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Greatest book in the whole frickin' universe!!! (of course, having read it over 30 years ago this won't be a highly detailed review...)

I was 11 years old when Alien came out. The buzz was huge, even among 6th graders, and everybody else on the planet had seen it. Except me. My mom wouldn't let us go to R-rated flicks at the time and older friends & cousins who might pass for legal guardians were afraid of my mother; they wouldn't take me either. I couldn't fathom such a miserable existence: a Monster Movie junkie being denied access to the latest and, if the rumors were true, possibly greatest creature flick of all time.

Torture. Cruelty.

I did take a shot at sneaking in and the Lincoln Mall Cinemas one afternoon. Some hair-lipped teen usher nabbed me and gave me a rash of crap over it. "It's R-Rated," he lisped with a fat tongue, spritzing my head with saliva. "You could get in big trouble, kid. I could call the cops on ya if I wanted" I shuffled across the hall as he pointed me out to one of his colleagues in acne, the pair giving me four greasy eyeballs as I slunk into the arcade. It was just a setback. I wasn't accepting defeat, but I'd already suggested to some pals that I was going to see it that weekend. I had to take a new tack.

Not too many shops away from the cinemas was Walden Books, one of my favorite loitering spots; having even gotten locked in the store one night while sitting on my ass reading stuff. Walden's had the next best thing to a 16mm reel of Alien: A entire display devoted to print paraphernalia of the movie.* There had been one hell of a licensing juggernaut for a movie kids weren't supposed to see on their own. Action figures, trading cards, playing cards, comic books, posters, pop-up books, place mats, picture books and one novel (written after the fact). Those last two got me as close as I ever was going to get to the movie until it came out on VHS (which would be contingent on ma getting us a VCR...) or I found a way to get a seat in the theater.

I ponied up $3.95 and gorged on the novel in a weekend. Having pawed through the picture book in the store so many times I had a pretty good visual of Alien in my head when I decided to start lying to my classmates and claimed to have seen the movie. Of course, the book was a fattened, prolix literary realization of Dan O'Bannon's screenplay. Which meant that it had events and dialog which didn't actually occur in the film. Which also meant I referenced "scenes" which kids who had actually seen the movie didn't remember.

Naturally this all led to puzzled looks and accusations that I hadn't seen Alien at all. Backed into a corner, I defended my falsehoods by accusing them of not really seeing it. Maybe they were in the bathroom barfing during the scenes in question or covering their eyes and missing stuff because they were chicken. I wasn't sure how long I could fake the ruse, so some Saturday it was a bus back to the Lincoln Mall. Bought a ticket to some dork mutt flick, 'Benji 8' or 'Chomps' or something, and took another stab at sneaking into Alien. McSpitty was busy trying to act smooth for some teen girls at the dog movie and I made it in. Success! Except for forgetting to pee, but there was no way I was going out to the restroom and risk not getting back in. When it was all over I felt like things were going to rupture out of me too and hauled it over to the men's room. I was nauseous, and delirious and happy as all heck knowing I was going back to school on Monday with a rock solid impersonation of John Hurt hatching a space bug out of his chest.

As for the book itself? Best literary experience I'd had at that point in life; even better than "The Andromeda Strain" or "How to Eat Fried Worms"

*Walden Books was also where I first "saw" the Rocky Horror Picture Show...

For a current feel of claustrophobia, dread and creatures trying to kill people (all in a funny way) check out

Jackass on a Camel