What did the alien do to Lambert?
The classic horrific scene where the alien slowly approaches Lambert as she is frozen with fear is very ambiguous indeed. What happens is left to our imagination after the alien’s tail seems to slide on the floor toward Lambert’s mid-section, and we just hear rapid, loud breathing culminating in a frantic final scream. When Ripley finds Lambert’s dead body, one of Lambert’s feet is hanging bare without a shoe or sock on. Some say that quite simply, the alien raped her. Depending on your definition of rape, that may very well be true. That is, if the definition of rape is forceful orifice penetration against one’s will, then I think that it is true. However, the alien’s motives here were obviously not sexual satisfaction, but rather malicious curiosity and torture. That is, here the alien has a helpless victim in front of it with no threat of reprisal from anything or anyone (Parker has already been taken care of), so the alien probably found itself intrigued by this weak, pathetic life
