Aliens.

Aliens title

Tag line : This time, it's war.

Aliens Some 7 years after the original, and they FINALLY get round to making a sequel. Directed by James Cameron, 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 aimlessly off course.

Awakened from hypersleep, she finds to her horror that the planet with the alien spacecraft on has since been colonised by terraformers from earth. Her warnings about the planet going unheeded, until one fateful day when contact with the colony is lost.

A group of highly elite space marines are called in to investigate, and Ripley is persuaded against her will 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 to go horribly wrong as the aliens show themselves and all hell breaks loose.

Some 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 with a "bloody great" high powered machine gun, showering himself with alien acid blood in the process, then melting right before the camera. Great stuff !

Completely different in style, and arguably better, than the previous film, being more sci-fi/action than horror. Aliens often, though rather unfairly, gets 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 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 (Hooray !), as there was in the first film.

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

Overall marks : 9/10.

Other Information.

For the theatrical release director James Cameron was forced to cut 17 mins worth of scenes out the film to reduce the overall running time. Many of these were later re-instated for a special edition video release, which has since made its way onto DVD. These included "Newt's" parents discovering the alien space craft, an extended "inquisition" 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.
The part of "Hicks" was originally given to James Remar, but he fell out with director James Cameron and was subsequently replaced by Michael Biehn who Cameron had used in the film "The Terminator".
One of the first "Special Edition" issues in the UK came in a special plastic "Facehugger" case, together with the original "Alien" and "Alien 3", and packaged with a collection of books and production stills, showing the making of each film. But with the pricey tag of £80 (and bearing in mind this was early 90's money we're talking about), this was out of reach of most collectors budgets.
Al Mathews, who played the role of Sgt Apone, was in real life a former marine Sergeant and had served in the Vietnam war.
One scene that was filmed, but not included in any subsequent release of either the original or special edition versions, showed the company rep, Carter Burke, still alive and cocooned in the alien lair. This would have taken place where Riply goes back inside the processing station to find "Newt" and would have occurred right after she finds the locator strap on the floor. Burke sees her and subsequently begs her to kill him as he can feel an alien moving inside him. Instead she hands him a grenade and tells him to do it himself. The explosion right after she frees newt, which forces her to go round into the queens chamber, was originally caused by Burke detonating the grenade.
In the "special edition" release, the picture of Ripley's (elderly) daughter handed to her by Carter Burke was in actuality a picture of Sigourney Weavers mother.
The marines pulse rifle weapons were actually Thompson M1A1 machine guns, the grenade launcher feature was actually a cut-down Franchi SPAS pump action shotgun.
The chest burster in this film differed from the original, in that this version had a small pair of arms, whereas the burster from the original film didn't.
The heavy-duty smart guns, used by Drake and Vasquez, were actually German WW2 MG42 machine guns with drum magazines, and a stedicam harness built around it. The firing handles and switches were actually handle bar grips from a Yamaha motor cycle.
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 cannibalised some of the scores he had previously used on the films Star Trek 2 and Star Trek 3.