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Noah Hawley brings a classic sci-fi horror franchise to the small screen with the lavish-looking Alien: Earth. Here’s our spoiler-free review of episodes 1 and 2:

Television spin-offs from hit genre films haven’t always had a particularly good hit-rate. RoboCop, Highlander and Total Recall all got their own small-screen shows years ago, and while there was entertainment to be found in them, it’s probably fair to say that their meagre budgets meant they couldn’t always compare to the movies on which they were based.

This is the 21st century, though: an era in which TV shows are given a level of financing and visual polish that the makers of, say, Highlander: The Series could only have dreamed of. We’re also living through a period in which TV now attracts the kind of talent that would have been making mainstream movies in the 80s and 90s. In other words,...

With 2012's Prometheus and its sequel, Alien: Covenant, director Ridley Scott returned to the franchise he created in 1979 with his gothic horror in space masterpiece, Alien, opening up the universe and revealing a unique connection between the titular xenomorphs and the mysterious "Space Jockey." Showing up early in the original film, the "Pilot" first appeared to the crew of the Nostromo as they responded to a strange transmission emanating from the distant moon Lv-426. It was a hulking extraterrestrial with an elephant-like trunk, its chest violently ripped open from the inside out at some point long ago.

John Hurt's Kane discovers a chamber containing countless egg-like cocoons as the crew explores the derelict ship. Investigating closer, a "face-hugger" erupts from one of the eggs, breaks through Kane's protective helmet, and latches itself onto his face. The others bring Kane back to the Nostromo, where they dislodge the face-hugger. Soon,...

Space horror Alien: Romulus left us with lots to talk about. Here’s our analysis of its twists, turns and a wild third act. Spoilers ahead:

Nb: This is your final warning for Alien: Romulus spoilers. If you want a spoiler-free exploration, do check out our review instead.

Having seen Alien: Romulus, certain things director Fede Alvarez has said in past interviews suddenly make perfect sense. When he mentioned in a June Q&a that he regards everything from the Alien sequels and prequels as canon, he meant it. His film may be set between Alien and Aliens, but it also heavily references Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, and owes a sizable debt to Alien: Resurrection, particularly in its third act.

When Alvarez said he was unafraid to make a divisive movie that tries to recapture some of the shock value of the original Alien, it’s now easy to see...

Director Ridley Scott's short list of favorite films includes three sci-fi classics. He revealed how his first two picks heavily inspired Alien's premise.

Ridley Scott was pressed to name four of his favorite films in an interview with Letterboxed. His first two choices were seminal to the development of Alien, which was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and George Lucas' Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope. Scott confirmed the parallel plots of Alien and Kubrick's 1968 sci-fi classic; he described that film's AI antagonist Hal 9000 as "The computer knows that the mission is more important than the people. We copied that in Alien." All of the mainline Alien films featured different iterations of humanoid synthetics issued by the Weyland-Yutani company, one of many mega-corporations running colonies beyond the solar system. Ash (played by Ian Holm) was an android ordered to ensure the Xenomorph survives in Alien.

It is fair to say that Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett’s original million-dollar idea for Alien remains one of the great all-time movie scares. A crew of astronauts, or at least space truckers, sits down for dinner before the long hyper-sleep home. Earlier in the story, one of them, a man, was attacked when an alien organism attached itself to his face. The crew’s science officer, a cagey and unknowable figure, tells us the man is fine. Yet come dinner time, everyone realizes too late that the man has been implanted (or impregnated) with extraterrestrial life. And it is a violent birth.

The visual of a creature bursting from a man’s chest remains one of the most viscerally disgusting moments in film history, and a scare so potent that even skeptical producer David Giler went from hating O’Bannon’s first draft to agreeing with Walter Hill...

Quick Links Dead & Buried Was Deceptively Advertised The Return of the Living Dead Was Inspired by Dead & Buried Dead & Buried Has Gained a Large Cult Following in Its Post-Theatrical Life

While the screenplay for the blockbuster 1979 science fiction horror film Alien is solely credited to Dan OBannon, with OBannon sharing a story credit with executive producer Ronald Shusett, the Alien script was also guided by the influence of several other important creative collaborators. OBannons original Alien script was extensively rewritten by producers David Giler and Walter Hill, who introduced the villainous android Ash, while artist Ron Cobb conceived the idea of the films titular creature having acidic blood. Of course, its hard to imagine that the Alien franchise would be nearly as expansive and successful as it is today without the twisted vision of artist H.R. Giger, whose original creature design revolutionized the horror and science fiction genres alongside Alien.

Alien: Romulus director Fede lvarez shares the letter he received from Ridley Scott when filming started. Scott's to-the-point message read: "Good luck. Good health. Good hunting. Don't f**k up. Very best." Scott has praised the new movie, even saying he hopes lvarez will stick around to make another franchise entry.

Alien: Romulus director Fede lvarez shared the advice given to him by the franchises original director, Ridley Scott. Following Scotts original Alien, later installments would each pass through the hands of James Cameron, David Fincher, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. However, Scott would later return to the series to helm the Alien prequel movies, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. Where Scotts later additions to the franchise would return to an earlier point in the timeline and help to explain the Xenomorphs' origins, lvarezs Alien: Romulus is instead set to position itself between the events of 1979s Alien and 1986s Aliens.

In...

We’re just days away from having the chance to see director Fede Álvarez’s contribution to the Alien franchise, Alien: Romulus, which is set to reach theatres on August 16th – and during an interview with SFX magazine, Álvarez revealed that he was so dedicated to trying to make his movie look like Ridley Scott’s original Alien and James Cameron’s Aliens, he even compared his shots to scans of a 35mm print of Alien and drew inspiration from concept art that was created for that film and its sequel.

Álvarez told the magazine, “We have a scan of the original 35mm print of Alien and we put it on the screen side by side with ours. Obviously that would do nothing if we didn’t do our job on the day (with the lighting).” The events of this film take place in between the events of Scott’s Alien and Cameron’s Aliens,...

Despite having lost three of her shipmates to an alien invader she doesn’t understand, despite learning that her shipmate and science officer Ash (Ian Holm) is an android, despite nearly getting killed when Ash tried to shove a porn mag down her throat, it’s something else that truly disturbs Ripley in Alien. It’s the two words she saw in a message from her employer: “crew expendable”

With those two words, Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) realizes that she’s at the bottom of a food chain, and not just because there’s a bloodthirsty Xenomorph on board. Never one to portray businesses or anyone with power in a favorable light, Alien director Ridley Scott took writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett’s idea about a haunted house movie set in space and turned it into a screed against the ruling classes.

By focalizing the adventure through the perspective of working-class space truckers,...

Ridley Scott's "Alien" is a science fiction masterpiece that mixes haunted house horror with the cold vastness of space, and it took a whole team of creatives to imagine the distinct future screenwriter Dan O'Bannon had envisioned. In his BFI Film Classics book "Alien," author Roger Luckhurst contrasts concept artists Ron Cobb and H.R. Giger, who each contributed to the look and feel of the film's dystopian, corporate-run version of the year 2122. While Cobb helped make the sterile corporate side of things feel appropriately grounded, Swiss biomechanical artist Giger designed the more out-of-this-world elements. It seems like Giger himself is rather out-of-this-world, too, as Luckhurst reveals a story from the movie's set where the artist simply decided, one day, that he needed bones. Lots of bones. Truckloads of bones.

If there was ever a movie where that kind of thing might be appropriate, it's probably "Alien." While some crew...

The new Alien movie directed by Fede Alvarez began filming in Budapest, Hungary on March 9th and wrapped up in early July, right before the Screen Actors Guild strike began. As far as we know (and here’s everything we do know about the movie that may or may not be called Alien: Romulus), it’s still on track for an August 16, 2024 theatrical release. Alvarez is doing a good job of keeping details under wraps – but over the weekend, he did take to social media to share a picture of the books he was looking through while developing the project.

Some of my bibliography when developing my Alien film. Did I missed anything? pic.twitter.com/uxYGLFkwdf

— Fede Alvarez (@fedalvar) October 14, 2023

In this image we have books on the art of the video game Alien: Isolation, Aliens set photography, the work designer H.R. Giger did on Alien, the work of concept artist Ron Cobb,...

The iconic design of the xenomorph in Alien was meticulously developed, with the original concepts being drastically different and potentially ruining the movie. The film underwent significant changes from script to screen, including the addition of Ripley and the hiring of artists to create the final look of the creature. The original design of the xenomorph, featuring translucent skin and live maggots, would have weakened the creature's impact and detracted from the film's elegant aesthetic. Its lack of eyes adds to its otherworldly and creepy nature.

Alien's xenomorph is one of the most iconic designs in cinema history, but the original plan was for it to look very different, and it would have completely ruined the movie. Alien is considered a masterpiece of sci-fi horror, and a huge part of that is the utterly iconic look of the titular villain. Producer, Walter Hill, understood the importance of nailing the design,...

Of all of Hollywood’s attempts to cash in on the video game craze of the 1980s, The Last Starfighter trails only Tron as the decade’s most fondly nostalgized entry in the video game movie’s micro boom. Like Tron, Nick Castle’s film is a demonstration of then-new CGI technology, which means that inevitably its heavy reliance on wireframe animations and blocky, thickly pixelated objects has very much aged, though the fact that its visual effects are tethered to the game technology of the day further highlights it as a relic of its era. Perhaps the one area in which it’s ahead of its time is in its conceit of an arcade game being used as a military recruiting tool.

At the center of The Last Starfighter is a teenager named Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), who lives in a trailer park at the dusty outskirts of his hometown.

No monster has struck fear into the hearts of moviegoers quite like the Xenomorph. The titular creature in Ridley Scott's 1979 sci-fi masterpiece "Alien" — as well as the sequels, prequels, spin-offs, video games, comic books, and novels that followed — is a killer beyond compare in science fiction, and today stands as one of the genre's most recognizable antagonists. And while it's fair to say that the franchise has been subject to a few ups and downs over the years, the spine-chilling power of the Xenomorph itself has never been less than total.

How much do you really know about Ellen Ripley's archnemesis, though? Is there more to this horrific beast than what you've seen on screen? Well, yes: Fittingly for a creature designed by a legendary surrealist, the history of the Xenomorph is as strange as the monster is scary. From the earliest concepts to those endless variants to...

The spaceship is one of the true hallmarks of the science fiction genre. Without these technological marvels, how else might we explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly go where no man has gone before? Yes, sci-fi is rife with spaceships of all kinds: capital ships, cruisers, fighters, freighters, yachts, rockets, space stations, escape pods, flying saucers, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. Despite their myriad differences, though, the majority are united by a single key attribute -- they're all seriously cool.

But what actually makes a spaceship "cool?" Is it enough to give it a slick look and make it go fast? Well, a nice coat of paint certainly doesn't hurt, but it takes more than mere aesthetics to win the hearts of sci-fi fans. Spaceships might be considered cool because they show off unique abilities, play a compelling role in a story,...

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On July 13, 1984, Universal debuted Nick Castle’s sci-fi actioner The Last Starfighter in theaters. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review, headlined “‘Starfighter’ summer tonic for youthful sci-fi film enthusiasts,” is below:

The Last Starfighter is a fight science-fiction adventure that may prove a summer tonic to young viewers whose heads swirl with notions of alien planets, forces and intergalactic warriors. For others, this Universal/Lorimar production may be an all-too-familiar trek through familiar plot terrain and special effects wizardry.

Lance Guest stars as a recent high school grad who’s a videogame whiz. Guest lives in a trailer park and aspires to bigger things. He wants to go away to school, not just the local community college, but doesn’t have the funds. The best thing about his life is his frisky girl friend (Catherine Mary Stewart) and the escapist time he spends,...

Sci-fi and fantasy films are dependent on the imaginative and brilliant minds of leading concept artists, and few of them have the same level of skill and aptitude as the late, great Ron Cobb. For decades, this masterful concept artist has lent his visions to some of the most popular films in Hollywood, including Star Wars and Aliens.

Related: 10 Pixar's Soul Concept Art Pieces You Have To See

Cobb has worked on a multitude of projects over the years, but some of his greatest works are the ones sci-fi fans can list off by name. These incredible concept art designs have helped immortalize Ron Cobb, a genius and a true artist who will go down in history as one of the most popular in his field.

Thirty-five years ago, James Cameron’s Aliens opened in theaters, stunning audiences and surprising even the most jaded critics. Here was a much belated sequel to a Hollywood blockbuster that was seven years old—and at a time when sequels were synonymous with soulless cash grabs. Yet in so many ways, Cameron’s follow-up took the ideas introduced by Ridley Scott and company in Alien and ran with them. More than just an added “s” in the title, Aliens marked an entire shift in tone and even genre. Rather than horror, we were now in the realm of action; instead of hiding in the shadows, the sequel overwhelmed audiences with spectacle. Like the poster said, “This time, it’s war.”

With near universal praise, Aliens even earned an Oscar nomination for star Sigourney Weaver in a role she’d already played once back in 1979. Hence many fans have spent years...

These days everyone knows the inner workings of the Alien universe, but back in the late 70's, no one knew how big the movie that started it all would be. Thankfully, they definitely had a good idea of what this universe was going to look like via concept art.

Related: 10 Actors Who Were Almost Cast In The Alien Franchise

Mostly done by H.R. Giger, Chris Foss, and Ron Cobb, the concept art for Alien is beautiful and terrifying, much like the film itself. Not only did these pieces of art influence the film, but would inspire the directors of many movies to come, even those outside of the Alien universe.

“Greetings, Starfighter. You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada.”

The 1984 Sci-Fi classic The Last Starfighter is currently available on Blu-ray from Arrow Video

Greetings Starfighter! You have been recruited by Arrow Video to experience the 1984 sci-fi classic as you’ve never experienced it before! Directed by Nick Castle, the man behind the Michael Myers mask in the original Halloween, The Last Starfighter tells the story Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), an arcade game whizz-kid whose wildest dreams comes true when he finds himself enlisted to fight in an interstellar war.

Now newly restored from a 4K scan of the original negative and featuring a 4.1 mix originally created for the film’s 70mm release – never included on previous home video formats – The Last Starfighter arrives loaded with brand new and archival bonus features. Strap yourself in: the Blu-ray adventure of a lifetime is about to begin!

Cartoonist and Back to the Future DeLorean production designer Ron Cobb has died at the age of 83.

Mark Hamil and Star Wars officially confirmed Cobb’s passing on Monday. He died of Lewy body dementia in Sydney, Australia.

“We were saddened to learn of the passing of conceptual designer Ron Cobb, who designed one of the most memorable characters in the Mos Eisley cantina, Momaw Nadon. He also contributed to E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, Back to the Future, and many more. He will be missed,” said a tweet from the official Star Wars account Monday.

The Los Angeles native and sci-fi production juggernaut was born on September 21, 1937. He began dabbling in graphic illustration when he was 18 and landed an animation job at Disney’s Burbank studios.

About 10 years later, Cobb worked on the animation giant’s 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty. Not long after, Cobb served in the Vietnam War as a draughtsman.

Ron Cobb, the iconic production designer and artist who worked on the original Star Wars and Back to the Future, has died. He was 83. Cobb passed away of Lewy body dementia in Sydney, Australia. The news was confirmed by his wife, Robin Love. Cobb died on his birthday.

Though Ron Cobb did not amass a huge list of credits during his time in the movie business, his work has gone on to inspire some of the most influential and enduring works in cinema. Some of his most enduring contributions exist in a galaxy far, far away, as Cobb designed several iconic creatures that appeared in George Lucas' seminal 1977 sci-fi movie Star Wars: A New Hope. The official Star Wars social media accounts paid tribute to Cobb by sharing a sketch of Momaw Nadon, one of the memorable background characters from the Mos Eisley cantina scene in A New Hope. The...

Rob Cobb Has Died at 83 — Ron Cobb, production artist behind Star Wars, Alien, and Back to the Future succumbed to dementia Monday at the age of 83. Cobb died on his birthday — his wife of 48 years, Robin Love, reported — after an illustrious career contributing to production design in many Hollywood [...]

Continue reading: Ron Cobb, the Artist Behind Star Wars, Alien, and Back To The Future, Has Died at 83...

Ron Cobb, who designed the DeLorean time machine for Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future, the Nostromo ship for Ridley Scott’s Alien, and more, has died at the age of 83. Celebrate his life by reading about several of his biggest on-screen accomplishments below. The Hollywood Reporter says that the multi-talented filmmaker passed away today […]

The post Ron Cobb, Designer of ‘Back to the Future’ DeLorean and Much More, Dead at Age 83 appeared first on /Film.

Film designer and cartoonist Ron Cobb died Thursday of Lewy body dementia at the age of 83. Cobb was a significant influence on the look and aesthetics of films including “Alien,” “Star Wars” and “Back to the Future.”

Cobb died on his birthday, Monday, after an illustrious career contributing to production design in Hollywood. He served as a consultant for “Back to the Future,” providing the initial designs for a DeLorean modified to travel through time, and several iconic alien species in the “Star Wars” universe.

We were saddened to learn of the passing of conceptual designer Ron Cobb, who designed one of the most memorable characters in the Mos Eisley cantina, Momaw Nadon. He also contributed to E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, Back to the Future, and many more. He will be missed. pic.twitter.com/TP9RckDiI6

— Star Wars (@starwars) September 22, 2020

His credits range from “Star Wars...

Today we found out that Ron Cobb, the highly influential concept designer and art director, died in Sydney, Australia. It was his birthday. He was 83. But the legacy he leaves behind is truly staggering – and even if you never knew his name, chances are you were touched by his work. His draftsmanship is intricate but never unidentifiable; you always knew a Ron Cobb design when you saw one, defined by clean lines and a kind of bulky, lived-in aesthetic that made you believe that things like spaceships and giant robots and memory machines were actually real. Cobb was …...

Cartoonist turned production designer Ron Cobb, best known for coming up the initial design of DeLorean time travel machine from “Back to the Future” has died, according to a report in the Hollywood Reporter. Cobb was 83.

Cobb died on Monday, his birthday, of Lewy body dementia in Sydney, according to his wife of 48 years, Robin Love.

Cobb’s designs help defined production design for some of the most iconic films of the 1970s and 80s. Cobb, who was born in 1937, broke into the industry in 1956 working at Disney as a breakdown artist on “Sleeping Beauty.” Cobb did uncredited design work on the aliens in the cantina scene in 1977’s “Star Wars,” and broke out designing the exterior of the earthship, Nostromo, on Ridley Scott’s “Alien” in 1978. Cobb also designed many of the Nostromo’s interior sets. In 1982, Cobb scored his first credit as production designer on 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian.

As 2020 continues to suck in ways that few could have ever predicted we've recently learned that Ron Cobb, the legendary cartoonist turned production designer whose work influenced films like Alien, Back To The Future, and Conan The Barbarian, has passed away. He was 83. Cobb passed on Monday - his birthday - of Lewy body dementia, the same affliction that plagued the late…...

Ron Cobb, the underground cartoonist turned production designer who influenced the making of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and helped shape the worlds of Conan the Barbarian, Alien and Back to the Future, has died. He was 83.

Cobb died Monday — his birthday — of Lewy body dementia in Sydney, his wife of 48 years, Robin Love, reported.

Cobb brought to life several cantina creatures for Star Wars (1977) and came up with weaponry and sets for Conan the Barbarian (1982), the exterior and interior of the Nostromo ship in Alien (1978) and the earth colony complex in Aliens (1986) and the DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future (1985).

His prolific design work also included the ...

Ron Cobb, the underground cartoonist turned production designer who influenced the making of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and helped shape the worlds of Conan the Barbarian, Alien and Back to the Future, has died. He was 83.

Cobb died Monday — his birthday — of Lewy body dementia in Sydney, his wife of 48 years, Robin Love, reported.

Cobb brought to life several cantina creatures for Star Wars (1977) and came up with weaponry and sets for Conan the Barbarian (1982), the exterior and interior of the Nostromo ship in Alien (1978) and the earth colony complex in Aliens (1986) and the DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future (1985).

His prolific design work also included the ...

Greetings Starfighter! You have been recruited by Arrow Video to experience the 1984 sci-fi classic as you've never experienced it before! Directed by Nick Castle, the man behind the Michael Myers mask in the original Halloween, The Last Starfighter tells the story Alex Rogan (Lance Guest), an arcade game whizz-kid whose wildest dreams comes true when he finds himself enlisted to fight in an interstellar war.

Now newly restored from a 4K scan of the original negative and featuring a 4.1 mix originally created for the film's 70mm release - never included on previous home video formats - The Last Starfighter arrives loaded with brand new and archival bonus features. Strap yourself in: the Blu-ray adventure of a lifetime is about to begin!

The Last Starfighter Special Edition Features:&#8226 Brand new restoration from a 4K scan of the original 35mm camera negative&#8226 High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) presentation&#8226 Uncompressed 2.0 stereo, 5.1 DTS-hd Ma and...

Dan O'Bannon's original Alien screenplay is getting the comic book treatment from Dark Horse Comics. Alien: The Original Screenplay will be made up of five issues by Cristiano Seixas and Guilherme Balbi. In 2018, Dark Horse found success when they released William Gibson's Alien 3, which adapted the original screenplay from David Fincher. Back in 2013, Dark Horse did an eight-issue run for George Lucas' original screenplay for Star Wars, which was also a huge hit.

The original screenplay for Alien includes a lot of differences from what ended up on the big screen. Alien: The Original Screenplay will feature new characters and alternate ship designs while trying to tell Dan O'Bannon's original story. The story was written by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, but it was heavily rewritten by producer Walter Hill, who went uncredited and made drastic changes to the source material, including making Ripley a woman.

"In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream." Long before Prometheus, Predators, and even poor Newt, Ridley Scott's Alien blew open the space doors for sci-fi horror. Here we'll take a look at 10 Things You Never Knew About Alien.

The Dune connection.

The story behind experimental filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's cancelled adaptation of Dune is the stuff of movie legend, lovingly detailed in the 2013 documentary, Jodorowsky's Dune. Dan O'Bannon, who co-wrote the 1974 sci-fi comedy Dark Star with John Carpenter, was hired to supervise the special effects for Dune, where he also worked with Swiss artist H.R. Giger. When Dune collapsed, O'Bannon found himself sleeping on the couch of another writer, Ronald Shusett. O'Bannon would eventually reassemble much of the artistic team from Dune for Alien, including Giger, Ron Cobb, Chris Foss, and legendary French artist Moebius.

Star Beast.

O'Bannon showed Shusett a script he'd started back in 1972 but had never finished.

"In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream." Long before Prometheus, Predators, and even poor Newt, Ridley Scott's Alien blew open the space doors for sci-fi horror. Here we'll take a look at 10 Things You Never Knew About Alien.

The Dune connection.

The story behind experimental filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's cancelled adaptation of Dune is the stuff of movie legend, lovingly detailed in the 2013 documentary, Jodorowsky's Dune. Dan O'Bannon, who co-wrote the 1974 sci-fi comedy Dark Star with John Carpenter, was hired to supervise the special effects for Dune, where he also worked with Swiss artist H.R. Giger. When Dune collapsed, O'Bannon found himself sleeping on the couch of another writer, Ronald Shusett. O'Bannon would eventually reassemble much of the artistic team from Dune for Alien, including Giger, Ron Cobb, Chris Foss, and legendary French artist Moebius.

Star Beast.

O'Bannon showed Shusett a script he'd started back in 1972 but had never finished.

“Alien” and its many sequels and prequels have always been about transformation. The creature itself is constantly changing, as are those unfortunate enough to encounter it. As you celebrate Alien Day — celebrated on April 26 because the original film is set on the planet Lv-426 — take a moment to revisit the many forms Sigourney Weaver’s greatest screen partner has taken on in the nearly 40 years since H.R. Giger and Ridley Scott first introduced us to it.

The facehugger (“Alien”)

Our first exposure to the otherworldly creature known among fans as the xenomorph remains the most quietly unsettling. “It’s got a wonderful defense mechanism,” Parker (Yaphet Kotto) says after noticing the facehugger’s acidic blood: “You don’t dare kill it.”

Almost reminiscent of a scorpion in its appearance, the facehugger was initially intended by Giger to be larger and possess eyes; screenwriter Dan O’Bannon had imagined it as an octopus-like being with tentacles.

Stuart Wilson Oct 12, 2016

Lots of ideas for the Indiana Jones films to date haven't yet made it to the screen - so could Indiana Jones 5 use them?

As the July 2019 release date inches closer, we still have no idea what will feature in the fifth Indiana Jones movie, that was confirmed earlier this year. If the earlier sequels are anything to go by though, there's a good chance we'll see some discarded concepts from previously ditched drafts.

You might think this kind of cobbling together of earlier ideas is what led to the rather messy Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull. However, as of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, we were seeing scenes that Lucas and Spielberg hadn't been able to fit into Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The stopover in Shanghai was originally considered during the Raiders story conferences, as was the climactic mine cart ride.

The making of James Cameron’s 1986 space horror, as revealed in a book Aliens: The Set Photography. The book, which includes brand new set photos and commentary from cast member Carrie Henn (who played Newt), details how Cameron and his set designer Ron Cobb created the world in which Ripley and co are stalked by predatory aliens, lead by a territorial queen

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This Lego xenomorph was inspired by Ridley Scott’s classic film Alien. It was created by the Arvo Brothers, and they’ve released a project design book that gives you a step-by-step guide on how to build your own.

Inspired by the works of geniuses H.R. Giger and Ron Cobb, this new project presented us with an opportunity to build one of the greatest icons of fantasy art. A journey from organic to geometric shapes, from dark to light, and the deep admiration that drives us to build all our creations as our only luggage. This book includes detailed, step-to-step instructions showing how to build the model, together with comments, pictures and diagrams that help the description and will contribute to your understanding of the entire process.

I love this design and that they even managed to include xenomorph drool. To get the instructions on how to build this bad boy,...

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Alien may be a sci-fi horror classic, but what about the movies that inspired it - including David Cronenberg’s debut, Shivers?

At first, they might look as different as night and day. One is the directorial debut from a maverick Canadian director, the other is a Hollywood movie funded by 20th Century Fox. One is set in deep space, the other in a luxury apartment block on terra firma. One had a decent amount of money to throw at the construction of sets and special effects, the other was made for a few thousand dollars.

Yet Alien, released in 1979 and triggering a franchise that is still growing and mutating today, has more in common with Shivers than at first meets the eye. Cronenberg made Shivers for approximately $130,000 in 1975. Could it be that this low-budget shocker inspired what is still considered to be the ultimate space horror movie?...

An alien craft shaped like an artichoke? A vessel with breasts? Here's our pick of 15 of sci-fi cinema's most eccentric spaceships...

For decades, heroes have crossed the universe in rocket ships and modified light freighters. Aliens have conquered galaxies in disc-shaped craft of varying sizes.

Yes, as long as there's been science fiction on the silver screen, spaceships have captured our imagination, from the matinee serials of the 30s to the sci-fi blockbusters of the present.

We all have our own idea of what a great spaceship should look like. For some, it's Han Solo's fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, the Millennium Falcon. For others, it's the more graceful USS Enterprise, or maybe the utilitarian craft of 2001: A Space Odyssey. But what about cinema's more unusual, outlandish spaceships? The ramshackle ones, the anachronistic ones, the ones that look a bit rude, or just plain scary? Those are...

We look at the films that slipped through Hollywood's net, from biblical epics to a time travelling Gladiator sequel...

This article contains a spoiler for Gladiator.

If you're one of those frustrated over the quality of many of the blockbusters that make it to the inside of a multiplex, then ponder the following. For each of these were supposed to be major projects, that for one reason or another, stalled on their way to the big screen. Some still may make it. But for many others, the journey is over. Here are the big blockbusters that never were...

1. Airframe

The late Michael Crichton scored another residential on the bestseller list with his impressive thriller, Airframe. It was published in 1996, just after films of Crichton works such as Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, Disclosure and the immortal Congo had proven to be hits of various sizes.

So: a hit book, another techno thriller,...

We’ve all been there. You eat and eat and eat, and your stomach gets so full, you feel as if you’re about to burst. Well, if you were Kane (played by John Hurt) in Ridley Scott’s “Alien,” then burst it did. Though, not exactly due to too much food. The “chestburster” scene from the 1979 film is one of cinema’s all time classics, and CineFix breaks down the mechanics and history behind it in this amazing new “Art of the Scene.” The nine-minute video starts with an introduction of the key players behind the “Alien” aesthetic, namely Scott, writers Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, and designers Ron Cobb, Chris Foss, and H.R. Giger. Cobb, a former engineer, was largely responsible for the look of the Nostromo, the crew’s ship in the film. The dining room he helped bring about gave a sense of normalcy to the deep-space setting,...

Happy Black Friday everyone! With the holiday shopping season kicking off today, we thought we’d get a jump start on our Annual Holiday Gift Guide as well, so that we can provide you guys with some great gift options and help you save a few bucks in the process.

Once again, Daily Dead is going to be posting some of our favorite gift ideas for all the horror, sci-fi and comics lovers out there over the next few weeks and just because we want to do something fun for our readers, at the end of each day’s recap, we’ll be posting a holiday horror-related trivia question and giving away great prize pack featuring items from our fantastic sponsors, including Scream Factory, Anchor Bay Entertainment and Horror Decor.

Vendor Spotlight: HorrorDecor.net

For any horror fan out there who likes to incorporate their love of zombies, slasher movies...

Scream Factory recently gifted us genre fans a double dose of creature feature terrors with their Blu-ray releases of the killer rat flick Deadly Eyes and George P. Cosmatos’ hugely underrated deep sea horror film Leviathan. While both films aren’t necessarily well-known amongst more casual fans, it’s great to see Scream put such great effort into their presentations for each of these cult classics.

For those who haven’t seen it before, Deadly Eyes (or Rats)is a rather ridiculous (but wonderfully so) early ‘80s nature-run-amok story that plays up the concerns and dangers of modern urban society by way of roided-out killer rat infestations that have a penchant for human flesh. The film takes its premise very seriously, but it’s the use of Daschunds in rat costumes that has given Deadly Eyes something of an unintentional comedic spin, making for a rather uneven horror film.

But...

Ryan Lambie Jun 12, 2019

Intended as a sequel to Close Encounters, Night Skies began in the 1970s and eventually became E.T.

Having scored a phenomenal hit with Jaws in 1975, director Steven Spielberg used his considerable industry clout to make Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - a science fiction fairytale for the UFO age. It was a personal project for Spielberg, conceived and partly written by the director himself (several other writers made uncredited passes on the script), and based on Firelight, the UFO film he'd shot for $500 while he was a teenager.

“I had a real, deep-rooted belief that we had been visited in this century,” the director once said of his fascination with the UFO phenomenon. “I was a real UFO devotee in the 1970s, and really into the UFO phenomenon from reading. For me, it was science.”

Like Jaws, the production on Close Encounters was difficult; as...

Intended as a sequel to Close Encounters, Night Skies began in the 1970s but later stalled. We look at how its ideas evolved into E.T...

Feature

Having scored a phenomenal hit with Jaws in 1975, director Steven Spielberg used his considerable industry clout to make Close Encounters Of The Third Kind - a science fiction fairytale for the UFO age. It was a personal project for Spielberg, conceived and partly written by the director himself (several other writers made uncredited passes on the script), and based on Firelight, the UFO film he'd shot for $500 while he was a teenager.

“I had a real, deep-rooted belief that we had been visited in this century,” the director once said of his fascination with the UFO phenomenon. “I was a real UFO devotee in the 1970s, and really into the UFO phenomenon from reading. For me, it was science.”

Like Jaws, the production...

Here's a little known fact for you guys... After the success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, director Steven Spielberg had something a lot darker in mind for us. Read on for details and a look at what E.T. was originally supposed to be.

Spielberg was fascinated by an event which transpired back in August 21, 1955, which became known as The Kelly, Kentucky Alien Invasion.

On that evening Billy Ray Taylor and his wife were visiting the Sutton farm. Billy exited the house to go fetch water from the Sutton family well and while doing so saw what he described as an "immense, shining object" landing about a quarter of a mile from the house. It wasn't long before he and the Sutton family were besieged by extraterrestrial invaders who were trying to break into the Sutton home. Click the link above for more on that story.

After becoming aware of the Kentucky incident,...

Ryan Lambie Apr 26, 2017

To celebrate Alien Day, we pay tribute to the work of the late artist Hr Giger, and follow the making of his masterpiece of design...

It’s the summer of 1978, and the UK’s Shepperton Studios simmers in the heat. Secreted away in his own personal workshop, a Swiss artist works feverishly on his paintings and sculptures, either fashioning strange shapes from gigantic blocks of styrofoam or spraying them with his airbrush.

See related 50 upcoming comic book TV shows, and when to expect them

This is 38-year-old Hr Giger, and he cuts an unusual figure. His shock of black hair is slicked back away from his pale forehead. He refuses to take his leather jacket off despite the searing heat. On a bench sits row after row of human and animal bones - skulls, femurs, vertebrae - plus a weird assortment of ribbed hoses, wires and mechanical...

We pay tribute to the work of the late artist Hr Giger, and follow the making of his masterpiece of design, the Alien...

Feature

It’s the summer of 1978, and the UK’s Shepperton Studios simmers in the heat. Secreted away in his own personal workshop, a Swiss artist works feverishly on his paintings and sculptures, either fashioning strange shapes from gigantic blocks of styrofoam or spraying them with his airbrush.

This is 38-year-old Hr Giger, and he cuts an unusual figure. His shock of black hair is slicked back away from his pale forehead. He refuses to take his leather jacket off despite the searing heat. On a bench sits row after row of human and animal bones - skulls, femurs, vertebrae - plus a weird assortment of ribbed hoses, wires and mechanical parts taken from old Rolls Royce motorcars. Quietly, obsessively, Giger is building his Alien.

The story...

Creative Assembly has announced a survival horror successor to Alien, Ridley Scott's brooding sci-fi classic

The cleaners have started to come round the Creative Assembly offices. I walk into a stark white bathroom where a paper towel dispenser's guts hang open below the hand dryer. It looks sad. I walk towards a cubicle.

Suddenly, the hand dryer goes off by itself and my chest clutches in at me like a claw. The hand dryer switches itself on and off and on and off. Each time I remind myself there's no one there.

The cleaner pops in. 'Sorry!' she says, and potters off.

Even as I write this I still feel frightened. There's a kind of bleak dread I felt on the Sevastopol, the remote space station featured in Alien: Isolation. It's a dread that lingers. The game's environment is beautiful, enchanting even. But it is unsettling. And the…...