BEFORE: Of course, I've seen "Alien" and "Aliens", but then sort of had a falling-out with the franchise. Perhaps I had a falling-out with movies some time around 1992, which is essentially when I started working a full-time schedule. It's taken me this long to try and get back on track... Maybe I just felt that the "Alien" movies were veering too close to horror movies, which is not usually my cup of tea.
THE PLOT: Ripley continues to be stalked by a savage alien, after her escape pod crashes on a prison planet.
AFTER: Now HERE is where you should use that tagline "Man. It's what's for dinner." It would sure beat the one they went with - "The bitch is back." Are you referring to the alien queen, or to Sigourney Weaver?
Actually, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) does act pretty bitchy in this one, but she sort of has a right to. At the end of "Aliens", it looked like things might work out and she might have escaped from the monstrous aliens - of course, we, the audience, know better.
Her escape pod lands on a prison planet, and she's the only survivor. Unfortunately, it's a prison-like mining colony, full of men who are double-Y chromosomed, so they're extra manly. Which of course means that they're all thieves, murderers and rapists, who haven't seen a woman in years. However, some of them seem to have forsaken their evil ways and formed something like a religious cult, which includes a vow of celibacy. Makes sense, if I were in a prison full of burly men I'd want to be celibate too.
Of course, where Ripley goes, an Alien nemesis is sure to follow, either as an egg or one of those crab-shaped thingies, and what we learned in the first two movies still applies - they grow up/adapt very quickly, hide in ducts and airshafts, and love to snack on humans. Actually, they seem to kill more often than necessary for their own survival - you'd think they would treat the humans more like a food source (Ripley makes a lion vs. zebras analogy at one point) and space out their meals, but I guess the filmmakers want to cram as much gross alien snackage into the film as possible.
More bad news - the prison colony doesn't have many weapons (other than the occasional shiv, one presumes) so the ex-cons have to make do with fire-axes, welding equipment, and other mining tools. Did I mention it was also a mining outpost and refinery? Yeah, that turns out to be significant.
The big question - can Ripley and the miners defeat the alien before the "rescue" ship arrives? Ripley assumes that the ubiquitous "Company" that she works for would rather capture and study the alien instead of killing it, so she works hard to keep it out of their twisted corporate hands.
I could have done without the nauseating "alien-cam" footage, where you see the alien's P.O.V. as it runs across the ceilings of the corridors, chasing down its meals. But other than that, I thought it was an OK continuation of the franchise. Online reviewers don't quite seem to agree...
Also starring Charles S. Dutton, Lance Henriksen, Pete Postlewaite.
RATING: 5 out of 10 sliding doors (6 for story, minus 1 for excess gore)
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