‘Alien’ Delivers Down-to-Earth Blood and Guts

Some teens have an amazing capacity for gore. Those who do like movies that serve it up by the bucket.

That has to explain why many kids who saw “Alien Resurrection” came away smiling and wanting more. “It was so gross,” said Harold Cribbs, 14, of Tustin. He went on to explain that gross, in this flick, was good; you just couldn’t take a movie seriously that was so into being gross.

“Alien Resurrection” may not have been that scary, but it was interesting to watch, he said.

“They made stuff look pretty real,” added Sara Fonseca, 13, also from Tustin, referring mainly to the movie’s scenes of aliens attacking hapless humans. The creatures, she said, “looked great.”

The movie is clearly too intense and graphic for preteens, even though several parents brought theirs. Nightmares could easily become the second feature with “Alien Resurrection,” but 10-year-old James Albertson of Yorba Linda didn’t seem worried.

Asked whether the film upset him, James shook his head and said he enjoyed it from top to bottom. But does he ever have bad dreams from stuff like this?

“Sometimes,” he said. “They go away after a while.”

It’s interesting to mark the devolution of the “Alien” movies since the first in 1979. That much-praised film, now something of a classic of the genre, had its share of blood and guts but was far smarter than its successors.

The alien was rarely seen, it had far fewer victims, and director Ridley Scott employed suspense as much as violence to hold the audience’s attention.

Since then, the grisly factor has continued to rise. In this, the fourth installment, the series may have reached its peak on the gore scale.

Clara Gutierrez picked up on that immediately. The 15-year-old from Anaheim wondered what a fifth “Alien” movie might be like. “How could they kill people next time?” she asked. “What else can they do?”

Although Clara and others were a bit mystified at how and why Lt. Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) came to be cloned 200 years after her death, they liked the change in her character. This time, she has some alien genes in her, making the good lieutenant stronger and more aggressive.

Clara laughed when asked if the new Ripley is a step forward in the development of women. “She sure was macho,” Clara said.

“I wouldn’t want to fight with her,” Harold added.

One of his favorite scenes didn’t involve any aliens at all. The cloned Ripley enjoys a light game of basketball when not fighting aliens and finds herself in an unfriendly game with a human space pirate. By using some inventive dribbling, she whips him good, which Harold found very amusing.

“I lost it when she [bounced the ball] up between the loser’s legs and he went ‘Ohhh!’ ” he said.

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Parents’ Perspective: Even though some kids thought “Alien Resurrection” wasn’t that big a deal, parents were unable to dismiss its excessive violence as harmless entertainment.

Jess Smith said he made a mistake in bringing his 12-year-old son to a screening. “We’ve seen the videos [of the original and previous sequels], and he took them in stride,” said Smith, of Tustin. “And he didn’t seem freaked with this one, either. But I felt bad after; it was just too bloody.”

Brea resident Heather Doane said she wouldn’t take her kids, simply because she felt the movie is so bad. Gratuitous mayhem and poor plotting do not make for an entertaining experience, she decided.

“If it was better, I don’t think I’d mind taking them,” she said. Her son and daughter, both in their early teens, “could handle this. But I just thought the story was boring, [and] I think they would too.”

* FAMILY FILMGOER, Page 16