"I admire its purity."

Where have all the good suspense movies gone?

A couple weeks ago I watched Alien again. As far as I’m concerned it is the quintessential suspense movie. Ridley Scott practically defined terror through suspense in his heart-stopping film about a terrifically evil Alien. And although the title character is the basis for the film, it only gets about a minute of actual screen time. When you compare this with today’s so-called ‘suspense’ films, well, there really is no comparison.

I have to agree with Alfred Hitchcock in that there is a distinct difference between ‘suspense’ and ‘surprise’. And I would also agree that most films continually confuse the two. Hitchcock uses the bomb analogy. Suppose two characters are having an innocent chat at a table. And suppose there is a bomb under the table, but neither the characters, nor the audience are aware of it. Nothing happens, and then all of a sudden ‘BOOM!’ The table explodes, the audiences screams, surprise is achieved.

Now let’s go back to the same situation but this time let’s tell the audience that the bomb is there. Perhaps the audience saw the bad guy place it there. And let’s allow the audience to see that the bomb is set to detonate at 1:00pm and let’s put a clock on the table. Now show the audience the same scene with the clock showing 12:45pm. That’s suspense.

The key is in having the audience become active participants in what is about to happen. They yell at the screen, telling the characters to stop talking about such trivial things, for there is a bomb under the table! And if the director is really good, like Ridley Scott, that bomb can go off and the audience will still be shocked and surprised, even though they knew it was coming.

Think of the air vent scene in Alien. We know the alien is in there. We’re even given a motion sensor showing the alien’s progress toward Dallas, the unfortunate crew member searching the air vent. Other characters are yelling that the alien is there. We know it’s coming. And yet when the moment happens, it’s pure terror. Why? I have a theory.

The unique concept of the Alien is that we really have no idea what it is. We hardly even know what it looks like. Granted, recent Alien films have shown us exactly what the alien looks like and how it acts. But when all we had was the first film, all we knew was that there was an alien…and that was about it. Ridley Scott knew what Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew – the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. The most terrifying part of a movie is terror itself. All Ridley Scott did was give us something to be terrified of, then he promptly hid it, rarely revealed it and never gave us any details into the motivations or workings of the alien. The rest was up to us and our own minds.

Most of my friends will tell you I’m not a big fan of horror films. It’s not that they scare me, it’s that they don’t scare me. They bore me. Sure, they probably have great moments of surprise and shock, but nothing has ever really lived up to the standard set by Alien. Granted, that could have a lot to do with my age at the time.

I first saw Alien when I was 10 or 11 years old. I was visiting family in Ontario and while staying at my Grandpa’s house I slept on the couch in the basement. This was totally cool for me because the couch was right in front of the TV and after everyone had gone to bed I could stay up late watching television. What a rebel I was!

One of the shows I discovered during my late night viewing was Alien. I had never seen it before then, although I had certainly heard about it. I caught the movie about half way through, right when Dallas is making his ill-fated journey into the air vents. Needless to say, I was scared silly. But I could not turn it off. I even had recurring Alien nightmares. But every time it was on TV I just had to watch. It terrified me and it was fantastic.

Sadly, the initial terror has long since worn off and I no longer have nightmares about aliens. But if I could go back in time and watch it again for the first time I would be overjoyed. Terrified, but overjoyed.

So the combination of innocent youth and the scariest suspense film ever created, in my opinion, were enough to effectively spoil my appreciation for any other movie claiming to be ‘suspenseful’ or ‘terrifying’. There just hasn’t been another movie like Alien. And sometimes I despair there never will be.

For now, I’ll just have to take pleasure in watching other people view it for the first time. Oh man, I can’t wait until I have kids.

In space, no one can hear you scream. But you can still read 'Alien' trivia.