Latest / All The Right Movies / Alien (1979) | Ep. 8 - Part 1

Transcript

Alien (1979) | Ep. 8 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

• 0:04
  All the right movies. Some of you may have figured out
• 0:09
  we're not home yet. Mother's interrupted the course
• 0:11
  of our journey. Seems she has intercepted the
• 0:15
  transmission of unknown origin. She got us up to check it out.
• 0:19
  SOS. I don't know.
• 0:21
  Human unknown. It doesn't look like an SOS, it
• 0:28
  looks like a point. I can't lie to you about your
• 0:44
  chances, but you have my sympathies.
• 0:55
  Ridley Scott's Alien was released in summer 1979 and
• 0:58
  became Seminole science fiction and horror.
• 1:01
  I claim there's a classic haunted house in space tale.
• 1:03
  It's born an entire franchise and launched the careers of
• 1:05
  Scott and its Leeds Sigourney Weaver.
• 1:08
  My name is John and I'm here with Westie.
• 1:10
  There's the food. Ain't that bad, baby?
• 1:12
  And Matt? We ain't out here in 10 minutes.
• 1:14
  We won't need no rocket. To fly through space on this
• 1:17
  podcast, no one can hear you scream, and all the right movies
• 1:20
  are bleeding acid. To talk Alien.
• 1:43
  Hello and welcome to All the Right Movies, a podcast
• 1:47
  unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of
• 1:50
  morality on classic and hit films.
• 1:54
  Today we've got a right old treat for you.
• 1:56
  We've covered Aliens already on a previous episode, and now
• 1:59
  we're going back to where it all began.
• 2:01
  Some huge opinions and laughs are in store as we bring you the
• 2:03
  full low down on Ridley Scott's Alien.
• 2:07
  Lovely. Yeah, of course.
• 2:08
  I don't know how many laughs they're going to be like, but
• 2:09
  we'll try. We might find one.
• 2:12
  Hilarious, this one. Before we wake from hyper sleep,
• 2:17
  though, a message from the company.
• 2:19
  If you like what we do on this or regular podcasts and would
• 2:22
  like us to keep on keeping on, please help.
• 2:24
  Supporters do that by becoming in all the right movies.
• 2:26
  Patron patrons also gain access to three bonus podcast episodes
• 2:31
  per month and access to our full archive of classic episodes like
• 2:34
  the one you're listening to now, and including Aliens as well.
• 2:37
  This archive is growing all the time, and right now there are 20
• 2:40
  something further classic episodes in there.
• 2:43
  Pretty good value, is it not? Massively, especially just to
• 2:47
  just to get aliens is a double feature.
• 2:48
  It's worth it. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:51
  So to find out more and sign up, please visit patreon.com/all the
• 2:55
  Right Movies, Back to Alien or Right from the Star.
• 3:01
  We knew this one was a search we'll be covering at some point,
• 3:03
  didn't we? Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:05
  Absolutely. So why do you want to talk about
• 3:08
  it, Wesley? But because we have to don't
• 3:10
  work. It's not because we have to,
• 3:12
  it's because we need to. I think it's just one of them
• 3:14
  films. And like, you know, coming out
• 3:15
  in 79, it just had such an impact on everyone who saw it.
• 3:18
  And I saw Aliens before I saw this.
• 3:20
  So for me, it was kind of like just going it like your older
• 3:24
  brother's room and like snooping around and, you know, you
• 3:26
  shouldn't be there. And it was like this too.
• 3:28
  It was like too much to take. It was just so slow and it was
• 3:31
  just really painful. And it was just so atmospheric
• 3:34
  and just so visually striking. And it stayed with us ever since
• 3:37
  I saw it. I can still, I can still see it.
• 3:39
  I can still see them. You know, the visor with the
• 3:42
  computer graphics over the top of it.
• 3:43
  I can still see the alien coming out of the darkness.
• 3:46
  I can still see all of those things that were impacted the
• 3:48
  very first time I saw it. And it had such an impact.
• 3:51
  That impact has not dropped in 40 years.
• 3:54
  You know, I'm not like saying I saw it 40 years ago, but like.
• 3:58
  You can you raise your way there?
• 4:00
  Yeah, I know I'm 85, but like when Cleopatra came out, it was
• 4:05
  huge. It was one of them films that
• 4:07
  really, really stuck with us and I think it sticks with everyone
• 4:10
  when they say it. It's one of them unforgettable
• 4:12
  films, one of them unforgettable cinema experiences and one that
• 4:14
  we have absolutely have to talk about.
• 4:17
  Yeah, well, like USD, I saw Aliens before I saw Aliens as
• 4:20
  well. I saw Aliens when I was about 11
• 4:23
  or something and it quickly became one of my favorite films
• 4:26
  and it still is. And then I didn't see Alien
• 4:28
  until I was probably about 17. So I haven't seen Alien so much.
• 4:32
  Alien. It became this like almost
• 4:34
  mythical film in me head. You see headshots of the crew
• 4:37
  from Alien in the briefing scene at the start of Aliens, don't
• 4:40
  you? And tells a story of Alien.
• 4:42
  And I was always like, oh, it's Alien.
• 4:44
  Even I didn't know what it was and when I first watched Alien I
• 4:48
  admit I was a bit disappointed with it.
• 4:50
  It's a very different beast to Aliens, much more about tension
• 4:54
  to Spence and horror than wall to wall action, so I'm looking
• 4:57
  forward to exploring that. Also, this is the first thing we
• 5:00
  talked about Ridley Scott, one of the most acclaimed directors
• 5:02
  of the last 40 odd years. So it's good to finally visit
• 5:04
  one of his films. And the back story of not just
• 5:07
  the movie, but the universe they created, the world building in
• 5:10
  HR Gigas, Alien design. I think all that's astonishing
• 5:14
  and there's loads of interesting stuff to talk about there.
• 5:16
  It's Seminole science fiction is Alien.
• 5:18
  And I'm really excited about this one.
• 5:21
  Really is. And Matt, why do you want to
• 5:23
  talk about Alien? Well, you guys did such like a
• 5:27
  bang up job on Aliens that we we had to kind of close the circle
• 5:31
  on it really and and get back to like you said where it all
• 5:33
  started and like you guys 3 three in a row added to the
• 5:36
  aliens. First me dad let me watch it
• 5:38
  when I was similar aged to you John, you filled me on the back
• 5:42
  story before it started. Just gave me a very kind of
• 5:44
  quick overview of who Ripley was and what had happened just when
• 5:47
  you what was going on. And then also probably about a
• 5:50
  year or two later, I found the novelisation of Alien in in the
• 5:53
  local library and I got it out and I read that and it's
• 5:57
  actually, I think from memory, I read it a few times when I was
• 6:00
  younger, not read it for at least 20 odd years.
• 6:02
  But from memory, I think it's actually based on the shooting
• 6:05
  script because there's things in the book that are only in the
• 6:08
  director's cut, like when Ripley finds Dallas cocooned and she
• 6:12
  kills from the info. So in regards to the film, I did
• 6:16
  put off watching it for a while because I felt, well, I know
• 6:18
  exactly what happens in it. I know Ripley survives, I know
• 6:21
  what happens to everyone. I, I didn't feel a real need to
• 6:24
  get around to it, even though I knew it was massive and I had
• 6:26
  this reputation. And so when I did first watch
• 6:29
  it, in a way I guess my expectations will Lord.
• 6:33
  But that was probably why I was so blown away by it and I really
• 6:36
  was because the novelisation. It just doesn't put across how
• 6:39
  intense this film is. It doesn't put across how good
• 6:42
  it looks. It doesn't put across how good
• 6:44
  it sounds. It's iconic for a reason.
• 6:47
  So many other films and directors have tried to copy
• 6:51
  this since practically scene for scene, character for character
• 6:54
  and it's nothing else has come closer it really.
• 6:57
  No, that's the first person in the history of Alien to say I
• 7:00
  read the book first it. Probably is.
• 7:03
  Yeah, definitely is. Such a nerdy on that, isn't it?
• 7:06
  But yeah. He's such an academic.
• 7:11
  Just speed the book first. Well, before we get into it, the
• 7:14
  production info on Alien produced by Brandywine
• 7:16
  Productions, distributed by 20th Century Fox and released on May
• 7:19
  the 25th, 1979. Alien was filmed at Shepparton
• 7:23
  Studios in London, directed by Ridley Scott, produced by David
• 7:26
  Guile and Walter Hale, written by Daniel O'barnon and Ronald
• 7:29
  Shusses and the main cast Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt,
• 7:32
  Veronica Cartwright, Yaffe Court or Harry Dean, Standing, John
• 7:36
  Hurt, Ian Holm and Balaji Bideo. So shall we get stuck right into
• 7:41
  the movie? Let's go.
• 7:43
  Yep. Excellent.
• 7:45
  Coming up then, we're talking the beginning of Alien.
• 8:04
  There's no dialogue for the 1st 6 minutes of the movie.
• 8:07
  How does that work? It's just so slow, but it's slow
• 8:11
  because it's incredibly ominous and it's eerie.
• 8:13
  And I think Scott is doing that with his title sequence because
• 8:17
  he's basically telling you this is what the rest of the film is
• 8:19
  going to be like. There's no big kind of Star Wars
• 8:22
  fanfare here. There's No title smashing the
• 8:24
  way under the screen. Everything is minimalist,
• 8:26
  everything is slow and it's creepy and it's designed to put
• 8:29
  you on edge, which it does. I know the original idea of
• 8:31
  those titles was to have the title made-up of flesh and bone,
• 8:34
  but really Scott thought that was too gory and what we see was
• 8:37
  actually designed by the legendary soul boss, though we
• 8:40
  don't credit it in the movie. And then you're inside the
• 8:43
  Nostromo. It's Ron Cobbs amazing set
• 8:45
  design here. It's just absolutely fantastic.
• 8:48
  It's mesmerizing. That's kind of how I want my
• 8:50
  house to look if I could. Let's get someone just like the
• 8:56
  Nostromo. After the era you up into the
• 9:13
  movie, Ridley Scott's in no major rush to get things moving
• 9:16
  and takes his time over and reducing us to the storm or crew
• 9:19
  waking up from hyper sleep and eating in the mess hall.
• 9:22
  After that, though, it's all happening and there's a couple
• 9:24
  of huge moments. We're obviously going to talk
• 9:27
  about that. I we're obviously going to talk
• 9:29
  about the iconic chess Bursta scene.
• 9:31
  But first we're looking at the sequence on the planet LV 426
• 9:34
  where a crew member is attacked and impregnated by a fierce
• 9:38
  hugger. How does that sound?
• 9:41
  Awful. Good for him.
• 9:46
  Well, after the Nestromo supercomputer mother wakes the
• 9:48
  crew when they receive a distress call from an unknown
• 9:50
  source, Thomas Garrett, Captain Dallas, John Hurts, Kane, and
• 9:54
  Veronica Cartwright's Lambert donned their space suits and
• 9:56
  head out to investigate. The sequence on LV 426 brings us
• 10:00
  mysterious spaceships, space jockeys, 130 alien eggs, and the
• 10:05
  inciting incident of the story. When a face of that attacks,
• 10:08
  Kane takes a little while to get to the big moment, but when it
• 10:12
  does, it's massive, isn't it? Oh yeah.
• 10:15
  I mean the actual attack itself, it's just a jump scare and in
• 10:19
  the wrong hands, a jump scare can be a really cheap tactic.
• 10:22
  It can be something that just makes you like turn off straight
• 10:24
  away. Oh, it's going to be one of
• 10:25
  those films things that's jumping out.
• 10:28
  But but this one, it just works so well because it's all that
• 10:30
  build up. It's how from as soon as the set
• 10:32
  foot on the planet, it's just instantly hostile to them.
• 10:35
  And it did. It's just screaming at them.
• 10:37
  Get off, pack on your ship and go.
• 10:40
  And then the the build up to it, though, it's brilliant because I
• 10:44
  think there's a lot of distraction going on because
• 10:46
  you're thinking, who the hell is that massive guy in the chair?
• 10:49
  How was something like exploded out of his chest?
• 10:51
  Why is the big massive hole in the floor?
• 10:54
  And then you go down with cane and then you see the eggs and
• 10:57
  the fluids running upwards, which is really weird.
• 10:59
  And that just really like freaks out.
• 11:01
  Like how on earth is that happening?
• 11:03
  And because you're looking at them and they're so fleshy and
• 11:05
  the sore organic and it's something you've just never seen
• 11:08
  before. I think it just really catches
• 11:10
  you off guard when it does leap out that editing.
• 11:12
  It's so swift, cut so hard you can barely take it in and then
• 11:17
  boom, you out of there. And I'll just look out that slow
• 11:19
  pull back from the ship. In the end, right there you go,
• 11:23
  you're in. Well, you fellas know I'll let
• 11:25
  my science fiction and this whole sequence just a bit, a
• 11:29
  little bit. And this whole sequence of all
• 11:32
  the alien ship is top to bottom top notch science fiction movie
• 11:36
  making as good as it gets. The design work from the alien
• 11:39
  shape to the space suits to the eggs to the face.
• 11:42
  Hooker is just exceptional. The production design, first of
• 11:45
  all in the Stromo and then aboard the Alien shape where we
• 11:47
  see the Space Jockey and the chamber full of eggs is huge.
• 11:51
  No spaceship interiors have ever looked better for me.
• 11:54
  The writing and performance is a top tier as well, but Ridley
• 11:57
  Scott's direction really, really stands out for me here.
• 12:01
  The 10 suspenseful Tony sets and then completely controlled as
• 12:04
  Dallas, Kane and Lamba investigate the ship is pretty
• 12:07
  masterful. I think I just find the whole
• 12:09
  thing fascinating. We see the exterior of the Alien
• 12:12
  ship and we're like, what the Hell's that?
• 12:14
  Then in the ship, we come across the Space Jockey and we're like,
• 12:16
  what the Hell's that? But desperate know what these
• 12:19
  things are. But it's not about that.
• 12:21
  Scott's building up to the money shop and that face hugger is so
• 12:24
  money shot. We arrive in the Chamber of Eggs
• 12:27
  and we're 130 alien eggs were created just for this sequence,
• 12:30
  which is ridiculous. And the whole thing just looks
• 12:33
  magnificent. And Kane examining the egg up
• 12:35
  close, I mean, come on. Even now 30 watches in when that
• 12:40
  egg opens and Kane coarsely appears into it.
• 12:42
  I'm like, get out of there. Don't put your head over that
• 12:45
  thing. At the same time, you don't
• 12:47
  blame him for wanting to know what it is because it's so
• 12:49
  fascinating. And the moment the Facebook
• 12:52
  strikes, the sound design's great.
• 12:53
  There's like a whip and a crack with its tail.
• 12:55
  And then the editing, like you mentioned, Matt, is just
• 12:58
  fantastic. We don't actually see this
• 12:59
  Facebook attack, but because it's so well done, it's sort of
• 13:03
  in my head, which is a sign of great directing.
• 13:05
  I think it's just superb start to finish and for me, the best
• 13:08
  sequence Ridley Scott's ever directed.
• 13:10
  Wow. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to have
• 13:12
  to be careful here. Exactly taught of this.
• 13:13
  I talked about this whole sequence about 45 minutes.
• 13:16
  So I'm just going to have to really fast and just get the
• 13:19
  bits sorted. But from seeing that ship
• 13:21
  silhouetted from the matte paintings to the to the model
• 13:24
  work to the the interiors that were just, you know, hand
• 13:27
  painted by Geiger as well. It was all done by him, sprayed
• 13:30
  by him. This thing looks alive.
• 13:32
  How kind of sexually violent the whole design is as well.
• 13:37
  I mean that whole ship just kind of looks like a spread pair of
• 13:39
  legs and then you've got them openings which are obviously
• 13:42
  vaginal. But they do.
• 13:48
  What's this theory #1 But the way they get in is just
• 13:54
  obviously vaginal. And then when you see that space
• 13:56
  jockey, that crane shot, for me, it's just, Oh yes, that's one of
• 14:00
  the best things I've seen. It just kind of pans all the way
• 14:02
  up and you just see the whole thing.
• 14:04
  But guy got kind of hand painted, all of it, and it was
• 14:07
  ruined by someone dropped a cigarette on it at the end of
• 14:09
  the shoot and burned it down. Unbelievable.
• 14:12
  Yeah, I've devastated. Absolutely devastated, but it
• 14:14
  was like 26 feet I think, when they built it.
• 14:16
  But like you guys have said, you've gone over that attack.
• 14:19
  But the thing that gets me is when they're shining that light
• 14:21
  through it and they see that movement and it's like no
• 14:24
  movement. But you know how they did that?
• 14:27
  They've got it on a platform and Ridley Scott's inside of it and
• 14:30
  they tried to put like product with sticks and it just looked
• 14:32
  rubbish. So he's actually got a pair of
• 14:33
  marigolds on painted flesh coloured.
• 14:35
  He's got like a like a cow's kidney and he's just kind of
• 14:38
  flapping it. You know, when you make like a
• 14:39
  shadow puppet on the wall, you try to do a bird, you lock your
• 14:42
  thorns and you flap your he's just basically doing that inside
• 14:44
  the egg. And that's Ridley Scott moving
• 14:46
  it so he he had control over all of it.
• 14:48
  He had like all these entrails and he had all these bits and
• 14:51
  all the kind of white bits of fat that you get on the on the
• 14:53
  entry. He dressed the whole of the egg.
• 14:55
  I mean, it's all from his mind. This whole film was Ridley
• 14:57
  Scott's film, which we'll go through.
• 14:59
  You've got that incredible shot where it pushes in, where you
• 15:01
  see them going into the ship and then it's completely bookended
• 15:04
  by coming out. That's a short film in itself.
• 15:06
  It's a horror film in itself. And then you then you bang onto
• 15:09
  the ship. It's just so beautifully done.
• 15:11
  I can just watch that over and over again.
• 15:12
  It's absolutely masterful. Yeah, I mean, Wesley mentioned
• 15:15
  it there about that blue light and where that came from because
• 15:17
  it's such an iconic look for me. The lightning, that chamber,
• 15:21
  where it comes from, that actually came from The Who of
• 15:23
  all people because when Scott was filming this sequence, The
• 15:26
  Who went next door because they had a big stage show coming up,
• 15:29
  so they were testing lasers. Scott just saw it, loved it
• 15:32
  immediately as an artist, thought I can use that and then
• 15:35
  ask Roger Dalry if he could. So that's where that light comes
• 15:37
  from. Amazing.
• 15:38
  Wow. Yeah.
• 15:39
  I've never been so thankful for Roger Dalry in me life.
• 15:42
  Yeah, best thing that whoever did.
• 15:44
  They should have called the planet LV 515 in tribute.
• 15:48
  I don't get it. I don't get it. 550 just on by
• 15:52
  The Who I mean I love them now. I mentioned a bit about the
• 15:59
  space suits there but it was an absolute nightmare on the set.
• 16:01
  It was like 38° and the cast kept saying, like, this is
• 16:04
  really uncomfortable and the regularly pass out and a nurse
• 16:07
  had to be on hand at all times. But that shot, I said when as
• 16:10
  the camera pans back, the guys in the suits are Ridley Scott
• 16:12
  and Derek Van Lyn's children. So you can kind of see them
• 16:15
  moving like kids would. And once they were put in the
• 16:18
  suit, they were like, this is really uncomfortable.
• 16:20
  And then they started passing out.
• 16:22
  So they went right, we've got a bit moderate medications to this
• 16:24
  costume because the kids are uncomfortable.
• 16:25
  What's the matter about the actors?
• 16:27
  As long as the kids are. The kids aren't all right in
• 16:30
  this case. You get that one, surely?
• 16:33
  That's a better one that one in. Well done.
• 16:38
  So like we've talked about the space jockey already, that huge
• 16:41
  alien skeleton. I will see when when they get in
• 16:43
  that ship. And obviously, since this film,
• 16:46
  Scott has addressed the origins of it in his two alien pregos.
• 16:49
  But before they came along, there was another explanation
• 16:52
  that have you heard what this was?
• 16:53
  No, go for it. No, go for it.
• 16:55
  Well, it comes from Ron Cobb, who Wesley mentioned.
• 16:57
  He's one of the concept artists on the film and he says a
• 17:00
  cataclysm caused that adult aliens to die, leaving the eggs
• 17:03
  dormant in the chamber. Years later, the space jockey
• 17:06
  race investigate the planet, find the egg chamber and are
• 17:10
  fascinated by it. One of them gets face hooked,
• 17:12
  the alien burst from his chest and goes on a killing rampage.
• 17:15
  The alien is shot and killed and it's acidic blood burns through
• 17:19
  the hole, leaving the space jockey stranded on the planet.
• 17:21
  So they send out a distress call, and that's one that's
• 17:24
  picked up years later by the Nostromo.
• 17:26
  But by this point the jockeys have all starved to death.
• 17:29
  Wow, the space truck you actually gets explained I think
• 17:32
  in a far worse way in Prometheus much?
• 17:34
  Worse. Yeah, I'm sticking with your
• 17:36
  explanation there, Ma. Also, I know that Fox very
• 17:39
  nearly said no to them building that space truck, he said,
• 17:41
  because it was so huge and only being used for one scene.
• 17:45
  And it was again, Ron Cobb who convinced him to keep it.
• 17:47
  He called it our Cecil B De Mille shot, meaning a moment
• 17:50
  that makes the movie really expensive and not like AB movie
• 17:53
  like the Fiat award. I mean, he's right.
• 17:55
  That's set alone gives the film an enormous shot of credibility
• 17:58
  early on. Just carry through.
• 17:59
  The rest of the film doesn't. It.
• 18:01
  Oh yeah, absolutely. I know there's quite a lot of
• 18:03
  discussion and debate around the design of the alien ship as
• 18:06
  well. In Daniel Bannon and Ron
• 18:07
  Schusett's original script, the eggs were founded an ancient
• 18:10
  pyramid like structure on the planet, which would have been
• 18:13
  quite cool. But I think it's great the way
• 18:15
  it's done. And obviously it was written out
• 18:18
  and the producers replaced it with an army bunker, which would
• 18:20
  have been fucking terrible. That's crap.
• 18:24
  That's Scott came in and he's, I like the ancient civilization
• 18:26
  idea and he kind of changed it back.
• 18:28
  But I love what Scott did with that idea and turned it into the
• 18:30
  ship instead of this pyramid, you know, it's, I think that's
• 18:32
  much better. So what this means is I don't
• 18:34
  think it's totally clear in the film is that the chamber with
• 18:37
  the alien eggs isn't actually on.
• 18:38
  The alien spaceship that's in the ancient structure in the
• 18:41
  alien ship is on top of it. All right, all right.
• 18:44
  So then when the AB sail down that shot, if you see them AB
• 18:46
  sailing, they're moving down from the ship into the
• 18:48
  structure, right. Actually brought that permit
• 18:50
  idea back for Alien versus Predator with some interesting
• 18:55
  results. Is that, shall we say?
• 18:57
  Yeah, it's in there, Yeah. Oh, it is.
• 18:59
  I remember. Yeah, vividly.
• 19:02
  So we've covered off quite a bit there with the face of our
• 19:04
  sequence. I mean, pretty exceptional,
• 19:06
  right? No outstand.
• 19:07
  Amazing. From one huge sequence, it's not
• 19:10
  long before when do an even more iconic one.
• 19:12
  After Ash goes against Ripley's wishes and lets Kane aboard in a
• 19:15
  stroma with the face hooker still attached, the creature
• 19:17
  attaches itself and dies. Everything is seemingly fine
• 19:21
  until lunchtime. In one of Hollywood's most
• 19:24
  famous scenes, Kane starts convulsing and spazzling on the
• 19:27
  table, and to the shock and horror of the rest of the crew
• 19:30
  and the audience, an alien graphically burst out of his
• 19:32
  chest and scurries away across the tabletop.
• 19:36
  In a movie part with great sequences.
• 19:38
  This is by a distance the most famous I think, isn't it?
• 19:41
  Yeah, yeah, it has to be. Yeah, I mean, look, you can
• 19:44
  criticize this scene if you want because, OK, that final effect
• 19:49
  shot, if it's going away a little bit comical, Yeah, fair
• 19:53
  enough. If you look close, you can maybe
• 19:54
  see a couple of rods, like moving it about in Kane's chest.
• 19:58
  All right, fair enough in the logic of it.
• 20:00
  You know, he's never felt this thing in his chest.
• 20:03
  They'll have an X-ray at him. You know, you can pick logic
• 20:06
  fault in it as well if you want. But I think that's just missing
• 20:08
  the point because this scene is one, you can just pause it.
• 20:12
  You can shorten anyone and say, you know what?
• 20:14
  This scene, it changed cinema because nothing was the same
• 20:18
  after it. We'd never, ever, ever seen
• 20:20
  anything like this before. And it's so brutal and it's so
• 20:25
  short, but it's to the point you can barely take in what's
• 20:28
  happening. And I can easily imagine the
• 20:31
  likes of Sam Raimi and John Carpenter watching this or
• 20:34
  going, oh, Jesus Christ, right, Better raise me game.
• 20:36
  You know, I thought I have some good ideas.
• 20:38
  Jesus Christ, God, look what we can get away with now.
• 20:42
  But for me, one thing that always makes the same all the
• 20:44
  more effective, and it's something that it's really easy
• 20:47
  to miss because obviously it's the big effect shot you come
• 20:49
  for. But just watch Ash in this
• 20:52
  sequence. Ian Home is so creepy here, even
• 20:56
  for Key and Sauce, choking and coughing and he's just eating.
• 20:59
  Ash gives him this little look. He just kind of cocks his head
• 21:02
  and just really pees at him really intensely and then when
• 21:06
  he just start coughing, he's just looking at him sore
• 21:09
  closely. He knows what's coming, doesn't
• 21:11
  he? He knows what's coming, everyone
• 21:13
  else is freaking out and he isn't.
• 21:15
  And I think on repeat films, because like I say, it's easy to
• 21:17
  miss it, but Ian Holm really makes the scene for me.
• 21:21
  I mean, the scene as a horse is totally iconic, isn't it?
• 21:24
  And for good reason, because it is brilliant.
• 21:26
  It's still, having seen it many times and knowing what's coming,
• 21:28
  still fantastic. Now, at the time when audiences
• 21:31
  had no clue what was going to happen, this must have been so
• 21:34
  shocking in the best possible way.
• 21:36
  I said that the first Facebook sequence is exceptional, and I
• 21:38
  think Ridley Scott deserves a lot of credit for it, but here I
• 21:41
  don't think you probably have to do quite as much.
• 21:43
  I think it's mostly there in the writing.
• 21:45
  The idea of a parasite planting an egg down somebody's throat
• 21:47
  and then later an alien gruesomely bursting out their
• 21:50
  chest is so fantastic. I just conned, wrapped my head
• 21:53
  around it. It's a great idea.
• 21:55
  I know that the moment the alien burst through Kane's chest as
• 21:58
  well, they created the mechanical torso laid out on the
• 22:01
  table, and John Hurt was under it and put his head, shoulders,
• 22:03
  and arms through a hole on the table to make it all seem like
• 22:05
  one body. The mechanical torso was packed
• 22:08
  with animal guts and a small compressed air cannon.
• 22:11
  They activated the cannon, the torch will burst open.
• 22:14
  The flood and gut spilled everywhere and they pushed the
• 22:16
  alien puppet up from under the table.
• 22:18
  I think there's a myth this was all filmed in one take as well,
• 22:20
  but it wasn't because the mechanism didn't fire the first
• 22:22
  time. But it all looks fantastic
• 22:25
  again. It's just incredibly, incredibly
• 22:27
  shocking, isn't it? I mean, even John Hurt was said
• 22:29
  in an interview. He said he doesn't know how many
• 22:31
  people have actually seen it. He says everyone who's seen
• 22:33
  aliens by 60% of people who's actually seen it because
• 22:36
  everyone just kind of shuts their eyes and turns away from
• 22:38
  it. He's always to be best
• 22:39
  performance and no one's actually seen me performance.
• 22:43
  It was it. Everyone says it's just one take
• 22:45
  to the know what's happened. I think the first time that air
• 22:47
  cannon fires and the blood spurts out, they didn't know how
• 22:49
  much blood was going to come out.
• 22:50
  So I think all of the reactions are absolutely genuine from that
• 22:53
  very first spurt. And then he stops and then he
• 22:55
  convulses again. And I think you can see where
• 22:57
  that cut goes and where you know where John Hurt is.
• 23:00
  He's kind of sat on the table where the aliens going to come
• 23:02
  through. But yeah, incredibly iconic.
• 23:04
  But it's the one thing about the film that always niggles me as
• 23:07
  the way that runs away. It's just a little bit too late.
• 23:10
  It's it's, I expect it's legs to like spin like Roger Rabbit or
• 23:13
  something and they say and it's like running across the table.
• 23:17
  Do you know what I mean it? Just.
• 23:18
  It just loses it a little bit for me, that and then the plates
• 23:21
  just jumping out of the way. I think there's there's yeah.
• 23:23
  But I mean, you know, it's iconic.
• 23:25
  It's incredible. It's just one of them scenes
• 23:27
  where really confidently done. It's just fucking brilliant.
• 23:30
  Yeah, I mean, years have talked about their lads.
• 23:32
  This whole thing about the blood and the goods.
• 23:34
  Now, much was shocking, but but even the cast weren't expecting
• 23:37
  it to be be so graphic. So when you get that shot of
• 23:40
  Lambert and she gets sprayed with blood, that's a genuine
• 23:42
  reaction from Veronica Cartwright now.
• 23:44
  I think you can tell she's absolutely disgusted by what's
• 23:48
  happening to it, so freaked out. And even Sigourney Weaver said
• 23:52
  like she thought John Hurt might have actually been dying.
• 23:55
  And the only reason she didn't break character was because
• 23:57
  nobody shouted cut. Yeah, Consumer professional
• 24:01
  Weaver. Yeah.
• 24:01
  Yeah, too professional of anything.
• 24:03
  I thought he was dead. I also know the Yaffe code Will
• 24:07
  plays park. I said that he went home that
• 24:09
  night in a state of shock. He said he looked himself in the
• 24:11
  bathroom and refused to talk to his wife for like 4 hours.
• 24:14
  Traumatized. I know, as well as when they
• 24:18
  were prepping the scene and fitting the torso at the table.
• 24:20
  It took a long time. John, who would get really,
• 24:22
  really bored. So in the end, he was asking
• 24:24
  Ridley Scott for like, cigarettes and a bottle of wine.
• 24:26
  But Scott was like, no, no chance.
• 24:27
  Constantly professional. But the crew ended up just kind
• 24:30
  of giving it to him anyway, just kind of under the table.
• 24:32
  There you go. Have a tub, have a glass of
• 24:34
  wine. You'll be fine.
• 24:36
  Scott's a right bastard, isn't he traumatizing everyone?
• 24:41
  Did you know as well that John, who wasn't the first person cast
• 24:44
  as Kane? I did.
• 24:46
  I did know that. Yeah, do.
• 24:47
  You know who the first person was.
• 24:48
  Well, I've forgotten his name now, but I know he he was really
• 24:51
  really poorly, like on the first day of shooting and then they
• 24:53
  found out he was diabetic right and took him up.
• 24:55
  I can't remember his name. Is it Peter Finch?
• 24:58
  Nearly John Finch. John Finch, yeah.
• 25:00
  So he was an English actor most well known for like Shakespeare
• 25:03
  roles. He played Macbeth and was also
• 25:04
  the leading frenzy, the Hitchcock film and he took I'll
• 25:07
  like Wesley said during production and was diagnosed
• 25:09
  with diabetes. Scott said he had to be carried
• 25:11
  off the set and he was replaced by John Hurst.
• 25:14
  I mean, I'm sure Jon Finch would have been excellent, but who?
• 25:16
  It's really memorable seeing as he's only here in the film for
• 25:19
  half an hour or so. Yeah, he's fantastic.
• 25:21
  To finish on the Chess Bursta scene, we have a question from
• 25:23
  Patreon. So a benefit of being in all the
• 25:26
  right movies, Pedron, is that will answer your questions on
• 25:29
  the show. And Jamie Russell.
• 25:31
  Hello, Jamie. Hello.
• 25:32
  Jamie. Jamie's asked us how high on the
• 25:35
  iconic horror death list is the chess bursta scene.
• 25:39
  I think it's pretty high. I would say top five.
• 25:42
  Yeah. For sci-fi horror, it's probably
• 25:44
  number one. I don't.
• 25:45
  I can't think of anything more iconic or more impactful or more
• 25:48
  memorable than that. Maybe kind of like the head
• 25:51
  exploding in scanners maybe, but that wouldn't happen without
• 25:54
  this. I kind of think of anything
• 25:55
  before this, should I say, that had such an impact.
• 25:57
  I think they set the benchmark and everything that came after
• 25:59
  it. Or was this a massive thank you?
• 26:02
  Yeah, I mean, iconic horror deaths.
• 26:04
  You've got the point of view sequence and Halloween, the
• 26:06
  first sequence in Jaws, Drew Barrymore and Scream, Johnny
• 26:09
  Depp and the Nightmare on Elm Street maybe and The Wicked Man,
• 26:12
  the Omen, Night, the Living Dead all have iconic death scenes.
• 26:15
  But for me, I think there's two out there that transcend the
• 26:17
  genre and on just iconic horror scenes or iconic scenes full
• 26:19
  stop. One the chess Burster scene and
• 26:22
  the others the shower scene in Psycho.
• 26:24
  In terms of state, a cycle will probably never be topped.
• 26:27
  So for me I'd say the chess burster scenes probably #2
• 26:30
  behind cycle. OK.
• 26:31
  Yeah, much the same. I was just trying to think of
• 26:33
  ones that did equal it. And I've kind of came up with
• 26:36
  more. So he wants to use.
• 26:37
  I've already mentioned, I do think, you know, David Warner
• 26:40
  getting decapitated in The Omen, that's incredibly memorable, but
• 26:43
  it's not as good in terms of the effects as it is here.
• 26:47
  Edward Woodward getting burned at the end of the way Command.
• 26:49
  Just, you know, one end and that is and the other one, not
• 26:53
  because it's in a great film necessarily, but one that did
• 26:55
  come to mind pretty quickly is the girl who gets wiped out by
• 26:58
  the bus in Final Destination. Oh yeah.
• 27:01
  Just because I've seen that effect ripped off so many times.
• 27:03
  Yeah, yeah. And to be fair, the first time I
• 27:06
  saw it, my popcorn went absolutely flying when I saw
• 27:09
  that in the cinema. It is brilliantly done.
• 27:11
  But I would say for she, like, what the fuck are we?
• 27:13
  This is still the one debate. John agreeing with that and then
• 27:16
  laughing at scanners. What on earth?
• 27:19
  Final destination. Would have thought be the other
• 27:23
  way around. Unbelievable.
• 27:27
  I'm not sure whether I've done a beginning section on a movie
• 27:29
  that's as big as this one. There's some great scenes with
• 27:32
  mother we just couldn't fit in. But in the two we've covered the
• 27:35
  Facebook, then the chess Burster.
• 27:37
  We've discussed some all time iconic filmmaking, haven't we?
• 27:40
  Absolutely, definitely just getting started.
• 27:45
  The director. We've mentioned him a lot
• 27:49
  already and the director of Alien was Ridley Scott, one of
• 27:53
  the most well known modern directors out there at this
• 27:56
  point. He directed one feature that was
• 27:57
  the Duelist historical drama released in 1977, but it was
• 28:01
  Alien that really put him on the Hollywood map.
• 28:04
  Yeah. Yeah, from Monica the Woods as
• 28:06
  well, isn't he? South Shields.
• 28:07
  Yes, he is indeed. Yeah, down the road.
• 28:10
  So he's a huge name nowadays, but it's the first time we've
• 28:12
  covered a movie of his. So what do we think of Ridley
• 28:14
  Scott as a director generally, first of all?
• 28:17
  What happened to Ridley Scott? I mean, come on.
• 28:21
  Like he he was one, he was rivalled as one of like my
• 28:24
  favorite directors when I was very first getting into films.
• 28:26
  And I just loved Blade Runner. I loved Alien and I just was
• 28:30
  like this, this guy's obviously the pinnacle.
• 28:32
  It was just it was there was him and Kubrick who I just kind of
• 28:35
  looked at and just thought, well, that's that's how it
• 28:37
  works. And then, I don't know, he kind
• 28:40
  of lost touch with his, with his real drive and his real sense of
• 28:43
  who he was visually. And I think this film and Blade
• 28:46
  Runner, he kind of proved himself.
• 28:48
  He didn't have to do anything else.
• 28:50
  That's it. You, if you, if you hit the
• 28:52
  ground running with Alien, you, you operate on 80% of it.
• 28:54
  And every single decision that's been made and every single set
• 28:57
  that's been dressed and every single bit of the face huger,
• 28:59
  even putting the oysters in and putting the kidney in and
• 29:02
  normally all the fish pits going, you organise all of that
• 29:04
  and you create something this iconic and this good.
• 29:06
  You can't take your foot off the gas as far as I'm concerned.
• 29:08
  But he has done some absolute classic since I'm Gladiator does
• 29:11
  massive Black Hawk Down is pretty good, but he's done some
• 29:13
  stinkers, hasn't he? Black Rain.
• 29:15
  What the fucks that 40? Come on.
• 29:18
  Kicked him a heaven rubble Hannibal away.
• 29:20
  Ridley man, come on man in your native tongue.
• 29:27
  Let's not even get started on Prometheus.
• 29:28
  Let's just leave it there. But I mean, a visionary and a
• 29:31
  genius on this and a visionary and a genius on Blade Runner.
• 29:34
  And I think leaving them two films in your legacy, that's all
• 29:37
  you need to do as an artist, I think.
• 29:39
  Yeah, he does divide opinion a bit.
• 29:40
  I think Ridley Scott, some people do say he's in the genius
• 29:43
  and some people think he's must be overrated.
• 29:45
  I would say I'm somewhere in the middle, but I am probably more
• 29:48
  on the side of being a fan. He has made quite a few misses
• 29:51
  for me, but when he's good, he's pretty good, isn't he?
• 29:54
  Yeah, yeah, I'm a finer Thelman Louise and Gladiator.
• 29:57
  I'm a massive fan of that, whoever's advert that he did
• 29:59
  back in the 70s. Oh, it's huge.
• 30:02
  Yeah. Common streets.
• 30:03
  Yeah, it's amazing, but it's the back-to-back wallop of Alien in
• 30:06
  79, in Blade Runner in 82 that stands out, obviously.
• 30:09
  Yeah. I mean, Blade Runner just, wow.
• 30:11
  Still has any film, not just science fiction, but anything
• 30:14
  ever looked better than Blade Runner?
• 30:16
  Actually, we watched it just a few weeks ago and the visuals
• 30:18
  that could come out now and I'd still be amazed by it.
• 30:21
  He does have a great life of visuals and his movies always
• 30:23
  have this real aesthetic way to them.
• 30:25
  For me. They always look huge and
• 30:27
  stylistically usually feel like you're in the hands of someone
• 30:29
  who really knows what they're doing.
• 30:31
  Where he does fall down for me though is big Achilles heel that
• 30:34
  stops him being Spielberg's Scorsese level is his
• 30:38
  storytelling. I don't think he understands
• 30:40
  story and narrative as well as those other guys do.
• 30:43
  There's a few examples but the recent Alien movies he did,
• 30:45
  Prometheus and Alien Covenant stand out for me.
• 30:48
  I like Prometheus as a concept, but the logic is all over the
• 30:51
  place and Covenant just has the most basic errors you could ever
• 30:53
  see with characters intentionally putting themselves
• 30:56
  in danger just because the script needs them to.
• 30:58
  I know Scott didn't write those scripts, but he didn't pick up
• 31:00
  on the problems either, so I think he does need the script to
• 31:02
  be done and finished for him. But like I say, once he has that
• 31:05
  great script, he's superb and his best stuff stands up and I
• 31:09
  think always will, as real classics.
• 31:11
  Yeah, he's a visual director, isn't he?
• 31:13
  Definitely, yeah. The first thing that I think of
• 31:15
  or feel when we talk about Ridley Scottish do feel a sense
• 31:18
  of pride because you know, for mention a he's a local guy.
• 31:21
  And if you're from the North East of England like we are,
• 31:24
  we're such a small region. And so for anyone to make any
• 31:27
  kind of name for themselves in film is an achievement.
• 31:30
  And then for him to be a list top of the table director, it's
• 31:34
  absolutely incredible. What do you achieve to come from
• 31:36
  such humble backgrounds? But that is a sentimental
• 31:39
  reaction and I've got to take it away from that and look at him
• 31:41
  as a director. And I'm kind with you guys.
• 31:44
  It's generally one of frustration because for every
• 31:46
  great film he makes, and he's made some great ones, he
• 31:49
  followed up with three really average ones and probably his
• 31:52
  stinker in there as well. And I look like like the last 20
• 31:55
  years he's, he's done a lot of films.
• 31:57
  But honestly, the only ones I ever go back to are Black Hawk
• 31:59
  Down in The Martian. All the rest very very
• 32:02
  forgettable. See, The Martian, even for me,
• 32:04
  was a bit forgettable, to be fair.
• 32:06
  I mean, you're never going to go or Let's go back and watch White
• 32:09
  Squaw on a Friday night. Let's get a take away.
• 32:12
  Watch White Squaw not. Going to happen.
• 32:14
  Get a take away obviously. Well, obviously, just watch
• 32:17
  anything else. But ultimately I do want to end
• 32:21
  up on a positive on a on a positive note form because he
• 32:24
  has made enough great films and it is when he does happen upon a
• 32:27
  great script and he does align that with that great, incredible
• 32:31
  eye that he has with superb effects, fantastic production
• 32:33
  design. He can give you something
• 32:35
  special and he has done that a few times.
• 32:37
  And he has, yeah. He's just inconsistent.
• 32:40
  Well, Ridley Scott actually came to work on Alien quite late in
• 32:43
  the day. Dan O'bannon and Ronald Schuster
• 32:45
  had a first draft of his script, but nobody wanted to make it.
• 32:48
  Even Fox passed on it at first. But then two things happened.
• 32:52
  Firstly, Walter Hale who had some credibility having written
• 32:55
  and directed several small successful movies like The
• 32:57
  Getaway in hard Times, he picked up the script and wanted to
• 33:00
  produce it. Then secondly, in May 1977, what
• 33:04
  happened? Star Wars.
• 33:06
  Star Wars was released as because in our Star Wars
• 33:09
  episodes. Or check out if you haven't
• 33:11
  already. Star Wars was a phenomenon that
• 33:13
  changed Hollywood and suddenly science fiction movies were red
• 33:15
  hot. Fox had produced Star Wars, so
• 33:17
  went back to Alien and Greenland it immediately, Walter Hill
• 33:21
  said. He didn't want to direct and Fox
• 33:23
  went through quite a lot of other candidates before they got
• 33:25
  to Ridley Scott. Right, Yeah, Fox took a
• 33:28
  shortlist of names and Scott was quite far down it, as I, as I
• 33:31
  remember reading the first, ask Robert Altman if he'd be
• 33:34
  interested, which anybody said no, I thought that would have
• 33:37
  been quite a bit. And Peter Yates, who directed
• 33:39
  Bullet, and Jack Layton, who directed The Great Gatsby, they
• 33:42
  were considered. Robert Aldridge came very, very
• 33:45
  close and he directed stuff like whatever Happened to Baby Jane
• 33:49
  and the The Longest Yard. But he talked himself out of the
• 33:51
  gig when he met with Hill and David Guyler.
• 33:53
  I think he just wanted the money.
• 33:55
  I don't think he had the passion for the project.
• 33:57
  And Guy last Aldridge, what plans have you got for the face
• 34:00
  hugger? And Aldridge said I'll just put
• 34:01
  some tubes on a guy's face. No one's going to remember it
• 34:03
  anyway. It's still going to get your
• 34:06
  job. Is it?
• 34:07
  What do you what do you see is up in five years time?
• 34:09
  Not here exactly. Yeah.
• 34:12
  Yeah. No one's remember the face
• 34:13
  hugger of the. Yeah, idiot.
• 34:16
  Well, finally, having been impressed by the Duelists, Fox
• 34:19
  got the Ridley Scott. Like a lot of other film makers
• 34:21
  at the time, Scott had seen Star Wars and been blown away by it
• 34:24
  and had some ideas and how we do a science fiction movie of his
• 34:26
  own. So when Fox approached him, he
• 34:28
  accepted the gig for Alien immediately.
• 34:31
  So Ridley Scott was hired. What do we think of his work as
• 34:34
  a director then on Alien? I mean, for all the criticisms
• 34:38
  that we've had of him, it's this film and Blade Runner that
• 34:41
  they're the two that just make you say no.
• 34:43
  He is worth a full episode because it, it's just a concept
• 34:46
  that just plays completely to his strengths.
• 34:48
  And you can tell he's an, he's looked at this with the eye of
• 34:52
  an artist, but he's also not lost sight of what the film's
• 34:55
  got to be about, which is just pure terror.
• 34:57
  And, and it's all, it's all down to him how he's managed to
• 35:00
  combine the two. I think his work, he is
• 35:02
  absolutely fantastic. Yeah, I agree.
• 35:05
  I mean I said before that give Ridley's got a very good script
• 35:07
  and he deliver something special and he does that here with
• 35:10
  Alien. The direction is world class,
• 35:13
  start to finish. He doesn't just take what's on
• 35:15
  the page and put it on the screen.
• 35:16
  He clearly had a really, really strong vision about what he
• 35:19
  wanted the Alien to be. And he pulls it off brilliantly
• 35:22
  as well. Right from the first seconds
• 35:24
  where the camera silently moves around in a Stromo as a visual
• 35:27
  setup for a movie that's just astonishing to me, introduces us
• 35:30
  to the world we'll be in and also sets that ominous tone
• 35:32
  brilliantly. Well, and working with the
• 35:34
  actors as a few little tricks that Ridley Scott use on the set
• 35:37
  that I like. So to heighten the sense of
• 35:39
  claustrophobia for the cast, he had the walls of the set pushed
• 35:42
  slightly closer together every day, but didn't tell the cast he
• 35:44
  was doing it. He wrote full back stories for
• 35:47
  each character and gave them to the actors before shooting.
• 35:49
  And to try and create more natural tension between the
• 35:52
  characters, he asked the affect court when Ian home to both
• 35:54
  antagonise Sigourney Weaver on the set.
• 35:57
  And those things worked, I think because the cast are all
• 35:59
  excellent. Every actor in the movie is
• 36:01
  playing at least one of the most famous characters he ever
• 36:03
  played, and Scott gets great performances from all of them.
• 36:06
  So visually, conceptually, working with the cast and crew,
• 36:10
  I think Scott was incredible in every way, to be honest on this
• 36:13
  one. I think this is just Ridley
• 36:15
  Scott's head, isn't it? He's got so many ideas.
• 36:18
  He's got so much energy he's got, he's got so much energy
• 36:20
  that he can build a whole world that's completely believable and
• 36:24
  a spaceship that's completely believable, and then a cast of
• 36:26
  characters that are all believable.
• 36:28
  Every single thing about this film you buy into.
• 36:30
  And that's just all down to his approach and the the real
• 36:34
  effervescence that he's got to make something, this real energy
• 36:37
  that he's got that comes across in the whole film.
• 36:40
  It comes across in every single camera move, every single
• 36:42
  performance, the way the scenes are blocked, the fact that he's
• 36:45
  got such a control over it. And based on the work that he
• 36:49
  does here, this is good enough to give you work for 40 years.
• 36:53
  And you can turn around years later and say to anybody, a new
• 36:58
  producer comes in, right? They've never heard of Ridley
• 36:59
  Scott, but they've seen Alien, and they don't know who Ridley
• 37:01
  Scott is. And they'll go, yeah, but we're
• 37:03
  doing the new Robin Hood film. Who's directing it?
• 37:05
  The guy who did Alien. Oh, fair enough.
• 37:10
  It doesn't matter. You could do anything you
• 37:11
  wanted. But that's just what comes
• 37:13
  across this film. This is just a a guy with just
• 37:16
  so much energy, so much vision, so much confidence.
• 37:19
  It's his film. And if anyone said to me, what
• 37:21
  is that, you know, what is Ridley Scott's vision?
• 37:23
  I would say Alien, Blade Runner, but I would just say this
• 37:26
  because he just seems to own the whole thing.
• 37:29
  It's perfectly done. Yeah, it is Scott's vision,
• 37:32
  although he did cite three of the movies as being big
• 37:34
  influences on him when he made Alien.
• 37:35
  One was Star Wars, like we said. Do you know what the other two
• 37:38
  were? 2001 Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
• 37:40
  Correct. Yeah, I think the influence of
• 37:45
  the visuals in the supercomputer from 2001 are obvious, but I've
• 37:49
  not seen A Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but I know you both
• 37:51
  have because you didn't episode on it.
• 37:53
  Can you see that as an influence on Alien?
• 37:55
  Absolutely. Definitely.
• 37:56
  It's the atmosphere and the way it just never lets up and it's
• 38:00
  just, it's how oppressive it is. It's like the film is almost
• 38:03
  like sitting on top of you. And I know Scott also played a
• 38:06
  massive part in getting the budget increased once he came on
• 38:08
  board to direct. While he was waiting for the
• 38:10
  initial 4.2 million budgets to be greenlit by Fox, Scott went
• 38:14
  away and storyboarded the entire film which took him I think 7 to
• 38:18
  8 weeks. Brought the storyboards back
• 38:20
  into the word. That impressed by the
• 38:21
  storyboards that doubled the budget from 4.2 million to 8.4
• 38:25
  million. Then storyboards are amazing.
• 38:27
  You can see them online. They are fucking unbelievable.
• 38:29
  I. Was going to say that must be
• 38:30
  one hell of a storyboard. It should just be.
• 38:34
  It should be released. I think the must have released
• 38:35
  in print form. I haven't looked, but if they
• 38:37
  have I'm buying it because it's unbelievable work.
• 38:39
  Like, it's fantastic. I mean, I haven't said that that
• 38:41
  he got more money than initially planned anyway.
• 38:44
  And despite the fact that I just said, you know, he really let's
• 38:46
  films go for budget, he did on this one mid shoot, he'd ran out
• 38:49
  of money because the production had grown so big.
• 38:52
  So he'd gone to Fox, asked for another 2.6 million, which was
• 38:55
  going to take it to 11,000,000 on total and so on to do this.
• 38:59
  And he did have a meeting with the head honchos and one of them
• 39:01
  just wanted to pull the plug on the whole project at this point
• 39:04
  and just just sack the whole thing off.
• 39:06
  Scott obviously absolutely kicked off at this.
• 39:08
  You know, the man just have a bit of a short fuse.
• 39:10
  And when he was ranting, he was pounding the table to make his
• 39:12
  point. He pounded the table so hard he
• 39:15
  broke his finger sideways. Wow, yeah.
• 39:19
  But you know that didn't stop the man.
• 39:21
  He just kept on going. So the secretary gave him a
• 39:23
  glass full of ice, he stuck his finger on that and he just
• 39:26
  continued ranting until he got this 2.6 million blamey.
• 39:30
  Yep, you don't want to be on the receiving end of a S Shield
• 39:33
  rant. I went to school there.
• 39:37
  He didn't receive any Oscar recognition for Alien Ridley
• 39:40
  Scott, but Peter, a year to a Westie, mentioned being
• 39:42
  concerned to direct, was nominated for Breaking Away.
• 39:45
  If you were redoing those nominations today, surely Scott
• 39:48
  and Alien would be in there, yes?
• 39:50
  Obviously 100% clear the board for me.
• 39:52
  To finish it off on Ridley Scott and Alien, I have a quote from
• 39:55
  Scott himself, He said. They sent me the script and I
• 39:58
  loved it and was in Hollywood within a day.
• 40:01
  I adjusted things here and there and shouted the few times to get
• 40:03
  my own way, but all I really wanted to do was scare the shit
• 40:06
  out of people. Job done are.
• 40:08
  They well done. Yep.
• 40:09
  Yep. Well, it's an accomplishment.
• 40:11
  Achieved. There was a big and highly
• 40:21
  accomplished ensemble cast worked on Alien.
• 40:23
  We're going to go into all of them as much as possible as we
• 40:25
  go, but are focusing now in full detail on the star of the show,
• 40:29
  the star of the whole Alien series.
• 40:31
  I'm talking, of course, about Sigourney Weaver is Warrant
• 40:34
  Officer Ellen Ripley. Sounds great.
• 40:37
  So Sigourney Weaver is Ripley starting out.
• 40:40
  An Alien is a slightly insubordinate, slightly
• 40:42
  unpopular crew member. Once Captain Dallas and other
• 40:44
  colleagues start disappearing and she takes command of the
• 40:47
  crew in situation, eventually facing the alien in a final
• 40:50
  showdown and blowing it the fuck out in the space.
• 40:53
  Oh yes, one of the most iconic female leads in all of Hollywood
• 40:56
  is Ripley. How is she here?
• 40:58
  And Sigourney Weaver playing her Westie.
• 41:00
  I mean, for our first film, right, It's astonishing.
• 41:03
  It's astonishingly good. I mean, she's just totally
• 41:06
  immersed in the whole performance and it's so
• 41:09
  believable. It's so good.
• 41:12
  And it's she should be annoying on on the page.
• 41:14
  She should be like a little brat and you should be like, I'm, you
• 41:18
  know, I'm doing this and I'm I'm playing by the rules, I'm
• 41:20
  playing by the book. And you should be thinking,
• 41:21
  well, I want you to get fucking killed first.
• 41:23
  But she doesn't like she has this real, this real energy that
• 41:28
  she brings to it. And it just really, really
• 41:30
  works. And I would put her up there
• 41:31
  with like Clarice as like one of my favorite kind of heroines of
• 41:35
  cinema. She's just such a powerful
• 41:37
  presence. And it works really, really
• 41:39
  well. And I think, you know, we've got
• 41:41
  all of this, all of the gender roles in the whole film are kind
• 41:45
  of punished if you stick towards your gender role a little bit
• 41:48
  too much. I think all the guys and the
• 41:49
  masculinities in there, they get punished for, for playing out
• 41:53
  that role of the masculine. They get, you know, Dallas is
• 41:55
  going down, I'm going to go down and do it.
• 41:56
  I'm going to sort all that out. And they always get punished for
• 41:59
  playing that role. And Sigourney Weaver and Ripley
• 42:02
  has had this incredible challenge, this incredible arc
• 42:05
  where her whole, her whole genre is, is completely flipped.
• 42:10
  And she has to have this masculinity, she has to have
• 42:13
  this real drive, and she has to have this complete break from
• 42:17
  who she is and become something completely different.
• 42:20
  And I think Sigourney Weaver pulls that off with a plume.
• 42:22
  Not only in this, but also in aliens.
• 42:24
  I don't want to go into Aliens because we've covered that
• 42:26
  already, but for somebody to do it so well twice, and for this
• 42:29
  to be your first film and do it so well here and so
• 42:31
  convincingly, I've got nothing else but absolute praise for
• 42:34
  her, to be honest. Like, it's astonishing.
• 42:36
  Yeah, she's such a great character, is Ripley.
• 42:38
  We did talk about it on our Aliens episode where we said the
• 42:40
  writing of the character from James Cameron is superb, and it
• 42:43
  is, but he's building on the fantastic world that's been done
• 42:45
  in Alien. There's a youthful naivety to
• 42:49
  Ripley here, certainly the start of the film that's gone by
• 42:51
  Aliens. She's a right little rebel at
• 42:53
  the start, seeing what she likes and always makes it known if she
• 42:55
  doesn't like or agree with in order.
• 42:57
  And when she doesn't, she's always fucking right as well.
• 43:01
  She wants to go after Dallas Cain and Lambert when she finds
• 43:03
  out the message isn't an SOS but a warning, and she doesn't want
• 43:05
  to let them back on the ship either.
• 43:07
  Both times she stopped by Ash and both times she's totally
• 43:10
  right and Sigourney Weaver. I mean, has anybody ever been
• 43:14
  more perfectly cast? Or has any other actor or
• 43:16
  actress made a role so definitively theirs as Weaver
• 43:19
  has done with Ripley? They're almost inseparable.
• 43:21
  When I think of one, I think of the other straight away.
• 43:23
  Yeah, yeah, it was going to be was first major role too.
• 43:26
  Like you mentioned Westie, which is even more impressive.
• 43:28
  She's just perfect. Ripley's intelligent, she's a
• 43:31
  total badass. She doesn't take any shit and an
• 43:34
  alien especially. She's fucking hot.
• 43:36
  Key is closed. Yes, it's incredible.
• 43:41
  But but what I like about Ripley in the setup of this film, I
• 43:44
  don't think it's like immediately apparently that
• 43:46
  she's going to be the survivor at the end.
• 43:48
  I think it's kind of what you guys are saying.
• 43:49
  She's almost like too clever at some points.
• 43:52
  She think, ah, she's going to get herself into trouble, isn't
• 43:54
  she, because she's getting a bit too cocky for herself.
• 43:57
  She's just like pushing the limits for authority even.
• 43:59
  It's just, you know, so she's going to get killed off.
• 44:02
  So I like how it's it, it sets that up like by the end, it's
• 44:07
  almost kind of blind look that she happens to be the one who
• 44:10
  has survived. She's the one who does that.
• 44:12
  Like, pretty stupid decision to go off and see if the cast at
• 44:14
  the end. Yeah, Yeah, You know that.
• 44:15
  It's the one like the one dumb thing she does in the film, but
• 44:18
  she still doesn't get punished for it.
• 44:20
  She's obviously resourceful. She's smart, she's principled.
• 44:23
  The fact that she doesn't want to let Kane back on the ship,
• 44:26
  she wants to keep in quarantine. And like you said, that's
• 44:28
  absolutely the right thing to do.
• 44:29
  She wants to get the dead face hooker off the ship.
• 44:32
  And again, that was the right thing to do.
• 44:34
  Nobody's listening to her. But she also just takes no shit
• 44:38
  from anyone. She stands up to pretty much
• 44:40
  everyone in this film. She stands up to Dallas.
• 44:42
  She stands up to Ash. She stands up to Parker and
• 44:44
  Brett together. Yeah, like when they're trying
• 44:47
  to gang up on her, like in the low levels, and she just takes
• 44:49
  no shit from them whatsoever. Why don't you just fuck off?
• 44:51
  Yeah, yeah. Exactly.
• 44:54
  But The thing is, you've got to believe that a female character
• 44:56
  can dominate in those scenes. Like especially against like 2
• 45:00
  pretty masculine actors like Yafford Cottoor and Harry Dean
• 45:03
  Stanton, you've really got to believe she can dominate those.
• 45:06
  And Weaver does it effortlessly. Like every single emotion and
• 45:10
  element of Ripley's character, she's just brilliant at putting
• 45:14
  those on screen. And by the end, when she's just
• 45:17
  radiating like pure fear at watches go on through and
• 45:21
  watches got to deal with. And when she's by yourself,
• 45:23
  you're just terrified along with her because she just convinces
• 45:26
  you. This is just the most horrific
• 45:27
  situation anyone could could be in.
• 45:29
  But as a performance? Iconic.
• 45:32
  Yeah, well, Sigourney Weaver was a complete or known at the time
• 45:34
  of Aliens, so of course there were lots of other names in the
• 45:37
  running to play Ripley. Some big, big names as well.
• 45:40
  Have you heard any? Was Jane Fonda in there?
• 45:43
  Well, firstly running a car. I auditioned.
• 45:46
  Fox loved her and Scott did too, but not for Ripley.
• 45:49
  So he cast her with Lambert. Also Genevieve Bujold and
• 45:52
  Catherine Ross were considered, Helen Mirren auditioned and
• 45:56
  according to Ridley Scott, it was actually Warren Beatty who
• 45:58
  recommended weave after he saw in a Broadway play.
• 46:01
  They got weave writing to audition and one of the Alien
• 46:03
  producers, Gordon Carroll, tells a good story about that
• 46:06
  audition. He said we were auditioning at
• 46:09
  the Regency but Sigourney went to the wrong hotel so was late.
• 46:13
  Her agent rang us and begged us to wait for her. 30 minutes
• 46:16
  later we heard outside footsteps of somebody sprinting towards
• 46:18
  the door, then slowing down, then silence as she composed
• 46:21
  herself outside. There was a knock at the door.
• 46:24
  I went to open it and right before me Ripley was standing
• 46:27
  there. Amazing.
• 46:29
  I'm pretty sure Meryl Streep was pretty close bit to being in
• 46:33
  there, and she was going to have an audition, but I know she was
• 46:35
  mourning John Cazelle's death at the time of the cast, and so she
• 46:37
  couldn't get involved. Yeah, that's right.
• 46:39
  That would have been pretty interesting.
• 46:40
  But Scott had some reservations and he wanted to get some, get a
• 46:43
  female perspective on the character.
• 46:45
  So we had 12 women secretaries from Fox.
• 46:47
  How many secretaries were you? Just leave one at the front
• 46:51
  door, didn't you? But then we've got 12 women
• 46:54
  Saturdays from Fox to watch Sigourney Weaver screen test as
• 46:57
  Ripley. He said that an argument broke
• 46:59
  out over whether she was more like Jane Fonda or Faye Dunaway.
• 47:02
  Anyway, we had his leading lady. Lovely.
• 47:06
  So yeah, based on that, Scott Castigoni Weaver as Ripley and
• 47:10
  the rest is history. So what's your favorite Ripley
• 47:13
  moment in Alien? Mine is her confrontation with
• 47:16
  Ash in the medical lab after he breaks quarantine to like Kane
• 47:21
  back on the show everyone else because you know, he's
• 47:24
  disappeared. Her commander, she says she was
• 47:26
  the ranking officer at the time. And I just love how she's
• 47:29
  clearly making him awkward. She's like just going in there.
• 47:33
  She's like playing like round with his toys and he just want a
• 47:35
  girl to come in and touch this toys.
• 47:37
  She's just playing with a microscope and looking through
• 47:39
  it and he's just like, please don't touch that.
• 47:41
  He's just so awkward around it. It's fantastic.
• 47:44
  And she's ultra sarcastic like when she says I'm sorry and she
• 47:48
  clearly isn't. She knows what she's soon, she
• 47:50
  loves winding up, and it's all about her reasserting her
• 47:53
  authority and she's putting Ash back in his place.
• 47:56
  And the interesting thing I find about the scene is, like on the
• 47:58
  page, the dialogue is quite clunky.
• 48:00
  It's all about breaking protocol and playing things by the book,
• 48:04
  by the manual. It's quite cliched, but Weaver
• 48:06
  really, really sells it. She really makes it impactful.
• 48:09
  And I think in retrospect, it's the scene that I think Ash is
• 48:12
  starting to think Ripley is going to be a real problem to
• 48:15
  him. So I think it's spurs the plot
• 48:17
  on and I think it's just a great bit of acting from it.
• 48:19
  Yeah, definitely. I mean, she's great in every
• 48:21
  scene, isn't she? But I'm going for the bit after
• 48:23
  Bretton Dallas have been killed and the four remaining crew
• 48:25
  members have a meeting. It's the scene where Ripley
• 48:28
  basically takes charge, and Weavers acting is outstanding.
• 48:32
  Ripley's saying what she thinks they should do.
• 48:33
  She's saying it's using the air shaft.
• 48:35
  We'll cut off every event until we have a corner and then we
• 48:37
  blow the fuck out in the space. She's totally right and it's a
• 48:40
  really good plan. But Parker keeps interrupting
• 48:42
  her and Ripley totally shouts them down.
• 48:44
  Like, would you listen to me, Parker, Shut up.
• 48:46
  We have a delivery of that is brilliant.
• 48:49
  But I also like it because I mentioned before how Scott asked
• 48:51
  the headquarters to antagonize. We've on the set and court will
• 48:54
  say that when the shot this scene between every take, he
• 48:57
  kept saying to Sigourney Weaver, come on sister, you've got to
• 48:59
  give me more than that. Till eventually she bit his head
• 49:01
  off. Yeah.
• 49:03
  He can tell. Absolutely, definitely curious.
• 49:05
  He finally can. Mine's one that was spoke about
• 49:08
  where where I've said that you should have been annoying.
• 49:11
  It's when they come back in the face of attached to Kane's face
• 49:14
  and she's actually standing our ground and saying to Dallas, no,
• 49:17
  you're not allowed to come back on on board the ship.
• 49:19
  No, it's, it's against protocol. And I just find that which would
• 49:23
  have been so difficult to deliver in like a meaningful way
• 49:27
  for the audience to kind of relate to that because you want
• 49:30
  them to come on board, you're like, let them on.
• 49:32
  But it's that, it's that whole point where the horror starts
• 49:35
  where you start questioning what's right and what's wrong
• 49:37
  and who's in charge and who isn't and what's going to happen
• 49:39
  and what kind of protocols they're going to break next.
• 49:41
  And I think she just stands her ground there.
• 49:43
  And for me, that's when she defines a character and she
• 49:45
  doesn't, she doesn't let up from that moment.
• 49:47
  She fixates on that character and she sticks to a ground from
• 49:50
  that moment. So for me, that's the first time
• 49:52
  you see it and one of one of my favorite Ripley moments.
• 49:55
  I love that bit as well. It's brilliant.
• 49:56
  Yeah, well, for Brilliant and Aliens, Sigourney Weaver didn't
• 50:00
  get any Oscar recognition, but it established as a major star.
• 50:03
  And from there she appeared in big movies like Ghostbusters,
• 50:07
  Aliens, Gorillas in the Mist, Working Girl, Avatar, among
• 50:10
  others. And looking back at her time on
• 50:12
  Aliens, Sigourney Weaver now says I like Ripley straight away
• 50:16
  because she was so unattractive. I beg to differ.
• 50:21
  Second time. She did what was right and would
• 50:25
  stand up for herself. Looking back now, I totally get
• 50:28
  why Ridley cussed me and I'm very glad that he did.
• 50:31
  Yeah. Nice, so away.
• 50:32
  Yeah, yeah. The middle.
• 50:40
  After the baby alien scurries off the dinner table, the crew
• 50:43
  go looking for it. To see her out in the depth is
• 50:45
  an understatement, and in two massive sequences, the fully
• 50:49
  grown Xenomorph revealed itself to us, attacks Harry Dean,
• 50:52
  standings Brett in the claw room, and when Captain Dallas
• 50:55
  was looking for it in the air shafts, he comes a crap hour as
• 50:57
  well. All of a sudden we're in the
• 51:00
  horror movie. What are our thoughts on these
• 51:02
  sequences? My favorite of these by far and
• 51:05
  away is Brett's death. Has to be because they're just
• 51:07
  the lighting on it. I don't sound like complete.
• 51:12
  Obviously, I don't give a shit about the story, like the way
• 51:15
  the way it's lit, the, the, the water coming down.
• 51:18
  He's got this kind of like, it's almost like this baptism, but
• 51:21
  this Christ kind of like symbolism that he, but then he's
• 51:23
  going to the alien almost appears kind of as Christ itself
• 51:27
  from the crucifix coming down to punish.
• 51:29
  You know, it's just got this incredible iconography and it's
• 51:32
  got this incredible sense of dread all the way through it.
• 51:35
  And he's just looking for the cat, which is a nightmare.
• 51:37
  You say get out of there and it's just a sound design.
• 51:40
  You've got that kind of heartbeat on the score and it
• 51:42
  just, it just pulsates and it's just, it's just there.
• 51:45
  And I know they had they had two suits, 2 alien suits built and
• 51:48
  one was for a gymnast. And the gymnast was actually in
• 51:51
  this sequence. And if you look behind Brett and
• 51:53
  one of the sequences, he's kind of rolled up into a ball holding
• 51:56
  up the chain and then just like unrolls from this ball and it
• 51:58
  just looks so terrifying. But it's so simple.
• 52:02
  And then just the way he dies, just that tongue in the head and
• 52:04
  he's just pulled up and just the screams.
• 52:06
  It's just this looks like Blade Runner for me.
• 52:09
  This is the most I'd like from where Ridley Scott's influence
• 52:12
  comes. Like, if you look at the scene,
• 52:13
  this could have been a scene from Blade Runner.
• 52:15
  It looks that good. You can tell this is where he's
• 52:17
  kind of made his marquee. And the lighting on this,
• 52:19
  especially the camera work, everything is just an absolute
• 52:22
  lesson in horror. It's amazing.
• 52:24
  Yeah, I think if Hitchcock directed a science fiction
• 52:26
  movie, it might be something like this.
• 52:28
  You try, yeah, for like an hour, an hour and a half.
• 52:32
  The tension is great. One there's alone around
• 52:34
  engineering is like palpable. You're looking for Jonesy, the
• 52:37
  ship's cart, and actually had a German shepherd on set to get
• 52:40
  the terrified hiss from Jonesy that the wonders Brett finds
• 52:43
  that skin that the alien shedded.
• 52:44
  That's a great touch. And the moment the alien reveals
• 52:47
  itself, it's just stunning. It drops down behind Brett and
• 52:50
  then slowly stands up to its full height.
• 52:52
  And that close up of its snarling, dripping mouth is just
• 52:55
  the stuff of nightmares. Imagine thinking you're looking
• 52:57
  for like a tiny baby alien. You turn around and nothing's
• 52:59
  standing there in front of you. Jesus, it's so when he picks up
• 53:02
  the skin and you think that must be tidy and it's just like keeps
• 53:05
  getting bigger. Oh fuck me, I.
• 53:09
  Think my favorite thing about this sequence, though, is what
• 53:11
  you'd mentioned there, Wesley, just before the alien attacks,
• 53:14
  Brett looking up into the rafters and letting the water
• 53:16
  drip on his face. Yeah, the point of view shot
• 53:18
  from Brett, and we'll see in full view the alien.
• 53:21
  Just hang in there, but first thing you're watching with no
• 53:24
  idea how this thing even exists so you don't even see it.
• 53:26
  And then on 2nd watch it's like how do they not see that the
• 53:28
  first time exactly? Yeah.
• 53:30
  Yeah, I know as well that this scene caused some contention
• 53:33
  between Scott and the producers, basically around the drip water
• 53:35
  that we've both mentioned there. Scott knew that he wanted some
• 53:38
  Somba ominous sound design, so came up with the idea of this
• 53:40
  water driven from the ceiling. But the producers like, why is
• 53:43
  the drip in water in a spaceship?
• 53:45
  So Scott was like condensation just went OK then.
• 53:52
  Yeah, fighting, isn't it? Yeah, there's not anywhere else
• 53:54
  that's some condensation that like.
• 53:58
  They waterfall. It is.
• 54:00
  When Dallas buys it in the vents, I think it's just
• 54:03
  incredible because I think at this point of the film, I think
• 54:06
  he's still being set up. Like he's the guy who's going to
• 54:08
  come through at the end. He's going to be, you know, the
• 54:10
  heroic captain. He's kind of softly spoken, but
• 54:13
  he's still a good guy, you know, even called Dallas, it's a
• 54:16
  heroic name. So when he's taken out,
• 54:18
  especially quite early on, like relatively speaking in the film,
• 54:21
  it's such a big shock. It's Lambert here as well,
• 54:24
  though. It's her performance that
• 54:25
  really, really adds to it, which is like, it's there, it's right
• 54:27
  there with you. And you just said, oh, Jesus
• 54:29
  Christ, yeah, it's horrible. Skerritt is Dallas.
• 54:34
  He's so calm, he's so collected, he's so cool under pressure.
• 54:37
  So when he's in there and and he does that line, I want to get
• 54:40
  the hell out of here. And he saw panic stricken.
• 54:43
  You're like, oh, that's it. He's got his absolutely fucking
• 54:45
  his goose is well and truly cooked.
• 54:47
  But like The thing is, him as a captain, if you think about like
• 54:50
  pretty much every decision he makes us the wrong one.
• 54:53
  He got so many things wrong in this film.
• 54:55
  And even in this, if he just stayed calm and he turned that
• 54:58
  radio off and he stopped listening to everyone, he
• 55:00
  stopped freaking out, he would have probably been all right.
• 55:02
  Because I think his actual plan if shutting off escape, then
• 55:05
  after escape, then the trapper, it's pretty sound and he has
• 55:08
  like the tactical advantage because he freaks out.
• 55:11
  He's absolutely don't find a thing of contrast really well
• 55:13
  with the the alien and love the fact that the alien isn't just
• 55:16
  like blunding around the tunnels running around grabbing him.
• 55:19
  It's actually sits and it waits for him.
• 55:21
  I think it's absolutely fantastic how it does that it
• 55:23
  it's the sound effect here. How how Ridley Scott makes a
• 55:26
  sequence sound like those doors. That's the kind of iris claws.
• 55:30
  That's fantastic. I mean, Wesley mentioned it in
• 55:33
  the Brett sequence, but that pulsing heartbeat in the
• 55:35
  background, the sound of that tracker just beeping and getting
• 55:39
  like more and more intense as it goes along.
• 55:41
  It's all just works really, really well.
• 55:43
  So when it gets them, it's just like, oh, Jesus Christ, A lot
• 55:47
  like the chess best of sequence again, just pay attention to Ash
• 55:49
  in the sequence because there's one shot of him that is just in
• 55:53
  such contrast to everyone else. Like Lambert is absolutely
• 55:56
  having a meltdown. Park is trying to calm her down.
• 55:59
  Ripley's trying to tune the both of them out and trying to talk
• 56:01
  Dallas out of the situation. And you just get this one shot
• 56:04
  of Ash and he's just got this blank expressions look on his
• 56:08
  face as he's just like looking at what's happening.
• 56:11
  He doesn't. And you can tell what you can
• 56:12
  tell later on what he's doing when you realize he's a robot
• 56:15
  because it's what he says. He's collating information.
• 56:18
  He's not bothered about Dallas. He's not trying to rescue him.
• 56:21
  He's taking in information about what this alien is capable of
• 56:24
  and if the main stylist gets killed, so be it.
• 56:26
  So again, it's just one shot, but it's really effective.
• 56:30
  Yeah, it was all shot in half a day.
• 56:31
  The Dallas sequence, which I find pretty astonishing and I
• 56:35
  love, like you mentioned there, Mark, how Scott subverts
• 56:37
  expectations because like you said, since the start, Dallas
• 56:39
  has been set up as the hero. Yeah, he's the Cup.
• 56:42
  And he's played by a man, Tom, Scary as he was top of the bill.
• 56:45
  And then from Norway, suddenly he's gone.
• 56:47
  I can remember watching this and thinking, well, he's definitely
• 56:49
  coming back. I've seen a movie before.
• 56:51
  In this case he doesn't, which is great.
• 56:54
  I do love Scared in the role, but did you know who they
• 56:56
  originally wanted? And I think the film would have
• 56:58
  been really effective if they'd gone.
• 57:01
  Who was that the? One that Harrison Ford.
• 57:03
  Well, really. Yeah, Can you imagine Harrison
• 57:06
  Ford this top of the bill? You think Han Solo on board a
• 57:09
  spaceship, he's going to be fine and then boom, he's out of there
• 57:11
  even more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 57:13
  That would have subverted expectation if it had been
• 57:15
  forward, wouldn't it? I know the producers support the
• 57:18
  Tommy Lee Jones as well about playing Dallas, but he said he
• 57:20
  wanted to play the alien. Just no costume, just really
• 57:28
  angry. Lee Jones even scarier.
• 57:32
  Yeah, I think so. Did you say that on Men in
• 57:35
  Black? Skerritt wasn't keen either at
• 57:39
  first. When the first approached him he
• 57:41
  said no because he thought the script had at the time was
• 57:45
  rubbish and the budget was like 2,000,000, two million like so
• 57:48
  he thought this is just going to be some slut eBay movie.
• 57:51
  He changed his mind when Scott was hired to direct because
• 57:53
  Skerritt had seen the Duelists which is amazing.
• 57:55
  And he said that movie was like a pain.
• 57:58
  And I thought, if anyone can make this movie work, it's this
• 58:01
  guy. And he's absolutely right.
• 58:03
  Yeah, good call play. It's going to also got some
• 58:05
  percentage points from the profits as well.
• 58:07
  So we're not pretty well from I think.
• 58:09
  Not too right? So we've waited over an hour,
• 58:12
  but when the full size alien shows up it doesn't disappoint,
• 58:15
  does it? No, definitely not.
• 58:16
  Not a bit of it. By this point, Kane, Brett and
• 58:20
  Dallas are all gone and the remaining crew members are in a
• 58:23
  bit of a pickle. A pickle with acid for blood.
• 58:27
  Say the least. Things are about to get even
• 58:31
  worse though, after Ripley speaks to Mother and discovers
• 58:33
  it and usher in cahoots to get the Alien back to Earth.
• 58:36
  Ash tries to kill Ripley and Ripley is saved when Parker
• 58:39
  bashes Ashes head in with a fire extinguisher.
• 58:42
  It's thrilling sequence, one after another by this point.
• 58:45
  How do I like this one? I think the thing that strikes
• 58:48
  me is from this whole sequence is how brilliant Ian Holmes is.
• 58:51
  I think the lack of emotion that he portrays as he's doing, you
• 58:54
  know, all. And Sigourney Weaver gives as
• 58:56
  good as she gets and she's really, they're really going for
• 58:58
  it. But it's that lack of emotion.
• 59:00
  And I think it's the way that he rules that magazine and tries to
• 59:03
  emulate what the alien has done and tries to put it down her
• 59:06
  throat and tries to kill her in the same way.
• 59:08
  He tries to have this purity and he tries to to emulate what he's
• 59:11
  already seen. And it's something that he can't
• 59:13
  do. And he's never going to be that
• 59:14
  good that it is almost a porn magazine.
• 59:19
  And he is surrounded by these these images.
• 59:21
  And this is this whole imagery of this, the sexuality that say,
• 59:24
  and then that's also brought into the sequence.
• 59:26
  And I think when the guys come in, they just don't know what's
• 59:28
  going on, especially Parker, even though you can see it.
• 59:31
  But the reactions are just so standoffish.
• 59:33
  And it's just what what what's going on.
• 59:35
  And the amazing thing is that as an audience, we don't know
• 59:38
  what's going to happen. The crew don't really know
• 59:40
  what's going to happen either. We're in the same boat, like
• 59:42
  what's happening with this guy. And then when that head comes
• 59:44
  off, it's incredibly, incredibly shocking.
• 59:47
  And I know that when one of the first screens of this, the usher
• 59:50
  actually passed out, wasn't at the chest burst the sequence, it
• 59:53
  was when his head came off. One of the issues in the cinema
• 59:55
  actually just passed out. Free ice cream must have been
• 59:57
  then if the OSHA passed out it's.
• 59:59
  Melting on the floor. Even with like Ashes Ashes blood
• 1:00:02
  run along the cinema. It's probably what freaked them
• 1:00:06
  out. Loads of ice cream everywhere,
• 1:00:11
  incredibly shotgun, but again, just in just a really, really,
• 1:00:14
  really good sequence. Yeah, Ash trying to kill Ripley
• 1:00:17
  by pushing a roller magazine down the throat is just creepy
• 1:00:19
  as hell. And so was the moment Parker
• 1:00:21
  takes I should head off Yeah, fire extinguisher when that
• 1:00:24
  happens I should body is still flailing around and the way they
• 1:00:26
  did that was there was a guy who was like 3 foot 6 inside an ash
• 1:00:29
  models to controlling it. I saw an interview with Ridley
• 1:00:32
  Scott where we said look at the arms.
• 1:00:33
  You can tell. You come when you look, but
• 1:00:36
  you're just too shocked. It doesn't matter.
• 1:00:38
  It's the one bit of the film that I really wish I could have
• 1:00:41
  gone in blind to see, because it's such a shocking moment.
• 1:00:44
  And on one hand it should be absolutely ludicrous, the idea
• 1:00:48
  that one of them has been a robot all along, even though you
• 1:00:51
  seem eaten with the rest of them.
• 1:00:53
  But it's brilliant and it's one of the best directed sequences
• 1:00:56
  in the film. I love how it starts.
• 1:00:58
  It's not a jump scare such, but that reveal of Ashwin Ripley
• 1:01:01
  leans back in. Yeah, and he's just there with a
• 1:01:05
  creepy grin on his that. Drip, isn't it down from his
• 1:01:07
  head? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:09
  Well, that's the other thing. There's all these elements that
• 1:01:11
  you don't know what the hell is going on.
• 1:01:14
  Why has he got milk coming out of him?
• 1:01:16
  Yeah. And then by the end, when his
• 1:01:17
  head is flailing off, you just completely went over by the same
• 1:01:21
  like, say, it could have absolutely ruined the film, but
• 1:01:23
  it doesn't. It just, frankly, it just like
• 1:01:26
  improves it. When you think, you know, this
• 1:01:27
  film can't get any more intense or any more shocking, They're
• 1:01:30
  like, right, Watch this bit. Yeah.
• 1:01:31
  It's crazy. And then Ripley says, well, the
• 1:01:33
  shuttle doesn't take four. And then when his head comes
• 1:01:35
  off, I'm thinking, oh, that's good, That can all get away now.
• 1:01:40
  Yeah. The scene just after this where
• 1:01:42
  Ash's head is on the table and the talking to it.
• 1:01:44
  The innards of Ash were a combination of spaghetti, milk,
• 1:01:47
  meat and onion rings. Sounds delicious does this.
• 1:01:51
  Just heat it up. That is the one thing in the
• 1:01:54
  film that when they are talking to that head and it is clearly
• 1:01:57
  like a model head and then it's Ian Holm and then it's a model
• 1:02:01
  head. But when Ridley Scott was being
• 1:02:02
  interviewed, it said because of the quality of the latex back
• 1:02:05
  then and under the heat of the lights, it just shrunk.
• 1:02:07
  So they just had to roll with it.
• 1:02:08
  And right, he knows about it, so we just had to roll with it.
• 1:02:12
  Yeah, that coat, Yeah, it does look Roby as hell.
• 1:02:14
  Yeah, surely they could. They should have cut away and
• 1:02:16
  then cut back to Ash's head with the goal straight from Ash's
• 1:02:19
  model head to Ian Holmes head in one cut down which makes it so
• 1:02:23
  obvious. Yeah, it's really jarring.
• 1:02:25
  Once the Chest Burster reveals itself, the film is relentless,
• 1:02:28
  back-to-back exciting sequences for the rest of its runtime, and
• 1:02:31
  none more so than those two we've just talked about.
• 1:02:34
  Nope. Yep, Nope.
• 1:02:35
  Yep, Yep. Nope.
• 1:02:38
  There's no other yet. Maybe no, maybe yet.
• 1:02:42
  Maybe. Fuck yourself.
• 1:02:54
  There was a relatively unknown director and lead actress on
• 1:02:57
  Alien, and a lot of the team behind the scenes were hugely
• 1:02:59
  well known either. We're going to talk in detail
• 1:03:02
  about Jerry Goldsmith, the composer, Derek Vanland, the
• 1:03:05
  director of photography, and HR Giga as a designer of the
• 1:03:08
  creature, but as ever, we're beginning with the writing.
• 1:03:12
  Sound good? Sounds great.
• 1:03:14
  Yep. So Alien was written by Daniel
• 1:03:17
  O'barnell and Ronald Schussett. Both were very much unknown
• 1:03:20
  science fiction writers at the time.
• 1:03:22
  Or Bannon had Co written John Common as Dark Star in 1974 and
• 1:03:26
  was actually a writer on Alejandro Hodorovsky's I'll
• 1:03:28
  Fated June. And Schussett had no screen
• 1:03:31
  credits at all prior to Alien. Massively inexperienced in terms
• 1:03:35
  of Hollywood the two writers then.
• 1:03:36
  But how good the job did they do on Alien Matt?
• 1:03:39
  Really impressive job. The one thing that stands out of
• 1:03:41
  me more than anything is how the basic concept of this film is
• 1:03:45
  the basic concept of like countless Star Trek episodes or
• 1:03:49
  Doctor Who episodes or cheesy 50 science fiction films.
• 1:03:52
  You know, in Alien, get some bordership and kills the crew
• 1:03:55
  members. It's just so basic.
• 1:03:57
  It's been done so many times before, but just never like this
• 1:04:00
  because they give it a real 70s twist.
• 1:04:03
  And I think a lot of that comes down to the dialogue, how this
• 1:04:06
  is so much like lazy bickering between these crew members as
• 1:04:09
  soon as they wake up. There's none of that kind of
• 1:04:12
  stilted dialogue where you're getting a lot of science fiction
• 1:04:14
  films from from before this. And I think it does such a great
• 1:04:18
  job if establishing those seven characters really quickly.
• 1:04:22
  And straight away you can see the hierarchy on board that ship
• 1:04:25
  and you can see that basically these guys have been living on
• 1:04:28
  top of each other for so long and they're just really getting
• 1:04:31
  on each other's nerves. And everyone just wants to go
• 1:04:33
  home and everyone just wants to get paid.
• 1:04:35
  And they just want to get out of each of this company because
• 1:04:37
  they've been stuck together for so long.
• 1:04:39
  And I think the script does a really good job of telling you
• 1:04:42
  like who's getting on who's nerves.
• 1:04:43
  Like, in particular, I love that little bit of dialogue you get
• 1:04:46
  between Ripley and Lambert where she's like, that's not our
• 1:04:49
  system, I know. That.
• 1:04:52
  Yeah, yeah. Ultra sarcastic.
• 1:04:53
  You can tell. Lawsuit.
• 1:04:54
  Just sick of the sight of each other.
• 1:04:57
  And I think that all comes from the script.
• 1:04:58
  I think it does a really good job of establishing that.
• 1:05:00
  And because it's so grounded and everything feels really
• 1:05:03
  believable and really lived in when it starts integrating all
• 1:05:07
  the more fantastical elements. So the aliens are becoming a
• 1:05:10
  robot. I buy it all because I buy into
• 1:05:12
  this world right from the beginning.
• 1:05:13
  Nothing feels like outrageous or unbelievable here.
• 1:05:16
  I don't think it's all amazing. I think the dialogue can be a
• 1:05:19
  bit of the place. Like at one point Park actually
• 1:05:21
  says this place gives me the creeps.
• 1:05:23
  Yeah. Which is just like so cliched.
• 1:05:27
  But it does have some great dialogue in there as well.
• 1:05:28
  Like when Ash is just the head on the table and he's talking
• 1:05:31
  about the alien where he's describing it as a survivor and
• 1:05:34
  unclouded by morality. Yeah, that's fantastic stuff.
• 1:05:37
  So I wish the dialogue was a bit more even because it is a bit
• 1:05:41
  all over the place. But overall, it may not be a
• 1:05:43
  script that jumps out as like an amazing screenplay, but for the
• 1:05:47
  type of film that it is, it's really pretty great.
• 1:05:50
  Yeah, I agree. I think the writing is really
• 1:05:51
  good. The story is simple, but they
• 1:05:53
  tell it really well. The characters have no back
• 1:05:55
  story but still feel fleshed out just enough for us to care about
• 1:05:58
  them. And like you mentioned, Mark,
• 1:06:00
  the dynamic between the crew members is really well done.
• 1:06:03
  I think one of the reasons that works so well is that when they
• 1:06:05
  wrote the script or Bannon and Schusset didn't specify what
• 1:06:08
  gender any of the characters were, they just give their
• 1:06:10
  names. And Helen Mirren, who I
• 1:06:12
  mentioned, auditioned for Ripley said when you read it, you had
• 1:06:15
  no idea which character was male and which was female.
• 1:06:17
  There was no a lean 32 year old woman who doesn't realize how
• 1:06:21
  attractive she is. There was none of that.
• 1:06:23
  That was a revelation. Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  The other part of the writing I love wasn't done by O'bannon and
• 1:06:27
  Justice. A copyright I called Barbara
• 1:06:29
  Gibbs came up with the famous tagline In Space No One Can Hear
• 1:06:32
  You Scream, which might be the best movie tagline ever.
• 1:06:35
  It's amazing. Yeah.
• 1:06:36
  He's. Fantastic.
• 1:06:38
  And Westy, what do you think? For me, this is a bit of mixed
• 1:06:40
  bag. I've watched a couple of
• 1:06:41
  documentaries on this and I feel really, really sorry for Dan
• 1:06:43
  O'bannon and not so much for Shizzix.
• 1:06:45
  I think he was a bit of a pain in the ass on set for people
• 1:06:47
  because he was, you know, I give up with a chest burst and so
• 1:06:49
  he's bounding ideas all over the place.
• 1:06:51
  But I think Dan O'bannon just wanted, wanted to do something
• 1:06:55
  that was that was meaningful and, and they both wrote a
• 1:06:57
  script that was good enough to get bought.
• 1:06:59
  And I think that script that got bought is definitely not what's
• 1:07:02
  on the screen. I think the ideas are there.
• 1:07:03
  All of the crew had different names.
• 1:07:05
  They didn't specify anything like John said, which I think is
• 1:07:08
  good. But Walter Hill and David Guila
• 1:07:10
  got a hold of it and they've completely turned it around and,
• 1:07:12
  and they created the shooting script, which is pretty close to
• 1:07:14
  what we see on the screen. So I think O'bannon and Trusted,
• 1:07:17
  they were the ideas men and they put something together to get
• 1:07:19
  that script sold. And then it was Walter Hill and
• 1:07:22
  David Guiler who took that further and almost didn't make
• 1:07:24
  it theirs anymore. So I feel quite sorry for them
• 1:07:26
  in that respect, to the point where O'bannon didn't want to go
• 1:07:28
  to the premiere. He didn't want to see it, but
• 1:07:29
  they forced him to go. And he certainly watched the
• 1:07:31
  film and he just wept and he just thought, you know, there's
• 1:07:34
  a lot of my ideas actually made it through because they tried to
• 1:07:36
  improve on them and they couldn't.
• 1:07:37
  And they've actually made it through and these ideas, it just
• 1:07:40
  shows that the original idea is the most important thing.
• 1:07:42
  And you can sugar coat it as much as you want here, but it's
• 1:07:45
  that original concept. And I think they need credit for
• 1:07:47
  that. And he is credited for that
• 1:07:48
  reason. And I don't think of all the
• 1:07:50
  Hill and David Gila, you can get a right in credit.
• 1:07:52
  I'm not too sure if they do or not.
• 1:07:53
  No, they don't. So that that from that point of
• 1:07:55
  view, the, you know, they were inexperienced, but they were
• 1:07:58
  hungry exactly the same as Ruddy Scott was.
• 1:07:59
  And I think that comes across in the idea of the writing and that
• 1:08:02
  works really, really well. And that sequence that you like,
• 1:08:04
  Matt, with Ash, that was just made-up like on the day that
• 1:08:07
  they needed something to fill in the agony position, that was
• 1:08:10
  just made-up on the day. You know, you have my
• 1:08:12
  sympathies. That was just really Scott just
• 1:08:14
  sitting there. Yeah, great.
• 1:08:15
  We're all just coming up. We need, we need something here
• 1:08:17
  that's going to have a bit of a gut punch.
• 1:08:18
  So there were it was built like all good films.
• 1:08:20
  Like we're like we spoke about on Apocalypse Now, like we spoke
• 1:08:22
  about on Texas Chainsaw Massacre, like we spoke about on
• 1:08:25
  a lot of these films that we love so much, they never arrive
• 1:08:28
  finished. Nothing brilliant ever arrives
• 1:08:30
  finished. And I think this is a really
• 1:08:32
  good example of that. What I do love about the writing
• 1:08:34
  is that O'bannon is credited for that idea, and I think that's
• 1:08:37
  the most important part of it. I agree.
• 1:08:39
  Yeah, that concept is just incredible.
• 1:08:41
  Well, you can't imagine the film being called anything other than
• 1:08:43
  Alien now. But that was actually not the
• 1:08:45
  original title. Have you heard what the first
• 1:08:47
  ones were? It's a pile of shit Star beast.
• 1:08:50
  Yeah, Star Beast crap, it is terrible.
• 1:08:57
  Even before they got to Star Beast or there was a couple of
• 1:09:00
  others as well. So Donald Ban's first draft was
• 1:09:03
  called Memory Well. Why?
• 1:09:06
  No idea why. I doesn't seem to have any
• 1:09:08
  thematic or narrative relevance at all, so I don't know why it
• 1:09:10
  was called that. You.
• 1:09:11
  Put the wrong front page on it. Another working title was The
• 1:09:18
  Bite, which makes no sense. I mean, there's only one of them
• 1:09:21
  for a start. Doesn't bite.
• 1:09:25
  Doesn't bite. And then you change it to Star
• 1:09:29
  Beast. They didn't like that either.
• 1:09:31
  And after reading through the scrape that realized how many
• 1:09:33
  times the word alien was mentioned and they were shocked
• 1:09:35
  to discover there never been a film called Alien before.
• 1:09:38
  So change it to that. I mean, Alien is a great title,
• 1:09:40
  isn't it? Yeah.
• 1:09:41
  And the main reason he did it is because he looked at, he went
• 1:09:43
  that's that's a noun and also an adjective, which is brilliant.
• 1:09:46
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:09:48
  The thing about the script as well, which is like Wesley's
• 1:09:50
  kind of alluded to, which is that David Gila and Walter Hill
• 1:09:53
  had him put into it, which they haven't been credited for, but
• 1:09:56
  they did change a lot of important things about it.
• 1:09:58
  The character names for start, originally you had standard
• 1:10:02
  Robbie Broussard, Malkinus, Hunter and Faust, and obviously
• 1:10:05
  they all got trucked out the window.
• 1:10:07
  Yeah, I think Ronald Shusett said he thought they did that
• 1:10:09
  just to try and get a writing credit on the film David Gila
• 1:10:11
  and Walter Hill. But I mean, the names that we
• 1:10:14
  get are better than those original ones, surely?
• 1:10:16
  No, Absolutely, yeah. Much better.
• 1:10:17
  But the other thing is, I don't know, like if it just clicked as
• 1:10:20
  you heard them there, but you might notice there's only 6
• 1:10:22
  characters there. That's because Ash was their
• 1:10:25
  creation as well. He wasn't in the original script
• 1:10:27
  at all. Those totally came down to
• 1:10:29
  Guyler and Hill. So that entire subplot, that's
• 1:10:32
  their idea as well. I mean, that's definitely for
• 1:10:34
  the better. I think the whole Ash mother
• 1:10:36
  conspiracy subplot is great. It doesn't take up too much of
• 1:10:38
  the story but adds a much needed extra dimension of the film for
• 1:10:42
  me I think. Exactly.
• 1:10:44
  Starts off as an egg of ideas and ends up a fully grown
• 1:10:47
  xenomorph. Lovely.
• 1:10:51
  Well, creatively, the starting point of the film, the whole
• 1:10:54
  Alien series I think, is the alien creature itself, which is
• 1:10:57
  a pretty unique idea. What do you think of that?
• 1:10:59
  The whole face hook got a chest burst that concept.
• 1:11:02
  I mean, it's incredible. I'm just to think of that.
• 1:11:04
  You just go off struggled immediately.
• 1:11:06
  Yeah, there's nothing like it. It's just it's got all the
• 1:11:08
  terror, it's got all the horror, it's got all the intelligence.
• 1:11:10
  You just go that base a whole film around that and then you go
• 1:11:13
  actually base a series of films around that and that's what
• 1:11:15
  they've done. You can't you'll never get tired
• 1:11:17
  of that. And and what really Scott said
• 1:11:19
  then interview as well, which I never kind of touched on, but it
• 1:11:21
  happens again nearly in three, is that Scott's approach was
• 1:11:24
  that whoever found the egg would have the face or attached to it.
• 1:11:27
  And then when the alien bursts from it, it basically takes in
• 1:11:31
  all of the elements of the host and then becomes like that host,
• 1:11:34
  which is why the alien is quite human like.
• 1:11:35
  And then an alien three is quite dog like because it comes from a
• 1:11:38
  dog. So I think that that in itself,
• 1:11:40
  as an idea, is incredible. It's great.
• 1:11:43
  I mean, the concept of the alien itself is where the writing
• 1:11:46
  really excels for me. That whole idea of a parasite
• 1:11:49
  that attaches itself to a human, implants and egg inside them,
• 1:11:51
  then a huge killer alien bursts out of them is the greatest idea
• 1:11:55
  for a Hollywood monster ever for me.
• 1:11:57
  Total genius. I mean, it needs the incredible
• 1:11:59
  design and production work to make it credible, but just as an
• 1:12:02
  idea that must have blown people away when they first read the
• 1:12:04
  script back in the 70s. Yeah.
• 1:12:06
  And Matt, what do you think of it?
• 1:12:08
  Yeah, much like you guys. I mean, how can you not just be
• 1:12:10
  impressed with this idea that the idea they've got have taken
• 1:12:13
  a creature for like through its entire life cycle, from its
• 1:12:16
  birth through to adults, and these human characters just get
• 1:12:19
  caught up in it and they can't deal with any aspect of it.
• 1:12:22
  And I love how it changes. First of all, you think it's
• 1:12:24
  this face hugger, which is disgusting enough.
• 1:12:26
  And then it's the chest burster, which is, you know, terrifying
• 1:12:29
  enough. And then it gets fully grown.
• 1:12:31
  You know, it never stops changing.
• 1:12:33
  It never stops like opening your expectations of what you have to
• 1:12:37
  deal with and it just gets progressively worse and worse.
• 1:12:40
  And the thing I like about it is how it, first of all, it's sorts
• 1:12:43
  like attacking the most vulnerable part of the human and
• 1:12:45
  not me, the mouth force itself in there.
• 1:12:47
  And then when it comes out, it comes out through what you would
• 1:12:49
  typically called probably the strongest part of the human and,
• 1:12:52
  Abby, your chest bone, you know, probably the strongest part in
• 1:12:54
  the human body. And it just comes to there no
• 1:12:55
  problem. Yeah.
• 1:12:56
  And once it's done that, it's like, you know what, Where
• 1:12:58
  you're all fucked. Yeah.
• 1:13:00
  It's not a single thing we can do about this.
• 1:13:02
  It's. Absolutely fantastic.
• 1:13:04
  Well, I know that when they first started writing the
• 1:13:06
  script, O'bannon and Schuster had the idea of an alien aboard
• 1:13:08
  a spaceship, but didn't know how to get the alien on the
• 1:13:11
  spaceship. And they've reached a bit of a
• 1:13:12
  writing impasse. And then one night, Ronald
• 1:13:15
  Schuster said that he woke up in a cold sweat.
• 1:13:17
  He called Obandon immediately and said, I've got it.
• 1:13:20
  The alien jumps on one of their faces and fucks them rather than
• 1:13:24
  thinking he was a madman. Or, Banham said, the show says,
• 1:13:27
  my God, that's it, we've got the movie.
• 1:13:29
  Then they went away and did some research into insects and took
• 1:13:32
  inspiration from Brackenaid Wasps, which lay their eggs
• 1:13:34
  inside caterpillars. So the whole idea developed into
• 1:13:37
  the face hooker. Wow, yeah, well, I prefer like
• 1:13:40
  description to it. Fuck their faces.
• 1:13:41
  Well, yes. I would have gone with that one
• 1:13:45
  first, yeah. I prefer many descriptions to
• 1:13:47
  that to be honest. The face fucker.
• 1:13:53
  The thing is all like, as much as we're seeing it's an amazing
• 1:13:56
  idea, it might not have been, like, amazingly original because
• 1:13:59
  they actually got sued for plagiarism because after the
• 1:14:01
  film was released, Fox received a lawsuit from a man called Ivan
• 1:14:06
  Vought. And he'd written a science
• 1:14:07
  fiction story in 1939 called Discardant Scarlet.
• 1:14:10
  And in that story, there's a lone survivor of an alien race
• 1:14:14
  and that infiltrates a spaceship and starts implanting eggs into
• 1:14:17
  the crew's bellies. So they've got in a little bit
• 1:14:20
  of trouble. But the truth for I don't think
• 1:14:22
  it's ever going to be really nervous.
• 1:14:23
  They got settled out of court. Wow, what a rip off.
• 1:14:26
  It's not the same as it's not the podcast.
• 1:14:28
  It's. Not the same.
• 1:14:31
  Let's do a podcast on that book. We discord and Scola shit
• 1:14:37
  titles. For writing Alien, Daniel Bannon
• 1:14:39
  and Ronald Schuster didn't get any award recognition, and they
• 1:14:42
  collaborated together on other projects afterwards, like Video
• 1:14:45
  Nasty Dead and Buried, Total Recall, and the legendary Alien
• 1:14:49
  versus Predator. Legendary.
• 1:14:51
  Legendary. Before passing away in 2009,
• 1:14:55
  Daniel Bannon said about Alien. My script was professional and
• 1:14:58
  tight. The suspense was there.
• 1:15:00
  I've spent all my years studying how to write good suspense.
• 1:15:03
  David GAIL and Walter Hill took lots of that out but thankfully
• 1:15:06
  really put it back in. It's the best thing I've done.
• 1:15:09
  It is really is better than dogs are.
• 1:15:12
  It's funnier anyway. Music plays an important role in
• 1:15:18
  any feature film, and really more so than in a film like
• 1:15:21
  Alien where the tone is so important.
• 1:15:23
  The composer of the music on Alien was a big name, the
• 1:15:26
  acclaimed Jerry Goldsmith. He was already well known at
• 1:15:28
  this point, having scored movies like Planet of the Apes,
• 1:15:31
  Papillon, Chinatown and The Omen.
• 1:15:33
  So one of the biggest Hollywood composers out there is Jerry
• 1:15:36
  Goldsmith. How good does work on Alien do
• 1:15:38
  you think? I think it's up there with its
• 1:15:40
  best, I would say well, and I think what's interesting in
• 1:15:43
  saying that is that it's also really, really minimalist at the
• 1:15:46
  same time. It's not bombastic all the way
• 1:15:48
  through, but I don't really mean that's the criticism because it
• 1:15:51
  always fits the scene, it always fits the tone of the film, It
• 1:15:54
  always suits its purpose. And when it comes in like big,
• 1:15:57
  it really works. But when it's easy and it's low
• 1:15:59
  key, it works. When it's hard pounding, it
• 1:16:01
  really adds to the scene and what I find just to strike.
• 1:16:04
  And those moments where there isn't any soundtrack and it cuts
• 1:16:07
  to silence. Like you've got that bit where
• 1:16:09
  the first end of the alien craft, the skull goes and you've
• 1:16:12
  just got all the diegetic sound of like the howl and wind and
• 1:16:15
  the breathing through the space suits.
• 1:16:17
  Yeah. And when that music does start,
• 1:16:19
  come back in those kind of insect like strings is the best
• 1:16:22
  way to call them. It's just really effective.
• 1:16:24
  Always reminds me of that scene in The Exorcist, you know, where
• 1:16:26
  the pull up Reagan's dress and you can see.
• 1:16:29
  Help me. Yeah, yeah, like, Oh yeah, body
• 1:16:32
  always reminds me of the music from there.
• 1:16:33
  So I think it's really fantastic, that bit.
• 1:16:35
  So yeah, big fan of it. I think it always seems whatever
• 1:16:40
  torn the particular scenes are going for, I think my favorite
• 1:16:43
  bit, so I would say, is when the ship takes off and lands on the
• 1:16:46
  planet. I love that, that music.
• 1:16:48
  That's fantastic. Yeah, that is brilliant.
• 1:16:50
  I think aside from the main theme, there's not too much that
• 1:16:52
  stands out. Is massively memorable for me.
• 1:16:55
  It's not full of hooks and choruses like the score James
• 1:16:58
  Horn I did for Aliens, for example, but it's still
• 1:17:00
  essential. Yeah, I think Scott's going for
• 1:17:03
  a very specific tone in the film, and that's what Goldsmith
• 1:17:06
  gives him. The music to me is mostly about
• 1:17:08
  setting a mood, and he does that from the very first shots of the
• 1:17:10
  film when we're moving around them in the Stromo, right until
• 1:17:13
  the end aboard the space shuttle.
• 1:17:15
  The music never really takes over the movie or really
• 1:17:18
  elevates it like Goldsmith is Best can do.
• 1:17:21
  But that's not what Scott wanted, I don't think.
• 1:17:22
  And the music is still integral to the film.
• 1:17:24
  It's excellent work. I mean, from that opening score,
• 1:17:27
  from that opening shot, it just marries so well with the
• 1:17:29
  visuals, doesn't that? I mean, I know Goldsmith tried
• 1:17:31
  to approach this totally different and he wanted to make
• 1:17:33
  it quite romantic and he wanted to make it quite big in scale.
• 1:17:36
  And Scott stripped a lot of that back and removed a lot of it, I
• 1:17:39
  think. And he kind of held Goldsmith at
• 1:17:41
  Bay. And I know that you like him,
• 1:17:43
  obviously, John Lee's work on Star Trek, but I mean, this is
• 1:17:45
  the complete. Oh, that's the best, obviously.
• 1:17:48
  Yeah, exactly. Huge and bombastic and it takes
• 1:17:50
  over the film. Yeah.
• 1:17:51
  This is him just, you know, he has to take a step back.
• 1:17:53
  And I think that was hard for him to do.
• 1:17:54
  I mean, watching interviews with him, I think that was hard for
• 1:17:57
  him to comprehend. And he wanted to create an
• 1:17:59
  emotion and he wanted to create a feeling.
• 1:18:01
  But I think Rudy Scott's already done that in the visual.
• 1:18:03
  He doesn't need an extra element of confusion with the music to
• 1:18:07
  pull you away from what the visuals doing or what the
• 1:18:08
  visual, the mood that the visual setting up.
• 1:18:11
  I think he's done it so well that you just need something to
• 1:18:13
  accompany and I don't think Goldsmith was used to doing
• 1:18:15
  that, but what he does do is brilliant.
• 1:18:19
  Yeah, absolutely. Well, Jerry Goldsmith wasn't
• 1:18:21
  really Scott's first choices composer.
• 1:18:23
  He actually wanted the alien to be scored by a Japanese composer
• 1:18:25
  I call is Altamita, who was a pioneer of electronic space
• 1:18:29
  music. But Fox wanted somebody more
• 1:18:31
  recognizable. They actually push for John
• 1:18:33
  Williams. Scott agreed to go with Jerry
• 1:18:35
  Goldsmith. And it did, I think we all
• 1:18:37
  agree, work out pretty well. Yeah.
• 1:18:39
  It did work out well, but I think we've all been kind of
• 1:18:41
  alluding to it. There were quite a few conflicts
• 1:18:44
  between Ridley Scott and Jerry Goldsmith about what they wanted
• 1:18:47
  to do. They did put heads throughout,
• 1:18:48
  pretty much because Scott flat out disliked all the kind of
• 1:18:51
  extravagant pieces that Goldsmith was putting together
• 1:18:54
  that he wanted to fill the film with these kind of like romantic
• 1:18:57
  flourishes that Wesley was talking about.
• 1:18:58
  Because Scott just wanted minimalism.
• 1:19:00
  He wanted it low key. He wanted just to be almost
• 1:19:03
  like, under the visual rather than like, on top of them.
• 1:19:05
  And Goldsmith did keep pushing and pushing for what he wanted.
• 1:19:08
  So Scott got to the point where when you get to the finale of
• 1:19:12
  the film, he all right, rejected what Goldsmith did and used a
• 1:19:15
  piece of music from a guy called Howard Hanson, piece called
• 1:19:18
  Symphony #2 and that apparently absolutely infuriated Goldsmith.
• 1:19:23
  Yeah, I didn't know about that, Goldsmith said.
• 1:19:26
  Ridley is a brilliant film maker, but he wasn't as
• 1:19:29
  articulate then about what the music should do.
• 1:19:31
  In other words, it's not my fault.
• 1:19:36
  Another thing that upset Goldsmith, as well as that from
• 1:19:38
  the scene where they're coming out of the pods at the start
• 1:19:41
  where the waking up, he said he'd written a beautiful theme
• 1:19:44
  then and 20th Century Fox didn't like it.
• 1:19:46
  And the producers went back because they owned a lot of the
• 1:19:48
  music that he didn't previously, and he did Freud.
• 1:19:50
  So they took one of the soundtracks from Freud, then put
• 1:19:52
  it over the top of that. And then when he watched the
• 1:19:54
  cut, he said, oh really? Fuck did you use that for?
• 1:19:56
  He's like, I've written a beautiful.
• 1:19:58
  It's good. You just use me.
• 1:19:59
  All stuff use the different guy. Really.
• 1:20:01
  Scott's telling us how to compose like absolutely furious
• 1:20:04
  when you can see like that electronic influence because
• 1:20:07
  Vangelis is straight and on Blade Runner.
• 1:20:08
  Imagine if Vangelis had scored this.
• 1:20:10
  That would have been ridiculous. Oh.
• 1:20:11
  Yeah, well, after Alien, Jerry Goldsmith carried on scoring
• 1:20:15
  classics and composed of films like Star Trek, The Motion
• 1:20:18
  Picture, Paul, the guys First Blur, The Gremlins, The Burbs,
• 1:20:21
  Total Recall and lots of others. And about Alien, he later said,
• 1:20:25
  Oh, Ridley, we could have got on so well, but we didn't.
• 1:20:30
  He didn't like the main theme I wrote.
• 1:20:31
  So I rewrote it as the obvious thing we had in Strange, and
• 1:20:35
  everybody loved it. Yeah, Said it took him like 30
• 1:20:38
  minutes to do the to do the one that really Scott, like six days
• 1:20:41
  to do the first one. Really, Scott might not have
• 1:20:47
  been blown away with how Alien sounded at first, but he's very
• 1:20:50
  much a visual director, as we discussed, and that shows in the
• 1:20:53
  final film. His director photography on
• 1:20:55
  Alien was Derek Van Lind. He was, Scott knew from his
• 1:20:58
  advertising days, and Alien was actually his first feature film
• 1:21:01
  as DP. So another inexperienced crew
• 1:21:04
  member, does it show? What do we think of how Alien
• 1:21:07
  looks? I think it looks amazing, but I
• 1:21:09
  think that's all down to Ridley Scott as well as Van Lint,
• 1:21:12
  really. I think Van Lindsey's right hand
• 1:21:14
  man, Scott's, you know, you can tell from Scott's storyboards
• 1:21:17
  how he wants it lit. Even from the storyboards, you
• 1:21:19
  know, where the light and the shadow is.
• 1:21:20
  He wanted it dark, he wanted it gloomy, he wanted it depressed
• 1:21:22
  and he didn't want it to look like Star Wars.
• 1:21:24
  He didn't want it to be top late.
• 1:21:25
  He didn't want it to look like 2001.
• 1:21:27
  He wanted it to look like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, more or
• 1:21:30
  less than he uses what they what they call panic lights.
• 1:21:32
  And you've got all the sirens, which are lighting a lot of
• 1:21:34
  things. The flamethrowers light a lot of
• 1:21:36
  faces, you know, and all these elements are thrown in.
• 1:21:39
  And Scott does it so well. And Vanlands just on the same
• 1:21:41
  page. I mean, they knew each of the 10
• 1:21:43
  years that worked with commercials with each other for
• 1:21:45
  10 years. So they knew exactly how things
• 1:21:47
  were going to work out and how things were going to be done.
• 1:21:49
  But I think one of the main, main things about this film that
• 1:21:52
  is often overlooked is that it's shot anamorphic.
• 1:21:54
  And this was the first film that Ridley Scott shot anamorphic
• 1:21:57
  because he shot the duelist spherical.
• 1:21:59
  So what anamorphic does, if nobody knows, I'm not going to
• 1:22:01
  bore you the tears. So basically you've got a square
• 1:22:03
  negative of film, and what they were doing spherical is shoot
• 1:22:06
  the middle of that film. That's where you'd naturally get
• 1:22:08
  the top and bottom black bars, which would have your widescreen
• 1:22:11
  effect. So what they do with an
• 1:22:12
  anamorphic lens is basically is an element built into the lens
• 1:22:15
  that stretches that. So you cover it the full square
• 1:22:18
  and then it's run through projector with the anamorphic
• 1:22:21
  element on the projector and that shrinks it back down.
• 1:22:23
  So what you're doing is you're getting all the information on
• 1:22:25
  that frame, on the actual negative and then the shrink it
• 1:22:29
  down to the to fit into that widescreen format.
• 1:22:31
  So you get a lot more depth, You get a lot more depth of field.
• 1:22:34
  You get a lot more lens flares. I mean, JJ Abrams loves it.
• 1:22:37
  The 1st 5 Spielberg films were shot anamorphic.
• 1:22:40
  All the like Raiders of the Lost Ark were all anamorphic.
• 1:22:43
  Blade Runner was anamorphic. And you can tell if you if you
• 1:22:45
  see a blue horizontal lens flare in the middle, if all of the,
• 1:22:49
  the bouquet in the background is all Oval instead of circular,
• 1:22:53
  that's shot anamorphic. And what that does is gives you
• 1:22:55
  incredible depth of field and it gives you like an incredible
• 1:22:58
  look. And don't forget, this was A2
• 1:23:00
  camera operation. So you had Vanland on one and
• 1:23:03
  you had Ridley Scott on the other.
• 1:23:04
  You had two guys shooting this whole film.
• 1:23:06
  That's incredible. This is 2 guys at the top of the
• 1:23:10
  game who are best friends who want to create something that
• 1:23:12
  looks fucking incredible. Yeah.
• 1:23:13
  Yeah, while talking about Ridley Scott before, I said his films
• 1:23:17
  tend to look big and grand. And while I think that's true
• 1:23:19
  here, I'm not sure how he's pulled that off because the
• 1:23:21
  settings are all so confined and small.
• 1:23:23
  But I guess it's that anamorphic lens that you're talking about
• 1:23:25
  there. Wesley was held for that.
• 1:23:26
  Yeah, I know that a lot of the movie was shot handed, like you
• 1:23:29
  mentioned Wesley, and the art director on Alien was called
• 1:23:31
  Roger Christian, and he said 80% of Alien was shot on Ridley's
• 1:23:35
  shoulder. So Scott did a lot of the camera
• 1:23:37
  work himself, which is massively impressive.
• 1:23:39
  I mean, it just looks incredible.
• 1:23:41
  The lighting throughout is sensational, from the big wide
• 1:23:44
  shots on the planet and in the egg chamber at the star to the
• 1:23:46
  much more claustrophobic feel on the Nostromo.
• 1:23:50
  Everything still stands up the day every single shot for me.
• 1:23:53
  And it gives this film, this B movie concept, just massive
• 1:23:56
  credibility based just on how it looks.
• 1:23:58
  Yeah. Vanland said that when they shot
• 1:24:00
  the final sequence, because they built the whole set around the
• 1:24:03
  alien being in that wall, so they built it around him.
• 1:24:05
  So he's perfectly camouflaged in there.
• 1:24:07
  So the guy in the suit was in there, built the wall around him
• 1:24:09
  and there's that panic light going off and there's the
• 1:24:11
  flashing lights. And they said they could only
• 1:24:12
  shoot it for about, they could do like 5-6 takes and then
• 1:24:15
  everyone would have to stop because everyone was just
• 1:24:16
  getting dizzy and falling over and passing out because it was
• 1:24:18
  just that practical and that's how they wanted it to look.
• 1:24:21
  So the shot under them whole conditions, which you can tell,
• 1:24:23
  it's just incredible. Awesome, I must.
• 1:24:27
  It's all right, I suppose. Same, same.
• 1:24:30
  Worse. All right, Pi, no, I mean anyone
• 1:24:37
  watching this, any direct with the time who had like thoughts
• 1:24:39
  of making a science fiction film must have just thought off of
• 1:24:42
  fucks sake, I've just. Forgot about 2001 then this
• 1:24:46
  comes along. You're like off of fucks sake.
• 1:24:49
  Yeah, exactly. Must have been so annoying.
• 1:24:51
  But yeah, it looks incredible. The thing that strikes me, I
• 1:24:54
  think it's Cinema Trophy that's designed to work hand in hand
• 1:24:56
  without amazing production design.
• 1:24:58
  It's designed to make the Nostromo look really greasy and
• 1:25:01
  run down and like in need of serious repair.
• 1:25:05
  It makes it look claustrophobic. And I love all the contrast that
• 1:25:08
  you do get between the light and the dark in the film, you know,
• 1:25:11
  so you go from the Med lab in the canteen to like the bowels
• 1:25:14
  of the Nostromo in the alien planet.
• 1:25:17
  That contrast works really well and I think for film that is
• 1:25:20
  like I've no like 80% in the dark, I think that darkness is
• 1:25:24
  just lit brilliantly because there's so much detail in it.
• 1:25:27
  There's still so much shadow you can pick out and there's this
• 1:25:31
  shades to the darkness or you know, I would describe this film
• 1:25:34
  as darkly lit, but it's not murky.
• 1:25:36
  There's something that's the difference.
• 1:25:37
  If it's murky, you can't make out anything, but you can make
• 1:25:39
  out everything in this film. Everything that Scott wants you
• 1:25:42
  to see, you can see. If you ever notice one of the
• 1:25:44
  mistakes in the film, like down in the cinematography.
• 1:25:47
  No, no. No, I'm interested to hear this.
• 1:25:49
  Whether it's new trophy or not, I'm not going.
• 1:25:53
  To shout at you. You know that bit and aliens
• 1:25:55
  when the marines wake up and James come and put a mirror at
• 1:25:59
  the end to double the amount of like tubes he has?
• 1:26:01
  Yeah, they did the same here and they put the mirrors at the end
• 1:26:04
  of the tunnel. So made the tunnels like stretch
• 1:26:05
  on really long, right? Because it's obviously the
• 1:26:07
  reflection. But if you look at the first
• 1:26:09
  scene with Parker and Brett, when they go down into the like
• 1:26:12
  the low levels and they're walking towards the camera, you
• 1:26:14
  can see their reflection in the back because that's where the
• 1:26:16
  mirror was. Oh, can you?
• 1:26:18
  Right. OK, Yeah.
• 1:26:19
  So it's just a shame that that sneaked in there.
• 1:26:21
  That that was supposed to happen.
• 1:26:22
  It was supposed to show how reflective they were about not
• 1:26:24
  getting enough money and being. It's about the duality.
• 1:26:28
  Duality of mankind. Finally had some major problems
• 1:26:31
  with achieving what they actually achieved because the
• 1:26:33
  sets and corridors had low ceilings, so the lighting had to
• 1:26:36
  be set through grills and hidden in walls or used practicals.
• 1:26:39
  And I think, like I said, because shooting anamorphic,
• 1:26:41
  you're going to see the ceiling, you're going to see the top and
• 1:26:43
  bottom and Van Lint, one of these lights really close to his
• 1:26:45
  actors. That's how he always lit things.
• 1:26:47
  So he had to use harder lights and he had to put them into the
• 1:26:49
  set and shoot them through grills and everything else.
• 1:26:51
  And one thing I did find out when I was researching this is
• 1:26:55
  that, you know, the floor of the nostril more how it looks like
• 1:26:57
  grills. Yeah, they just turned over like
• 1:27:00
  milk crates painted silver, Right?
• 1:27:03
  Brilliant. That's a bit of a classic
• 1:27:04
  science fiction trick. I think they often use overturn
• 1:27:06
  milk crates and stuff. But when it's done well, like,
• 1:27:08
  yeah, it just looks fantastic. Exactly it.
• 1:27:10
  Looks miss. There was lots of problems that
• 1:27:11
  Scott and Derek Vanland had to overcome, but they did so pretty
• 1:27:14
  expertly. So what's your favorite shot in
• 1:27:17
  the film? Mine is towards the end of the
• 1:27:19
  film and Ripley has set the Nostroma to self destruct and
• 1:27:23
  you get that absolutely sensational close up of her
• 1:27:26
  fingers. And then a face is just pulling
• 1:27:28
  herself up the ladder from, like, the low level to the upper
• 1:27:31
  level because, like, the fear in her eyes, it's just bulging out.
• 1:27:37
  And it's just like drenched in sweat.
• 1:27:38
  And it's picking out every single bead of sweat.
• 1:27:41
  It's picking out every single, like, bit of grease and dirt
• 1:27:44
  that's just picked up along the way.
• 1:27:46
  And it's just lit so fantastically.
• 1:27:48
  And it's like what he's been saying about how the use the
• 1:27:50
  light sources, It's from the alarms going off.
• 1:27:53
  It's the one image I would pick out and say that's what Alien is
• 1:27:56
  about because it just completely captures the fear of the film at
• 1:28:00
  that time. I think it's absolutely
• 1:28:01
  brilliant. Yeah.
• 1:28:02
  Great light. It's a great shot.
• 1:28:04
  Mine is also what Alien is about.
• 1:28:08
  It's when they step up in a stroma and on that planet and
• 1:28:10
  you actually see that ship for the first time and it's
• 1:28:13
  silhouetted, but it's when they come round and it's that pushing
• 1:28:15
  that we spoke about earlier. But you just see them three
• 1:28:18
  lights at the bottom, which makes it real.
• 1:28:20
  You just see the three helmet lights just at the bottom of the
• 1:28:23
  frame, tiny, just the right size and that slow pushing and then
• 1:28:27
  there's the sound over the top. It's every element of that
• 1:28:29
  really works and it's a mapping and it's a miniature and it's
• 1:28:32
  got these small lights in it that work.
• 1:28:34
  And in 1979, I just look that, I would think looking at that, but
• 1:28:37
  what planet did the land on to shoot that because that looks
• 1:28:39
  really. It does, yeah, you're right.
• 1:28:43
  Got all these different visual effects coming together and it
• 1:28:45
  just looks fantastic. Doesn't.
• 1:28:46
  It it's amazing. No huge recognition for Derek
• 1:28:49
  Van Lynch for Alien, really, and he only worked on three features
• 1:28:52
  after this one, which were Dragon Slayer, X-Men and The
• 1:28:55
  Spreading Ground. Yeah, bit of a bizarre mix
• 1:28:58
  there, but what? That one.
• 1:29:02
  He's most well known for Alien, of course, and before passing
• 1:29:04
  away in 2010, Derek Vanlen said about the film.
• 1:29:08
  Ridley is a very talented guy and has always been fun to work
• 1:29:10
  with since he was involved. I knew from the word gore the
• 1:29:13
  picture would end up looking nice and it would do me no harm
• 1:29:15
  whatsoever to be involved in it. Man, what I'm going to do.
• 1:29:22
  We've talked about the importance of the design and
• 1:29:24
  production were to the success of Alien already, but I think
• 1:29:27
  it's worth going into a bit more on the creature itself, don't
• 1:29:30
  you? Of course.
• 1:29:31
  So, quite famously, the fully grown adult Xenomorphin face
• 1:29:34
  hugger were designed by a pretty unique artist.
• 1:29:37
  You know who that is, of course. Geiger, Geiger, Geiger.
• 1:29:41
  HR Giga giga. Haven't done that for a while of
• 1:29:45
  it. So I got Aliens, a surrealist
• 1:29:53
  Swiss artist known for creating bizarre images of humans and
• 1:29:56
  machines, often in a sexualized fashion, and he clearly carried
• 1:29:59
  out into his work here. HR Giga.
• 1:30:01
  So what do we think of the Alien as a piece of design?
• 1:30:04
  A movie? Monster creation.
• 1:30:05
  Unparalleled. Absolutely unparalleled.
• 1:30:08
  I've always loved it since the first moment I saw it.
• 1:30:11
  It was. It's just one of them things
• 1:30:12
  that is just so original, so terrifying, and the same time
• 1:30:16
  just so majestic and beautiful in its design.
• 1:30:19
  It's got this real attractiveness to it, I think,
• 1:30:21
  which is a weird sexy, isn't it? Well, it's not sexy.
• 1:30:23
  I mean, that's sexy little bit. That's ridiculous.
• 1:30:30
  Calm down. You would be looking for the cat
• 1:30:33
  if you were Bret. You'd be looking for the early.
• 1:30:35
  Where are you with your net? But no, it's just got this, this
• 1:30:40
  real. It's, I mean, it's just, it's
• 1:30:42
  just a cinematic marvel. I mean, there's no other place
• 1:30:45
  for it than on the big screen. It's a waste anywhere else.
• 1:30:49
  It's just a beautifully realised, beautifully designed
• 1:30:52
  meeting of minds. And on the page, yes, fine, you
• 1:30:55
  could sketch it and you could talk about it, but to make it
• 1:30:58
  look that good, to make it sound that good move that well have
• 1:31:02
  all of these elements in it, you just believe it.
• 1:31:05
  I think getting him involved was absolutely paramount to what
• 1:31:09
  this film is. So without him, it's just
• 1:31:12
  nowhere near as powerful. And I think the alien is the
• 1:31:15
  culmination of everything. It's just unbelievable.
• 1:31:18
  I agree, it looks absolutely fantastic.
• 1:31:20
  It looked fantastic there and it looks fantastic now, just as
• 1:31:22
  good. What do you think of it?
• 1:31:24
  Until guy comes along there must have been petrified because,
• 1:31:28
  like you say, it kind of lives and dies on what this thing
• 1:31:30
  looks like because essentially you're still talking about a guy
• 1:31:32
  in a suit. Yeah.
• 1:31:33
  And it could have just been an absolute waste of everyone's
• 1:31:36
  time if they didn't absolutely nail it, which he does.
• 1:31:40
  I mean, you name any other famous monster in cinema
• 1:31:42
  history, the original King Kong, Frankenstein's monster, the best
• 1:31:47
  if you get from Harryhausen. And this is still the best thing
• 1:31:50
  that's ever been created from someone's imagination or put on
• 1:31:53
  screen to just scare you and terrify you.
• 1:31:56
  And just the details, which are just terrifying, like the size
• 1:31:59
  of its take, the fact it's got a mouth within a mouth.
• 1:32:02
  Yeah, it's the most alien alien I've ever seen.
• 1:32:05
  It's just fantastic. It's something where you just
• 1:32:08
  can't praise it enough. You just can't.
• 1:32:10
  Well, a gig. I got the gig because Dan
• 1:32:12
  O'bannon had worked with him on that abandoned June project I
• 1:32:15
  mentioned. Or Bannon was blown away by the
• 1:32:17
  design work on that film and when it was shut down it
• 1:32:20
  basically took the creative team with him to make Alien including
• 1:32:22
  HR Giga. And then when Ridley Scott came
• 1:32:25
  in he loved Gigas artbook Necronomicon so kept him on.
• 1:32:29
  Actually absolutely iconic, but it wasn't an instant idea.
• 1:32:32
  It did take a while before we ended up with what we got on
• 1:32:35
  screen. So for example, the face hookers
• 1:32:37
  originally they were green one day done abandoned was on said
• 1:32:41
  saw them where they hadn't been painted yet and just went no
• 1:32:44
  leave them because of that horrible flesh color off white.
• 1:32:47
  He said no, leave them like that.
• 1:32:49
  They look absolutely brilliant to the did and then once fully
• 1:32:52
  grown, they were originally going to be see through that
• 1:32:54
  enormous head. It was actually going to be full
• 1:32:57
  of living markets that got changed.
• 1:32:59
  I know just reading that makes me feel ill, but the change that
• 1:33:03
  just because it was just too tricky, right.
• 1:33:05
  And then lastly the the originally designed with ice,
• 1:33:07
  but Giga himself. As he went on with the design,
• 1:33:10
  he grew to dislike that idea, so he asked them to be taken out.
• 1:33:13
  Yeah, it looks great how it's gotten to eyes.
• 1:33:14
  I mean, don't even notice that it's gotten to eyes really did.
• 1:33:16
  No, no, I think every one of those changes are definitely for
• 1:33:20
  the best. Every single one of them.
• 1:33:22
  Yes, absolutely. I know the Giga had problems
• 1:33:25
  with US customs as well as when he shipped over his first
• 1:33:27
  designs for the Face Ago. Customs officials were so
• 1:33:30
  alarmed by what they saw that detained them, so Dan O'bannon
• 1:33:34
  had to go to LAX to convince him.
• 1:33:35
  The word for a horror movie. And the guy who you met
• 1:33:37
  described the images as repulsive abortions.
• 1:33:40
  Wow, that's graphic, isn't it? You just work at LAX when you're
• 1:33:47
  coming up with that kind of visualization.
• 1:33:53
  Imagine opening that portfolio and seeing all that shit inside
• 1:33:55
  though. We lock this man up.
• 1:33:57
  Amazing. We have another Patreon question
• 1:33:59
  here as well, specifically on HR Giga, So Justin Walsh.
• 1:34:03
  Hi, Justin. Hello mate.
• 1:34:05
  Justin, he's asked, in regard to cinema, is there more
• 1:34:07
  influential painter, set designer than Giga?
• 1:34:11
  Influential, probably not, but I think there are some names that
• 1:34:14
  are worth mentioning. So I would say Roger Christian
• 1:34:18
  for me who worked on Star Wars and you hope when you think of
• 1:34:21
  like the MTVC designed for that, you know, the inside of the
• 1:34:24
  death saw Millennium Falcon, so iconic and obviously something I
• 1:34:28
  still get used to do. I also want to mention Ken Adam,
• 1:34:30
  you designed all the Bond films in the 60s and 70s, like
• 1:34:33
  particularly You Only Live Twice, which is the one with the
• 1:34:36
  volcano layer, which just looks absolutely still.
• 1:34:40
  And he also 'cause he did Doctor Strangelove.
• 1:34:42
  Nice. Oh yeah, the more.
• 1:34:44
  Room, so they're the other names are thrown in the mix, but yeah,
• 1:34:48
  this one pretty outstanding and influential.
• 1:34:51
  Yeah, I mean Gigas Alien was very influential clearly, and
• 1:34:54
  it's been ripped off many times, but the most influential arts in
• 1:34:57
  cinema think maybe saw Bass Miles, something to say about
• 1:35:00
  that. He designed lots of iconic
• 1:35:02
  posters and title sequences like Vertigo and The Shining, and
• 1:35:06
  that style I think is seen more often than Gigas because Gigas
• 1:35:08
  are so original and unique. You could argue Drew Struzan was
• 1:35:12
  more influential too. He designed posters for Indiana
• 1:35:14
  Jones, The Thing, Back to the Future, loads of classics.
• 1:35:17
  There's an Oliver Stone quote on Giga, though, where he said, I
• 1:35:21
  do not know anybody else who was so accurately portrayed the soul
• 1:35:24
  of modern humanity. A few decades from now when they
• 1:35:26
  talk about the 20th century, they will think of Giga.
• 1:35:29
  Well, I mean, if Stone's right and that happens, then yes, in
• 1:35:32
  the future we might be saying that he's the most influential
• 1:35:34
  artist in cinema. But for now he's one of the big
• 1:35:37
  names. Absolutely.
• 1:35:38
  But I'm not sure you could call him out and out the most
• 1:35:40
  influential because we've already mentioned there three or
• 1:35:43
  four names that are equally as influential if not more, I
• 1:35:45
  think. Yeah, I would say the same as
• 1:35:48
  you, John, really. I think he's too original to be
• 1:35:50
  inspirational, if you know what I mean.
• 1:35:52
  You can't, you can't replicate what Giga does.
• 1:35:54
  That's it. If you want something that looks
• 1:35:56
  like what Giga does, that's all he does.
• 1:35:57
  You're not going to bring him on to, do you know, My Fair Lady or
• 1:36:00
  something, You know, it's just that it's not.
• 1:36:02
  Going to happen. So he's incredible and I mean
• 1:36:05
  inspirational from the fact of he's original and I think you
• 1:36:09
  should be as original as Giga should be and have and realise
• 1:36:11
  your own vision. And I think that as an
• 1:36:13
  inspiration definitely. But I mean there's the likes of
• 1:36:15
  Ant and 1st as well, who did the 1989 Batman and redesigned
• 1:36:18
  Gotham City. I mean that was the biggest set
• 1:36:21
  built since Clear Carter in 63. Do you know what I mean?
• 1:36:23
  It was massive, it was huge. And he he did Full Metal Jacket
• 1:36:27
  as well. So he turned London into
• 1:36:29
  Vietnam. So, you know, there's, there's
• 1:36:31
  these people who, you know, it depends on its, its horses for
• 1:36:33
  courses really. It just depends on their ability
• 1:36:36
  and what they are brought on board to do.
• 1:36:37
  But I think Giga for this is an inspiration for originality.
• 1:36:41
  And you spoke about artists there, John, you know, like Saw,
• 1:36:43
  Bastrews, Drews an amazing, but I would say probably Ridley
• 1:36:45
  Scott himself. I mean, these storyboards are
• 1:36:47
  worth $4.2 million, so yeah. So once Giga designed the beast,
• 1:36:55
  the Star Beast, they had to actually make it.
• 1:36:58
  I want to know how they did that.
• 1:36:59
  Yes please. So Ridley Scott firstly wanted
• 1:37:02
  to use animatronics to create and control the alien to avoid
• 1:37:05
  it being a man in a rubber suit. But special effects at the time
• 1:37:08
  weren't advanced enough to do that.
• 1:37:09
  So it did end up being a man in a rubber suit mostly and the
• 1:37:12
  head was a puppet. So to create that head there was
• 1:37:15
  a team of puppeteers who were able to control the head to move
• 1:37:18
  in any direction and they could also control the aliens lips,
• 1:37:20
  it's jaw and it's inner mouth that shoots out.
• 1:37:23
  The puppet head had over 900 working parts to it.
• 1:37:26
  The front part of the alien's head was made from a cast of a
• 1:37:28
  real human skull. The slime that drips from the
• 1:37:31
  aliens mouth was KY Jelly. Very simple.
• 1:37:33
  But that just looks fucking awesome.
• 1:37:35
  Yeah, doesn't it? And shredded condoms were used
• 1:37:38
  to create the tendons on the alien jaws.
• 1:37:40
  Tiny touch, but again, I know what they mean.
• 1:37:42
  But I didn't know they were condoms, so I might look at that
• 1:37:44
  differently now. But you don't know what they
• 1:37:46
  are. They look great.
• 1:37:47
  I mean, the whole thing is just some creation.
• 1:37:49
  It looks absolutely incredible and every bit As for the most
• 1:37:52
  part, it looks real, which is the most important thing, I
• 1:37:54
  think. Yeah.
• 1:37:55
  I mean The thing is as well though, like once the design
• 1:37:57
  did, they've actually got a casted and there were a number
• 1:37:59
  of actors who were up for filling the alien suit and one
• 1:38:01
  of them, famously Peter Mayhew did Chewy Chewy.
• 1:38:06
  He was up for this as well, but eventually went to a guy called
• 1:38:09
  Balaji Badu. And he was a graphic artist and
• 1:38:12
  he had kind of no real interest in in being an actor or
• 1:38:15
  anything. But he just happened to be seen
• 1:38:17
  in a London pub by one of the casting directors who reports
• 1:38:20
  him, asked me if he'd be interested if he'd go and meet
• 1:38:23
  Ridley Scott. And that's how he got the gig.
• 1:38:24
  And then what Ridley Scott did with him.
• 1:38:26
  He sent him to mime classes and to Tai chi classes so he could
• 1:38:29
  slow down his movements and like fully kind of how how to move
• 1:38:33
  that suit. Mimely Marcel.
• 1:38:34
  Marcel. Yeah, stuck in a glass box.
• 1:38:40
  So because they had no choice to go with the guy in the rubber
• 1:38:43
  suit like Matt mentioned there, Scott had to shoot the alien
• 1:38:45
  very specific ways to make sure it wasn't laughably obvious the
• 1:38:48
  alien only actually has. Can you guess how many minutes
• 1:38:51
  of screen time? 8 or 9 minutes, yeah.
• 1:38:55
  Yeah, 4 minutes of screen time. Four, Really.
• 1:38:58
  Yeah, absolutely ridiculous. And when it's on screen, the
• 1:39:01
  shots of it are very short, like, or it's extreme close-ups,
• 1:39:04
  or it's just cutaways, or it's just there and we don't see it
• 1:39:06
  until one hour into the film. Also, Scott deliberately never
• 1:39:10
  shot the alien face in the camera directly because he
• 1:39:12
  thought that made it look more humanoid.
• 1:39:13
  I mean, the front of the actual alien was modelled on a human
• 1:39:16
  skull, so he shot everything like in a side profile.
• 1:39:19
  Just give it that bit more of a strange look which works so
• 1:39:22
  well. Yeah, all those things worked
• 1:39:23
  amazingly well I think, didn't they?
• 1:39:24
  Definitely. So with the huge production
• 1:39:26
  values in design, where they went in the Alien, we've been
• 1:39:29
  through quite a lot of stuff there.
• 1:39:30
  The writing, music and cinematography are all essential
• 1:39:33
  to the film's success, and the design and effects work around
• 1:39:35
  creating the Alien itself are still impressive for the time.
• 1:39:39
  Extraordinary, surely unbelievable.
• 1:39:48
  After Ashes out of the pitch, the three remaining crew members
• 1:39:51
  come up with a new plan. They'd set a self destruction
• 1:39:53
  sequence of boarding a Stromo and leaving a space shuttle,
• 1:39:56
  leaving the Alien to meet a fiery end on the ship.
• 1:39:59
  Ripley board the shoulder prepared, while Parker and
• 1:40:01
  Lambert headed the supply room to gather life support
• 1:40:03
  equipment. But they're not alone.
• 1:40:06
  The alien takes its final victims here, sorry to say.
• 1:40:09
  Parker and Lambert go. What do we think of this
• 1:40:11
  sequence? Scariest sequence in the film
• 1:40:14
  for me, easily. Absolutely.
• 1:40:17
  It's the one that just puts me on edge.
• 1:40:20
  Like Northern, I like how it kind of flips convention on its
• 1:40:24
  head because it's usually the person who goes off by
• 1:40:26
  themselves, but here it's not. It's the people who are doubled
• 1:40:29
  up who should be safer. They're the ones who get wiped
• 1:40:31
  out. I think the fact that even
• 1:40:34
  though Lambert has pretty much been a nightmare to deal with
• 1:40:36
  throughout the whole film and Park is a bit of a Dick, I still
• 1:40:40
  do want them to get away just because the whole film has been
• 1:40:43
  so like, oppressive and scary. I just want them to get out of
• 1:40:46
  there. It's worse Ripley because she
• 1:40:48
  doesn't see what what happens. She just starts to hear it and
• 1:40:50
  especially Lambert's scream, the way that gets drawn out and
• 1:40:54
  she's kind of panting at the same time and it's just that
• 1:40:58
  thought in your head, like what the fuck is it doing to her?
• 1:41:01
  That is just the scariest written the film by far for me.
• 1:41:04
  Then what we see is just a scary.
• 1:41:06
  I mean it's by far the way the most we see of the Alien.
• 1:41:10
  The score is ramping up and This is why the so much of the film
• 1:41:14
  has been about the slow build, about just building tension up
• 1:41:17
  carefully and quietly, because this is just Scott letting loose
• 1:41:22
  and just putting it right in your face.
• 1:41:24
  Full on pure horror. It just absolutely demolishes my
• 1:41:29
  nerves pretty much every time I watch this scene.
• 1:41:31
  I think it's brilliant. Yeah, similar to you, Matt.
• 1:41:34
  Of all the moments in the film, the scene where Park and Lambert
• 1:41:37
  are killed is the one that feels most like a horror movie to me.
• 1:41:40
  It's the moment that I dread coming up.
• 1:41:42
  It's the classic. After all they've been through,
• 1:41:44
  we want them to escape, and they're so close to doing so,
• 1:41:47
  but don't quite make it. The tensions they gather in the
• 1:41:49
  supplies and you know there's a good chance the aliens going to
• 1:41:51
  show up is a game just palpable off the screen.
• 1:41:55
  And the way Scott lets us know the aliens there is fantastic.
• 1:41:58
  Lambat's moving the oxygen tanks and just spotlighted against the
• 1:42:01
  wall, and as she turns away, we see the alien shadow appear
• 1:42:03
  right where she's standing, then disappear.
• 1:42:05
  That's awesome. It's just heartbreaking for me,
• 1:42:09
  intentionally and brilliantly so, the way they both die.
• 1:42:11
  Parker has got a clean shot at the alien.
• 1:42:13
  He's shown the Lamba to get out of the way, but she
• 1:42:15
  understandably is so petrified you can't even move.
• 1:42:18
  So Parker takes the Elliot on in a fistfight, which is a terrible
• 1:42:22
  idea and comes on a distant second best.
• 1:42:25
  But what Scott does brilliantly throughout the whole film is
• 1:42:27
  that in King, Brett, Dallas, Parker and Lambert, five people
• 1:42:30
  are killed by the alien. But each of those sequences are
• 1:42:32
  completely different. Yeah, I dread this one coming
• 1:42:35
  because I just find it also sad the way they go.
• 1:42:37
  But that's Scott's intention. And yet again, he directs the
• 1:42:40
  whole thing just magnificently. Yeah.
• 1:42:43
  Top level stuff. And Westie.
• 1:42:45
  Yeah, exactly the same as you guys, really.
• 1:42:46
  I don't kind of want to repeat anything that you've said, but I
• 1:42:49
  always find this sequence, I feel always feels a little bit
• 1:42:52
  rushed for me when they're just kind of out of there.
• 1:42:54
  It's there. It, it doesn't seem to build as
• 1:42:56
  as much as I wanted to. I know it's the climax of the
• 1:42:58
  film and it's, it needs to get there, but I feel Park has just
• 1:43:01
  could have had a little bit more to his death.
• 1:43:03
  I think. I think he's out there just a
• 1:43:04
  little bit too quickly. I know that fist fights a little
• 1:43:06
  bit ridiculous. I don't know if it just, it
• 1:43:08
  could have felt a bit clever for me.
• 1:43:09
  I think they could have done it in in a, in a bit of more of a
• 1:43:11
  clever way. It just seems like we've got 2
• 1:43:13
  characters left. We want to get down to Ripley.
• 1:43:15
  Let's put them both in the same place.
• 1:43:16
  Bang, Bang and then out. And then then we're down to
• 1:43:19
  that, you know, the final showdown, which you can then
• 1:43:21
  breathe again. And yet, right, okay, we're on
• 1:43:22
  to Ripley. So for these two characters to
• 1:43:24
  die the way they do it is sad and it is horrific, but I would
• 1:43:27
  like to see a little bit more of that.
• 1:43:38
  In that bit though, when Parker gets killed by the alien,
• 1:43:40
  basically like chomping through his skull, they made a
• 1:43:42
  fiberglass replica of Cotto's head and they're filled with
• 1:43:45
  pig's brains. I mean, is there a part of an
• 1:43:48
  animal that hasn't been used? The butchers must have,
• 1:43:51
  absolutely. Made it kill him.
• 1:43:55
  Quite literally. It's where really, Scott's 4.2
• 1:44:00
  million went on his storyboard. Thrills Oysters.
• 1:44:08
  But just forehead as well, that's made of wax and that's
• 1:44:11
  why the teeth like looks like it just punches through no problem
• 1:44:14
  because it was actually very Brill.
• 1:44:15
  Right. I mean, again, it just looks
• 1:44:16
  great, doesn't it? Yeah, it does.
• 1:44:17
  Yeah, Yeah. I know that in the original
• 1:44:19
  version of the script, Lambert's death was supposed to be a bit
• 1:44:22
  different. I say a bit different, loads
• 1:44:23
  different. So originally it was going to be
• 1:44:25
  that Parker does try to shoot the alien, but misses and blows
• 1:44:28
  a hole in the hull of the ship, which creates a huge vacuum out
• 1:44:31
  into space. Then the alien pushes Lambert
• 1:44:33
  over that hole and just slowly gets sucked through it.
• 1:44:37
  Horrific. They actually do that in Alien
• 1:44:40
  Resurrection. Remember that at the end where
• 1:44:42
  that baby thing is sucked out, the tiny hole in the hole, It's
• 1:44:46
  horrible, and not in a good way. It's just horrible.
• 1:44:49
  So I'm glad they didn't do that. There's a moment here as well
• 1:44:52
  that's been a bone of contention for some fans over the years.
• 1:44:56
  So we don't actually see the Alien kill Lambert, but in her
• 1:44:59
  final moments we'll see a shot where the alien tail comes up
• 1:45:02
  between her legs. Then when Ripley gets there, we
• 1:45:05
  don't see Lambert's whole body, but we do see her naked feet and
• 1:45:08
  legs and the one naked before. This implies that the alien
• 1:45:12
  didn't just kill them, but it's actually assaulted her first.
• 1:45:15
  Do you go along with that? How does that sit with you if
• 1:45:18
  you do? Wesley, come to you first.
• 1:45:20
  OK, thanks. Come come with me with all the
• 1:45:24
  easy questions. That's fine.
• 1:45:27
  I think my answer to that is I think every single person who
• 1:45:30
  dies in this film is sexually assaulted.
• 1:45:32
  That's how they die. Right.
• 1:45:34
  In one way or another, it's a, you know, there's either a
• 1:45:35
  massive phallic tongue going through your skull, which
• 1:45:38
  happens to Brett, happens to Parker, you know, that Kane is
• 1:45:41
  almost raped and then he's got this unwanted pregnancy and this
• 1:45:44
  unwanted birth, you know, So that's due to being, you know,
• 1:45:47
  this sexual assault goes all the way through the film for me.
• 1:45:49
  And I think that is one of the key elements to it and part of
• 1:45:52
  the horror and part of the body horror that I mentioned earlier
• 1:45:54
  on. And I think that's the whole
• 1:45:56
  point. And yes, this is probably the
• 1:45:58
  most obvious version of that. And I think that's why it sticks
• 1:46:00
  in people's minds and they think that that's the only way or the
• 1:46:03
  only time that it does happen. And people could argue with
• 1:46:05
  that. Dallas doesn't.
• 1:46:06
  But there's a deleted scene from the end when Ripley's running
• 1:46:09
  back to the shuttle and she comes across a cocooned Brett
• 1:46:12
  and Dallas. Brett's dead because of the
• 1:46:15
  sexual assault that has happened in that.
• 1:46:17
  You know that he's being penetrated almost by this
• 1:46:19
  phallic tongue, which happens. And then you've got Dallas.
• 1:46:22
  You think, well, that doesn't happen to him, but he's been
• 1:46:24
  cocooned, so it's going to start all over again for him.
• 1:46:27
  So that will happen, and the circle will start again.
• 1:46:29
  So I think everyone in this film is sexually assaulted and that's
• 1:46:31
  how they die. Yeah, I mean, there's sexual
• 1:46:33
  imagery all the way through the film, isn't there?
• 1:46:36
  The face. Look up Fox.
• 1:46:37
  Kane's face as Ronald shows have put the chest burst.
• 1:46:39
  That's very phallic looking when it comes out of Kane's belly.
• 1:46:43
  HR Gigas design work concepts hinted graphic sexuality all the
• 1:46:46
  time. I'm on board with all that.
• 1:46:48
  I think it gives the film this real uniqueness and plays in
• 1:46:50
  your subconscious in quite a graphic way.
• 1:46:52
  But this suggestion that the alien takes Lambert clothes off
• 1:46:56
  and a salsa is over the line for me to be honest.
• 1:47:00
  Firstly 5 people are killed by the alien, only one of them is a
• 1:47:02
  woman and she is the only one who had strips naked.
• 1:47:05
  I mean that's horrific to me to be honest.
• 1:47:08
  The portrayal of gender has been so strong at this point it's a
• 1:47:10
  man who gets impregnated by the face hugger which is a nice
• 1:47:13
  reversal. the Super company has called mother and Ripley is a
• 1:47:15
  stronger lead as you could ever see then.
• 1:47:17
  This just undermines that a bit for me which is such a shame.
• 1:47:21
  Also, in terms of what we've been told, I'm not even sure it
• 1:47:24
  makes any narrative sense whatsoever.
• 1:47:25
  I mean, we know the life cycle of the alien.
• 1:47:27
  They don't have sex to reproduce, so why would the
• 1:47:29
  alien have any sexual urges at all?
• 1:47:31
  It wasn't even meant to be in there.
• 1:47:32
  Because that shot we're talking about is Harry Dean Stanton's
• 1:47:35
  legs. It was taken from the bread
• 1:47:36
  sequence and she won't hear just for shock value where the alien
• 1:47:39
  tail moves up and it's pretty tacky shot value at best for me.
• 1:47:44
  To be honest, the only reason the film didn't lose me at this
• 1:47:46
  point is because the rest of it is just ridiculously good.
• 1:47:50
  Mostly. I really strongly dislike those
• 1:47:52
  two shots of the tail moving up my leg and then of a bare feet.
• 1:47:55
  I don't like either of them to be honest.
• 1:47:57
  Right, right. OK.
• 1:47:59
  Yeah, I think I'm probably, I'm kind of on the fence, I guess.
• 1:48:03
  I'll definitely be in agreement with you, John, in that there's
• 1:48:06
  no logical sense to this idea that it does, that it makes no
• 1:48:10
  sense to the narrative whatsoever.
• 1:48:12
  But as he's both pointed out, there is still so much sexual
• 1:48:16
  imagery throughout the film. The face hookers, the tube down
• 1:48:19
  the chest, ash and the magazine force, and that on Ripley's
• 1:48:21
  thought. But it does fit in with that.
• 1:48:23
  Yeah. It, it does hark back to a lot
• 1:48:26
  of these kind of cheesy 50s science fiction films you get
• 1:48:28
  where aliens were kidnapping Earth women and things like
• 1:48:32
  that. But obviously this is done in a
• 1:48:33
  much more horrific and intense and and graphic way.
• 1:48:36
  So it definitely fits the thematic concerns that you've
• 1:48:40
  got in the film. It just doesn't make much
• 1:48:42
  narrative sense to me. And then in terms of how it
• 1:48:44
  makes me feel, it makes me feel really horrible, which is where
• 1:48:47
  I think I'm I'm definitely with you on this, John.
• 1:48:49
  It's just. I'm not saying it doesn't make
• 1:48:52
  us feel bad, just so much of the spaceship looking like open
• 1:49:01
  legs. I.
• 1:49:04
  Haven't recovered from that, but it does.
• 1:49:08
  Yeah, it does. It makes me feel really
• 1:49:10
  uncomfortable and not do think of this film was made today, you
• 1:49:13
  wouldn't get that shot. I agree, yeah.
• 1:49:15
  So I agree with that, yeah. So a problematic sequence in
• 1:49:19
  some ways may be, but that aside, the deaths of Parker and
• 1:49:22
  Lambert are thrilling and heartbreaking in equal measure.
• 1:49:25
  Yep, Yep. At this point, Kane, Brett,
• 1:49:28
  Dallas, Ash, Parker and Lambert have all left us and we're left
• 1:49:32
  with the showdown we've been waiting for, Ripley and the
• 1:49:34
  Xenomorph. Ripley sets a self destruct
• 1:49:37
  sequence, boards a narcissist, watches and the Stromal blow up
• 1:49:40
  and think she's made it until she finds she has a store way
• 1:49:43
  aboard the shuttle. A store way with acid for blood.
• 1:49:46
  She blows out the goddamn airlock.
• 1:49:48
  Is it a fitting ending to what's came before Matt?
• 1:49:51
  In some ways yes, in some ways no, I think for me.
• 1:49:54
  Yeah, we'll go. Well, what I like about it,
• 1:50:01
  first of all, is Ripley's ingenuity here.
• 1:50:04
  You know, she's trapped in the most confined space she could be
• 1:50:07
  in now, just in this little support shuttle, literally no
• 1:50:10
  way out. I mean, the Nostromo was bad
• 1:50:12
  enough trying to find a way out of there.
• 1:50:13
  Here absolutely no way out for her and what's great is because
• 1:50:17
  there's got no one to play off with or playoff against.
• 1:50:20
  She can't explain what her plan is.
• 1:50:21
  You have to sit nothing right? Why she's strapping herself into
• 1:50:24
  the space shoot, why she's strapping herself into the the
• 1:50:26
  console, into the seat now and what you're doing with the
• 1:50:28
  grappling hook. So I'll love all that stuff.
• 1:50:31
  And then her actual plan, you know, it makes complete perfect
• 1:50:34
  sense. And I'll love how that's just
• 1:50:35
  Ripley thinking on her feet. The bit that doesn't quite work
• 1:50:38
  for me is it it's a little bit like Wesley's like criticism of
• 1:50:42
  the of the Parker and Lambert scene.
• 1:50:44
  I just want a little bit more from the scene.
• 1:50:47
  I want something a bit more creative.
• 1:50:49
  I just feel this is the scene where I think Ridley Scott, he's
• 1:50:52
  kind of run out of ideas of how to film the Alien.
• 1:50:56
  I just feel we've seen this close up a fair few Times Now.
• 1:50:59
  I just want to see it done in a slightly different way.
• 1:51:02
  The scene itself is fine, Weaver sells the hell out of it, but it
• 1:51:07
  just lacks a bitter umph for me at the end.
• 1:51:10
  I just want a bit more punch for this final climax and I just
• 1:51:13
  don't get it. I'd get a guy in a suit bouncing
• 1:51:15
  around on the end of a rope. I.
• 1:51:18
  Just I just wonder if Ridley Scott looks back at this and
• 1:51:21
  thinks, ah, if I'd one more day, yeah, maybe something really
• 1:51:26
  great without. I just feel it runs out of steam
• 1:51:28
  a little bit in terms of what he can do with the Alien here.
• 1:51:32
  Yeah, I know what you mean. I think it's still an iconic
• 1:51:34
  climax of the film. Yeah.
• 1:51:36
  And I do think, I do think it's grace and no huge, spectacular
• 1:51:38
  bombast. It's all very slow, pretty
• 1:51:40
  subtle. And again, I think it's really
• 1:51:42
  well directed for the most part. The bit when the alien reveals
• 1:51:45
  itself, even now when I know the aliens there in the bulkhead, I
• 1:51:48
  still can't see you until the ton shoots out.
• 1:51:51
  It looks. It's great.
• 1:51:52
  I like when Ripley's putting on the spear suit and she sings You
• 1:51:54
  Are My Lucky Star. That was improvised on set by
• 1:51:57
  Sigourney Weaver. In the studio were furious that
• 1:51:59
  Scott kept it in because they hadn't budgeted to pay for music
• 1:52:01
  rights. But I'm glad they did keep it in
• 1:52:03
  because I think it's great. The effects work like you saw
• 1:52:07
  mentioned, Mark when the aliens been harpooned and dangling
• 1:52:10
  outside the ship hasn't aged well and I'm not sure how it
• 1:52:13
  bears the full brunt of the show's rocket engines and is
• 1:52:15
  totally unscathed. But those final seconds where
• 1:52:18
  Ripley delivers the iconic monologue when recording the
• 1:52:21
  ship's log. This is Ripley.
• 1:52:22
  Last Survive members in this room was signing off.
• 1:52:24
  That's just a fantastic way to end things for me, that's.
• 1:52:27
  What? That was the audition piece,
• 1:52:28
  wasn't it? That's what they all had to say.
• 1:52:29
  That's what they got. Oh, really?
• 1:52:31
  Yeah, and. What do you think of the final
• 1:52:34
  sequence, Westie? I mean, it's amazing when you
• 1:52:36
  watch this again and I watched Aliens and Aliens for me was was
• 1:52:39
  burned into me mind. And then I watched this over and
• 1:52:41
  over and over again in preparation for this.
• 1:52:42
  And I just realized there's so much in this film that's been
• 1:52:45
  taken and then speed up fast forwarded and you're just
• 1:52:48
  blowing up into what Aliens is and this whole end and is the
• 1:52:51
  blueprint to the end of the aliens really.
• 1:52:54
  I mean, it's exactly the same. It's pretty much on.
• 1:52:56
  It's you know, it seemed foreseen, but it's just a little
• 1:52:58
  bit more intense, bigger explosions, you know, drop ships
• 1:53:01
  coming in now. But the whole theme is pretty
• 1:53:03
  much the same. And the the bit that does let it
• 1:53:06
  down is like Matt said, when it's just standing outside the
• 1:53:08
  ship, it does look a bit shit. But apart from that, I mean,
• 1:53:11
  it's it because the built the set around the alien plane stuck
• 1:53:14
  in there. I mean, you try to climb out
• 1:53:16
  three or four times and end up ripping the suit every time
• 1:53:18
  because the building that far into it.
• 1:53:20
  I mean, that level of detail is incredible.
• 1:53:22
  And then you just have this kind of floating, you know, it's
• 1:53:25
  just, it's kind of gone by then. It doesn't really, It doesn't
• 1:53:28
  work. It should be kind of clambering
• 1:53:29
  on the side of and then scuttling around the whole
• 1:53:31
  around the ship. And it should be like trying to
• 1:53:33
  get it off in certain ways. And the ship should be tilting
• 1:53:35
  and it should have that kind of element to it to completely
• 1:53:37
  finish off the standard of the whole film.
• 1:53:40
  The standard does kind of drop at the end.
• 1:53:41
  But for me, I mean, it doesn't drop that far.
• 1:53:43
  It's still fucking incredible. And for her to have that pool
• 1:53:45
  sequence where she is singing that for me is just so hold your
• 1:53:48
  breath. Every time I watch you.
• 1:53:50
  I'm just, I'm just. And the way she sings it and
• 1:53:52
  she's just lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky.
• 1:53:55
  I was just lucky. Yeah.
• 1:53:56
  But she's lucky getting into that.
• 1:53:57
  And I kind of read it both ways. She's singing the song to calm
• 1:54:00
  myself down, but just telling myself that she's lucky to get
• 1:54:02
  this far. So for me, yeah, it's it's a
• 1:54:04
  great, great end of the film. And I love the fact that she
• 1:54:07
  does end up, you know, it's sleeping and you do get a happy
• 1:54:09
  ending. But if it was me and I'd been
• 1:54:11
  through that trauma, I wouldn't just go straight asleep.
• 1:54:13
  I'd be sitting there shaking, just looking.
• 1:54:14
  There must be another one. Yeah.
• 1:54:17
  Yeah. Just like I'll take the cat
• 1:54:19
  around on a little lead just pointing at the corner and see
• 1:54:21
  if it hisses. Anyway.
• 1:54:22
  Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
• 1:54:24
  Yeah. But it it does work.
• 1:54:26
  It works fantastically and it's a wonderful end to a wonderful
• 1:54:28
  film. Lovely.
• 1:54:30
  Yeah, I mean to pick up on Wes, he said there about Bellagio and
• 1:54:34
  he ripped his suit a few times. There's one outtake from this.
• 1:54:37
  I would have loved to have seen it when he clambers out.
• 1:54:40
  He didn't rip the suit on this occasion, but he stands up in
• 1:54:42
  front of Ripley and the tail fell off.
• 1:54:46
  Can you imagine Ridley Scott's face when that happened?
• 1:54:48
  That would have been. Absolutely amazing to say it.
• 1:54:51
  Would have been a close up anyway.
• 1:54:52
  You wouldn't have seen it. A good point, yeah.
• 1:54:56
  Yeah, the alien is moving so slowly at this point.
• 1:54:59
  It's great because even though it's not explained in the film,
• 1:55:01
  the point is that the aliens dying at this point, it's
• 1:55:04
  fulfilled its role in the life cycle of the alien has gone into
• 1:55:07
  the shuttle to die, not to hide. So that's why it's so slow to
• 1:55:10
  attack Ripley. That's what the price is.
• 1:55:11
  Yeah. OK, definitely that.
• 1:55:13
  So we've praised the ending where Ripley blows the alien out
• 1:55:16
  in the space, but Ridley Scott actually did not get the ending
• 1:55:18
  that he wanted at the time. What he wanted was very bizarre.
• 1:55:23
  Have you heard about this? Yes, I have.
• 1:55:24
  Yes, it's so weird. Well, if anyone that's not what
• 1:55:29
  was going to happen was Ripley harpoons the Alien.
• 1:55:32
  But it makes no difference. It runs towards her, slams
• 1:55:36
  through her mask and rips her head off.
• 1:55:38
  It would then sit in the chair and in Captain Dallas voice say
• 1:55:41
  I'm signing off. Hopefully the network will pick
• 1:55:43
  me up. With the cigar.
• 1:55:47
  Really weird. Do you like that?
• 1:55:50
  No. I'd have been furious if that
• 1:55:53
  was the ending. Well, thankfully, folks didn't
• 1:55:55
  like it either. Hearing what Scott had planned,
• 1:55:57
  the studio executive arrived on set and told Scott he'd be fired
• 1:56:01
  on the spot unless he filmed an ending where the alien dies.
• 1:56:04
  And Scott himself later admitted that how the film ends is
• 1:56:06
  definitely for the best. Yeah.
• 1:56:08
  When is compared to that it is. Ever done anything as weird as
• 1:56:11
  that in the film before? Never.
• 1:56:13
  That's just awful. Where did that?
• 1:56:14
  Come from all of Kingdom of Heaven.
• 1:56:21
  And one final thing. If you watch the end credits
• 1:56:23
  until the very, very end, the final thing you hear, you've got
• 1:56:25
  to turn it right up. It's better if you turn it right
• 1:56:27
  open. The final thing you hear is the
• 1:56:29
  final credits roll up is the sound of an alien egg opening,
• 1:56:32
  which is a really nice touch. Oh, nice.
• 1:56:35
  Lovely Easter egg. Easter Alien egg.
• 1:56:37
  Yeah, the most famous and iconic moment from Alien probably come
• 1:56:43
  in the first hour, but that's not to say the rest of the let
• 1:56:45
  down. Far from it.
• 1:56:47
  And in those two final sequences, Parker and Lambert
• 1:56:49
  meeting their fate, followed by the Ripley Alien showdown.
• 1:56:52
  The film ends pretty brilliantly, I think.
• 1:56:54
  Absolutely. Reception and award.
• 1:57:02
  Alien is an iconic science fiction horror classic nowadays,
• 1:57:06
  but what about how it did back in 1979?
• 1:57:09
  The final budget for Alien ended up being $11 million and it
• 1:57:12
  grossed $106.3 million at the box office.
• 1:57:16
  Big, big return, but maybe not we'd expect going off the state
• 1:57:19
  as the film now has. I thought it would have been
• 1:57:22
  more. Yeah, I was a little bit
• 1:57:23
  surprised at that. Yeah.
• 1:57:25
  I've got some of the critical response to the film here, too.
• 1:57:27
  So Roger Ebert, did Roger like Alien do you think of?
• 1:57:32
  Course, he thought, something doesn't like anything.
• 1:57:34
  He did four stars out of four and he said Ridley Scott's movie
• 1:57:39
  is a great original. One of the greatest Frank
• 1:57:41
  civilian is its pacing. It takes its time, it waits, it
• 1:57:46
  allows silences, it vibrates with a dark and frightening
• 1:57:48
  intensity. And Sigourney Weaver is going to
• 1:57:51
  be a major star. Called that.
• 1:57:53
  Right, wrong. Called that right, left, right
• 1:57:54
  and said that yeah. I'll take that back.
• 1:58:00
  Pauline Kale, I think Pauline liked it, she said.
• 1:58:03
  Oh, here we go. No one knows what the fuck
• 1:58:06
  should. It reaches out, grabs you and
• 1:58:09
  squeezes your stomach. It's more gripping than
• 1:58:11
  entertaining because it makes you feel like you've been
• 1:58:13
  brutalized. Thanks for that, Pauline.
• 1:58:16
  Was that it? That's it.
• 1:58:18
  That's it. Brutalized.
• 1:58:20
  However, time out, we're not so kind.
• 1:58:23
  And they said Alien is an empty bag of tricks whose production
• 1:58:26
  value is an expensive trickery cannot disguise imaginative
• 1:58:29
  poverty. Ludicrous.
• 1:58:31
  OK. Ludicrous.
• 1:58:33
  I don't I don't understand that. Really, today I want to models.
• 1:58:39
  Alien has 98% from critics and 94% from audiences.
• 1:58:43
  Humongous scores and an IMDb. It has 8.4 out of 10, which is
• 1:58:47
  also massive. It's it's 52nd and the IMDb all
• 1:58:51
  time list. Bizarrely enough, it's
• 1:58:53
  sandwiched between Rear Window above it and Apocalypse Now
• 1:58:56
  below it, which are our last two episodes.
• 1:58:58
  Oh, there you go. That's not the blueprint, by the
• 1:59:01
  way. We don't just go, let's do that
• 1:59:04
  one. Yeah, it wouldn't be so bizarre
• 1:59:07
  if that was the case with it. Exactly.
• 1:59:10
  At the Oscars, Alien 11, it was nominated for one.
• 1:59:13
  It was nominated for best art direction but lost out to all
• 1:59:15
  that jazz, and it won for best visual effects.
• 1:59:19
  It beat out 1941 and Star Trek The Motion Picture, which I'm
• 1:59:22
  furious about. Well, I'm sure.
• 1:59:24
  You are. No one else is strong.
• 1:59:26
  Not Alien is the right winner. You're right.
• 1:59:29
  So Aliens regarded as a true classic nowadays.
• 1:59:32
  The reception at the time didn't totally reflect the stage that
• 1:59:34
  currently has, but it was a big hit and was the launchpad for
• 1:59:38
  the careers of Ridley Scott and Sigourney Weaver and the rest of
• 1:59:41
  the Alien franchise. Indeed.
• 1:59:48
  Sequels and influence. At this stage recently I found
• 1:59:52
  myself seeing things like no sequels for Shawshank or no
• 1:59:55
  sequels for The Departed. Not so with Alien.
• 1:59:58
  Of course. Since Ridley Scott film in 1979,
• 2:00:01
  there have been a further 7 Alien movies.
• 2:00:04
  We're not going to talk about all of them because we did so on
• 2:00:06
  our Aliens episodes and I think most people agree that most of
• 2:00:09
  them are totally shit. But we are going to answer a
• 2:00:12
  paper young question on the other good Alien film that we've
• 2:00:15
  mentioned a bit already. So.
• 2:00:17
  George Anderson. Hi, George.
• 2:00:18
  Hi, George. Hi.
• 2:00:19
  George, Andy and Jones, actually.
• 2:00:21
  Hello, Deanne. Hi.
• 2:00:22
  Deanne. They both asked the same
• 2:00:24
  question. I thought they were working
• 2:00:25
  together in coats. They don't come with a pay, I
• 2:00:28
  don't think. Which Cassidy and Sundance?
• 2:00:36
  Which is your favorite alien or aliens?
• 2:00:41
  Fucking Sophie's Choice. Depends what mood.
• 2:00:45
  I mean, this is a terrible question.
• 2:00:47
  It's an amazing question, but it's terrible to answer.
• 2:00:49
  I saw Aliens 1st and I love Alien now that I've seen it, and
• 2:00:53
  I could really appreciate what's going into making it.
• 2:00:55
  But then again, I really appreciate what's going into
• 2:00:56
  making Aliens. I'm going to answer it in like
• 2:00:58
  the most scapegoat way I possibly can and say it's
• 2:01:01
  probably the perfect double bill of all time.
• 2:01:03
  Lovely. The best one too.
• 2:01:05
  Yeah, best one too you can possibly sit through.
• 2:01:07
  It's an easier one for me to answer, to be honest.
• 2:01:10
  It's aliens, no contest. Well, of course it is.
• 2:01:12
  And that's not a criticism in any way of Alien, but Aliens is
• 2:01:15
  possibly my favorite film ever. George and Dan could have said
• 2:01:18
  what's your favorite, any film ever or Aliens and I would have
• 2:01:21
  still said Aliens probably. It's all covered on our Aliens
• 2:01:25
  podcast so I won't go into great detail, but James Cameron's work
• 2:01:28
  on that film is incredible for me.
• 2:01:30
  He changes genre from horror, thriller to action for the
• 2:01:33
  better in my opinion. He develops the world and the
• 2:01:35
  idea and introduces the Alien Queen, again for the better for
• 2:01:38
  me. And the writing in general, but
• 2:01:40
  specifically around the character of Ripley is just
• 2:01:42
  unbelievable. And Sigourney Weaver obviously
• 2:01:45
  nails the writing to the wall. She's incredible.
• 2:01:47
  The budget for the film is relatively small and what
• 2:01:49
  Cameron does with it is nothing less than phenomenal in my eyes.
• 2:01:52
  As a story, as a narrative, it's an absolute roller coaster ride.
• 2:01:56
  Not that Alien isn't, but I think there are maybe some
• 2:01:58
  imperfections in Alien which we've covered.
• 2:02:00
  There's none in Aliens for me. I think people come back like
• 2:02:03
  the alien purists could come back and say, but without alien
• 2:02:05
  you can't have aliens. But then they've tried.
• 2:02:08
  They've tried again. Without Alien.
• 2:02:09
  You can't have Alien Three. They've tried again and nobody's
• 2:02:12
  done anywhere near as good as Cameron.
• 2:02:14
  And Matt, which is your favorite?
• 2:02:15
  Yeah, I'm with you, John. It is a fairly easy answer for
• 2:02:18
  me and it is Aliens because Aliens for me it's a film for
• 2:02:21
  all kind of moods. You know, I've got the lads
• 2:02:23
  coming around, we're going to have a few beers.
• 2:02:24
  What should we put on? Let's watch Aliens.
• 2:02:26
  When my son was growing up and he was he was getting old enough
• 2:02:30
  to watch Slad the oldest stuff. Aliens was one of the first ones
• 2:02:32
  I let him watch. Took took a while long before I
• 2:02:34
  let him watch Alien. On a date?
• 2:02:36
  Have you watched on a date before?
• 2:02:37
  I've watched on a date before. No, I haven't actually.
• 2:02:40
  She loved it. Do it.
• 2:02:42
  What about the film though? I.
• 2:02:46
  Didn't watch that? Didn't.
• 2:02:49
  Finish it sexual threat in the first one.
• 2:02:51
  There's not perfect date movie. Yeah.
• 2:02:57
  If I've had a shit day and I want chewing up, yeah Aliens,
• 2:02:59
  that's absolutely going to lift my mood every time.
• 2:03:01
  And there's so many aspects to it that I don't necessarily get
• 2:03:05
  out of Alien. Like if I want to get myself
• 2:03:07
  psyched up for anything, I'll just stick on Bishops countdown
• 2:03:09
  in the background. Like just two minutes and I'm
• 2:03:12
  ready for anything. There's nothing quite like that
• 2:03:15
  alien. And when we take notes for
• 2:03:17
  these, as obviously we all do, Alien does feel a little bit
• 2:03:21
  like homework, where it's like, obviously I wasn't on the Aliens
• 2:03:24
  podcast, but I don't think I could have taken notes for
• 2:03:26
  Aliens because I just would have ended up watching the film.
• 2:03:29
  It was a little bit easier to take myself out of that and
• 2:03:32
  watch Aliens. So for those reasons, yeah, it
• 2:03:35
  is Aliens for me, but it's not really a criticism of how good
• 2:03:38
  Alien is. Nobody agrees it's the greatest
• 2:03:40
  double bill of all time. I completely just by myself for.
• 2:03:42
  That. Oh, no, it is.
• 2:03:43
  Yeah, yeah. The greatest 1-2 better than the
• 2:03:45
  better than the Star Wars 1/2. Yeah, you need Jedi, man.
• 2:03:49
  Yeah, fair enough. The end of Aliens is like a
• 2:03:51
  resolution, isn't it? Resolved.
• 2:03:52
  Yeah, Or should be. It should have been anyway.
• 2:03:54
  And. Just the way that Aliens just
• 2:03:55
  takes the concept and just alters it so slightly but so
• 2:03:58
  brilliantly. Yeah.
• 2:03:59
  And it gets two totally different moods.
• 2:04:01
  It's just amazing. Alien was so good and so
• 2:04:04
  successful that it's born the entire franchise in movies.
• 2:04:07
  Most of us actually prefer the sequel, but I think for all of
• 2:04:09
  us that shouldn't be taken as a slight on what Ridley Scott
• 2:04:11
  achieved here. No, not at all.
• 2:04:13
  Nope. All the right movie, The
• 2:04:18
  ranking. Massive scores everywhere for
• 2:04:22
  Alien if we just went through, but how about the All the Right
• 2:04:25
  Movies leaderboard? How about it?
• 2:04:27
  Yeah, let's find out. Let's start with you, Matt.
• 2:04:29
  Your summary and rating for Alien please.
• 2:04:32
  Alien there's so much to love about this film and there's so
• 2:04:35
  many reasons to respect it. It's the film that announced
• 2:04:38
  Ridley Scott is the talent that he is and is average, as some of
• 2:04:42
  his output is. This is still a film that you've
• 2:04:45
  just got to respect him for. The way he pulled it together,
• 2:04:47
  the way he oversaw everything, the way he visualised this,
• 2:04:51
  that's incredible. It changed science fiction
• 2:04:54
  forever as a genre and any film that can change a genre like
• 2:04:57
  that, you know, how can you not love that?
• 2:04:58
  And the way that it then blends that with horror, that's
• 2:05:02
  incredible. It it did it in a way that had
• 2:05:04
  never been seen before and it's been imitated so many times
• 2:05:07
  since, but very, very rarely as effectively as it is here.
• 2:05:11
  The design is incredible, the monster is iconic and you've got
• 2:05:15
  the beginning to one of the most iconic characters in cinema
• 2:05:18
  history. So there's so much to love about
• 2:05:20
  it, but there are the little elements that don't work for me.
• 2:05:23
  I mentioned some of the dialogues a bit iffy.
• 2:05:26
  Lambert's fate I'm not really comfortable with, and not in the
• 2:05:29
  way that the film makes me want to be uncomfortable with it.
• 2:05:33
  And like I said, I just want that end in the pack a bit more
• 2:05:36
  of a punch than it does. It just doesn't quite stick the
• 2:05:39
  the landing as effectively as I think it could and as I think it
• 2:05:41
  should. And ultimately I do have to put
• 2:05:45
  this one into the context of how I would read it alongside
• 2:05:47
  Aliens. And that is my favorite.
• 2:05:50
  So it's massive. It's massive reason it's a nine.
• 2:05:54
  Nine big score. Well, I said at the start of the
• 2:05:57
  episode that was disappointed with Alien the first time I saw
• 2:05:59
  it. Needless to say, I'm not
• 2:06:01
  disappointed with it anymore. Top to bottom, back to from this
• 2:06:04
  is top class. Not just science fiction or
• 2:06:06
  horror movie making, but filmmaking in general.
• 2:06:09
  The concept of the Alien itself from Daniel Bannon, Ronald
• 2:06:11
  Schussett is sensational. The execution of that concept in
• 2:06:15
  HR Gigas design work is sensational.
• 2:06:18
  Ridley Scott realizing the whole thing on the screen as
• 2:06:20
  beautifully and dispensefully as he does is great, great work.
• 2:06:24
  And Sigourney Weaver creating one of the most iconic lead
• 2:06:27
  characters, male or female, in pretty much a debut performance
• 2:06:30
  shouldn't be possible, but she did it.
• 2:06:32
  It's a near perfect film in my eyes, except as we talked about
• 2:06:37
  how to handle Lambat's death and what for me is a really
• 2:06:40
  distasteful decision to make it look like the alien took her
• 2:06:43
  clothes off and sexually assaulted her.
• 2:06:45
  I know it was the 70s, but I just cannot forgive that
• 2:06:47
  decision to be honest. And it leaps out with me every
• 2:06:50
  time I watch the film. And that's lost the film an
• 2:06:52
  entire point. So I'm also going to give it a
• 2:06:55
  nine out of 10. And Rusty, what are you going to
• 2:06:59
  go for? I mean, I do love this film.
• 2:07:01
  I do love the aesthetic. I love how beautifully shot it
• 2:07:05
  is. I love how confident it is.
• 2:07:06
  I love how inspirational it is. I love how the fact that it was
• 2:07:09
  just two guys, two cameras, I know there was an army of people
• 2:07:12
  behind them in the set. Builds are just incredible, and
• 2:07:14
  the concepts are just incredible, and the ideas behind
• 2:07:17
  it are just incredible. I don't think there's been
• 2:07:19
  anything as original as this since.
• 2:07:21
  And I don't think it can be bettered.
• 2:07:23
  I think it's tried to be bettered and it has been
• 2:07:25
  slightly with Aliens because they had to take it to a
• 2:07:27
  completely different place. But if you try and make this
• 2:07:29
  again and try and create this intensity and try and create
• 2:07:33
  something this good from, you know, the ideas that they had, I
• 2:07:36
  don't really think it's possible.
• 2:07:38
  It's just a marvel of filmmaking.
• 2:07:40
  It's a marvel of cinema. It's up there and it should be
• 2:07:43
  applauded as much as it has been applauded.
• 2:07:45
  I think. I think Ridley Scott's done an
• 2:07:46
  incredible, incredible job on it.
• 2:07:48
  And like I said earlier, I mean, the work on this is good enough
• 2:07:51
  to sustain a career of 40 years. That's how good this film is.
• 2:07:55
  It's an absolute marvel. But there are bits that just jar
• 2:07:58
  is a little bit and have dated a little bit.
• 2:08:00
  And the one the two things are in its relation to the alien,
• 2:08:03
  it's when the chess person comes out and it scuttles across the
• 2:08:06
  table that always pulls me out a little bit.
• 2:08:08
  And then when it's hanging underneath the ship and it looks
• 2:08:11
  a little bit dated, that Jaws is a little bit.
• 2:08:13
  And like both of you guys have said, the way the Lambert's
• 2:08:15
  death is handled is a little bit too on the nose.
• 2:08:17
  I think it's really, really clever in every other aspect
• 2:08:20
  apart from that it is in bad taste.
• 2:08:22
  And I think because of the time that is aged a little bit, but
• 2:08:25
  that it's not enough to knock the whole point off for me.
• 2:08:27
  That's enough to just niggle. And I think, you know, it is a
• 2:08:30
  film and we've got to give it the credit where credit's due.
• 2:08:32
  And I'm not going to bring something down because of one or
• 2:08:34
  two things. But it does lose half a point
• 2:08:37
  because of them three little niggles that it's got.
• 2:08:39
  So it's a 9.5 for me. 9.5 big score again as we always do.
• 2:08:45
  We also asked our Twitter follow us to vote some of their
• 2:08:47
  comments. Ricky Keeley at Rickster Scale,
• 2:08:49
  who's one of our patrons, said Ridley Scott has made plenty of
• 2:08:52
  great sci-fi films, but is Alien his best?
• 2:08:56
  Pretty much flawless, even if some of the chest burst effects
• 2:08:58
  look a tiny bit dated now. But that's being mega picky.
• 2:09:01
  Overall, it's a nine out of 10 for me.
• 2:09:03
  Iconic film making. Yeah, it is.
• 2:09:06
  Carson Pirifoy at Carson Pirifoy said stand the test of time, so
• 2:09:10
  I gave the 9 He's a pony, he doesn't know it.
• 2:09:18
  And how does at? How does 2020 said?
• 2:09:20
  How on earth can anyone rate this movie less than A10?
• 2:09:23
  It's aesthetically perfect, the acting is sublime, it's full of
• 2:09:26
  shocks and twists. There's a ground breaking female
• 2:09:29
  lead. Without it you wouldn't have
• 2:09:30
  aliens and it has not aged one bit.
• 2:09:32
  It's flawless. We'll put a few floors in there
• 2:09:36
  if she wants to revisit that. See what you think of our
• 2:09:39
  floors. They had us, that's no and our
• 2:09:42
  Twitter followers rated the film as What do you think I would.
• 2:09:47
  Say it's like 9.5. Yeah, I'd say 9.5 as well.
• 2:09:51
  Yeah, 9. .5 Correct? All right.
• 2:09:53
  It came within a whisker. Have a 10 actually, that scored
• 2:09:56
  some massive films. Outscored Pulp Fiction, The
• 2:09:58
  Shining, The Exorcist, Apocalypse Now did really well,
• 2:10:01
  Yeah. They're shining.
• 2:10:02
  Disagree with that? So that gives Alien 37 out of 40
• 2:10:09
  in total. You can check our website for
• 2:10:11
  the full ranking table. And that's that on Alien.
• 2:10:14
  Hopefully you haven't heard enough and you're going to pull
• 2:10:16
  the plug. Join us again in two weeks for
• 2:10:19
  another classic episode installment.
• 2:10:21
  If you're talking about bum cakes, Matt, Luke and Pi have
• 2:10:24
  got them as they talk big bottoms and Rob Reiner bringing
• 2:10:27
  you the story behind classic comedy This Is Spinal Tap.
• 2:10:30
  Yes, yes, yes. That'll be a laugh riot, right
• 2:10:32
  Matt? Pi is like a kid on Christmas
• 2:10:35
  morning. We're going to get stuck in some
• 2:10:40
  very different alien pods, put it that way.
• 2:10:44
  And I mentioned for all of our directors, chair level paid runs
• 2:10:46
  as well. I'm handing over to Wesley this
• 2:10:48
  time, but I went Wesley. Nope.
• 2:10:53
  All right, there's quite a few of you guys now, so I'll try my
• 2:10:55
  best to do this in a in a really professional way, but I can't
• 2:10:59
  read very well, so that's a floor on my part.
• 2:11:01
  So here we go. Parents are Adam Cowie, Adam
• 2:11:04
  Yates, Andrea Barca, Syed Anna Randall, Anthony Hudson,
• 2:11:08
  Benjamin Rogers, Brandon Galvin, Brio de Paris, Cags Clough,
• 2:11:12
  Carlos Conse, Sal Craig Bourne, Caroline and Paul Williamson,
• 2:11:15
  Damien Lennox, Daniel Ryan, Darrell Clough, David Courts,
• 2:11:19
  Deanne Jones, Derek Noonan, George Anderson, George Eliot,
• 2:11:22
  Graham Cheter, Henning Pierzunga, Ian Chapel, James As
• 2:11:25
  of you, Jamie Russell, Jonah Howie, Just Joe, Justin Fellas,
• 2:11:29
  Justin Walsh, Kareem Halliwell, Kenny Morrison Matlum, Mike
• 2:11:32
  Riley, Mr. Paul Devine, Richard Kodish, Robbie Day, Sean
• 2:11:36
  Campbell, Sharif Ahmed Hilton Thompson and Maxime Shearer.
• 2:11:40
  Lovely. Thank you Wesley, know more
• 2:11:45
  about becoming a Patreon, accessing our archive, born this
• 2:11:48
  episode and supporting us in what we do.
• 2:11:50
  Please visit patreon.com/all the Right Movies.
• 2:11:53
  You can also subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes and Apple
• 2:11:55
  Podcasts. And socially, you can keep up
• 2:11:57
  with all the right Movies on Twitter, which is at Right under
• 2:12:00
  score Movies Instagram, which is at all the under score Right
• 2:12:03
  Movies. And you can find our movie group
• 2:12:05
  on Facebook to join in with all the movie chat and fun that
• 2:12:08
  takes place on there. Oh yes.
• 2:12:10
  And our website is all the right movies.com.
• 2:12:13
  We're all off now to see if we can remove this huge 8 legged
• 2:12:17
  parasite from Matt's face. Looks innocent enough.
• 2:12:21
  Poor Matt. I'll take responsibility.
• 2:12:29
  Get that damn thing off. So thanks for listening
• 2:12:32
  everybody and please come back next time.
• 2:12:35
  See you later folks. Thanks for listening.
• 2:12:37
  Thanks guys.