8 Films With "Subtle" Messages (That Are REALLY Obvious)
7. Alien
Alien remains one of the few perfect sci-fi horror films. A magnificent cast, great originality, and a compelling, gloomy vision of the workaday life of intergalactic trade. It draws on a lot of ideas, too - exploration, first contact, the unimaginable, un-breachable distance between two predatory species...
It's also, essentially, a haunted house movie. All the elements are there - a small group of bickering victims, an inescapable, constrained location, and an unseen, mysterious threat.
But the deeper reason that Alien works is dread on a sexual level.
Thomas Kane's fate combines many intimate fears, including sexual assault, violent penetration, suffocation, invasion and impregnation. The facehugger grips his head unstoppably, forcing its egg down his throat, and not long after he dies horribly giving birth to a glistening, wriggling, phallic creature.
The grown beast is covered with slimy discharge, and it has smooth, elegant curves on its lethal body. Of course, the beast was designed by oddball nightmare merchant H.R. Giger, who regularly fused dismemberment, distortion, and disfigurement into his erotically charged art.
The morbid, brutal sexuality of Alien is only one element of its sensory assault, but you can't miss it.