Classic Film Series: Alien (1979)

40 years ago, one of the greatest science fiction films of all time was released. Alien captured the imagination of audiences worldwide with its grim, gritty depiction of space travel. The combination of the film’s dark, claustrophobic environments and uniquely terrifying antagonist leaves viewers in a perpetual state of suspense. Today, Alien still remains a masterpiece in horror film and a revolutionary leap forward in the sci-fi genre.

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the film, I hosted a film viewing and discussion program at the library as part of my “Classic Film Series.” Included in this post are my discussion notes, which includes: production notes, film trivia, and critical accounts. I’ve also included a flyer template for the program that you are free to use.

Who You Need to know:

Director – Ridley Scott
Writers – Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shussett
Art Director – H.R. Giger
Visual Effects – Brian Johnson
Cast:
Sigourney Weaver (Ripley)
Tom Skerritt (Dallas)
Ian Holm (Ash)
Veronica Cartwright (Lambert)
Harry Dean Stanton (Brett)
John Hurt (Kane)
Yaphet Kotto (Parker)

awards/recognition:

Academy Awards:
Winner – Best Visual Effects (H.R. Giger, Brian Johnson)
Nominee – Best Art Direction (Ian Whittaker, Roger Christian, Leslie Dilley)
Golden Globes:
Nominee – Best Original Score (Jerry Goldsmith)
BAFTA Awards:
Winner – Best Production Design (Michael Seymour)
Nominee – Best Promising Newcomer (Sigourney Weaver), Best Supporting Actor (John Hurt), Best Editing, Best Costume Design
Saturn Awards (Academy of Science Fiction):
Winner – Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress
Hugo Awards (World Science Fiction Society):
Winner Best Dramatic Presentation

Accepted into the Library of Congress U.S. National Film Registry in 2007.
Ranked #7 on the American Film Institute’s list of the greatest sci-fi films.

flyer template (click to download):

how it got made:

1974: Dan O’Bannon wrote and starred in a student film called Dark Star, a sci-fi comedy directed by the then unknown John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing). The film centered around small crew aboard a faulty space ship trying to cope with the loneliness of space. The film was pandered for its comically unrealistic alien. O’Bannon vowed to remake the film as a horror movie, this time with a more realistic alien.

1976: O’Bannon is hired to work on a film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune. While the film was in production in Europe, O’Bannon developed a friendship with one of the artists, a young Swiss painter and illustrator by the name of H.R. Giger. Production on the Dune adaptation eventually falls apart and O’Bannon returns to the states, freshly inspired by Giger’s artwork. Once back in L.A., O’Bannon teams up with his friend Ronald Shussett on a new script, titled ‘Space Beast.’ They pitch the film to Brandywine Studios, a subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, who shelve it.

1977: A little film by the name of Star Wars debuts, igniting a sci-fi crazy. Not wanting to miss out, Fox scrambles to start production on a sci-fi film. O’Bannon and Shussett’s script is the only one they have available and green light it immediately. They bring in 3 writers to polish the script (Walter Hill, Gordon Carrol, and David Diler). The new writers add an android character to the dismay of O’Bannon who hates the cheap “Russian spy twist” movie tropes.

The studio has trouble finding a director to commit to the film, finally settling on a young, ambitious director named Ridley Scott based on the solid work of his debut film, The Duellists. Scott quickly storyboards the entire film himself and pitches to 20th Century Fox that he can make the film into more than a “B-movie horror flick.” The studio heads are so impressed with his vision, they double the budget of the film.

production trivia:

Harrison Ford turned down the role of Dallas
To preserve the shock-value of the alien, no production images were released, even for the novelization of the film.
Ridley Scott did all of the handheld camera work himself.
Original Cut of the film ran 3 hours and 12 mins.
Ripley was never cast as a female. In fact, each character was written with unisex names so they could be cast in any gender.
Final casting of Ripley came down to Sigourney Weaver and Meryl Streep, Weaver got the job because Streep was mourning the death of her partner, John Cazale.
Yaphet Kotto turned down the role of Lando Calrisian in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back because he thought Lando would be killed and he would be forever typecast as the token black guy killed in every sci-fi film.
The evil corporation that owns the crew’s space ship is called “Weyland-Yutani,” named after Ridley Scott’s former neighbors whom he hated.
There was a subplot that was cut in which Ripley and Dallas were having an affair. It was removed for slowing down the pace of the film and not adding anything necessary to the plot.
Ash’s innards in the film are made with pasta, glass marbles, plastic tubes and caviar.
To get Jones (the cat) to react, they used a German Shepard behind a screen, dropping it at the right moment.
John Hurt initially turned down the role of Kane to take another role. The actor cast to play Kane got sick while filming and had to leave the film. At the same time, John Hurt’s film fell through. Ridley offered him the role again and he accepted.

title sequence:

The design of the original title was a bubbly and organic graphic, but was decided to be too grotesque. Ridley Scott wanted the title to have a “hieroglyphic or computer print out feel” in order to have a strange, foreign appearance to viewers.
The title was switched from “Space Beast” to “Alien” when Dan O’Bannon noticed how often the word appeared in the script and realized it had not yet been used.

the nostromo:

The Nostromo’s interior is constructed from old airplanes parts and industrial pallets. The floor of the Nostromo are upturned milk crates.
The set of the space ship was huge, taking up an entire factory floor. Ridley insisted the set be totally enclosed as to give it a claustrophobic feel for the cast and viewers.
In the scene when the crew awakens from hypersleep, the computer reads “just near Zeta 2 Reticuli”, which is a real star system 39 light-years from Earth and figured prominently in UFO lore. Film takes place in 2122.

alien planet:

O’Bannon hated how other sci-fi films made landings sequences seem smooth and easy. This is why the landing scene on the alien planet is so violent. Ridley Scott put paint mixers under the seats to make the landing more realistic, but were too violent. He shook camera instead and had the crew shake in their seats corresponding with his camera movements.
The model of Nostromo shuttle is only 4ft long.
The crew’s spacesuits had no ventilation, weighed a ton, and leaked carbon dioxide into the helmet. While shooting the exploration scenes, Veronica Cartwright and John Hurt nearly passed out on several occasions.
The scene in which the elevator drops the crew to the alien surface was shot with children (including Ridley Scott’s kids) in order to scale down the production costs of the set.
Scott panicked releasing the set for the alien ship was too small to shoot from every angle. He came up with a creative solution: show the camera feed from the crew’s helmets instead. Scott shot the footage himself with a cheap handheld camera in one day.

alien ship:

Ridley pictured the alien ship as a military ship with weaponized eggs that would ‘aggressively integrate’ with a native population
“The Space Jockey” model was 26 ft tall and was destroyed after filming by a lit cigarette.
130 alien eggs were made for the egg chamber scene.
The high pitch squeal heard as Kane enters the chamber is the sound of the actual laser used to make the smoke effect. Ridley liked the sound, so he kept it. The laser lights themselves were borrowed from the band The Who, who were touring at the time.
Ridley Scott’s hands are moving alien inside of the egg. The egg innards are made with sheep and cow stomachs and intestines from a local butcher.
The facehugger was initially meant to be green, but O’Bannon liked the unpainted flesh toned mold of the creature. Scott agreed.

chest bursting scene:

The facehuggler’s innards are made of oysters, handpicked and arranged each day by hand by Ridley Scott.
Ridley kept the actors off-set when testing the burst scene. They had no idea how it would work. Ridley wanted genuine terror from the actors when the alien burst from Kane’s chest.
The chest bursting scene was shot with 4 cameras in 1 take.
The baby alien skitters across the table by way of a railway track across the table.
John Hurt’s head, shoulders and arms come through a hole in the table during birthing scene. His torso is a prop, controlled by a crew member under the table.

the Alien:

Bolaji Badejo was hired to play the alien when a producer discovered him at a bar. The producer was struck by his height and long, thin “insect-like” arms. Badejo took Tai Chi and Mime classes to learn to move like the alien. He had no prior acting experience.
During production only Badejo and H.R. Giger were allowed to see rushes in order to refine the alien’s look and movements.
The alien is only given 4 minutes of screen time. It’s first appearance is 1 hour into film.
O’Bannon and Scott didn’t want to have the classic horror movie trope of a monster whose skin in impervious to bullets. A production assistant came up with the concept of acid for blood.
Ridley did not imagine a “Queen Alien” producing eggs in his design of the xenomorph. Instead, he imagined the alien placing it’s victims in cocoons, consuming them and transforming them into the eggs we see at the beginning of the film “somehow.”
The alien’s design (by H.R. Giger) was changed several times for being too explicitly sexual. In fact, the original character designs were held by U.S. Customs when Giger arrived in L.A.
In the scene where Brett is looking for the cat, you can clearly see the alien hanging from one of the chains curled up in a ball as the camera pans around the room.

The End:

The original ending was supposed to occur after the Nostromo explodes, just as the camera pans back to see Ripley’s face where she delivers the famous final line of the film. Ridley Scott pleaded with Fox to let him add a “4th act that would change the way films are made.” They reluctantly agreed. The entire final segment on the escape pod was filmed in less than 4 days.
Weaver improvised singing “You are My lucky Star.” Ridley Scott loved it and insisted it stay in the film, despite the producers’ complaints of the cost to license the song.

Themes:

Motherhood: The computer that controls the Nostromo is called MU-TH-UR, or “Mother” by the crew members. The crew can be seen as the children of the ship, “hatching” from their cryo-chambers into life at the beginning of the film by the ship (mother). This echoes the alien eggs they discover later (also lying dormant in their ship, waiting to be born). Ripley’s relationship with Jones, the cat, can also be seen as motherly. It is the only genuine affectionate relationship shown between any characters in the film (and the only one to survive).

Rape: The alien on the other hand, represents the other side of the equation. The imagery surrounding the alien is extremely sexual. It’s phallic-shaped head. It’s stiff, piercing tongue. The way in which it lays its eggs. All of these images suggest sexual violence. O’Bannon explains that he uses this imagery to “attack the audience” sexually, taking particular aim at the men in the audience. He expressed his intentions in an interview, stating: “I’m going to through every image at them I know that’ll make them cross their legs. Sexual oral rape.”

Even the android expresses his thirst for, or at least curiosity in, engaging in sex. When Ash is struggling to subdue Ripley after she discovers the company’s plans, he does so by trying to thrust a rolled up porno magazine down her throat. How’s that for imagery?