The M41A Pulse Rifle

Had some time to write and thought I would share. People who get to know me ask were my love of reading comes from and my fierce love of cinema. My love of literature started when I read Fahrenheit 451 at age 14 and my love of film comes from my Mom taking me to see Aliens for my 12^th birthday. Yes I was young, but Ill cover that part in a moment.

I’m 42 years old and would be considered a classic Gen X’er due to being so influenced by pop culture as a child in addition to my birthday date and year born. Although I love many sci-fi weapons two always stood out in my childhood. Deckard’s LAPD blaster in Blade Runner and the M41A Pulse rifle in Aliens. Both are iconic, the Blaster in part because it’s never really explained on how it works, what it shoots, but it’s clearly powerful and the armorer who fused the.44 Special to a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle with some LED’s to boot really made a memorable weapon. Something more than just a ray gun. It is almost anti-Star Wars as far as blasters are concerned on screen. The Pulse Rifle? Well, there is simply nothing like it. The weird staccato sound it makes, its pulse bursts and exploding ammunition…to a freshly minted 12 year old that was pure gold.

To start I must go back to when I was 6 years old. My older brother by four years, Steve, got me up early one Saturday morning to watch two horror films back to back on HBO. It was 1980-1981 timeframe. Anyway, HBO used to run these double features starting at 5 am. This Saturday he decided to pull this stunt the films were Alien and Poltergeist. My Mom was sleeping as any hard working single Mom does if they don’t have to work and when she did wake up we were at the end of Poltergeist. She wasn’t impressed with my Brother and his scheme. However, the damage was done. At six years old Alien had left its mark. Now I didn’t remember much but I do remember being bored until the chest burster scene, the Alien killing Brett and stalking Dallas in the air vents, Ripley shooting it with the grappling gun. That thing scared me half to death! It scared me so bad that when the advent of the VHS tape and video stores came about it’s the ONE film amongst a few I refused to rent. Now I and my neighborhood cronies had ways to get R movies from rental places in town so we did watch many other horror films. Some of my friends had seen Alien and although they agreed it’s pretty damn scary, they were also 8-10 when they snuck watched it so they had a tad bit of age like my brother had had so it didn’t leave as deep a mark. Or maybe they just processed it better, but it was one of the gold standard scary movies to rate others by when we watched them. So one day, I finally caved because only a few of us have seen Alien. God Lord, it’s still just as bad the second time LOL! What really stuck on the second watch was Ash’s little speech. We didn’t get the impression it was indestructible, but more debated amongst ourselves that it was smart enough to avoid confrontations that could be its demise and/or you would have to blast it with something unconventional to stop it and the questions remained. Then again, maybe we were wrong. By the way, most of us had battered copies of Fangoria’s and other fan zines so we knew about the possible sequel ideas and also had read the Foster novelization. So egg morphing as it’s now called was known back then too. It all added to the mythos of: “What the hell is that thing?”

So its 1986 and my birthday is coming up. My Mom asked me what I wanted. That’s the age were toys are now passé’ and my Mom couldn’t afford expensive gifts and we both knew that fact. All summer the trailers for Aliens had been playing and for whatever reason I did not pick up it was a sequel. It was a summer release and summer in my childhood was spent outside camping, playing, swimming, acting up, etc. So summer was coming to a close and I have a September B-Day. After my B-day gift talk I was watching MTV and one trailer for Aliens showed an Alien. My eyes got huge as I now recognized Ripley and it was when the trailer showed the Alien Queen screeching I flew into the kitchen and started to beg my Mom to take me to see Aliens. Now talking your Mom into taking you to an R-rated horror film, that is also a sequel to Alien, which is a hard R too, is one of the toughest sells I have ever made in my life. My Mom had seen Alien so she knew what we were getting ourselves into, or so we thought.

The date is set and after a nice pizza and chicken wing dinner we go to the theatre. We had to go to a neighboring town since it was starting to leave the theatres. It wasn’t full but the people there had clearly watched the film and were there for a follow up ride. As I sat their all I could think about was the trailer. They have weapons, there is more than one Alien, what is going to happen?

When the lights came up my Mom and I walked out of the theater shell shocked. Many cinema lovers know what I am talking about, many who were young and saw Star Wars in 1977 had a similar experience. My Mom and I, we were assaulted on all sides. It was a horror film, an action film, a suspense film all wrapped into one. It had us literally on the end of our seats. It gave my Mom heartburn, no kidding! We still talk about that night to this day and it made me fall deeply in love with film as an art form.

Something the film touched on, that I found and still do that is scary was the idea that when facing the Alien the most advanced solders with the most advanced weapons barely stood a chance. Ash’s words still rang true. The Battle in the Operations lab is still one of the single best action sequences ever filmed and shown and also one of the scariest. This of course is where my love of the Pulse Rifle comes in. That odd sound, the exploding bullets chewing up the Aliens. It was pure art! I was so mesmerized that first time and shocked at how the Aliens were very adept in how the Marines fought that Vasquez was laying down suppressing firepower to keep that last 3 Aliens in the room hiding. Who! They know to keep under cover! They didn’t just mindlessly throw themselves at the Marines. If they were losing, the creatures figured out another way. Then she cuts loose with the grenades at point blank range! This scene is what I mainly used in explaining to my friends that all the cool weapons don’t matter and Ash was still correct, but they did at least, give you a slim chance of making it. The Pulse Rifle gave a little hope. Hope that was not found in the first film. It was shocking on that first watch how the Marines through both rounds one and two with the Aliens got decimated. Once we all eventually watched it judgements about how the Nostromo crew handled the Alien flew right out the window. I mean, if combat experienced space Marines couldn’t get the job done we were also going to be hosts for the creature too! Yet as I fell asleep and had nightmares for weeks (I really did) I imagined I had a M41A snuggled up beside me and I’ll get at least a few of them before they get me. I even made my own crude version to play with…yes, I was that obsessed.

As time has passed Aliens is oddly sometimes panned by younger viewers. At its time, that was never the case. Both Alien and Aliens were highly respected. This came up as my good friend Nate went and saw Prometheus with me and loved it. Nate knew I was a fan of the Alien series so I had him come over and we watched both director’s cuts of Alien and Aliens together. Nate is 10 years younger than me and he didn’t watch movies like this in his childhood due to a strict upbringing. Afterwards in our nerd discussion he commented how Prometheus and Alien are clearly directed by Ridley Scott and he was impressed with Alien. Aliens, and he started laughing, was really over the top, but he went on to say: “The problem in being critical of Aliens is that film has been so copied and ripped off by other films and videos games it’s like I’ve been watching some version of Aliens my whole life and didn’t know that until now.” Nate also added that it is rather sad such an explosive film was so copied in other films and video games. I told Nate the same thing happened with Star Wars too. I told Nate about the movie Krull as an example of a Star Wars rip off, even though it was a fun film. Nate also picked up on Aliens was some kind of allegory for something. I said: “Yes indeed my perceptive friend, Cameron used the story as an allegory for the Vietnam War.” A superior fighting force decimated by a simple enemy. I then shared some film history that each decade of film expresses the fears, loves and concerns of American society. 70’s cinema is dark due to coming off the 60’s, the end of the Vietnam War, Watergate and the Cold War maybe not having an end. The 80’s is stacked with movies about Vietnam and what to do with it and the emotions it had on America. I mean, as a kid I remember the pride of the WWII vets displayed, but most Vietnam vets were quite about their service. Aliens oddly fits into that little sliver of time in our society. So as the film has aged, some of its meaning is lost and it’s been so copied it doesn’t have the punch on some younger viewers depending upon their exposure to other pop culture.

However, I am the blessed Father of two boys and I am training them in the ‘love of cinema’. My oldest (10) doesn’t not own a modern video game system (we have an Atari) and we do not have cable. So many films when we watch them are for the first time. He knows I am a massive Alien fan. He has had many questions. So I’ve shown him a few scenes from both Alien and Aliens. When Dallas gets it in the airshaft. The suspense scared him half to death. He said: “I don’t know if I can handle that whole film Dad…JEEZ that was awful! What did it do to the guy?” “Oh, you wait son, you wait!”. Another time I put on the surround sound and showed him from ‘How could they cut the power man their animals to Vasquez firing the grenades then falling back’. He was just like me at 12…literally on the end of his seat. He got mad when I shut it off LOL! He said: “WAIT! Leave that on Dad that was awesome!”. He geeked pretty hard on the weaponry too making me proud.

Soon he’ll join me and we will watch both, but it was nice to see that film still has that impact on the uninitiated.

BZ