Aliens

Alternate titles : Alien 2

Tagline : "This Time it's War"

Some 7 years after the original, and they FINALLY got round to making a sequel. Directed by James Cameron (The Terminator), the story picks up some 57 years after the original, showing Flight Lt. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver reprising her earlier role) being picked up by a deep space salvage team, after her life raft drifted off course.

Awakened from hypersleep, she finds to her horror that during the intervening years, the planet with the alien spacecraft on has since been colonised by terraformers. Of course, her warnings about the planet going unheeded, until one day when contact with the colony is (predictably) lost.

A team of space marines are called in to investigate, and Ripley is persuaded to go along with them. Finding the colony apparently deserted, apart from one 9 year old girl called Rebecca 'Newt' Jordan, who's been hiding in the ventilation ducts, things soon start go horribly wrong, as the aliens show themselves and all hell breaks loose.

Spectacular battle scenes follow, as the aliens and the marines clash. One particularly memorable moment being where one of the marines blasts an alien at point blank range, gets showered with acid blood, and melts right before the camera. Great stuff !

Completely different in style, and arguably better, than the previous film, being more action orientated than horror. Aliens often gets, rather unfairly, lumped in with those clichéd 80's action movies. However, viewed as a horror film I found it refreshing to see the heroes actually putting up a decent fight, instead of just getting jumped from behind down a dark corridor (or somewhere).

There's also a great scene where Ripley clashes with the Alien Queen using a giant power loader, and fans of Miss Weaver will be happy to see there are plenty of scenes of her running around in her underwear, as there was in the first film (Hooray!).

Should appeal to fans of the original, along with Sci-Fi and Horror fans alike.

Overall Marks : 9/10.

Terrifying Trivia

• James Cameron was offered the directors job after the producers were suitably impressed with "The Terminator".
• Apparently, 20th Century Fox executives weren't interested in having Sigourney Weaver return and suggested she be writtern out. But Cameron and the producers stuck to their guns and managed to convince them she should return.
• For the theatrical release the director was forced to cut 17 mins worth of scenes to reduce the running time. These included Newt's parents discovering the alien space craft, an extended scene where Ripley meets with the company's directors, extended scenes showing the marines in hypersleep and later looking round the complex. A scene showing them erecting sentry guns around the ops room and an extended scene where Ripley and Hicks tell each other their first names as she prepares to go after Newt. These were re-instated for the 1991 directors cut VHS release, and can be found on current DVD and Blu-Ray releases of the film.
• James Remar, who had appeared in Producer Walter Hill's earlier film "The Warriors", was originally hired to play Hicks. But he was fired shortly after filming began, after being arrested for drugs possession and details of his drugs habits came to light. He was subsequently replaced, at short notice, by Michael Biehn who had starred in Cameron's "The Terminator". Some scenes with James Remar remained in the film, such as where the marines enter the alien hive, but as he is only seen from behind, you can't tell its him.
• A scene showing Ripley finding Paul Reiser's character, Carter Burke, cocooned in the alien hive  was filmed, but ultimately not used in any release. The scene was finally included as an extra in the 7 disc special edition Blu-Ray box set released in 2010.
• The picture of Ripley's (elderly) daughter seen in the special edition version was actually a picture of Sigourney Weavers mother.
• The marine pulse rifles were actually Thompson M1A1 machine guns with custom casings, with a cut-down Franchi SPAS pump action shotgun bolted underneath for the grenade launcher. The smart guns were actually German WW2 MG42 machine guns, fitted with a flash muzzle and drum magazine, bolted onto a stedicam harness. The firing handles and switches were actually handle bar grips from a Yamaha motor cycle.
• James Cameron and Bill Paxton (Hudson) had previously worked as set decorators on the Roger Corman produced "Alien" knock-off "Galaxy of Terror".
• Composer James Horner was struggling to get the musical score completed on time owing to the excessive time it was taking the director to finish editing the film. As a result, he had to cannibalise some of the scores he'd previously used on Star Trek 2 and 3 to save time.

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