Directed by Ridley Scott (1979).
Written by Dan O'Bannon.
Starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerrit, John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto, Veronica Cartwright.

The crew of the Nostromo, a space mining vessel, are returning to Earth when they receive a distress signal from an apparantly uninhabited planet. They go to investigate and one becomes infected by an unknown and malicious creature which then escapes onboard their craft...

Alien is Ridley Scott's masterpiece of horror and suspense, brilliantly shot and with solid characters this is no gore-fest, the alien of the title is not even seen until towards the end. Instead Scott focuses on the characters and their inevitable fate of being picked off by the creature one by one.

The art direction and creature design are impressive as are the cast and Alien was to prove such a success that it 'spawned' (groan!) several sequels, the only notable one being the second - 'Aliens' which is an all-out action movie directed by James Cameron (1986).