October 2011's Space Babe is
Sigourney Weaver as Warrant Officer Ripley in director Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi Gothic,
Alien. As portrayed by the then-relative newcomer, the strong-willed Ripley proved to be the ultimate survivor, not only escaping from the clutches of the titular extraterrestrial xenomorph, but going on to thwart its toothy brethren in three sequels. Of course, most of us here at
Space: 1970 remember her primarily for her scanty panties at the original film's conclusion. Shame on us.
Born as Susan Weaver, the tall, striking brunette has appeared in a number of genre films, but has also garnered considerable acclaim as a serious dramatic actress. Among her sci-fi/fantasy credits are the aforementioned
Alien franchise sequels, the
Ghostbusters films, James Cameron's
Avatar, Paul, and the delightful spoof,
Galaxy Quest, which poked good natured fun at the kinds of TV shows we celebrate here at
Space: 1970.
I was one of the lucky handful of kids in my junior high who got to see ALIEN when it first came out, thanks to being friends with a kid whose step-dad was willing to take him and his friends to whatever R-rated movies we wanted to see in an effort to ingratiate the kid to him. That move eventually proved a failure because the step-dad in question turned out to be a rotter, but ALIEN blew my mind at the time for being one of the rare space movies of its era that was not a STAR WARS-influenced space opera. Truckers in space? Absolutely, plus who knows what kind of dire life forms they might encounter? And if you ask me, Ripley was the logical next step up from Princess Leia, namely the tough and pragmatic space heroine who had a brain. LOVE HER.
ReplyDeleteGreat pic of her! That's the look I think of when I think "late 1970's"... she looks rather like a few women I actually knew back then. (Granted, they didn't all wear jumpsuits; usually jeans & t-shirts, but the hair and light makeup seemed 'normal' to me back then, and thus helped that character seem more real to me.)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, I was lucky enough to have a grandma that worked at a printing company... she got me a copy of the Alien photonovel, which I read & re-read many times before I got to see the actual film a couple years later. (I got the Heavy Metal comic adaptation years after that, though I'd looked through it at the local bookstore when it was still on the sales shelf.)
Sorry about the seemingly random flood of memories relating to Alien.
Um... back to Sigourney. I saw a clip online of some early test shots of her interacting with Dallas. These are literally test shots, not delted scenes, and as far as I know, didn't appear anywhere on my old Laser Disc special edition of Alien. I wonder if they're on the dvd? (If I can find a link to the clip, I'll try to post it later.)
CR
Nuts... the clip I mentioned had been at YouTube, but it was removed for copyright violation.
ReplyDeleteI had originally stubled across it on a Space: 1999 forum, where someone had linked to it because the test clip used footage of the derelict spacecraft from the S99 episode "Dragon's Domain"... that part of the clip starts out with a clapperboard clearly marked ALIEN being held up in fornt of the large S99 model, and then a nice beauty pass is made of the ship. The rest of the clip featured a test scene between Dallas & Ripley, wherein Ripley removes her shirt at the end! (Relax, guys, the 'panty shot' that actually was in the final film showed more flesh, so you're not missing anything.)
CR
The "panty shot" at the end of Alien was my fathers favorite part of the movie. As a child I never understood why... :/
ReplyDelete