Alien (1979, 20th Century Fox, dir. Ridley Scott, PG-13) may be the greatest sci-fi film other, primarily because of its vision of what an alien world really could look like (Pitch Black from USA also does this), with living spaceships and egg-colonies. The screenplay delivers two big surprises that are logical in retrospect, and the exploding body is only the beginning (the second surprise involves AI). Sigourney Weaver (as Ripley), Tom Skeritt (who explodes) and Ian Holm(as the not-quite human, as if with Asperger's, well not). The concept that the organism could be built right into hardware is fascinating, In one of the less impressive sequels Ripley is given “clippers for her private parts” given the infestation of the entomological alien’s world. Great monsters.
Just remember, in space there is no one to hear you scream.
I remember that this film was heavily advertised in late 1978, as I prepared to move from New York City to Dallas. I saw it at the Medallion Theater in Dallas, when theaters were just getting Dolvy Stereo. I remember standing behind someone who had been horribly burned. I had seen that once before the first time I stepped on a Metro train after returning "home" in 1988 to go to July 4. Those images stay in the mind. But in a carnival in Vernon, TX in 1984, I remember a deformed woman who made fun of the customers who had paid to look upon her as a "freak". Times were different then, and hostile thinking was only then becoming less acceptable when others could detect it.