I was 7 years old in early 1979. I guess that would have put me in second grade. My interests were probably limited to Star Wars – drawing Star Wars spaceships, playing with Star Wars action figures, reading Star Wars books and listening to the “movie on tape” version of Star Wars. When not doing any of those things, I was probably reading about space exploration or drawing pictures of fighter planes and tanks. Although I can’t recall many details from that time, I am sure about the Star Wars stuff. I was obsessed. And from the sales figures, I wasn’t the only one. Action figures and toys from Lucasfilm were selling like crazy and Hollywood was trying to follow the success of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a spate of sci-fi films to be released within the year. Battlestar: Galactica, The Black Hole, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and Moonraker were all soon to be relatively well-received in theaters.

For most kids my age, straight up science fiction films were one thing but most of my peers weren’t seeing horror movies yet. I guess I wasn’t most kids because I was pretty preoccupied by shit that scared me. I LOVED watching those black and white horror movies on Saturday’s Creature Double Feature even though they sometimes gave me nightmares. In the summer of 1979 my mother even took me to see Prophecy in the theater (more about that in a bit)!

So, into my world comes this trailer:

Spooky, right? Imagine me watching Diff’rent Strokes with my sister and that comes on…. I thought something was coming out of that egg and whatever it was, it was going to scare the crap out of me. Eventually, I was trained to just cover my eyes and yell “lalalalalalalalalalalala!” at the top of my lungs every time that commercial aired.

Fast forward to May or June of that year when my older-by-a-decade sister tells me that she went to see Alien. Now, this was a long time ago so I don’t remember her exact words but it was probably something like “scariest thing I’ve ever seen”. The sentence “I almost tossed my cookies” may have also been uttered. She assured me that there were spaceships in the story but it was nothing like Star Wars. After putting up with my repeated asking, my mother made the wise decision not to take me to see Alien. However, as I mentioned above, she did take me to see Prophecy. I think she thought the movie poster bore some resemblance to the egg in the trailer for Alien and as anyone who has kids knows, if you can’t get exactly what the kids want, you settle for the next best thing. I got about 4 sleepless nights out of that experience and my mom got several hours of sitting on my bed while I tried to fall asleep.

Sometime not long after, I ran across the novelization of Alien and I guess I figured, since I couldn’t see the movie, I could at least read the story.

You have to remember, these were the days before everyone had VCRs and if you missed a movie during its theatrical release, your next chance to see it was probably going to be the “television network premiere” about 5 years later. I couldn’t wait so I got the book. This was a serious undertaking and probably the longest book I had attempted. Somehow I managed to take the book with me to school so I could read it during quiet time or indoor recess when it was raining. Not wanting to dissuade a student from reading, my teacher glossed over the potentially inappropriate content. The story was slow and I’m sure I didn’t really understand most of what I was reading. I just kept wondering when the scary stuff was going to happen and I never did finish the novel.

During this time, I was also a big fan of the sci-fi and horror movie magazines that were out at the time – Starlog, Fangoria, Fantastic Films, Cinefantastique. I used to go to the comic book dealer who set up shop at the Auburn Flea Market and read through all of them to while away the time as my mother, grandmother and great-aunt tried to sell all our old stuff. These magazines all had advertisements for mail-order (remember, this was way before the Internet!) companies selling books and other movie memorabilia. At some point, I don’t recall whether it in one of these magazines or in person at our local Beacon pharmacy that sold comic books and magazines, I ran across this:

The comic adaptation of the movie looked amazing. Printed on heavy gloss paper, the art was pretty stunning for the time. Googling for this will turn up lots of pages to get an idea of the quality. The dialog was straight from the movie and I think it even included some scenes that were cut from the final release. Finally, the plot of the film was clear to me! On top of that, I got to see the artist’s rendition of the Nostromo and the refinery and all the technology that appeared in the background and added so mcuh realism to the whole movie. I read the graphic novel over and over until I took the next steps down the road to my Alien obsession.

I’m not sure if I got the Alien Film Novel from a book store or if I convinced my mom to order it for me from a mail order company but when I got it I was fascinated. With over 1,000 color frames from the movie, this really was almost as good as seeing it in the theater. Looking at the stills, I could see what the characters look like and really get a feel for the atmosphere of the film.

My next acquisition was the Book of Alien which is basically an “art of…” book by today’s standards. There is some background on the formulation of the story and the creation of the film but it doesn’t go into much detail. The coolest thing from my perspective was the conceptual art – especially Ron Cobb’s amazingly detailed and technical designs that I have already seen from books like The Star Wars Sketchbook. I can recall looking at the photos of the bridge of the Nostromo in this book and the film novel and being inspired by the level of detail.

There were other tie-ins too: alien action figures, trading cards, patches and hats, shirts, etc. Although not as heavily merchandised as the Star Wars franchise, Alien was a pretty big hit and it also struck a chord with me from many perspectives.

I don’t really remember when I finally did see Alien. It may have been on VHS in the mid 80s. I’m not even sure if I had seen Alien prior to seeing Aliens in the theater. It may have been when the Alien Collector’s Edition laserdisc set was released in the early 90s. I really can’t recall. Obviously, I was not let down by the film’s presentation since I have seen it many times since and I still enjoy that the first installment more than any of the others in the series. I even enjoy multiple viewings of the making-of and behind-the-scenes supplemental material on the DVD and recent Blu-ray sets and Dennis Lowe’s very cool Alien Makers series.

There was some unique magic that was created with this film that sparked something within me as a child and still remains as an adult. I’m still obsessed!