THE ALIEN LEGACY
CAST: Sigourney Weaver, Dan O'Bannon, Ronald Shussett, H.R. Giger, etc.
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Rob Klein
DIR: None Listed
STUDIO: Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment
IN THE SPACE of the theater, you couldn't hear anybody laughing. The film unwound, reel after reel, but the audience that was supposed to laugh--because this was intended to be a comedy, after all--didn't. And what Dan O'Bannon heard was a "silence" that deafened his senses.
O'Bannon, who had co-written and made the movie with another neophyte named John Carpenter, began to shrink down into his loge. It was a slow kind of death. He,. Carpenter and some buddies from college had set out to make a funny space adventure, a send-up of sci-fi movies. A rib-tickling satire concocted to evoke guffaws, chortles and hee haws. Maybe even some intellectualized belly laughs. But, just when they thought it was safe to do a comedy set in deepest space, everyone had decided not to laugh. Not even a mild, subtle chuckle. Or an under-the-breath titter. It was so quiet, you could even hear yourself thinking about the next screenplay you were going to write, only brother, is that one going to be different. Not like this piece of . . .
O'Bannon continued to shrivel up inside. And DARK STAR, a 1971 student project that had miraculously worked its way into commercial movie houses in 1974, was to make only a minor mark in movie history. It had been cheaply made and was perversely irreverent at a time when audiences didn't seem to appreciate perverse irrevence very much. However, the lessons it taught O'Bannon were to be the first steps toward the writing of a new screenplay and the making of a true cinema classic. It would be the stepping stone to ALIEN.
So the legend is spun in THE ALIEN LEGACY, a 67-minute documentary about the making of ALIEN, from the moment it was conceived by O'Bannon until the summer of 1979, when the box-office blockbuster established unique trends in blending horror with hardware science-fiction. It sent shock waves through stunned, sometimes sickened audiences when a small, flesh-chewing monster emerged from the chest chavity of actor John Hurt, and when Sigourney Weaver found herself alone on the spacecraft Nostromo with a ruthless, cunning extraterrestrial monster that slavered and drolled as it licked its extraterrestrial chops in anticipation of its next meal--Weaver.
This new behind-the-scenes report is no great brilliant piece of film-making--most of it, in fact, consists of talking heads. But by allowing the sound bites to run their natural course, the film gives us insight and depth into how modern movies are made--something that too few documentaries achieve with their "Entertainment Tonight" mentality of never holding on the same scene longer than five seconds. These new interviews (largely recorded at a recent reunion of the crew at Shepperton Studios outside London, where the movie was originally shot in late 1978) are greatly enhanced by engrossing behind-the-scenes footage taken during actual production. So THE ALIEN LEGACY achieves its purpose with a subdued sense of style and importance. Let the material speak for itself. No flashy cutting or filmic distractions. Old-fashioned maybe, but it really works.
THE ALIEN LEGACY is a bargain when you consider that it's one of five tapes to be found and savored in Fox's new 20th-anniversary packaging of the ALIEN series. (The "digitally mastered" tapes can be purchased in a wide-screen version or full-TV screen format, whichever is your pleasure.)
In addition to the original ALIEN, you will find James Cameron's re-edited version of the first sequel, ALIENS (1986), which features nearly 20 minutes of material not included in the original theatrical release.
There's the film I've always considered the weakest of the sequels, ALIEN 3. But then they threw in 1997's ALIEN RESURRECTION, which I have yet to find packaged as a single unit in videocassette sellthrough, so I think this box is a super bargain. That's why I knocked over several other cassettes when I grabbed the box off the shelf of my local Suncoast store. (Did I mention that Fox Video even threw in a small pack of "premium trading cards?" These packagers will stop at nothing to take your hard-earned bucks.)
The documentary unfolds the full story of the history of ALIEN, beginning with that depressing moment when O'Bannon realized he had gone wrong with DARK STAR. What happened next is told by O'Bannon and his writing companion Ronald Shusett in intriguing detail. How O'Bannon got involved in an attempt to bring DUNE to the screen, and emerged broke and jobless when the European-based project was cancelled in preproduction in the mid-'70s.
While staying at the L.A. digs of Shusett, also a struggling would-be screenwriter, O'Bannon fell into deep depression and slept for a week. When he woke up, he was ready to tackle ALIEN, a script he had been working on with only moderate success, having never gotten past the first act. According to Shusett, who describes O'Bannon in those days as "a feral child," O'Bannon had been inspired by an act of nature: how the wasp paralyzes a spider and lays its eggs in the spider's nest and waits for its wasp larvae to pray on other spiders. Could an alien monster become the wasp, and human beings the spiders? O'Bannon had been struck with another idea, this one involving gremlins: What if the mischievous little imps had attached themselves to a B-17 bomber during World War II and worked their way through the interior of the ship, killing the crew members one at a time? Could that image be transferred to deep space? How about blending the two ideas, but drop the gremlins and turn the wasp into a hideous alien beast?
Shusett, he wanted to work on an idea he had called TOTAL RECALL, but he and O'Bannon agreed to put that off until they finished collaborating on ALIEN. (Shusett went on to do TOTAL RECALL with O'Bannon, as well as many other fantasy thrillers, but that, dear readers, is another bloodcurdling tale.)
"The breakthrough came for us when we hit on the Chest-Burster," recalls Shusett. "Once we had that, the rest of the story almost wrote itself. The idea of one crew member being a robot [Ash, played by Ian Holm] was added later by [H.R.] Giger or [producer Walter] Hill but everything else was ours."
THE ALIEN LEGACY goes on in considerable depth describing how Swiss sculptor-designer H.R. Giger was brought into the project once assigned-director Ridley Scott had seen some of his "disturbing" images of the artist's "bio-mechanical world."
Giger, dressed completely in black, offers unusually revealing and lengthy pieces of memoir which spell out an eccentric personality caught up in a major movie production and having to adjust his expensive, uncontrolled brainstorms to the film's limited $4.5 million budget. His comments are often fragmented and disjointed, and he definitely feels mixed about the world-wide recognition ALIEN brought him. Obviously he would have rather had it come through his "fine art" rather than a monster movie. But, he finally says, shrugging away whatever ambivalent feelings he has, "People know me as the father of ALIEN. It's okay." He should think it's "okay." He won an Oscar for "Best Visual Effects."
Also talking on camera at length are Scott, who comes across looking very cool and sagacious and perceptive; illustrator Ronn Cobb, who rattles on incessantly with enthusiastic comments that are more stream-of-consciousness than intellectual; costume designer John Mollo; and two visual effects wizards, Brian Johnson and Nick Allder, who each won an Oscar for their contributions.
Other highlights: Scott's crude but instructive storyboard drawings, and renowned collector Bob Burns showing off some of the ALIEN props he now owns in his private sci-fi collection.
But where the documentary really shines its brightest is with stunning footage that was never used in the final release cut. Art director Leslie Dilley, while we see some of the dazzling sets, describes how the interiors of the Nostromo, the spaceship on which all the action is set, were jazzed up with actual aircraft parts purchased from the British government. The ceilings of the sets were lowered at director Scott's request to give a claustrophobic feeling to the actors. Also, the startlingly visual sets were built in an interconnected manner, to heighten the realism for the actors who had to walk through one portion in order to reach another.
One outtake is especially impressive, and seeing it today makes one wonder if Scott's reason for removing the shot (it slowed down the action, he says, when the action needed to be accelerated) was the best choice. It depicts Ripley (Weaver) finding a "cocoon chamber" where various members of the crew, captured earlier by the alien, are enwrapped in a gooey prison. As they slowly die, they plead with Ripley to be mercifully finished off. But she's reluctant and goes through moments of torment and anguish. Finally, she turns her flamethrower on and their bodies are consumed in flames. This scene reveals just how incredibly effective ALIEN was, even with footage that was ultimately excised.
Considerable time is given to the development of the Face-Hugger, the thing with finger-like appendages that bursts upward through a giant seed pod and grabs John Hurt's head . . . but even that cannot be topped by the Chest-Burster, the snake-like thing that pops out of Hurt's chest during the dinner sequence. The first take was done without anyone really knowing exactly how it was going to look, and it stunned everyone as make-believe blood squirted outward. Angela Cartwright's take reveals her recoiling in horror--not acting, just reacting.
Cobb remembers going to the dailies and seeing hundreds of feet of film of the Chest-Burster, for many cameras had simultaneously recorded the action. "It was like a bad dream. A bad dream you can't forget. It's also thrilling, the enjoyment of being scared. It's so outrageous. Beyond your normal experience." He also remembers a screening where several people left the theater as Harry Dean Stanton searched for his cat. They knew something as awful as the image of the Chest-Burster was in store, but they didn't have the stomach to stay and watch how the alien was going to finish off Stanton.
It's that kind of ancedotal memoir in THE ALIEN LEGACY that instills in you the burning desire to watch ALIEN again. Any documentary that can do that has achieved its purpose above and beyond...
--reviewed by JOHN STANLEY
Evaluation: A
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