40 Years Ago Today: Link (1986)

Although relegated to limited theatrical release and near obscurity afterwards, director Richard Franklin’s Link (1986) is an effectively made and ingenious horror film that deserves to be better-remembered and, indeed, championed.  

The film depicts a tense battle for superiority, pitting man (or woman…) against ape in a remote English estate.  A sort of simian version of Psycho (1960), Link ponders a very specific question:  Does possessing “civilization” make man inherently superior to apes? 

Or, contrarily, is civilization a mere construct that can be picked up or put down as easily as one takes off a dinner jacket? 

Is civilization a strength, or a weakness?

Throughout the Franklin film, when the titular chimp (played by an orangutan…) prepares to commit murder, he removes his tasteful jacket, as though noting that, simply, civilization has its limitations, and therefore, at times, must be ignored. 

Link the ape wears civilization as if is a suit, but does not internalize its value.

Cleverly, Link presents three important “rules” that -- according to Terence Stamp’s anthropologist, Dr. Phillips -- must dominate man’s interaction with chimpanzees.  But then the film diagrams, in harrowing detail, what problems those rules can cause for both man and beast.  

After all, rules or laws are part and parcel of “civilization.” And yet by the same token rules, to some degree, establish boundaries that demand testing. Link tests those boundaries in his human “friends” and masters, and possesses a tactical advantage in the sense that he can avoid civilization all together simply by taking off the aforementioned jacket.

Humans, it seems, have a much more difficult time shedding this construct.

Buttressed by a superb final act which features a climax (and chase) of virtually unbearable suspense, Link explores man’s perpetual fascination or obsession with simians, and at the same time notes that civilization is both man’s greatest handicap and greatest virtue.

“The little monster’s been getting out at night…”

A zoology student in London named Jane (Elisabeth Shue) petitions Professor Phillips (Stamp), a prominent anthropologist, to serve as his assistant. With a semester break coming up, Phillips agrees that Jane can work at his remote estate, on the sea, as his assistant.  

There -- over the objections of her boyfriend, David -- she will prepare his meals, clean the house, and help him look after his chimps, including old Voodoo, baby Imp, and the intelligent “domestic,” Link.

Upon her arrival at the house in the country, Jane is unprepared for Phillips’ hostility and cruelty towards the animals. He plans to euthanize both Voodoo and Link, and tells Jane the hard and fast rules for dealing with the apes.  

However, Link soon turns the tables on Professor Phillips.

While Jane attempts to understand, precisely, the simian politics of the house, Link goes on a killing spree, and lays siege to the house and its occupants.

“You just have to let them know that they are forgiven…”

Writer Everett De Roche, Richard Franklin’s frequent creative collaborator, sets down three rules for man/ape interaction in Link.  

These are: 

1. Man is the dominant species, so he must never treat the apes as equals.

2. Man’s anger must never escalate. He must always forgive the apes, no matter what they do. The apes must know that they are forgiven.

And, finally…

3 Man must not get involved in inter-ape squabbles, instead letting them work matters out for themselves.

Notice that, in a curious way, all three rules establish the same thing: man is in charge, and ape is subservient, inferior. 

Rule one establishes dominance, but so does rule two, in more nuanced terms, because it is man who has the capacity (and responsibility) to forgive, not the apes. 

The third rule, meanwhile, establishes that ape matters are beneath the interest of man and therefore to be ignored. Their affairs are not man’s concern.

Phillip’s Laws as we might call them overrule the law of the jungle, and demand that man act, constantly, as a deliberate superior to his ape friends.  

Amazingly, clever Link develops a way around these rules. He kills Voodoo (settling a squabble his own way), and is constantly seen demanding forgiveness, no matter how radically he transgresses, or what crimes he commits.  

If humans must always forgive, then Link can always simply extend his hand in supplication, no matter his trespass. Link realizes he has an out for any act that could get him in trouble: Rule #2.  He doesn’t realize that Dr. Phillip can break his own rule by offering not forgiveness, but a final solution: murder of the transgressor.

Yet if Link sees a way around the rules, he is not exactly deceitful in nature. By contrast, Phillips’ stock and trade is cruelty, and he plans to kill Link essentially because the animal has grown too smart; too knowing. 

At least Link has the decency to remove his jacket when he gets down to murder, an affectation that Phillips doesn’t observe. He never casts off the face of civilization, though his act (homicide) qualifies as barbaric.

But Link is a clever movie, in part, because it establishes a film-long conflict between man and ape on all fronts. One early scene sees Jane pitted against Imp in an IQ test, and she nearly loses. The message is that intelligence is not the sole purview of man.  Intelligence is not the thing that separates us, then, and Link’s dialogue informs us that some apes have IQs as high as 85.

Another scene suggests that man is separated from ape by his capacity to make war. The movie undercuts that notion as well, and tells a story of a chimp “war” in Tanzania in 1979.

In the finale, Jane realizes that the only way to defeat Link is to trick him, and she does so by exploiting his understanding of Phillip’s Laws…of civilization itself. Link knows that he will be forgiven for his trespasses, including smoking.  

So Jane starts to discipline him, pre-emptively, for smoking a cigar near a lit gas pilot light in the kitchen.  Knowing he won’t face permanent anger or discipline, Link lights up the cigar, demonstrating his belief in his own superiority.  

Instead, he blows up the house and loses the war.

Watching Link again for the first time since 2005, I was struck by how similar the film is, in a sense, to Hitchcock’s Psycho.  

The setting is an isolated house with a very similar interior on the first floor, and the murderous individual (in this case Link, not Norman Bates) has an established routine for disposing of visitors (dumping cars not in a swamp, but over a rocky cliff, Oceanside).  

Furthermore, the villain is psychotic, one might surmise, due to a betrayal from a parental figure. Norman poisoned and killed his own Mother when she turned her affection away from him.  Link kills his father when he recognizes Phillip’s betrayal.  There’s even a bathroom scene here, with Link peeping at Jane as she is about to take a bath.

Link is more straightforward a film than Psycho is, in many respects, but both films trade on the notion that not everything is what it seems on the surface.  Phillips boasts a darkness to him that seems to bring about Link’s violent fit, and so a key question remains: is Link acting out of self-defense, or out of blood-thirstiness when he commits murder?  Norman’s activities, likewise, come out of the need and desire to emotionally protect himself from his mother’s death.  His murders are a form of mental self-defense, you might say.

One innocent figure in Link is the baby chimp, Imp. He is carried about on Shue’s shoulders throughout the film.  She reads him bedtime stories, and he is treated, essentially, like a human baby.  

This innocent is unencumbered by rules or knowledge of them, and suggests a blunt course of action.  “Kill Link,” Imp types into a computer.  

Jane responds that murder is “is not the way civilized people behave,” but ultimately, Imp is right.  Imp suggests the same course of action as Dr. Phillips does, but Imp gains audience sympathy because of his innocence, and because of his nature as an animal…one who understands instinctively what Link is capable of. Link, who has figured out how to game the rules, must die, because he keeps crossing lines of decorum or civilized behavior (murder, primarily). 

Link is a great horror film, dominated by a number of great, almost sub-textual touches.  Early on, the film Blonde Venus (1932) is seen on a television, and shows footage of humans dancing with a gorilla (or a person in a gorilla suit).  Underneath the suit, Marlene Dietrich is revealed at one point.  So Dietrich removes her “costume” as a beast to reveal her civilized, human self.  This act is the precise opposite of Link’s in the film. He takes off his human suit to reveal his murderous, uncivilized, animal side.

Similarly, the lead character here is named “Jane,” and we associate that name explicitly with Jane in the Tarzan stories, and Jane Goodall, a famous primatologist and anthropologist.  In all these cases, Jane is a figure who is something of a go-between, moving between the human world and the ape world.  That is, not coincidentally, the role that Shue’s Jane plays here.

Finally, I love that Jane reads Imp the story of The Three Little Pigs in the film, because the last act literalizes the story, with Link as the Big Bad Wolf outside, trying very hard to make his way inside the house.  

A formalist like Hitchcock, Franklin surpasses his earlier film work in Link by staging some remarkable and expressive shots during the movie’s final battle. After Jane picks up a shot-gun and shoots at Link, Franklin stages a gorgeous shot through the bullet hole in the kitchen door.  

Later, he stages an extreme high-angle shot from above the second floor balcony, and follows Link’s pursuit of Jane, Imp and David up the stairs, around the ledge, and into a locked room.  The effect is exhilarating, as the long-shot provides viewers the full terrain of the battle, and offers no fakery or trickery.  A sense of space and time -- and therefore danger -- is brilliantly preserved. While so many films sort of wind-down or creatively peter out in the third act (see: Explorers [1985]), Link delivers the thrills.

For some reason, audiences got a lot of “ape”-based horror movies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Link, Monkey Shines (1988), and Shakma (1990).  

I’m a big fan of Romero’s Monkey Shines, but even so Link remains, in my eyes, top banana.

40 Years Ago: Vamp (1986)

Writing for The Richmond Times Dispatch, movie critic Carole Kass termed Vamp (1986) “sleazy, tawdry and disgusting.” Oddly, those are some of the very reasons I enjoy this film so much. The film is absolutely all those things, and, I would argue, delightfully so.

But the reason Vamp worked in 1986, and still (largely) works four decades later is that the film boasts a goofy big-hearted sense of humor.

Although I am not one of those horror fans who insists that the genre today is dead or even in trouble, I do believe that the quest for gritty authenticity has, in some way, driven the horror genre away from humor.  By contrast, the mid-1980s represents a great time in the horror cinema precisely because efforts such as Return of the Living Dead (1985), Fright Night (1985) and yes, Vamp, all walked that uneasy line between horror and comedy. Fright Night and Return of the Living Dead are better films, but Vamp is stylish, and boasts a powerful reason for using the creative approach that alternates screams and giggles. 

In short, the film is a coming of age story about a sheltered, privileged suburban kid, Keith (Chris Makepeace) who sees life in “the Big City” for the first time, and must reckon there with people who are different from him, and possibly dangerous. These people have different life-styles, different orientations, and yes, different appetites. Mostly, they’re vampires.

In the film, Keith takes his first steps into this larger, initially unsavory world, and must determine where and how he fits in.  He must learn how to recognize those who are dangerous (like Grace Jone’s Katrina, or Billy Drago’s albino, Snow,) and those who are merely different.

Taken on those terms, Vamp is fun and forward-looking, and probably deserving of a re-examination in 2026. One might even conclude that the film, with its meditation on a vampire co-culture feels “very new, very now.”

“Welcome to your worst nightmare!”

Fraternity pledges Keith (Makepeace) and A.J. (Robert Rusler) make a deal to hire a stripper for the frat house’s upcoming party, in exchange for membership in the organization.  Unfortunately, their campus is “200 miles from nowhere” and they don’t own a car.  Accordingly, Keith and A.J. agree to pretend to be friends with Duncan (Gedde Watanabe), a rich kid who owns a car, and take a road trip to the big city to procure an exotic dancer.

There, by night, the trio visits the “After Dark Club” in hopes of finding a good stripper for the party. A.J. is enamored with exotic Katrina (Grace Jones), but the dancer turns out to be an aged Egyptian vampire.  Worse, the young men seem to have stumbled into the Vampire District!

After Katrina kills, A.J, Keith must step up and find a way home.  He must do so alongside an employee at the club who claims to know him: Amaretto (Dedee Pfeiffer).  

But it’s going to be a long night…

“All you are to her is a quick fix.”

As I noted in Horror Films of the 1980s (2007; McFarland), there’s a nice little joke informing Vamp. Many hero’s journey tales or coming-of-age stories involve, specifically, the crossing of the threshold. That concept is literalized here. Early in the film, Duncan’s car goes on a crazy, out-of-control spin, and when it stops, those inside it have arrived at the world of the Big City. 

It’s as if a tornado itself has deposited the car and the occupants there, and one character -- appropriately referencing The Wizard of Oz (1939) -- jokes “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”  The idea, clearly, is one of transition; of Keith moving from his cultural comfort zone (as A.J.’s straight man) in the safe world of college, to the larger, more dangerous and exotic world beyond.

The exotic (and erotic) world of the After Dark Club is depicted in Vamp in lurid shades of green and red, a color palette that suggests the red light district, cheap motels, and neon signs. It is Keith’s task, in this garish world, to determine who is friend, and who is foe. If he is to grow up (and not die), in other words, he must come to understand the perils of pleasures of a multi-cultural world. He must confront those who are not like him and determine how to view them.

What I resolutely admire about Vamp is that even though the film is yet another "heroic journey," it nonetheless takes time to genuflect to a superior idea; that Keith’s narrow, parochial world view isn’t the only one, and that he can and will grow beyond it.  

One delightful moment in the film finds Keith realizing, to his horror, that all the denizens of the After Dark Club are vampires. “That doesn’t make them bad people,” replies a patron, and that’s sort of the film’s point. As human beings, we are afraid of the things that we don’t know. We judge that which is different --- at least at first -- to be bad.

So at least initially, the vampires of the film are terrifying to Keith. They aren’t people…they’re monsters!  

Note, for example, the scene in which he watches a child vampire viciously attack an unsuspecting stranger.  Keith recoils in horror and disgust at the sight. And when he confronts A.J. as a vampire, his friend tells him he can no “longer be trusted” because of what he has become.

Yet by Vamp’s denouement, Keith is not only more confident, he is more experienced, and therefore willing to accept that his former best friend, A.J. (Robert Rusler) can be two things simultaneously: both a vampire and buddy.  

After the new-ness of the vampire population has worn off, and Keith feels he can conquer the danger they represent, he is open to A.J. returning to school, and re-establishing his friendship with him. He has also met a love-lorn vampire (one who dreams of being more to Katrina than a quick-fix), and another who dreams of being “classy” like the people he imagines in Las Vegas. Now these characters may still be monsters, but they are people at the same time.  The dynamic has reversed.

Some years ago, a reader on Twitter (now X) contacted me and pointedly asked me if I felt there was homo-erotic tension between Keith and A.J. in Vamp.  My answer? I think there is, and I think that it is absolutely intentional. That unspoken homo-eroticism fits in with the film’s bigger idea: that Keith is growing up in a world of different kinds of people, and reckoning with different kinds of relationships. 

Far from home (which remember, in terms of the film, is 200 miles from the city metropolis…) Keith must reckon with new vistas and new ideas. And it’s impossible to deny that, historically-speaking, vampirism is often equated in the horror film with homosexuality. 

Therefore, it is possible to read Keith and A.J.’s bromance as being indicative of desires deeper than mere friendship. A.J. come out as a vampire -- a surrogate for homosexuality -- but confesses to Keith that because of his new identity, he can no longer be trusted. That’s an expression of fear in the face of something new.  But in Vamp, after some initial discomfort and trepidation with that “new” idea, however, Keith finds he is absolutely okay with A.J. and his new orientation. A.J. is okay with it too. They find they can still be friends, even with new knowledge about each other. Ironically, this plot-line makes Vamp the second film (after A Nightmare on Elm Street: Freddy’s Revenge [1985], to pinpoint Rusler as an object for homo-erotic desires.  

In Vamp, however, the homo-eroticism is quickly defused. In growing up, Keith finds his confidence, and that confidence is expressed in the fact that his amorous attentions are now directed towards women, namely Allison/Amaretto.  A.J. becomes a vampire and friend rather than a potential lover.  

Still, I would argue that the film deserves credit, at the very least, for its through-line of acceptance. By the end, A.J.’s “other-ness” is de-fanged as a threat, and he stands around kvetching about his wardrobe. He has been assimilated into the mainstream, his “difference” from the dominant culture no longer judged a mortal danger to it. He can be a vampire, and still go to college, and still be best friends with straight-arrow Keith.  No longer is he a “monstrous” other.  He’s just one voice in a culture of many.

Grace Jones’ Katrina is the yang to that yin, one might conclude.  

If A.J. is The Other made normal (and acceptable to mainstream society), Katrina is the “Other” as a continuing threat. Katrina is a feral, abusive user, one who does not seek consent before indulging in her feral appetites. Jones is perfect for this villainous role, given her career and physical attributes. As Julia Felsenthal quotes photographer Jean-Paul Goude in Vogue (September 28, 2015): “Men think she’s sexy. Women think she’s a little masculine…and gays think she’s a drag queen.”  

Vamp plays up Jones trademark androgyny in a clever way. We aren’t certain, seeing Katrina, what exactly she is, how she identifies, or what she wants. Her strip-tease is quite different from the others featured in the film, and seems an expression more of wildness than any particular brand of sexuality.  We see Katarina and we register her as hungry, animalistic, prowling.  She could be, essentially, any number of things -- male, female, gay, straight, what-have-you -- but in fact Katrina is just one thing: a hungry “user” of those around her.

Of all Grace Jones’ 1980s genre roles, from Conan the Destroyer (1984) to A View to a Kill (1985), Vamp utilizes her physical presence and charisma best. We have doubts about Katrina’s identity until the truth becomes plain.  She is a monster, and yet that monstrosity has nothing to do with how she identifies (gay, straight, androgynous), but rather with how she treats those around her: as walking blood banks. 

But at first, her physical otherness is all the viewer sees.

Today, it seems difficult to deny that Vamp is about category-straddling as a normal aspect of life in the Big, Modern, American City. The child-vampire is both innocent and a monster. Snow is both ‘white’ and part of a deried co-culture (the Albino gang). The After Dark Club is both sexually liberated and predatory, perhaps even simultaneously sleazy and “classy,” given the predilections of its owner. Likewise Amaretto is both known and unknown to Keith.  In broaching a multi-cultural, diverse world, Keith must navigate all these contradictions, and accept the ones that don’t hurt him (like A.J.’s new orientation) and dismiss those that could (Katrina, namely).  

In other words, the film asks Keith, ultimately, to view others not by categories, but by their actions.  The world, if not shades of gray, is shades of red and green.

I opened the review by noting that Vamp is alternately funny and scary, and I believe that approach is the best way to mimic the film’s leitmotif about the Big City. When confronted with the unknown, sometimes we assess it as dangerous, and sometimes not. By making us laugh and scream, Vamp reflects this reality.  We can react to “new” things with terror, or with humor.  Danger can be defused by humor…or not.

Vamp is a fun, gory horror movie, and an example of a different age and different sensibility in the genre, for certain. But the film retains value today because it is about a person of the dominant culture opening his eyes to the fact that not everybody who is different than he is must by definition be bad, or a “monster.” Sometimes, Vamp reminds us, people are only “monsters” until you get to know them; until the initial dread of difference recedes and you see the people not for their categories or labels, but for their common humanity.

40 Years Ago: Aliens (1986)

The first two films in the long-lived Alien franchise tend to stir passionate debate, especially when placed in direct comparison to one another. 

There are those viewers who appreciate Ridley Scott's terrifying, original 1979 "space trucker" film and consider it the superior work of art.  And then there are those who feel just as strongly regarding James Cameron's intense, militarized sequel, Aliens (1986).  The bottom line, however, is that each film is superb in its own unique manner and style.

James Cameron's greatest decision regarding Aliens, perhaps, involves his judgment to move the protean film series in a fresh direction.  His sequel does not, in any significant manner, attempt to re-create the Gothic atmosphere of Ridley Scott's classic horror film.  Instead, the Cameron film forgoes the "ten-little-Indians," or "haunted house in space" aesthetic of Alien for a wider, more epic scope, one exemplified by the well-remembered ad-line "This time, it's war." 

Where Scott's Alien focuses on an atmosphere of dread, jumps and jolts, plus out-and-out terror, Aliens functions more as a non-stop rush; a roller-coaster ride of almost unparalleled excitement.  And as much as Scott brought his remarkable  perspective to Alien, James Cameron imbues the sequel with his own individual viewpoint and obsessions.  The result is that Alien and Aliens complement each other in a most gratifying and satisfactory fashion. Each film is the superlative work of an individual artist; meditations on a theme (or franchise), as it were, with Sigourney Weaver and the titular monsters as the primary connective fabric.

To fit the film into his career, James Cameron movies often feature strong female characters, and comment on matters of military and big business.  Aliens very much fits this description. At the center of the action is Sigourney Weaver's Ripley, a paragon of common sense and intelligence in two spheres where such qualities seem in alarmingly short supply (the futuristic military establishment, and the Company's hierarchy, specifically.)   

The basis for Ripley's common sense, bravery and intelligence arise, apparently, from her initial experience with the alien in the Scott film, but also, importantly, from her singular status here as a fish-out-of-water.  As the film opens, Ripley is 57 years out of her natural element, and (in the special edition of the film) has lost her only daughter.  These qualities diagram Ripley as both outside a command structure of any type, and as a woman seeking to re-capture what she has lost, namely motherhood.

Because she is unfamiliar with the technology and protocols of the soldiers and the space yuppies, Ripley is also a powerful surrogate for the audience: one who catches on quickly, and who countenances no bullshit regarding the hostile alien species. We in the audience share Ripley's concerns, having "lived through" the traumatic events on the Nostromo with her.  A distinctive quality of Cameron's approach in Aliens is that he uses our familiarity with Ripley and her "biases" (regarding androids, for instance), against us.  He plays on our expectations again and again, to layer surprises and shocks into the film's narrative.  These "bumps" in the road have the effect of keeping us both off-balance and anxious.

A movie of breathtaking action and intense emotions, Aliens also ably functions on an allegorical level, serving as a commentary on American involvement in the Vietnam War (1962 -1975).  This commentary makes the film a crucial example of the Vietnam War film "revival" that occurred mid-way through the two-term Reagan Presidency, and which -- for lack of a better description -- re-fought the conflict either under more favorable, familiar "war movie" terms (Rambo: First Blood Part II [1985]) or which, contrarily, demonstrated vividly why the Vietnam War seemed a lost cause (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, etc.)

At the time of the film's release, critics were overwhelmingly positive about James Cameron's Aliens, often comparing it favorably to Alien.  Elliott Stein at the Village Voice termed the sequel "intense, suspenseful" and "filled with gritty dialogue."  Time Magazine voted Aliens one of the ten best films of 1986 and noted its "technically awesome blend" of horror and science fiction.  I still remember Joel Siegel's review on ABC TV at the time, wherein the movie critic noted that the last half hour of Aliens was like attending a Bruce Springsteen concert...from "inside the bass drum."

In terms of James Cameron's career, Aliens (1986) was the director's first big budget motion picture following the surprise success of The Terminator in 1984.  Aliens also features several members of the unofficial Cameron repertory company, including Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen and Bill Paxton, all of whom appeared in his previous effort.  But Aliens was not just an expensive film "reunion" for Cameron: it was the opportunity to prove that The Terminator was not a fluke, and that he could successfully tell a story against an epic backdrop and in an already-established universe.  

Needless to say, considering the film's sterling reputation today -- now 25 years later -- Cameron succeeded wildly with Aliens.  In 2011, the film still thrills both as a straight-up war movie in space, and as a metaphor for America's involvement in Vietnam.

"We're on an express elevator to Hell...going down!"

Fifty-seven years after the events of the movie Alien (1979), Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is awakened from hyper-sleep when her shuttle, the Narcissus, is recovered by a salvage crew.

Once back on Earth, Ripley meets with representatives of the Company, including Carter Burke (Paul Reiser), regarding events aboard the Nostromo. She recounts her story of the hostile alien life form that her crew encountered on distant LV-426, but Company executives are skeptical of the tale,  They suspend Ripley from flight duty.  Meanwhile, Ripley learns from Burke that her daughter died -- an old woman -- not long before Ripley was recovered.

Some time later, Carter and a representative of the Colonial Marines, Lt. Gorman (William Hope), visit Ripley in her small apartment.  The terraforming colony on LV-426 has dropped out of communications contact, and the Company fears that Ripley's "monsters" have reared their heads.  After getting assurances from Burke that the mission is to "wipe out" the aliens and not study them, Ripley agrees to return to LV-426 with a platoon of well-equipped Colonial Marines.  Among the crew is Bishop (Lance Henriksen), a "synthetic" or android. His presence doesn't sit well with Ripley because of her encounter on the Nostromo with the android Ash.

Upon arrival at LV-426, Ripley and the Marines discover the only apparent survivor of an alien attack, a small girl named Newt (Carrie Henn).  Ripley bonds with the child almost immediately, even as Gorman sends in the platoon to examine life signs emanating from the terraforming station.  There, the marines discover the cocooned survivors of the colony, now being used to propagate the alien life cycle.

After a disastrous first engagement with the aliens and the destruction of the military drop ship, Ripley, Newt and the surviving soldiers take up sanctuary in a control center, and attempt to procure a second vehicle for evacuation from their orbiting ship.  Unfortunately, the aliens are on the move again, and a traitor -- now exposed -- makes his move.

As more of the soldiers are killed in action, Ripley attempts to rescue Newt, who is taken to the alien "hive" for facehugger implantation.  There, Ripley and Newt encounter a new foe: the Alien Queen. To escape from this monster, Ripley must put her trust in someone she fears: the inhuman Bishop.

"Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!" - Aliens and The Vietnam War

It took the American cinema a good long time to understand and synthesize the nation's traumatic experience in the Vietnam War.  

Although celebrated films such as Coming Home (1978), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Apocalypse Now (1979) all played theatrically in the same decade as the war's ending, it was not truly until the Reagan Era that a real renaissance in Vietnam War films arrived in theaters.  

From 1984 to 1989, audiences saw Missing in Action (1984), Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986),  Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket (1987), Hamburger Hill (1987), The Hanoi Hilton (1987), and 84 Charlie MoPic (1989), to name just a few films.

Why had the floodgates opened to the Vietnam War film in the 1980s, in both action mode (Chuck Norris, Sly Stallone) and award-winning mode (Stone, Kubrick)?  In part it may have been because of President Reagan's Operation Urgent Fury in 1983, a successful invasion by American forces of the small Caribbean island of Grenada.  

Unlike the Vietnam conflict, which lasted through the presidencies of Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, this effort was a short, contained engagement and one in which the Americans could readily and easily be declared victorious.  There was no "mission creep," so-to-speak. In that new moment of American victory and clarity, it was easier, perhaps, to exorcise the demons of Vietnam than it had been in the 1970s, when new military failures such as President Carter's Operation Eagle Claw only reinforced the sense of America's inability to use armed force successfully.

Whatever the reason, Aliens quite clearly fits into the Vietnam War movie trend of the mid-1980s.  In fact, at least metaphorically-speaking, it could even be considered the ultimate Vietnam War film, even though it concerns alien monsters not Viet Cong, and space marines rather than American soldiers. 

Whatever the exact reasons, the Vietnam War was clearly on Cameron's mind as he fashioned the script for his sequel to Scott's Alien.  Cameron had recently finished writing Rambo: First Blood Part II for Stallone and by his own admission "was kind of fascinated by Vietnam at that point." 

This obsession with the American experience in Vietnam plays out in Aliens in several ways, but most importantly in the style of warfare portrayed in the film.  In considering the Vietnam conflict, the authors of Living Through History: the Twentieth Century World described a war in which the Americans brought the latest, high-tech equipment (such as helicopter gunships and rocket launchers) but were met by an enemy, the Viet Cong, who "did not fight open battles, where these weapons could be used." (Heinemann Educational, 1988, page 77.)  Furthermore, after their attacks, the Viet Cong "melted back into the jungle where the Americans could not find them."

This overarching dynamic is almost perfectly replicated in the battle of LV-426 in Cameron's film.  The Colonial Marines come bearing M41A pulse rifles, drop ships, synthetic officers (Bishop), flame-throwers, smart guns, APC vehicles, and motion detectors, yet their weaponry proves entirely ineffective in stopping the alien attacks.  The aliens don't literally "melt back into the jungle" here, but they do seem to melt into the walls of the terraforming station, a trick which offers them perfect natural camouflage.    

Or as Hudson notes: "They're coming outta the walls. They're coming outta the goddamn walls!"  The alien battle tactics are certainly guerrilla in nature, then. The beasts use natural cover (their resin-coated caverns), pools of water, and air ducting to engage the humans in conditions favorable to their extra-terrestrial strengths.  This is not a "stand-up" fight in other words.  Again, consider that in Vietnam the Viet Cong was famous for using a subterranean tunnel supply system.  Once more, the aliens mirror that function, taking up residence in the "sub levels" of the battlefield, moving back and forth out of easy sight.

It is not just in battle specifics that Aliens re-parses the details of the Vietnam War.  The central argument against the Vietnam conflict on both the conservative and liberal sides of the political spectrum has always been that America fought a "limited" and "bureaucratic" war, one in which the U.S. could not simply annihilate the enemy, or invade and occupy the country.  A common refrain heard at the time of the Vietnam War was that our superior military forces were fighting with one arm tied behind their backs.  They were never really unloosed...to win, hence Rambo's memorable plea to his superiors, "do we get to win this time?"  Whether or not this perception is entirely true is beside the point in regards to Aliens.

Here, quite clearly, the problem is that the Colonial Marines fight a limited, bureaucratic war in much the same fashion.  Their wrong-headed commander, Lt. Gorman orders the committed troops -- in the battle zone, no less -- to holster their pulse rifles and smart guns.  He even has the sergeant collect their magazines. The reason for Gorman's action is valid: delicate machinery ("primary heat exchangers") stands nearby and could be destroyed (thus causing a nuclear blast...) should it be damaged.  

But suddenly, these high-tech soldiers are forced to use old-fashioned pistols and shotguns to fight their invisible, incredibly powerful enemy.  Like the American forces in the jungles of Vietnam, the Colonial Marines thus wage a war with one hand tied behind their backs, and not surprisingly are unable to win that war in direct engagement.

On the urging of Burke, Gorman attempts to safeguard property (corporate property) ahead of actually winning a battle, or even safeguarding his men.  Burke's agenda is to preserve an expensive "investment," not destroy the aliens, and so the bureaucratic agenda surfaces and, again, clouds the rules of war.

It goes further than that.  Ripley herself becomes a vocal advocate of a different-style of warfare.  After suffering a debilitating defeat, she suggests to Corporal Hicks (Biehn) that the marines return to the Sulaco and "nuke" the alien hive from orbit because it is the only way "to be sure" the alien threat is neutralized.  

Naturally, Burke can't get on board with that idea, and he says that Hicks is just a corporal and "not qualified to make a decision like that."  Again, he is attempting to impose limits on the nature of the fight.  These are limits, by the way, that the aliens don't observe.  Rightly, Hicks overrules the yuppie.

Importantly, Ripley's nuke-the-whole-site-from-orbit plan is a philosophy in direct contradiction to the "limited war" scenario engaged by both Gorman and by American generals in Vietnam.  Ripley's suggestion, in the fictional case of Aliens at least, seems entirely reasonable.  If the colony is overrun by deadly aliens, why engage them at all on ground level?  Limited, bureaucratic war is not a blueprint for victory, the film seems to make note.  

Again, this doesn't mean (at all...) that nuclear weapons should have been utilized in the Vietnam War, only that the bureaucratic, one-hand-behind-the-back strategy settled on by the American leadership was flawed, and in some sense, lacking in common sense.  Why fight a war if you don't intend to leverage your own strengths and win it?  Like Rambo before her, Ripley seems to be searching for a way to "win this time."  

That way to win is, specifically, by avoiding the half-measures and limitations imposed by generals and bureaucrats.  Accordingly, the end of the film sees the terra-firming station go up in an (accidental) nuclear blast, and the survivors returning home, their enemy vanquished.  This is a victory (at least after a final "bump" with the Alien Queen) denied America in Vietnam.  You may remember the shocking images of helicopters pushed off air craft carrier decks as the U.S. Armed Forces returned home in 1975, for instance.  Aliens re-fights the war on better terms, and brings at least some of the boys (and girls) home from the battlefield.  At least until the sequel.

There are other simple connections to Vietnam in Aliens as well. Many Americans felt that the Viet-Cong were primitives living in "rice paddies." Their tactics, experience and skill were not respected, nor honored. Because the Viet Cong weren't from a modern, high-tech, industrial Western culture we were lulled into believing that the war would be a cake walk. The opposite, of course, was true. In Aliens, the marines -- but never Ripley -- often underestimate the aliens in a similar fashion. When the aliens cut the power to plunge the hiding marines into darkness, Hudson wonders aloud how "animals" could have cut the power. Even at this late juncture, he is still making the mistake of underestimating his opponent.  The aliens are not just animals: they are a highly organized hive mind, a surrogate, in some sci-fi way, for Communism, too, I should point out. And of course, Communism was the real American target in the Vietnam War.

Right down to the marines' manner of self-expression, Aliens very powerfully suggests the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s. "The dialog itself, the idiom, is pretty much Vietnam era," Cameron reported in an interview here. "It's the most contemporary American combat "war speak" that I had access to. I studied how soldiers talked in Vietnam, and I took certain specific bits of terminology, and a general sense of how they express themselves, and I used that for the dialogue, to try and make it seem like a realistic sort of military expedition, as opposed to a high tech, futuristic one. I wanted to create more of a sense of realism rather than that of an interesting future."

Another unique facet of The Vietnam War: many Americans did not understand why the war was fought. The notion, of course, was that if Vietnam fell to Communism, other countries (Laos, Thailand, etc.) would also fall like "dominoes" to that ideology. But who were our allies, exactly? What would victory look like? Why should the average American on the street, struggling to make ends meet, care about what was happening in Vietnam, half a world a way? This wasn't like World War II, for instance, where fascism was moving like a dark tide across free Europe, and the consequences were easily understood. Instead, the motives and strategies surrounding the Vietnam War were ones of intellectual gamesmanship. It was, as James Cameron himself noted "a weird and surreal kind of war."

In contrast to the military in Aliens and the American soldiers serving in Vietnam, Ripley boasts a very strong and clear personal motivation for fighting a war on LV-426. She has an individual connection to Newt...a "family" member of a sort. So she picks up arms to fight the aliens, and does so effectively. I have always believed that Ripley is an example of the everyman (or woman) here in America. When our families are attacked or threatened, we will fight. To the death. But to fight for simply a cerebral theory of geopolitics (the Domino Theory), and one ultimately proven wrong, hardly seems an effective use of military might.  What Cameron appears to express in Aliens is his grave concern about the application of American military power in foreign land when there is not a clear and just cause.  This idea resurfaces powerfully in both The Abyss (1989) and Avatar (2009).

All this established, I think it's important again to note that Cameron is not anti-military. The "grunts" in the film, from Hicks to Hudson to Vasquez are clearly heroic in nature. Hicks is effective as a leader. Ultimately, Hudson finds his sense of courage. Vasquez fights to the death to save her fellow marines and survivors. Even the green Gorman finds redemption at the end, taking out a handful of aliens in a final act of self-sacrifice. So I don't think that Cameron is reflexively against the military or so-called "just" wars. Rather, his stance reminds me of what President Obama once said (and has since forgotten, vis-a-vis Libya): that he isn't against wars; he's just against dumb wars. In other words, there are legitimate applications of military might; but you better think them through; and you better fight to win.

Game over, man!  Game over! Aliens and the fog of war.

The comparison to the Vietnam War in Aliens also involves another important element: "the fog of war." 

For those unfamiliar with this term, it means, essentially, the uncertainty of the participants in a military operation once it has begun.  

That uncertainty can cause mistakes and fatalities.  There are different categorizations for "the fog of war," including operational types (meaning the commander of a force not having full sight of a mission imperative, for instance), or strategic type.  In the strategic type, the commander fails to grasp the geography of the battle,and the enemy's capabilities, to the detriment of his men and his cause.

In Aliens, Gorman makes a fatal mistake of the strategic type by sending his soldiers into a trap; a trap from which they can't utilize their high-tech advantage.  But what's most interesting about this failure is Cameron's method of visualization.  

Throughout the early portions of the film, Cameron shows audiences how each soldier wears a camera mounted on his or her helmet.  And then, he reveals Gorman's command post in the APC: a small corner of assembled video screens tracking the footage of each individual soldier, as well as ancillary data such as "mission time" and life-sign readings.    When full scale war erupts in the terraforming station sub level, Cameron cuts to relatively few "live" shots of the soldiers actually battling the aliens.

Instead, Cameron cuts repeatedly to the chaotic images on those video screens as all hell breaks loose.  We see static, for instance.  We register failed communications and see a "rolling" picture.  We see herky-jerky, hard-to-interpret visuals of gunfire, and marines in action.  Marines repeatedly run directly at camera (at us), screaming above the din of bullets and hissing aliens.  

In essence, Cameron reveals to us a futuristic version of the Vietnam War's particular brand of "fog."  If you go back and watch Oliver Stone's Platoon, you'll notice how there are almost no clear battle lines, no clear "sides" in the many scenes of combat.  Soldiers seem to run endlessly through the jungle, back and forth, constantly under attack, while air strikes occur all around them.  It's Death from Above...and everywhere else, for that matter.  It's impossible to guess where the enemies are hidden, at least in terms of geography  It is pandemonium on a vast scale. As viewers we have no sense of visual order; of the enemy being on the left or right.  Instead, we sense danger everywhere.

In Aliens, Cameron cleverly pinpoints a corollary for that approach, giving us "electronic" fog of war, essentially, in the first battle sequence. He uses video imaging, failed communications, and grainy visuals to suggest the bewilderment and panic of the grunts on the ground as they are attacked from all sides by an enemy that seems to literally appear out of nowhere, melting out of the walls.  The point, of course, is that our technology will do us no good when fighting the aliens.  The fractured, indecipherable images on a video screen provide us our only clues about what is happening, but again, don't reflect relative positions of armies or fighters.

The prominent use of the video screen is especially important in Aliens.  You may remember that Marshall McLuhan once wrote (in May of 1975, for the Montreal Gazette) that "television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.  Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam."  

In Aliens, the video screen dramatization of a hopeless battle seems to recall this particular scenario.  We see the war fucked up to Hell on the video-sets in the film, and at least subconsciously (if you are the right age...), you will be reminded of similar images from the Vietnam conflict.  In fact, while Gorman sits speechless, resigned to a catastrophic loss, Ripley leaps into action.  She thus takes -- literally -- the living room (the APC) to the battlefield to effect action: to rescue the men and women still in combat.  It's a weird reversal of the dynamic in the Vietnam War; as if American citizens could step up from their sofas and impact the goings on half-a-world away.  And again, it's a way of saying (like Rambo), this time, we get to win.  We don't just sit back and watch helplessly.

"I work for the company. But don't let that fool you, I'm really an okay guy" - The Yuppie Mentality in Aliens.

If James Cameron treats the "grunts" of Aliens with respect and admiration, he certainly doesn't hold back his venom for another demographic target: the yuppie movement of Reagan's America.

Again, some history is useful here.  Newsweek termed 1984 the "Year of the Yuppie," and identified over one million Americans as belonging to this this newly identified demographic (Young Urban Professionals).  

By and large, the Yuppies were baby boomers, and therefore former hippies.  But these peaceniks had by Reagan's years traded their political activism for stock options, power suits, and corner offices.  Primarily, yuppies were concerned with personal status and conspicuous consumption.  In other words, making oodles of money.  A side effect of this self-absorbed outlook was that many  Americans who were not Yuppies were left behind.  This was an America were the rich grew richer, and everyone else was getting squeezed out.  By the end of the 1980s, horror films were obsessing with this class warfare gap  in films such as They Live (1988) and The People Under the Stairs (1991).

In Alien, audiences learned that The Company had thoughtlessly sent the crew of Nostromo to acquire an alien life form for study, considering the men and women of the ship "expendable."  In Aliens, we actually get to meet some of those Company executives and V.I.P.s...and it is isn't pretty.

In an early scene set in a smoky board room (replete with coffee cups, fancy business suits and clouds of cigarette smoke...) we watch as the Company Board stages an inquisition at Ripley's expense. The Board arrives at the pre-ordained conclusion that Ripley is a liar, and focuses simply on the bottom line.  Ripley admits to having destroyed the Nostromo, a "very expensive piece of hardware" and is summarily dismissed for her negative contribution to the bottom line. 

Appropriately, Ripley terms the concerns of the Company "bullshit" and walks away from it, but the Yuppies aren't done with her yet.

In fact, the colonists on LV-426 face horrible death because an executive, Carter Burke, sent them out to the very coordinates Ripley specified on one of her reports: the location of the alien derelict ship where thousands of eggs were located.  

Notably, Burke does so without warning the colonists of what they might find.  Why?  He wants to save the lion's share of the profits from the aliens for himself.   This is how he rationalizes his behavior: "What if that ship didn't even exist? Did you ever think about that, I didn't know! So, now, if I went and made a major security situation out of it, everybody steps in; Administration steps in, and there's no exclusive rights for anybody, nobody wins! So I made a decision, and it was... wrong. It was a bad call, Ripley. It was a bad call."

Notice the terminology there: "bad call."

It explicitly refers to Wall Street jargon (namely "call options"), but more importantly, Burke's comments share the attitudes of many "players" on Wall Street.  For a living, they gamble with the retirement and pension funds of investors, and don't necessarily act responsibly in light of such responsibility.  In essence, Burke does the exact same thing in Aliens, playing with the lives of the colonists on the chance that he could win "exclusive rights" to what he perceives as a treasure trove: the rights to alien biology and "bio-weapons" created from it.

Aliens' most trenchant and memorable observation about yuppies and 1980s yuppie values comes from Ripley.  She compares the Aliens -- a hive mind working for the common good of their race -- with Burke's brand of selfish "humanity:"  "You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage."  She's right.  As hideous and monstrous as the Aliens appear and act, they move as one; they don't betray and sabotage one another so one drone can get ahead.

Although Aliens arrived before the stock market crash of 1987, it certainly suggests the fall of the Yuppies, because of this self-absorbed attitude.  Had Burke worked to protect Ripley, Newt and the Marines, they would have certainly reciprocated and worked to save him when push came to shove.  Instead, Burke is left alone, and therefore without the support he needs to survive in an arena overrun by aliens.  His very philosophy of life -- me first! me second! and me third! -- dooms him.  Of course, he's too short-sighted to see it.

Clearly, Burke is the most despicable character in the film.  He's a liar, a turncoat and a murderer.  But what makes him so sick is that all of his sins came about from a desire simply to be rich.  Again, the Aliens act according to their nature, not out of extraordinary malice.  They kill, certainly, but do so not to acquire personal wealth, but to assure the continuance of their species.  This is a very sharp counterpoint to human behavior in the Reagan/Yuppie Era, and one not lost on audiences.

There's so much more to discuss here regarding Aliens, yet this review has certainly gone on long enough.  

So, if you'll forgive me, I'll close with a few bullet points to think about while you watch the film:

1. Cameron shows a real preference for movement within the foreground of the frame, especially during action sequences.  In the climactic battle between Ripley (in a power suit) and the Alien Queen, for instance, one hydraulic arm moves up and down in the frame repeatedly, obscuring our view, occasionally, of the close-quarters, mother-against-mother combat.  This movement not only takes our eyes away from any deficiencies in terms of special effects; it adds to our desire to "see" the action and makes the action seem all the more urgent.  Cameron would utilize the same approach (with a swinging light panel in the foreground of the frame) during the knife-fight in The Abyss.  

2. Aliens reads as a "faithful" continuation of Alien despite deliberate alterations in the alien life-cycle in large part because Cameron has, like Scott before him, targeted a particularly colorful class of people, namely blue collar people, as main characters.  In Alien, the crew of the Nostromo was famously termed "space truckers," and Brett and Parker constantly complained about their contracts, shares and responsibilities in the Company.  In Aliens, Cameron lands us into battle with blue collar "grunts," and their flamboyant and gritty language also seems real, and often very funny.  In particular, the character of Hudson is a source of continuous humor with his colorful observations ("Game over, man! Why don't you put her in charge? You want some of this?!).  But the tenor of the characters from Alien to Aliens is surprisingly consistent.  Both films pit the average joe -- of stalwart heart -- against faceless and callous white collar-types: business executives and military higher-ups.

3. Aliens has often been termed the ultimate battle of the Moms: Ripley vs. The Alien Queen.  That dynamic is definitely present here, and it is interesting to contrast these two matriarchs.  Ripley suffers from guilt because she was not "there" to raise her biological daughter, and so goes to extreme lengths to protect Newt from danger.  She won't make the same mistake twice.  The uber-protective mother resurfaces in Cameron films such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), but here is contrasted with a mother of a very different and inhuman perspective.  

Specifically, the continuance of the Alien race rests with the Queen and her survival, whereas the continuance of the human race rests with the child, the heir to our lineage.  The Alien Queen ultimately fights to the death for her own survival then (so she may lay more eggs), whereas there is an emotional, personal connection and component to Ripley's love for Newt.  She would never consciously choose her own survival over the child's. This is the difference, perhaps, between the mentality of an insect, and the mentality of a mammal.

4. The last half-hour of Aliens is a virtual replay of the finale of Alien, only with more combat, and bigger, more elaborate sets.  Once more, Ripley is required to don protective gear (a power suit rather than a space suit) so as to eject an alien life-form from a spaceship, via the airlock. Only in this case, Ripley is fighting for more than her own survival (or the survival of a cat).  Here, she has an android, another adult, and a child to safeguard.  The higher stakes in this battle render the "rerun" ending incredibly effective and it hardly seems like a regurgitation of what Scott accomplished.  But at least from an objective standpoint, the film's final act is the only part of the film that slavishly mirrors the dynamics of its predecessor.

5. I always find it interesting how the Alien films treat non-humans and non-aliens.  In Scott's Alien, Jones the Cat was just as much a survivor as Ripley, and operating as much by its unique nature as were the humans and the alien.  In Aliens, another non-human, Bishop, plays a critical role in the action.  And he too lives up to his unique nature (or programming, in his case.)  Ripley's eventual rapprochement with Bishop is a good example of the fact that humans need not be obsessed with jingoistic hatred or malice for "the other."  In a series obsessed with violence, and with aliens and humans at war, this is a nice bit of business to throw in.  Humans still have the capacity to empathize with other creatures even if they are different, like Bishop, who comes across as a complete innocent. There can be little doubt here that Bishop is the model for Star Trek: The Next Generation's Lt. Data.

In so many ways large and small, Aliens is almost a perfect time capsule of the 1980s. It shares that decade's obsession with the Vietnam War, and with the emerging Yuppie culture.  As a sequel, it is bigger and more elaborate than its progenitor, and it features state-of-the-art special effects sequences.  But what makes Aliens resonate beyond the original context is its overwhelming sense of heart. The bonds between Ripley and Newt, and even the bond between the Marines are strong evidence that man is the superior species in this war with an aggressive species, and will ultimately prevail.

James Cameron makes big, expressive, emotional action films, and Aliens is one of the best of that category ever made.  The performances are uniformly strong, and Sigourney Weaver was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. But most importantly, Aliens cogently reminds the viewer of a critical and powerful human truth.  

If you are fighting for a just cause -- for your family, for instance -- you truly feel like can slay dragons.