There is so much already said about Alien (1979) that I’m not sure I can add to the legacy of this great SF-Horror film. The background story is just as entertaining and impressive as the film itself. It is only fitting that we discuss the film that opened most people’s eyes to the art of the remarkable H.R. GIGER, who passed away last week. The amount of talent involved in this film is insane. Makes you wonder why this didn’t turn into a disastrous talent bomb. I think the first answer would be THE STORY! This movie has a story and a formula that Hollywood has been snagging since it came out. So many movies rip off this film to the point it has become its own category. Some almost get it, 70% there. Others, never even get that close. And STORY is what they almost all miss.
As the story goes - Dan O’Bannon (story and screenplay) worked on Dark Star with John Carpenter while they were at USC. He was unhappy with the alien they used on that film. Understandable, because it was just a beach ball that was painted. To their credit, it was a very funny spoof of SF films and it definitely showed Carpenter’s genius that would turn up in future films.
O’Bannon meets Ronald Shusett, who tells O’Bannon he has the rights to a Phillip k Dick story that ends up being the film Total Recall. They decide to collaborate on both films, but Alien was first because Total Recall would be too expensive to make right away. Just as they were working on that script, O’Bannon gets a call from Alejandro Jodorowsky to come to France and work on an adaption of Dune. It was there that O’Bannon meets Giger (along with comics artist extraordinaire Jean Giraud - AKA-Moebius) and the production was off with Dune. The production of Dune fell through and O’Bannon was back in the states penniless. He and Shusett went back to work on Alien under many titles, but none excited them until during a late night writing session the word Alien jumped right off the typing paper at them. They were turned down by a few studios until a mutual friend got something set up at Fox. Before that they flirted with Roger Corman’s company, but decided to go with Fox. That’s where Walter Hill became involved.
Hill didn’t like the script much and decided he and his associate producer David Giler, rewrite the script without O’Bannon’s knowledge. Hill’s contribution was the android Ash Eight different revisions were completed. Still Fox wasn’t satisfied and from what Shusett said, “It was the best thing contributed to the film because the scripts became weaker and weaker with each revision.” O’Bannon suspected it was a ploy to remove him and Shusett’s names from the movie and claim an original script by Hill and Giler. Also according to O’Bannon the reason the film was green lit because Star Wars was such a huge hit and the only SF script they had lying around was Alien.
O’Bannon had assumed he would direct the film. Fox asked Hill to direct, he declined because of other commitments. Soon a barrage of names would touch the project. Peter Yates, Jack Clayton, and Robert Aldrich had been considered to helm the film. O’Bannon, as well as Hill and Giler didn’t care for any of these prospects. Hill and Giler had seen an independent period piece called The Duelists, starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. They were impressed and contacted Ridley Scott. Scott was whisked away to Hollywood by the new week. Now the film had a director.
Scott created storyboards that impressed Fox so much they doubled the budget, 4.2 million to 8.4 million. His storyboards were of designs of spacesuits and spaceships and the planet, were influenced by 2001, A space Odyssey. The look and feel of darkness were influenced by Texas Chainsaw Massacre. This is where O’Bannon pushed an art book by Giger in Scott’s face. Scott realized the biggest design problem he had was solved. The Alien itself. Fox initially rejected the idea of Giger designing the monster. They thought his art was too ghastly for audiences. Scott persisted and finally won out. He flew out to Zurich to meet Giger, because Giger would not fly to California. It was the painting, Necronom IV showed Scott what the alien should look like. Giger worked on all aspects of the Alien and its environment including the surface of the planetoid, the derelict spacecraft, and all four forms of the Alien from the egg to the adult.
O’Bannon also brought in Ron Cobb and Chris Floss to design space suits and spaceships. Cobb designed the interiors of the spaceship as well. The final name of the ship was derived from the title of Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel Nostromo, while the escape shuttle, called Narcissus in the script, was named after Conrad's 1897 novella The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'. Moebius was attached to the project for a few days and his designs served as a basis for what the spacesuits would look like.
Scott set out to find a cast of strong actors that didn’t need help from him so he could concentrate on the look of the film. In 1979, it was a bold move to cast a woman as the lead actor in this film and to be honest, none of the actors were big names, but mostly character actors. It also may have come from Hill and his team to change the character to woman. In any respect, Scott cast Sigourney Weaver as Ripley was a great idea. As was Tom Skeritt, Harry Dean Stanton (of course from the underrated classic Repo man and several David Lynch films) John Hurt (another Lynch actor who played The Elephant man) Yaphet Kotto (Running Man and was hilarious in Midnight Run) Veronica Cartwright (acted in The Birds as a child, invasion of the body snatchers) and Ian Holm (Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Fifth Element).
This movie spawned a franchise and was the best in the series. It also had its fair share of knockoffs. None of the sequels or ready-made Hollywood cookie cutter look-a-likes seemed to carry that tension or hold true to the fear you could see in the character’s eyes.
Mark Slade, HMS
Read the previous installment.