Ellen L. Ripley

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Ellen Ripley, Lieutenant and only survivor of the Starship Nostromo  

Film series Alien, © 20th Century Fox, 1979
After this first film, three others were made. Aliens, director James Cameron, Alien³, director David Fincher and Alien Resurrection, director Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Sigourney Weaver starred in all four.
All screenshots taken from the Alien Movie Novel, © Avon Books 

Ripley: Sigourney Weaver. Dallas: Tom Skerritt. Lambert: Veronica Cartwright. Brett: Harry Dean Stanton. Kane: John Hurt. Ash: Ian Holm. Parker: Yaphet Kotto.
Director: Ridley Scott. Story: Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. Screenplay: Dan O'Bannon


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The film is black, dark, moody, terrifying, perfect. Compared to the shiny an fragile looking Star Wars and Star Trek spaceships, this Nostromo is dirty, rusty and massive. It really looks like steel. There are no neat apartments  with pictures on the wall at the inside of the ship. Oil is leaking from seals instead and where a man or woman could find a place to sit, machines surround him or her. They actually put in old bomber equipment in the set. You don't recognize is unless you know these airplanes, but you feel it's real. Not just props. 
Nostromo doesn't speed through space. She ploughs through the vacuum as a steamer through the waves. A big spaceship in a film is supposed to look impressive. And most of the time they do. But when you see for the first time how the Nostromo landing ship, the command module, disengages from the mother ship in order to set in a landing on a hostile planet, that's when you become really impressed. At least I did. And for the first time, there was a really terrifying monster, the alien, designed and made by H.R. Giger. Again, it's a briljant film. 

Ripley was my first real heroine. I knew when I saw the poster with the helmet and Ripley's face behind the visor that this film was special. When I saw the actual film I was almost knocked out. In a strange way everything about the film seemed familiar, and fitting. And there was Ripley of course. Never saw such a showing of determination and anger and fear before or after.  Saw the film 38 times in cinema, often two times at one evening. Even taped the soundtrack with a specially bought little cassette recorder. Have worn out several video tapes too, including an illegal one with not much more  than snow and static on it.
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