripping water . . . People really believed while they were watching it that it was a true experience...