A L I E N

Before we begin, a little BACKSTORY...

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28 YEARS ago I saw it for the first time, it´s funny now that i recall it, the name in spanish was: ALIEN The 8th passanger. Living in a spanish speaking country ( In México we speak - CASTELLANO) most of the films get a different name, one that makes you want to see it. In this case now we know who the 8th passenger is , but back then the first time i saw it i didn´t understand it. Back then , i´m talkin 1987, 1988, my parents, my sister my brother and i , use to go every friday or saturday to the video rental store. No NETFLIX or Streaming devices back then. I felt were rich because we had a BETA VCR and VHS VCR. Very few houses had Cable, so every trip to the video rental store was like going litteraly to the movies. Like buying a record, you had only two options before you decided. Watching the front and reading the back of the cassette case. Which had a little review of the film NO SPOILERS ALLOWED BACK THEN. I think my dad rented it because of something he heard by someone at his office. So I was like... what is this? What is this about? You have to understand i was only 10 years old.

"After a space merchant vessel perceives an unknown transmission as distress call, their landing on the source moon finds one of the crew attacked by a mysterious lifeform. Continuing their journey back to Earth with the attacked crew having recovered and the critter deceased, they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun. "

- from IMDB

So the movie begins... I was eating popcorn (as one usually does, but with me is A MUST) the film begins and it was reaaaaaaaally boring for me until the moment where they are all eating and then it happened. A scene which has been haunting me to this day, anytime i feel stomach pain. 



The ALIEN chestburster scene left me speechles, cold and scared. I really felt and thought it was really happening. It looked REAL. And that was really scary. I´d seen The Exorcist or AMADEUS,  Kramer vs Kramer, movies that scared me in several ways. But this was a whole different kind of film. It changed my life.

"When Star Wars came out 

and was the extraordinary hit that it was, 

suddenly science fiction 

became the hot genre." 

- Dan O'Bannon 

Screenwriter 

The Director

Ridley Scott's first exposure to early Alien, el octavo pasajero (1979) drafts were sent to him by Sanford Lieberson, then head of 20th Century Fox's London headquarters. Lieberson had seen Scott's Los duelistas (1977) and was adequately impressed to consider the neophyte filmmaker.

Saul Bass, the famous graphic artist designed the opening ALIEN hieroglyphic titles. He was not credited.

Originally, no film companies wanted to make this film; 20th Century-Fox even passed on it. They stated various reasons, most being that it was too bloody. The only producer who wanted to make the film was Roger Corman, and it was not until Walter Hill came on board that it all changed. 20th Century-Fox agreed to make the film as long as the violence was toned down; even after that, they still rejected the first cut for being "too bloody."Giler, Hill, and Carroll had been impressed by Ridley Scott's debut feature film The Duellists (1977) and made an offer to him to direct Alien, which Scott quickly accepted.Scott created detailed storyboards for the film in London, which impressed 20th Century Fox enough to double the film's budget from $4.2 million to $8.4 million.His storyboards included designs for the spaceship and space suits, drawing influences from films such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars.However, he was keen on emphasizing horror in Alien rather than fantasy, describing the film as "The Texas ChainSaw Massacre of science fiction".

The stylized artwork that Ridley Scott used to create the storyboards that got Fox to double the budget were inspired by the artwork of famed French comic book artist Jean Giraud AKA Moebius.

Dan O'Bannon requested that Ridley Scott and producer Walter Hill, both of whom had little knowledge of horror or science-fiction cinema, screen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) to prepare for shooting the more intense scenes. Scott and Hill were stunned by the horror film and admitted it motivated them to ratchet up the intensity of their own film.

Many producers have professional "readers" that read and summarize scripts for them. The reader in this case summarized it as "It's like JAWS (1975), but in space." Dan O'Bannon's original draft title was "Star Beast," but he was never happy with this. It was only after re-reading his script that he noted how many times the word "alien" appeared, and realized that it was a perfect title: it works as both a noun and an adjective, and it had never been used before.

Ridley Scott did all the hand-held camera-work himself.

O'Bannon introduced Scott to the artwork of H. R. Giger; both of them felt that his painting Necronom IV was the type of representation they wanted for the film's antagonist and began asking the studio to hire him as a designer. 

20th Century Fox initially believed Giger's work was too ghastly for audiences, but the Brandywine team were persistent and eventually won out.According to Gordon Carroll: "The first second that Ridley saw Giger's work, he knew that the biggest single design problem, maybe the biggest problem in the film, had been solved." Scott flew to Zürich to meet Giger and recruited him to work 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.

The Monster

While studying cinema at the University of Southern California, Dan O'Bannon had made a science fiction comedy film with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb entitled Dark Star.

Ronald Shusett, meanwhile, was working on an early version of what would eventually become Total Recall. Impressed by Dark Star, he contacted O'Bannon and the two agreed to collaborate on their projects, choosing to work on O'Bannon's film first as they believed it would be less costly to produce. O'Bannon had written twenty-nine pages of a script titled Memory comprising what would become the film's opening scenes: a crew of astronauts awaken to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid. They investigate and their ship breaks down on the surface. He did not yet, however, have a clear idea as to what the alien antagonist of the story would be.

O'Bannon soon accepted an offer to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky's film adaptation of Dune, a project which took him to Paris for six months. Though the project ultimately fell through, it introduced him to several artists whose works gave him ideas for his science-fiction story including Chris Foss, H. R. Giger, and Jean "Moebius" Giraud.O'Bannon was impressed by Foss's covers for science fiction books, while he found Giger's work "disturbing": "His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. 

And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster." After the Dune project collapsed O'Bannon returned to Los Angeles to live with Shusett and the two revived his Memory script. Shusett suggested that O'Bannon use one of his other film ideas, about gremlins infiltrating a B-17 bomber during World War II, and set it on the spaceship as the second half of the story.The working title of the project was now Star Beast, but O'Bannon disliked this and changed it to Alien after noting the number of times that the word appeared in the script. He and Shusett liked the new title's simplicity and its double meaning as both a noun and adjective. Shusett came up with the idea that one of the crew members could be implanted with an alien embryo that would later burst out of him, feeling that this was an interesting plot device by which the alien creature could get aboard the ship.

“

Dan [O'Bannon] put his finger on the problem: what has to happen next is the creature has to get on the ship in an interesting way. I have no idea how, but if we could solve that, if it can't be that it just snuck in, then I think the whole movie will come into place. In the middle of the night, I woke up and I said, "Dan I think I have an idea: the alien screws one of them [...] it jumps on his face and plants its seed!" And Dan says, oh my god, we've got it, we've got the whole movie.

”

—Screenwriter Ron Shuset

To preserve the shock value of the alien's appearance, no production images of it were released, not even to author Alan Dean Foster when he wrote the film's novelization. 

Only acting role of Bolaji Badejo. He vanished into anonymity after this.

The Xenomorph XX121, better known just as Xenomorph (which literally translates to "alien form") or the Alien, are an extraterrestrial, endoparasitoid species with multiple life cycles, possibly originating from the planet Proteus (also known as Xenomorph Prime). 

The Xenomorph (ALIEN ) has 4 minutes of screen time.

Bolaji Badejo who plays the Alien in the movie was a graphic artist who was discovered at a pub by one of the casting directors. He was 7 feet 1 inches tall with thin arms - just what they needed to fit into the Alien costume. 

He was sent for Tai Chi and Mime classes to learn how to slow down his movements. A special swing had to be constructed for him to sit down during filming as he could not sit down on a regular chair once he was suited up because of the Alien's tail.

During production, an attempt was made to make the alien character transparent, or at least translucent. Coincidentally, this idea was later used for the title creature's camouflage suit in PREDATOR (1987), which was later decided to take place in a shared universe with this movie. 

Ridley Scott made sure that Bolaji Badejo did not take tea or lunch breaks with the rest of the cast so that their fear of the alien would be more genuine.

Unimpressed with the poor body cast mold made of Bolaji Badejo (the actor cast to play the Alien), H.R. Giger was prepared to suggest a replacement before he'd met Badejo. One of his suggestions was supermodel Verushka, who Giger described as just as tall as Badejo. Reportedly, Ridley Scott was open to the suggestion. When he finally met Badejo, Giger realized that he was perfect for the Alien role and insisted that a new body cast be made.

Bolaji Badejo regretted that no one can recognise him as the Alien in the film, but thinking back on Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee, or other successful actors who began their careers by playing grotesque monsters, he adds, "The fact that I played the part of the Alien, for me, that's good enough. Legally, I'll be given the opportunity of doing a follow-up, if there is one." Although he is training for a career on graphic design and commercial art, he exclaims, "Not if a film comes along!" 

The xenomorph in this film is slightly different from others of his kind featured in the following sequels in terms of behavior: unlike the other aliens in the series which kill only for food, host gathering or self-defense, the alien in this film is implied multiple times in both the film, novelization, and several scripts to be very sadistic and enjoys killing for fun. This is shown when the alien kills Parker: he waits 30 seconds or so while squeezing Parker so hard he bleeds, before finally killing him with a headboard. 

THE SHIP

"I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science fiction films are notorious for this. I've always felt that there's another way to do it: a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be–as convincingly as possible, but always in the background. That way the story and the characters emerge and theybecome more real."

—Artist Ron Cobb 

on his designs for Alien

"Nostromo" is the title of a Joseph Conrad book. The shuttlecraft is called the "Narcissus," from the title of another Joseph Conrad book. 

Some of the Nostromo's corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area.

The LOOK OF THE FILM

Alien was filmed over fourteen weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. 

Production time was short due to the film's low budget and pressure from 20th Century Fox to finish on schedule. 

Art Director Roger Christian used scrap metal and parts to create set pieces and props to save money, a technique he employed while working on Star Wars.Some of the Nostromo's corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area. Special effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Nick Allder made many of the set pieces and props function, including moving chairs, computer monitors, motion trackers, and flamethrowers. 

H. R. Giger designed and worked on all of the alien aspects of the film, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the Nostromo and its human elements. 

20th Century Fox Studios almost did not allow the "space jockey," or the giant alien pilot, to be in the film. This was because, at the time, props for movies weren't so large and it would only be used for one scene. However, conceptual artist 'Ron Cobb (I)' convinced them to leave the scene in the movie, as it would be the film's "Cecil B. DeMille shot," showing the audience that this wasn't some low-budget B-movie.

THE MUSIC

Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith (February 10, 1929 – July 21, 2004) was an American composer and conductor most known for his work in film and television scoring. He composed scores for such noteworthy films as The Sand Pebbles, Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Patton, Papillon, Chinatown, The Wind and the Lion, The Omen, The Boys from Brazil, Capricorn One, Alien, Poltergeist, The Secret of NIMH, Gremlins, Hoosiers, Total Recall, Basic Instinct, Rudy, Air Force One, L.A. Confidential, Mulan, The Mummy, three Rambo films, and five Star Trek films.

He collaborated with some of film history's most accomplished directors, including Robert Wise, Howard Hawks, Otto Preminger, Joe Dante, Richard Donner, Roman Polanski, Ridley Scott, Michael Winner, Steven Spielberg, Paul Verhoeven, and Franklin J. Schaffner.

Goldsmith was nominated for six Grammy Awards, five Primetime Emmy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, four British Academy Film Awards, and eighteen Academy Awards (he won only one, in 1976, for The Omen). In 1979, Goldsmith composed a score to the landmark science fiction film Alien.

 His score featured an orchestra augmented by a shofar, didgeridoo, steel drum, and serpent (a 16th-century instrument), while creating further "alien" sounds by filtering string pizzicati through an echoplex. Many of the instruments were used in such atypical ways they were virtually unidentifiable. His score was, however, heavily edited during post-production and Goldsmith was required to rewrite music for several scenes. The final score resulted in several pieces being moved, replaced, or cut entirely. Director Ridley Scott and editor Terry Rawlings also, without Goldsmith's consent, purchased the rights to the "Main Title" from Freud (1962) which they used during the acid blood sequence. Despite the heavy edits and rewrites, Goldsmith's score for the film earned him a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Original Score and was one of the AFI's 250 nominees for the top twenty-five American film scores.

Director Ridley Scott and composer Jerry Goldsmith were at odds with each other on the usage of the original music score. As a result, many crucial cues were either rescored, ill-placed, or deleted altogether, and the intended end title replaced with Howard Hanson's "Symphony No. 2 (Romantic)." 

THE ENSAMBLE


Harry Dean Stanton as Brett, the engineering technician.

Harry Dean Stanton's first words to Ridley Scott during his audition were "I don't like sci fi or monster movies." Scott was amused and convinced Stanton to take the role after reassuring him that the film would actually be a thriller more akin to Ten Little Indians.

Yaphet Kotto as Parker, the chief engineer.
According to Yaphet Kotto, Ridley Scott told him to annoy Sigourney Weaver off-camera so that there would be tension between their characters. Kotto regrets this because he really liked Weaver.

Tom Skerritt as Dallas, the captain of the Nostromo. 

Harrison Ford turned down the role of Captain Dallas. 

When Tom Skerritt first read the screenplay for Alien, he declined to be involved, as he was unimpressed with the writing quality and the low budget. After the screenplay was edited and the budget enhanced, Skerritt was approached again, which prompted him to sign on. Halfway through production, he approached the writer and executive producer Ronald Shusett, asking if he could trade his salary for half a percentage point of royalties.

John Hurt as Kane, the executive officer who becomes the host for the Alien.
When John Hurt was being fitted up for his scene on the table, it was a long and complicated affair, and ultimately he got somewhat bored. In the end, he asked the crew if he could have his 

cigarettes and a bottle of his favorite wine, which they poured for him. He was then happy and relaxed after, with his creature comforts.

Sigourney Weaver as Ripley, the warrant officer aboard the Nostromo. Although Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett had included a clause in the script stating that all characters could be either male or female, they hoped to avoid what was already becoming a cliché in horror films: the female in danger being the only one left alive to face the killer at the climax, 

later referred to as the "final girl" phenomena. Ironically, that's exactly how the character of Ripley ended up, although it must be noted that, from the outset, she is much stronger and more resourceful than the typical horror film "final girl."


Veronica Cartwright as Lambert, the Nostromo's navigator.

Cartwright had previous experience in horror and science fiction films, having acted as a child in The Birds (1963) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).She originally read for the role of Ripley, and was not informed that she had instead been cast as Lambert until she arrived in London for wardrobe. 

She disliked the character's emotional weakness, but nevertheless accepted the role: "They convinced me that I was the audience's fears; I was a reflection of what the audience is feeling.

Ian Holm as Ash, the ship's science officer who is revealed to be an android. The character of Ash, and subsequently an android character being introduced into the film, is what Dan O'Bannon calls a "Russian spy,"

 someone on a mission who it is discovered intends to sabotage said mission. "If it wasn't in there, what difference does it make?" the screenwriter asks. "I mean, who gives a rat's ass? So somebody is a robot." O'Bannon was annoyed by the character being added and calls it "an inferior idea from inferior minds well acted and well directed."


Bolaji Badejo as The Alien.

In the original script by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, the names of the characters were Standard, Roby, Broussard, Melkonis, Hunter and Faust (there was no Ash character). Walter Hill and David Giler hated the names, and changed them multiple times during revisions. They finally settled on Dallas, Ripley, Kane, Lambert, Parker and Brett, and added the Ash character. The script by O'Bannon and Shusett also had a clause indicating that all of the characters are "unisex," 

meaning they could be cast with male or female actors; consequently, all of the characters are only referred to by their last name (Dallas, Kane, Ripley, Ash, Lambert, Parker, and Brett), and the few gender-specific pronouns (he/she) were corrected after casting. However, Shusett and O'Bannon never thought of casting Ripley as a female character. 

THE HERO 

In a male action hero industry, Sigourney Weaver´s HUGE KNOCK on the door with ALIEN was UNEXPECTED. When everyone was used to seeing the screaming girl running full of fear OF THE HORRIBLE MONSTER, Weaver made herself a force to be reckoned with and LONG TIME REMEMBERED. A role of a LIFETIME making tough decisions, grabing a flame thrower, exploding a ship!

JONESY (the cat)

To get Jones  to react fearfully to the descending Alien, a German Shepherd was placed in front of him with a screen between the two, so the cat wouldn't see it at first. The screen was then suddenly removed to make Jones stop advancing and start hissing. REAL ANIMALS ARE KEY for REALISMA, THEY  MAKE THE DIFFERENCE IN MOVIES they make the SUPERNATURAL believable. You will remember my words. EXAMPLES: The monkeys of the OMEN, the dog in GREMLINS.

Post-production

Editing and post-production work on Alien took roughly twenty weeks to complete. 

Terry Rawlings served as Editor, having previously worked with Scott on editing sound for The Duellists. Scott and Rawlings edited much of the film to have a slow pace to build suspense for the more tense and frightening moments. According to Rawlings: "I think the way we did get it right was by keeping it slow, funny enough, which is completely different from what they do today. And I think the slowness of it made the moments that you wanted people to be sort of scared...then we could go as fast as we liked because you've sucked people into a corner and then attacked them, so to speak. And I think that's how it worked."The first cut of the film was over three hours long; further editing trimmed the final version to just under two hours.   AHe was nominated for an Oscar for his work on Chariots of Fire and for BAFTAs for both Alien and Blade Runner.

trivia FACTS 

During the opening sequence, as the camera wanders around the corridors of the Nostromo, we can clearly see a Krups coffee grinder mounted to a wall; this is the same model that became the "Mr. Fusion" in BACK TO THE FUTURE.

The name of "the company" that the crew work for is "Weylan-Yutani" (the spelling was changed to "Weyland-Yutani" in Aliens (1986) and later films). The name can be seen on a computer monitor, as well as on a beer can Dallas drinks from during the crew meal. The light-blue "wings" emblem seen in several places, most notably Ash's uniform, is intended to be W-Y's logo (the logo was also changed for the later films). 

As Ripley goes through the shuttle start up sequence, a brief shot of a monitor appears which displays an 'Environmental CTR Purge' screen. The exact same screen appears in Blade Runner (1982) when Gaff takes Deckard to see Bryant in his flying police car.

All the androids in the franchise are named in alphabetical order. Ash in this film. Bishop in Aliens (El regreso) (1986) and Alien 3 (1992). Call in Alien resurrección (1997). David in Prometheus (2012). 

Director Trademark :

Ridley Scott: [mothers] The Nostromo's computer is named "Mother." The incubation of the alien has also been interpreted as a metaphor for pregnancy. 

Helen Horton as the voice of Mother, the Nostromo's computer.

Bolaji Badejo beat Peter Mayhew to the part of the alien.

Ridley Scott used his kids as diguised astronauts, for the Space Jockey Scene so that the set would appear bigger by taking the camera far for the WIDE SHOT.

THE LEGACY:  In a self contained space, there is a group trapped with a hungry or thirsty for blood predator out to get them one by one.  How many films are discribed on this premise?????? It became an ICON, not just for horror films but for ALL FILMS. It created a whole GENRE of TENSION in movie making. The editing, the performances, the acting, the mysterious creature. Unlike JAWS, this thing didn´t only hunt you in water. It hides in shadow, and has acid for blood. I love the ALIEN franchise, all of them i always want to see them over and over again. And as many movie classics a film such as this has many special, unique and unforgettable scenes. But there is the one, the ICONIC one that left you amazed, the final dialogue by RIPLEY:

"Final report of the commercial starship Nostromo, third officer reporting. The other members of the crew - Kane, Lambert, Parker, Brett, Ash and Captain Dallas - are dead. Cargo and ship destroyed. I should reach the frontier in about six weeks. With a little luck, the network will pick me up. This is Ripley, last survivor of the Nostromo, signing off...."

Despite releasing a new version of the film titled "Alien: The Director's Cut," Ridley Scott wrote in a statement in the film's packaging that he still feels the original Alien (1979) was his perfect vision of the film.  Scott is currently filming ALIEN: COVENANT.