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Film Reviews Horror

Alien3 (1992)

Hey, a movie from 9 Deuce! I have the lowest of low expectations because horror was not very good in the early 90’s by and large. It was mainly sequels….like this is. Now we find ourselves with a cast not so great….on the surface. Sigourney returns as Ripley. Lance Henriksen returns as Bishop 2. We have Charles S Dutton, who has done a lot of cool roles, but he’s far from an A-Lister, and I really like the guy. He plays Dillon in this film. Then there is Charles Dance, better known to the modern audience as Tywin Lannister in Game Of Thrones, plays the role of Clemens. Pete Postlethwaite, better known in Usual Suspects as Kobayashi, plays the role of David. Yeah….not a lot to work with. This is considered a step down in the franchise, but David Fincher directed this, and he also did Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, and Gone Girl, so he has a good head on his shoulders. Let’s watch and enjoy the ride, hopefully.

We see Ripley sleeping, as is tradition. Her ship is freed from the big ship, and it falls to a planet and lands in some water. She has landed in Fiorina 161 Class C Prison Unit. Lucky her? Some guys find her and try getting her out. There is a lot of alien good it looks like. Hey, the guys have a dog! One of the people is still alive, Lt Ellen Ripley. It looks like Newt is dead, as is Hicks. Bishop is there, but not awake. The dog is barking at something in the ship, and sure enough, it’s a little parasite alien, or little guy as I like to call them.

Shit, everybody is bald and has bar codes on their bald head. All of these guys have done a vow of celibacy.  They don’t want anybody messing with her until the rescue team can take her, but you know some of these guys want some poontang. I love seeing young Tywin Lannister! She goes to inject her, and she wakes up. She has questions. He is giving her a stabilizer. He tells her that she should shave her head due to a lice issue. He tells her that the others didn’t survive. She is nude, asks for clothes. None of these guys have seen a woman for years. This place does stuff with toxic waste containment. He brings her to the wrecked ship and we find out what happened to everybody. She sees some alien residue and asks to see the girl.

The man finds his dog, and apparently, he had been missing and the dog is hurt pretty badly. Clemens brings Ripley to the morgue to see Newt. Ripley wants to do an autopsy on Newt, but Clemens insists that she drowned. She says that she has a very good reason, possible contagion, and she lies and says cholera. Well, Clemens will do it for her. No sign of infection or disease. Time to check the chest, and Clemens is looking at her fairly incredulously. They crack the chest and see that she was drowned in the fluid. He asks her what they are really looking for. 2 guys come in and ask him what the hell he is doing, they are in charge. Ripley says that they need to cremate the body, and the boss is like, nope, keep the body on ice. Clemens says that it would be unwise to not avoid a possible outbreak.  They get permission to use the furnace, but man, he runs a tight ship so to speak.

The dog is acting weird while they are giving the dead a nice funeral service. The poor dog is spazzing out. It is obviously infected as we see the transformation. That poor dog. Dillon gives a really nice eulogy. And a full alien is out of the dog, while the shell of the dog lays there.

Ripley has shaved her head, good for her. It’s weird that Sigourney has done so many nude scenes in film, but never in the Alien franchise. She comes down to the cafeteria after her shower and all the guys are scoping her out. This isn’t gonna end well. She thanks Dillon, but Dillon says that he is a murder and rapist of women, trying to be a tough guy. She decides to sit down anyway. Dillon says that they state anybody, even the intolerable, but this temptation is a bad thing.

Clemens tells her how Dillon and the rest took up religion about 5 years ago. When the company wanted to close this planet down, Dillon got them to let them stay as custodians and Clemens as the medical officer. He asks her what she was looking for in the little girl. She doesn’t give him a direct response. Some dude is cleaning and singing a song and steps in the shedding of the alien. He then notices a hole and sees something, so the alien strikes, the guy goes tumbling through a huge fan and is dead.

Ripley slept with Clemens, way to go Clemens! She tells him that she had a horrible dream in hypersleep, and glad that it wasn’t true. And now she broke rules fraternizing with a prisoner, but he says that he is not one. She asks why he has the bar code, but he says he will explain later. He gets called to check on the accident. The head guy is Superintendent Andrews, so we know that. It was Murphy who got killed. Aaron feels guilty for giving Murphy that job. Clemens is investigating and sees weird crud on the floor. Andrews wants to see Clemens in his chambers.

Clemens tells Ripley about how he found a burn mark just like the one in Newt’s tube, Newt is the girl in case you were wondering. He is insistent on finding out what she is looking for. She wants a computer that can read the audio files on the flight recorder, but they don’t have such a thing. She inquires Andrews is pissed at Clemens because he got a call from the higher-ups, and they haven’t gotten a call in years. Andrews says “We all know what you are” and threatens to let Ripley know who he really is.

Ripley goes to her wreckage and gets Bishop, well what’s left of him. Of course, 3 guys go to get in her way, so she turns around and walks away and they walk after her. She is surrounded and getting bent over. Dillon comes to the rescue and uses a stick or pipe and beats the fuck out of them. He says that he needs to re-educate some of the brothers. I liked that scene.

3 guys are trying to figure out where they are and why their candles are getting blown out. So the one guy goes on his own. A candle goes out.  He is standing next to a puddle….and a big boy. Bog boy gets him and the other guys make a run for it.  They go up these drainage pipes. They get to a door that looks sealed shut. They find their dude by the door, and he dead. The black guy is looking around while the other guy gets close to the dead guy and big boy gets him from the ceiling. The white guy ran off.

Ripley is working on trying to get Bishop up and working. She has him barely working. She asks him how he feels and he says that his legs hurt. Haha. He notices the haircut. She asks him to access data on the flight recorder. There was a fire in the cryogenic chamber. The fire was electrical. She asks if there was an alien on board and he says yes. It was with them all the way. The company knows about this. He asks her to disconnect him as he will never be top of the line.

They bring the white guy in for questioning about the bodies. Andrews wants to sedate him, but Dillon says not until they know about the brothers. Andrews thinks that this guy killed the brothers. Dillon sticks up for this guy. The guy claims that it was a dragon, and Ripley wants to talk to him. Andrews is being a condescending dick. She tells Andrews about the alien, and he doesn’t believe it. Andrews says that they have a few carving knives and fire axes, all in this maximum-security prison. Ripley says that they are fucked. Andrews wants her quarantined.  She asks Clemens if there is any way off, but there’s only a supply ship every 6 months. She still won’t tell Clemens about the aliens. She is apparently getting sick.

The white guy starts talking to Ripley. Clemens closes the curtain. They ask if she is married, and she asks why. She wants to know why he is there basically. He prescribed the wrong dosage of painkiller which caused an accident that killed 11 people. When everybody else stayed, he decided to stay. He also has an addiction to morphine. An alien comes up behind Clemens, white guy is restrained the bed. Clemens is dead. Big boy is after Ripley. He shows her his teeth and then leaves her alone. She runs away. Golic is the white guy, glad I got that name!! Andrews wants to set out a search party for the 2 missing guys. Ripley tells everybody that the alien is there. He says she is crazy and wants her escorted back to the infirmary, and the big boy picks up Andrews from the ceiling.

They are trying to figure out who the next leader should be. Dillon wants Ripley to be. She says that the other previous aliens didn’t do well with fire. Lots of arguing, then they calm down and decide to strategize. So they start looking at maps. She figures out the proximity of the eggs. No batters for lights, but torches are a possibility. There is a door that is 6 feet thick door, and Ripley wants to trap it in there obviously.

Dillon is giving Ripley shit about the plan and why they should help, and she is like, either way, you are fucked, so you may as well help.  They are going to lure it down a pipe and seal the door. I bet this plan goes through flawlessly. A guy going up a ladder finds Big boy at the top. He dead. The guy drops the thing that ignites all the stuff that they have been spreading, ya know, this plan of theirs. It went poorly. Now it is a blazing inferno in there. They finally get the sprinklers on and well, it’s a mess.

They are finding all the dead bodies. Aaron is all pissy. Ripley is clearly ill. More bickering. Dillon says to round up everybody. Ripley goes in her cryo bed. She is getting bio scanned. There is something about foreign tissue type in her. There’s no surprise there. She wants no help to arrive for fear of spreading it. Aaron won’t let her send word back to stop any possible rescue. She decides that she is going to go find it. Obviously, with one living in her, that’s why Big boy didn’t touch her. Evac team is on its way in 2 hours, but they want acknowledgment that Ripley is to be quarantined.

Ripley goes in search of the alien. So she is near it obviously based on all indications. She has a metal pole. She jabbed a hole in a tank and let out a bunch of tiny bugs of parasites. The alien drops down, but won’t hurt her. She says that it is a queen, which is an egg layer. She talks to Dillon and she asks him to kill her. She says that she can’t survive the alien anyway, so she needs to be killed. Dillon says that he is up to it. She stands against a prison door with her back to him. He hesitates. He won’t do it. He needs her to help them kill it. Smart dude. After they kill the alien, then he’ll kill her.

He gives a speech about going to kill the alien. Everybody makes fun of Aaron only having an IQ of 85. Dillon is calling the guys pussies for not wanting to help. They wonder why the company won’t supply them with guns. Ripley says that’s because the Company wants this thing alive. She explains how her ship was expendable, how the marines were expendable, and these prisoners sure as fuck are. Dillon gives a great speech. I like Charles Dutton a lot.

The plan is to lure the alien and then use a big piston, which will push it into molten lava or some shit. We see an alien eating a dude, and now it gives chase to some dude, so they are trying to seal off the doors. Well, we have discovered that the alien can slice through a door. Dillon is getting pissed at people not following orders, so he is leaving Ripley to go looking. This whole thing is a mess to describe quite honestly. The ship has landed by the way. The alien is picking off guys every 2-3 minutes. Dillon saves one of the guys from the clutches of it. Well, he dies. The alien is near Dillon and Ripley. Somebody pre-emptively started the piston, so Ripley gives chase. Another dude is dead. The evac team is slow as shit.

Aaron greets the evac team. They are interested in finding Lt. Ripley. 2 guys bump into each other, have a good laugh, but one gets got, and the other crawls and finds Ripley. She has a torch. She is just yelling at the Alien to get out. The alien put the torch out. She grabs a tentacle. Dillon is dragging Ripley and that pisses off and entices the alien. SO he drags her to the piston. All Morse has to do is hit the switch. He finally does. The evac team looks like nerdy badasses. Dillon won’t let Ripley stay and die until the alien dies first. Dillon is gonna stay down and they are going to pour the lead. Dillon is talking shit to the alien and fighting it. Morse finally pours the lead. Ripley and Morse and Aaron may be the only ones left alive. We have some triumphant music. But the alien jumps out. Of course, it does. Morse is trying to give her directions from afar. So she does some swinging Indiana Jones shit and pours more lead on it and she is hanging on to this chain. It’s all a tad silly to be perfectly honest.

The evac team makes it to the furnace. They find Ripley and Morse. She tells them to stay where they are. There’s the real fucking Bishop. He is human. He says that they want to help her by taking the alien out of her. He says that they want to remove it and kill it, not hurt her. Lance is looking good here. She asks for a guarantee, and he says that she has to trust him. She says no. One of the guys shoots Morse in the leg. Aaron attacks Bishop and bashes him in the head. A guard shoots up Aaron of course. She leans back and drops into the molten lead. The alien pops out of her chest. All I see are some really shitty looking flaming clouds. That looked so fucking awful.

The Evac team leaves and escorts Morse out. He lived!!! We hear Ripley’s signal from the very end of the original. We see a transmission about how the place is being sealed off and the equipment sold for scrap. Glad Morse made it out alive.

End film.

Sigh…..I remembered really disliking one of the films. Yeah, it was this one. It was just bad from the get-go. Do you realize how frustrating it is to describe people when 80% of the cast is a white, British bald guy? Yeah. So I think Dutton and Dance were really great, especially Dutton. Everybody else was pretty forgettable, as in, come tomorrow, I may only remember Morse. The deaths were nothing spectacular. It was almost more sci-fi action, without the horror or any real attempt at horror. The claustrophobic presence wasn’t here for the most part. It was too well lit, too much shit happening. I’m very disappointed with this one, and it sounds like a new Alien movie is being made that takes place after Aliens, possibly to rectify this garbage.

Final rating: 5.1 only because I would watch it again during a marathon, but bitch about a lot of it after Clemens died.

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