The story of the film "Alien" that we know and love today starts back in the mid 1970's with a young man named Dan O'Bannon.
Dan O'Bannon attended USC film school at the same time as John Carpenter and collaborated with Carpenter on his debut film "Dark Star" (1974)
When I say collaborated O'Bannon wrote the script, he played in one of the leading roles and edited the film on an old 1940s Moviola... Significant input!
The film Dark Star is about a spaceship with a "blue collar" style crew who work in space demolition who end up with a rouge alien life-form onboard...
Dan O'Bannon wrote another sci-fi script called "Memory" and sold it to a production company by the name of "Brandywine Productions" which belonged to screenwriter and director Walter Hill who made films such as "The Driver"(1978) and "The Warriors"(1979).
Legend has it Hill and another screenwriter David Giler did several rewrites to the script concentrating largely on developing the subplot involving the crew member Ash and making the dialogue more "working class" amongst the ship's crew to be more "Truckers in Space" rather than a clean military style crew.
In 1976 if you went to 20th Century Fox studios and said I have a sci-fi project they would be super sceptical... But after 1977 and the phenomenal success they had with Star Wars, Fox would probably have bit your hand off for another Star Wars. The story goes when the reality of the money tsunami off the back of Star Wars hit 20th Century Fox the only "Spaceship" type movie script in their "In Tray" was "Memory" now rewritten and called simply "Alien".
Alien was greenlit by 20th Century-Fox, with an initial budget of $4.2 million ($20.3m in 2024).
20th Century-Fox initially asked Walter Hill to direct the film but Hill declined due to other commitments. He also said he would be uncomfortable with the level of visual effects that would be required in Alien. Fox considered hiring directors such as Peter Yates who directed "Bullitt" (1968), John Boorman who made the classics "Deliverance" (1972) & Zardoz (1974), Jack Clayton the director of "The Innocents" (1961), Robert Aldrich of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962) & "The Dirty Dozen" (1967) fame and Robert Altman? I genuinely can't imagine an Altman "Alien".
The team at Brandywine Productions felt that in the hands of these established directors Alien may end up being a B-Movie creature feature which was definitely not the tone they were aiming for. Luckily for everyone involved Giler, Hill, and Carroll from Brandywine had seen and were very impressed with the film "The Duellists" (1977) so they offered the directing job to Scott and he quickly accepted.
"Alien" (1979)
Directed by Ridley Scott, Screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, Story by Dan O'Bannon & Ronald Shusett, Produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler & Walter Hill, Music by Jerry Goldsmith
Cinematography by Derek Vanlint, Edited by
Terry Rawlings & Peter Weatherley, Starring
Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt,
Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto.
In deep space, the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo is awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey home to investigate a distress call from an alien vessel. The terror begins when the crew encounters a nest of eggs inside the alien ship. An organism from inside an egg leaps out and attaches itself to one of the crew, causing him to fall into a coma.
Once Ridley Scott was onboard he hit the ground running. Scott made detailed storyboards for the film which included designs for the spaceship and space suits he also expressed that he was keen to draw from films such as "2001: A Space Odyssey"(1968) & "Star Wars"(1977)
but he was focused on emphasising the horror in the "Alien" project rather than the fantasy describing it as "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre of science fiction" this impressed the suits at Fox so much they doubled his budget from $4.2m to $8.5m.
When it came to casting the film had casting calls and auditions in New York City and London.
The film may only have seven human characters but that also meant the casting had to be perfect and Scott was keen to hire strong experienced actors who would "Get it" so he could focus on the film's visual style and impact.
He employed casting director Mary Selway, who had worked with him on The Duellists, to head the casting in the UK, while Mary Goldberg handled casting in the United States and they knocked it out of the park.
When the film came out the film critic Roger Ebert noted that the actors in Alien were older than what was typical in thrillers at the time, which aided to make the characters more convincing. It is true that none of the cast were particularly "young".
Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, John Hurt was 39 but looked older, Ian Holm was 48,
Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, make of this what you will but the two cast members who were the "usual age" were the females Veronica Cartwright 30 and
Sigourney Weaver 28. With this casting it effortlessly tells the audience the crew are not space adventurers these people are blue collar workers they are space truckers transporting 20 million tons of ore to Earth.
In addition to Ridley Scott's vision Dan O'Bannon's script and a remarkable cast there are a few more people whose skills came together to create this truly remarkable film.
Where Ridley designed the look of the spaceship in the film "Nostromo" and the crews space suits but when it comes to the design of the titular Alien of the film Scott approached the Swiss artist H.R. Giger. It was scriptwriter Dan O'Bannon who introduced Ridley to Giger's work by showing him Giger's 1976 painting "Necronom IV" as an idea for the look of the production's creature.
"Necronom IV" (1976) by H.R Giger.
Swiss artist H.R. Giger
Xenomorph in Alien (1979)
Scott loved Giger's work and when he saw it he knew that the biggest single design problem of the whole production had just been solved. Scott wanted to bring Giger onboard but 20th Century-Fox had other ideas, telling Ridley that H.R. Giger's work was "too ghastly for audiences" but Walter Hill and the team at Brandywine productions basically insisted and Fox caved.
Ridley flew to Zürich to meet with the artist 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 face hugger then the chest burster then an adult.
One of the many genius approaches taken in the production of this film was that everything "alien" was designed by H.R. Giger and his team and everything from "Earth" was designed by Ron Cobb and Chris Foss and there was no crossover between the teams until the designs were locked down. This subliminally communicates to the viewer just how "Alien" these two cultures are from each other.
"Alien" was made in a Post-Star Wars cinema landscape where audiences expected great space exteriors and spaceships with a believable sense of movement.
Ridley Scott personally filmed the model shots of the spaceship Nostromo and its attached ore refinery. He made slow passes of the model filming at only two and a half frames per second instead of 24 frames per second so when the film is played back at the standard speed gives the models the appearance of heft, scale and motion.
The model work and filming for Alien took place at "Bray Studios" in Berkshire which if you read this blog you will know was the studio "Hammer Productions" built to make their legendary horror films.
The principal photography for "Alien" took place over 14 weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. In addition to Bray Studio the production utilised "Pinewood Studios" and "Shepperton Studios" near London. The shooting schedule was very tight considering what they were trying to make because it was the only way to adhere to the film's strict budget and 20th Century-Fox was pressuring the production to finish on budget and on time.
A crew of over 200 craftspeople and technicians constructed the three principal sets: the surface of the alien planetoid, and the interiors of the Nostromo and the derelict spacecraft.
Another individual whose skills were pivotal in the look of the final film was Italian special effects and makeup effects artist Carlo Rambaldi who built the physical alien suit recreating H.R. Giger design into a usable costume. Before "Alien" Rambaldi had worked on "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (1977) he went on to build E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) and he also worked on David Lynch's "Dune" (1984)
The man who played and brought the Alien creature to life was the Nigerian visual artist and actor Bolaji Badejo.
Badejo was 6 feet 10 inches tall and was a gifted physical performer who studied mime and tai chi. He must have had the patients of a saint to go through the lengthy process while the suit was designed and constructed around his physical frame.
Tragically Bolaji Badejo passed away at the age of 39 in 1992 of the hereditary blood disorder, sickle-cell anemia.
We all know the special sauce for all Genre cinema is the musical score. Scott originally wanted the film to be scored by Isao Tomita,
The Japanese composer who is regarded as one of the pioneers of electronic music using analog synthesizers which I think would have been spectacular! but 20th Century-Fox were incredibly risk averse balked at the idea.
Then-president of Fox Alan Ladd Jr. basically told Ridley that Jerry Goldsmith was available and he "advised" he went with him... and he did. Personally I think the suits at Fox were only doing this project with an "Off the back of Star Wars" ethos. They had already embraced this being a Sci-fi horror and not a space opera and let H.R. Giger onboard and the thought of moving away from an orchestral score was too much.
The musical score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, conducted by Lionel Newman, and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra who were the orchestra who were featured on the amazing "Barry Lyndon" (1975) soundtrack among others. Goldsmith was not a poor choice he did have Sci-Fi credentials he scored,
"Planet of the Apes" (1968), Logan's Run (1976) and went on to work on numerous Star Trek films projects after Alien but over his career that spanned over five decades and he was responsible for over 150 film scores. Ridley Scott praised Goldsmith's score as
"full of dark beauty" and "seriously threatening, but beautiful".
It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, and it won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.
The film was released on the 25th of May, 1979 in the United States then on the 6th of September 1979 in the UK.
The film ended up costing $11m ($47.8m in 2024) only going slightly over its $8.5m budget.
I am sure the bosses at Fox didn't stay angry for long due to the film going on to gross $187m
($812m in 2024) at the global box-office.
The critical response to the film on its release was best described as mixed. Where some critics who were not always positive about "Genre" cinema such as Barry Norman were positive about the film. Where I think the genuine horror mixed with sci-fi was perhaps a bit too much for some people in the late 1970s. There was a review published in "Time Out" magazine that said "empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery cannot disguise imaginative poverty". WOW!
Regardless of critical response we know the film was a smash hit on its initial theatrical release.
In the first years of the home video market "Alien" was a hot title. Apparently when it was released on Betamax & VHS to rent it grossed $40,300,000 ($132m in 2024)
in the United States alone!!
"Alien" is one of the relatively rare examples of a film that were a smash hit on its initial release and went on to become a Cult Classic and we all know it spawned a massive franchise with multiple sequels, prequels, graphic novels and a video games.
The film is respected as one of the best films made in 1979 as well as one of the most influential sci-fi films of all time.
It is a true masterpiece.
End of Part Two.
