ALIEN

Before you, are clashing teeth, reeked breath, and claws, large, sharp talons, the whole dark of creature that appears to be nothing but a factory of living organs and nuerons within the brain with the intent to devour you. The creature is lightning fast, and a deadly expert at hiding within the shadows surrounding you. Every inch on its strange exoskelaton is covered with sharp claws, teeth, or spikes, ready to gut you alive. It runs so fast that this fury comes out of the darkness, tearing you into conffetti.

Welcome to the world of Aliens, a saga of death and madness, life and fear, all centered on the monster originally created by real life artist H. R. Giger.

Ever since 1979, when Dan O'Bannon created this grotesque creature from the walking dream landscapes of H. R. Giger, landcrapes with territories of sinews, and liquid, and things with teeth, a place where no one can hear you scream, aliens have been all around us. They domminate comic book pages, the paper and words within novels, have spawned countless imatations and have started the carreers of several actors including Sigourney Weaver.

O'Bannon has stated, "(Giger's) paintings had a profound effect on me. I have never seen anything that horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster."

The film sneaks up on us and does what horror films are made to do - scare our pants off. I was in the third or second grade when I saw this movie, which terrified me pretty badly and made me think that Jurassic Park wasn't the scariest movie ever, Alien was. That was my first invitation to the field of horror, to discover that there is a whole huge genre out there devoted to horror movies. I would sit with friends and we would discuss the latest Aliens comic books. Years later, when I was in fifth grade, Alien: Resurrection sprung up, the first of the series that I would see in the theatre.

For years, I loved to just watch the film. I never really thought about the plot during those watches. I would just watch. I stared at the screen obsessing about the film, the monsters, and every aspect. There were viewings when I did think. But all in all, this is one of my favoriate movies. But where did O'Bannon gain his ideas for the film other than the Giger paintings? From old science fiction movies from the 50's and 60's. Namely Planet of the Vampires and It! the Terror from Beyond Space.

From the black coils of deadly exoskelaton to the art of H. R. Giger, the Alien series will always remain a timeless piece of horror history, if not film history, and if not history in general.

From imitation to imitation this film finds itself in many forms and many levels. There are those who even study the fictional aliens as if they were actual entities, studying the films and looking at exactly what the alien does to try and figure out somekind of biolobgy to the beast.

ALIEN: (1979 director- Ridly Scott)
This wonderful venture directed by Ridley Scott tells the story of a believable set of people fighting against the ultimate nightmare: the horrific beast stalking you cloaked by shadows, air ducts etc. For 1979 this film is a good movie. For any year it's a good movie! Basicly, these astronauts land on this spooky planet, one astronaut is attacked by a parasite, brought back on board. What he doesn't know is that the parasite placed an embryo inside him that breaks through his rib cage and stalks other members of the crew.

ALIENS: (1986, director - James Cameron)
The spooky alien planet is now colonised, and that colony has been taken over by aliens. Every colonist grows an embryo inside him/her so an alien army grows. Meanwhile, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) leads a bunch of marines to kill off the alien infestation.

ALIEN 3: (1992, director - Joss Whedon)
After the military attack on the alien infestation, the spaceship used to escape the planet has a fire on board, and an escape pod goes out. It lands on Fiornia 161, a prison colony. As it turns out, two facehuggers (the alien parasites) were on board. A dog at the colony grows an embryo inside and so does Ripley, the sole survivor of the crash. The dog's alien "births" first, and stalks the inmates of the colony. Since Ripley has a queen alien growing inside her, she is immune to alien attack. One small problem: any weapons are lightyears away from the colony and the rest of the inmates are dying fast.

ALIEN RESURECTION (1997, director - ?)
Since Ripley died at the end of Alien 3, she is cloned at the beginning of this fourth sequel. What results is a kind of weird X-Files-like disturbing film with Ripley having half alien DNA, and half human with both aliens and a military conspiracy genetics testing thing stalking prey this time. The cool question of the movie is: Is Ripley more alien or more human? Good suspense and story for a fourth installment, although it is the weakest of the series.

Alien Insurrection
Giger Gripes Again

On November 1, 1997 after the first U.S.A. screening of Alien Resurrection, H.R.Giger received the news that his name is not mentioned anywhere in the film credits. The following letter is from Giger to 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, stating the artist's opinion.

TO: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX, November 13, 1997

FROM: H.R. GIGER

The Alien Quartet has, from the very beginning, contained my unique and personal style. For the first film Alien, I was awarded an Oscar for "Best Achievement for Visual Effects". In Aliens, a film I was not asked to work on, I still received a screen credit for "Original Alien Design". On Alien 3, I was cheated out of the Oscar nomination received by that film because 20th Century Fox gave me the credit, "Original Alien Design" again, instead of "Alien Creature Design", as it was my rightful title in accordance to my contract and the work I had performed on the film. In 1976 I had completed two paintings, "Necronom IV" and "Necronom V", in which two long-headed creatures appeared. In 1977 these paintings, were published in my book, Necronomicon, by Sphinx Verlag, Basel, in German. It was in this version of the book that Ridley Scott, in his search for a credible Alien creature, came across these two paintings and decided, on them for the full-grown Alien, using the words "That's it!" The statement has been graciously repeated by Ridley Scott in almost every interview about his work on Alien.

The creatures in Alien Resurrection are even closer to my original Alien designs than the ones which appear in Aliens and Alien 3. The film also resurrects my original designs for the other stages of the creature's life-cycle, the Eggs, the Facehugger and the Chestburster. Alien Resurrection is an excellent film. What would it look like without my Alien life-forms? In all likelihood, all the sequels to Alien would not even exist! The designs and my credit have been stolen from me, since I alone have designed the Alien. So why does Fox not give me the credit I rightfully earned?

As for those responsible for this conspiracy: All I can wish them is an Alien breeding inside their chests, which might just remind them that the "Alien Father" is H.R. Giger.

Show your support by writing H.R. Giger's agent at: webagent@hrgiger.com

The latest debate on the Alien series has to do with copy right issues. H. R. Giger (my favoriate artist) hates working with Hollywood because he believes that they constantly immitate him and steal his work and treat him unfairly.

With Alien : Resurrection, he claims that they have stolen his ideas for the alien and that his name not being in the credits proves this fact. At right is a letter from Giger to Fox. I believe that Fox has treated him unfairly. In the credits, it should say 'Alien Creature Design Created by H. R. Giger' but it doesn't. Surely any web site owner can understand his frustration. We've all built that perfect graphic or article until to have some lazy guy go copy and paste crazy. Some of my graphics are copied from elsewhere, but I never stole any thing major. I only stole graphics that are minor and I never stole whole articles. Most of my graphics I design myself.

An entire piece of art, and years of work. He spent his life puting into this, and now some person out there thought he could just cheat him out of the credit. It's like an author being cheated out of his book. It's forgery and plaugerism. That's illegal, and highly offensive, especialy on something so large.

Oh, well. I hope someone out there reads this!