Ridley Scott’s Alien has become one of the most acclaimed and influential horror movies ever made, but Scott was influenced by even earlier horror movie masterpieces. Scott is a master of genre filmmaking: he brought the tropes of film noir into the distant future in Blade Runner, he revitalized the swords-and-sandals epic with Gladiator, and he combined the spectacle of science fiction with the terror of a haunted house in his gory spacebound slasher Alien. But even a pioneer like Scott had to find his inspiration somewhere.
Alien was one of the earliest films to legitimize the horror genre. Before Scott came along and delivered his groundbreaking masterpiece, horror films were considered to be schlocky B-movies with very little artistic merit, usually produced by the likes of Roger Corman. With the endlessly rewatchable Alien, Scott took a B-movie premise and turned it into an A-movie with atmospheric filmmaking, high-caliber acting, and a chilling sense of dread. As far as Scott is concerned, there were only three great horror films prior to Alien.
What Ridley Scott Considered The Best Horror Movies Before Alien Released In 1979
Scott Lauded The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Omen, & The Exorcist
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In the bonus features for Alien: Romulus, there’s a featurette called “Alien: A Conversation,” in which director Fede Álvarez talks to Scott about what it was like before releasing Alien in 1979. In this featurette, Scott mentions that, in his opinion, there had only been “three really good horror films” before he directed Alien: Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Richard Donner’s The Omen, and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist. Scott describes these movies as “perfect engines of fear and terror” that delivered things that audiences had never seen before.
Scott describes these movies as “perfect engines of fear and terror” that delivered things that audiences had never seen before.
These are three bona fide horror masterpieces. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre doesn’t have an ounce of fat in its runtime, slowly building dread in its first three-quarters, then paying it off with relentless terror in the climactic dinner scene. The Omen takes the sweet, harmless experience of raising a child and puts a terrifying spin on it as the kid turns out to be the Antichrist. The Exorcist depicted the Devil in a more realistic way than audiences had ever seen before, and it created a cultural phenomenon.
How Ridley Scott Fought For Alien To Be A True “Horror Movie”
Studio Executives Thought The Movie Was “Too Violent”
Scott also reveals in the featurette that he had to fight for Alien to be as scary as it is. Studio executives didn’t like the design of the xenomorph, but Scott fought to keep it. They also thought the movie was too violent, to which Scott hilariously countered, “It can’t be too violent — we’re doing a horror movie.” A lot of the elements that Scott fought for increased the audience’s curiosity to keep going back to the theater, which made Alien a hit. If the executives had gotten their way, Alien wouldn’t have been nearly as impactful.
Source: Alien: A Conversation
