40th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

‘In space no one can hear you scream...’ — but in 4K HDR, you’ve at least got a better chance of seeing what’s hiding in the shadows. And as for that chest-burster scene...

To complete our all-science-fiction collection in this issue, we finish with the classic 1979 film Alien. Yes, it’s also a horror film, but if science-fiction is about exploring ideas in technology, space or science, this does that aplenty too. The alien creature might be out to eat all the humans, but how does it’s life-cycle work? This movie thinks about these things, and is faithful to the science... mostly. If there was any mention of the artificial gravity in the Nostromo, it escaped me.

And as a horror film, it’s immaculate. The horror consists in both the building of tension, and its fruition. It becomes apparent that Ripley — Signourney Weaver — is the main protagonist. Will she survive? In one of the two commentary tracks on this disc, one of the commenters describes how he and Ridley Scott watched lots of successful Aand B-level horror movies to ensure they got the pacing and beats right. They did. Sure, by today’s standards the pacing is perhaps a little deliberate, but that allows us to better dwell on the intricacy of the sets.

If you really want to know about Alien, it’s worth going through both commentary tracks. The 1999 track is only on the theatrical cut, while the 2003 track is on both that and the director’s cut. Both tracks include Ridley Scott, but also others from the cast and crew. Not

everyone agrees with everyone about everything. For example, the whole science officer sub-plot — I don’t want to give anything away if somehow, unaccountably, you haven’t yet seen the movie — was a late addition. Scott thought it important. Someone else felt it lifted the whole third act. He thought that after the famous John Hurt scene, that act may have been a let-down. But Dan O’Bannon has a little rant about how it was added after he finished the script, how he didn’t agree with the use of what he called ‘Russian spy’ additions to storylines. He derived his name from the Russian spy in Fantastic Voyage and attributed that kind of thing to an obsession with subplots.

‘So,’ he concluded, ‘I think it’s an inferior idea of inferior minds.’ But he conceded that although he disagreed, the addition was ‘wellacted and well-directed’.

I think he’s wrong. It adds another level to the movie, one in which the misfortunes aren’t just bad luck, but involve a degree of malice by unseen manipulators.

Of course, the movie has the usual problem of older movies: today we have technology which is far advanced over much of the stuff shown on-screen, while it has other tech far advanced over what we can do. But none of that stuff is hokey, so I don’t find it at all off-putting.

Apparently others agree. With an IMDB score of 8.5/10, Alien presently stands at #52 on its list of top rated movies. (Aliens, the James Cameron sequel, is 8.4 and at #69. I wonder if we’ll see a 40th Anniversary edition of that in 2026.)

The picture quality is almost entirely unimpeachable, although the 20th Century Fox logo is briefly disheartening. It’s incredibly grainy, and the brass fanfare is mono, just about as grainy, and seemingly limited to the Academy sound bandwidth. But that makes the eerie opening of the soundtrack sound even more impressive by comparison.

And the picture. There are few movies in which low-light detail is more important. The bulk of it takes place in dark spaceship corridors, or the dark tomb of a crashed alien spacecraft. Inadequate presentation — especially crushing at the dark end of the scale — would have half the screen occupied by featureless blackness throughout much of the movie. But this movie was rescanned at 4K specifically for this presentation, and processing was performed on a 4K digital intermediate. If there were defects in the film, they’ve been cleaned up. But not offensively so. There’s a light smattering of grain, particularly across the lighter scenes, the faces and uniforms of the characters in the dining area, for example. This does not detract at all. It

merely reminds us that this was a movie shot on film — with anamorphic lenses, so the full resolution of the film was available.

Clearly some of the cleaning was automated, though, and where automation occurs, errors also appear. So towards the end (around 1 hour and 41 minutes in) as Ripley is making her way down the dark corridor, with warning lights and white strobes flashing, ‘steam’ bursts spurting (apparently they use CO2 for those), a brightly lit section of corridor beyond Ripley flickers and squirms awkwardly. It’s only a small part of the picture and may not be noticed by those not looking directly at it. Presumably it wasn’t intentional, so I guess it slipped past quality control.

I should add: this movie is presented in HDR10+. That’s an enhanced version of HDR10 and it includes metadata for sceneby-scene adjustments, similar to Dolby Vision (but it doesn’t have Dolby Vision’s 12 bits of colour depth). My TV doesn’t support HDR10+ so this review is limited the nevertheless incredibly impressive presentation in standard HDR10.

The sound is very impressive... for 1979. The movie is provided with a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track (I’d estimate 24 bits, judging from the average data throughput), but also 4.1 and 2.0, both also in DTS-HD MA. The 4.1 track is for the original 1979 version only, and it would seem to replicate the main release soundtrack (which was in Dolby Stereo). There was also a six-track version on limited 70mm release.

Even on the 4.1-channel version — that’s left, centre, right and surround — there’s impressive use of the surround field, fully encompassing the listener. If you have DTS Neural:X turned on in your AV receiver, you’ll enjoy the tinkling of chains overhead shortly before the demise of one of the characters. The only real weakness by comparison with more modern movies is that the depth and power of the bass is relatively inhibited. If ever there was a movie calling for a nearinfrasonic, very disquieting throb, this is it.

Also on the disc: the theatrical score without the effects and dialogue, and also the original composer’s score, again, sans effects and dialogue.

Plus there’s the 2003 ‘Director’s Cut’. There are a few changes, but nothing huge. Ridley Scott was reportedly very happy with the original Theatrical cut. It’s unclear whether the disc has both movies in full or uses seamless branching. I’m guess the latter because the video bit-rate seems to be mostly up around 60Mbps.

Also on the disc are nearly seven minutes of deleted scenes, presented in the same picture quality as the main presentations.

ALIEN 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION 1979 – Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment South Pacific MOVIE: PICTURE: SOUND: EXTRAS:

DIRECTOR: Ridley Scott STARRING: Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto RUNNING TIME: 117 minutes RESTRICTIONS: Rated M, Region Free UHD BLU-RAY DISC

PICTURE: 2.39:1, 2160p/24, HEVC, HDR10+, BT.2020 SOUND: English: DTS-HD Master Audio 3/2.1; English: DTS-HD Master Audio 3/1.1; English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2/0.0; French, German, Italian, Spanish: DTS 3/2.1 @ 768kbps; Spanish, Czech, Thai, Final Isolated Theatrical Score (79 version only), Composer’s Original Isolated Score (79 version only): Dolby Digital 3/2.1 @ 448kbps; 2 x Commentary: Dolby Digital 2/0.0 @ 224kbps SUBTITLES: English, Spanish, French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Cantonese, Czech, Mandarin, Korean, Polish, Thai; 2003 commentary: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian; 1999 commentary: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian

EXTRAS: Resume, Bookmarks, Movie - Director’s Cut (2160p - 116 mins), 7 Deleted Scenes (2160p - 7 mins)