Alien Trivia (1979)

Alien Trivia

• There is no dialog in the first 6 minutes.
• Sigourney Weaver's final speech screen test is what landed her the role as Ripley.
• The character of Ash was not in Dan O'Bannon's original script.
• According to Ridley Scott the mechanisms used that made the alien eggs open were so strong that they could tear off a hand.
• The alien was never filmed with it's face looking toward the camera due to it's very humanoid features.
• It was also never filmed with it's entire body in the shot. Ridley Scott did this because he did not want to have a feeling of a man in a suit to come through on screen.
• The conceptual artist Ron Cobb was the person who suggest that the alien bleed acid. Dan O'Bannon used the idea since he couldn't think of a reason why the crew would not just shoot the alien.
• Ridley Scott did all the hand-held camera work himself.
• A German Shepard was used to make Jones the cat to react with fear.
• The chestburster scene was filmed in one take with 4 cameras.
• H.R. Giger's first designs for the facehugger were held by U.S. Customs when they were alarmed by what they saw. Writer Dan O'Bannon had to go to LAX and explain to customs that they were designs for a horror movie.
• The 2003 directors cut footage largely came from boxes of film that were discovered in a vault in London.
• 130 eggs were made for the egg chamber scene.
• Many non English titles of the film translate to "Alien: The 8th Passenger".
• Nostromo is the name of a Joseph Conrad novel.
• According to the Alien Quadrilogy, the species' scientific name is Internecivus raptus, Latin for "murderous thief". (Some comic books use the name "Linguafoeda acheronsis", Latin for "foul tongue from Acheron".)
• H. R. Giger's Alien creature design, which won an Oscar in 1980, was based on his lithograph "Necronom IV".
• The company's name "Weylan-Yutani" (changed to "Weyland-Yutani" in the sequel) was meant to imply a business alliance between Britain and Japan. "Weylan" was derived from the British Leyland Motor Corporation, and "Yutani" from the name of the Japanese neighbor of Ron Cobb, one of the designers.
• The film's working title was "Star Beast".
• The film's tag line: "In space no one can hear you scream." refers to the fact that sound cannot travel through the vacuum of space.
• H.R. Giger's designs were changed numerous times because of their blatant sexuality.
• The script by Dan O'Bannon had a clause that said that all characters are unisex, meaning that a male or female could play the role. Though they admit they never intended for Ripley to be female.
• The early draft of the script had Ripley as a male.
• Veronica Cartwright was supposed to play Ripley but Sigourney Weaver was chosen instead.
• The film was originally supposed to be directed by Walter Hill, but he pulled out and the job was given to Ridley Scott.
• Before being cut for time, the film ran for three hours and twelve minutes.
• The alien was designed by H.R. Giger, and originally had eyes. The eyes were eventually removed to make the alien more threatening.