Alien Was Originally X-Rated For The Most Hilarious Reason
When Ridley Scott’s Alien was released in 1979, it re-defined the science fiction genre because it was for adult audiences instead of general audiences like the original Star Wars. While the film is extremely bloody, some censors in the United Kingdom at the time felt that the film’s sexual sub-context was more problematic.
According to Blastr.com, the British Board of Film Classification gave Alien an “X” rating, meaning no one under the age of 18 could be admitted into the theater to watch it. This rating is similar to the “NC-17” rating in the US as opposed to the “R” rating. The rating just below it in the UK is “AA” or “14+,” which means teenagers over the age of 14 could see it.
So why all this hullabaloo over Alien face-huggers and chest bursters? Well, this is where we have to take the censors a little to task. Apparently, the UK censors felt Alien’s view of sex would confuse teenagers on how sex between people worked because sex between people and aliens is always confusing.
The UK censors had a problem with the Alien scene involving Executive Officer Kane (John Hurt) entering a room full of alien eggs. When one of the eggs opens up, he looks inside, and a facehugger attacks him and impregnates him with an alien.
At the time, one of the censors wrote about Alien, “I feel uneasy about passing for 14-year-olds a film which uses sexual imagery in a horror context… The images are not always explicit but run like a dark undercurrent throughout suggesting a powerful, threatening, unnamed force. Occasionally the image is explicit as when the leathery egg opens up to reveal a glistening pulsating membrane which erupts into a squid-like creature.”
In the 1970s, UK censors could pass judgment on a film based on its content and artistic intent or interpretation. So, if they felt a film’s subtext raised eyebrows, they could censor accordingly. In the US, the MPAA gives ratings based solely on content.
As part of their reasoning behind the Alien rating, they also said, “I don’t want to flash ideas like this to teenagers who might not have come to terms with the normal sexual functions… The early teens are a troublesome time with physical changes making terrific demands on emotional stability. I don’t myself want to pass for this age-group a film which might be disturbing in a non-specific way to a significant proportion of them.”
There are obviously so many issues here that it’s almost too hilarious to sum up. But, basically, if you’re learning about human sexuality from a movie called Alien then there’s a bigger issue at hand.
Thinking, in any way, that a teenager seeing an alien jump from an egg, suck the crap out of some astronaut’s face, and then an alien pops out their chest the next day all while thinking, “Oh! So that’s how that all works! Why didn’t mom and dad tell me?” I mean, come on.
Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed here and Alien went about its R-rated business.
