@William said:
You're right about not showing the monster. Nowadays all they do is show the monster. "Show me the monster!" screamed the producer. I like the film that "Alien" was stolen from - it was called "It the Terror from Beyond Space" and was much better than the later overblown, overly expensive potboiler everybody thought was so amazing. Oh look! Sigourney Weaver's got her underwear on! Oh look - the alien popped out of the guy's chest!" ZZZZZZzzzzzzz.........
In the days of Val Lewton, like in Cat People, Seventh Victim or I Walked with a Zombie, the whole idea was to use imagination instead of special FX. Though they were trying to use their low budget frugally, it also applied to the way those stories were done in general, suggesting everything including the psychology, settings, etc. By the way those films also have great scores by Roy Webb, a little known composer today.
Actually, Alien was a fairly low budget movie for science fiction, it only cost 11 million. It's funny to see criticism of Alien since it is considered by many to be one of the best scifi films ever made, and it is specifically praised for getting maximum suspense out of not showing the alien much and relying more on the psychology of the situations. The Thing wasn't much lower budget, and it probably has a comparable amount of FX (and considerably more gore, which is what got it many of the bad reviews). I haven't seen Big Trouble yet, but I'll have to check it out...but I'm skeptical it could be that much better than Raiders, which pretty much nailed that genre.