Big Screen Classics: Alien (1979)
After investigating a mysterious transmission of unknown origin, the crew of a commercial spacecraft encounters a deadly lifeform. (R, 115 min.)
Showtimes
Wednesday, October 7, 2026
7:00 PM
Big Screen Classics 2026 is sponsored by Hotel Vandivort.
Tickets on sale Sept. 28.
The time is the future. The crew aboard a massive, commercial space vehicle is en-route to earth with a load of extraterrestrial ore when they are sidetracked by mysterious signals from a nearby planet. The signals seem to be calls for help and when the space ship arrives they find a ruined, moldering spacecraft and within it egg-like living organisms. [Disney]
Starring: Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto
Director: Ridley Scott
Genre: Sci-Fi, Horror
"A genuine fright classic."
— Bruce Westbrook, Houston Chronicle
"It's one of the greatest sci-fi movies ever made."
— Jamie Russell, BBC.com
"After 40 years, this sci-fi horror masterpiece still feels lethally contemporary."
— Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
"A movie masterpiece. And on the big screen, the chestburster scene just kills."
— Kim Newman, Empire Magazine
"In its best moments, Alien is as frightening as a nightmare that won't go away after your sleep has ended."
— Clyde Gilmour, Toronto Star
"An old-fashioned scary movie set in a highly realistic sci-fi future, made all the more believable by expert technical craftmanship."
— Variety Staff, Variety
"A sci-fi thriller of palpable, nerve-tingling tension, with Sigourney Weaver -- playing warrant officer Ellen Ripley -- in stunning form."
— Martin Chilton, Daily Telegraph (UK)
"The naturalism of the performances and the dialogue served only to accentuate the horror of the extraterrestrial game of cat and mouse."
— Wendy Ide, The Times (UK)
"Seen again a quarter-century later, we marvel at how the filmmaker generates so much tension and sweat with a bare minimum of moving parts."
— Stephen Cole, Globe and Mail
"Alien is pure and basic horror stuff, exploiting with ruthless simplicity the nightmarish idea of an unreachable, invulnerable and utterly hostile non-human force."
— Meaghan Morris, Sydney Morning Herald
"The narrative runs like clockwork, drawing us slowly, almost gently into the world of the film before unleashing a string of extraordinary, stake-raising shocks."
— Tom Huddleston, Time Out
"The filmmakers have come up with some images that are sheerest nightmare. The film earns its shudders honestly: Scott is too talented to need gratuitousness as a aid."
— Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle
"Scott’s film still shreds nerves... Not the fright induced by monsters with slithering tentacles and rapacious spikes, but the chilled-to-the-bone fear that no one can hear you scream, no matter where you are."
— Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times
Support for the Moxie
Become A Member
