title: Apocalypse Now

text: In 1975, Coppola hoped for cooperation from the United States Army and scouted military locations in Georgia and Florida; but the Army was not interested. While promoting "The Godfather Part II" in Australia, Coppola and his producers scouted possible locations for "Apocalypse Now" in Cairns in northern Queensland, as it had jungle resembling Vietnam's, and in Malaysia. He decided to make the film in the Philippines for its access to American military equipment and cheap labor. Production coordinator Fred Roos had already made two low-budget films there for Monte Hellman, and had friends and contacts there. Frederickson went to the Philippines and had dinner with President Ferdinand Marcos to formalize support for the production and to allow them to use some of the country's military equipment. Coppola spent the last few months of 1975 revising Milius's script and negotiating with United Artists to secure financing for the production. Milius claimed it would be the "most violent film ever made". According to Frederickson, the budget was estimated between $12 and 14 million. Coppola's American Zoetrope obtained $7.5 million from United Artists for domestic distribution rights and $8 million from international sales, on the assumption that the film would star Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen and Gene Hackman.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Steve McQueen was Coppola's first choice to play Willard, but McQueen did not want to leave America for three months and Coppola was unwilling to pay his $3 million fee. When McQueen dropped out in February 1976, Coppola had to return $5 million of the $21 million he had raised. Al Pacino was also offered the role, but he too did not want to be away that long, and was afraid of falling ill in the jungle as he had done in the Dominican Republic during the shooting of "The Godfather Part II". Jack Nicholson, Robert Redford and James Caan were approached to play either Kurtz or Willard. Keith Carradine, Nick Nolte, and Frederic Forrest were also considered for Willard. In a 2015 "The Hollywood Reporter" interview, Clint Eastwood revealed that Coppola offered him the role of Willard, but much like McQueen and Pacino, he did not want to be away from America for a long time. He also revealed that McQueen tried to convince him to play Willard; McQueen wanted to play Kurtz because he would have to work for only two weeks.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Coppola also offered the role of Colonel Kurtz to Orson Welles and Lee Marvin, both of whom turned it down.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Coppola and Roos had been impressed by Martin Sheen's screen test for Michael in "The Godfather" and he became their top choice to play Willard, but he had already accepted another project. Harvey Keitel was cast in the role based on his work in Martin Scorsese's "Mean Streets". By early 1976, Coppola had persuaded Marlon Brando to play Kurtz, for a fee of $2 million for a month's work on location in September 1976. Brando also received 10% of the gross theatrical rental and 10% of the TV sale rights, earning him around $9 million.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Hackman was set to play Wyatt Khanage, who later became Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall. Dennis Hopper was cast as a war correspondent and observer of Kurtz; when Coppola heard Hopper talking nonstop on location, he remembered putting "the cameras and the Montagnard shirt on him, and [shooting] the scene where he greets them on the boat". James Caan was the first choice to play Colonel Lucas, but Caan wanted too much money for what was considered a minor part, and Harrison Ford was cast instead.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Prior to departure for principal photography, Coppola took out an advertisement in the trade press declaring Keitel, Duvall and others as the "first choices" for the film. It also listed other actors who did not appear in the film, including Harry Dean Stanton, Robby Benson and Michael Learned.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Sam Bottoms, Larry Fishburne and Albert Hall all signed seven-year deals, with Coppola including acting training of their choice in their deal. Bottoms was infected with hookworm while filming in the Philippines, and the parasite "wrecked his liver".


title: Apocalypse Now

text: On March 1, 1976, Coppola and his family flew to Manila and rented a large house there for the planned four-month shoot. Sound and photographic equipment had been coming in from California since late 1975. John Ashley assisted with production in the Philippines. The film was due to be released on Coppola's 38th birthday, April 7, 1977.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Shooting began on March 20, 1976. Within a few days, Coppola was unhappy with Harvey Keitel's take on Willard, saying that the actor "found it difficult to play him as a passive onlooker". With Brando not due to film until three months later, as he did not want to work while his children were on school vacation, Keitel left the project in April and quit the seven-year deal he had signed as well. Coppola returned to Los Angeles and replaced Keitel with Martin Sheen, who arrived in the Philippines on April 24. Only four days of reshoots were reportedly required after the change.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Typhoon Olga wrecked 40–80% of the sets at Iba and on May 26, 1976, production was closed down. Dean Tavoularis remembers that it "started raining harder and harder until finally it was literally "white" outside, and all the trees were bent at forty-five degrees". Some of the crew were stranded in a hotel and the others were in small houses that were immobilized by the storm. The Playboy Playmate set was destroyed, ruining a month's scheduled shooting. Most of the cast and crew returned to the United States for six to eight weeks. Tavoularis and his team stayed on to scout new locations and rebuild the Playmate set in a different place. Also, the production had bodyguards watching constantly at night and one day the entire payroll was stolen. According to Coppola's wife, Eleanor, the film was six weeks behind schedule and $2 million over budget; Coppola filed a $500,000 insurance claim for typhoon damage and took out a loan from United Artists on the condition that if the film did not generate theatrical rentals of over $40 million, he would be liable for the overruns. Despite the increasing costs, Coppola promised the University of the Philippines Film Center 1% of the profits, up to $1 million, for a film study trust fund.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Coppola flew back to the U.S. in June 1976. He read a book about Genghis Khan to get a better handle on the character of Kurtz. When filming commenced in July 1976, Marlon Brando arrived in Manila very overweight and began working with Coppola to rewrite the ending. The director downplayed Brando's weight by dressing him in black, photographing only his face, and having another, taller actor double for him to portray him as an almost mythical character.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: After Christmas 1976, Coppola viewed a rough assembly of the footage but still needed to improvise an ending. He returned to the Philippines in early 1977 and resumed filming.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: On March 5 of that year, Sheen, then only 36, had a near-fatal heart attack and struggled for a quarter of a mile to reach help. By then the film was so over-budget, Sheen worried that funding would be halted if word about his condition reached investors, and he claimed that he'd suffered heat stroke instead. Until he returned to the set on April 19, his brother Joe Estevez filled in for him and provided voiceovers for his character. Coppola later admitted that he could no longer tell which scenes were of Joe or Martin. A major sequence in a French plantation cost hundreds of thousands of dollars but was cut from the final film. Rumors began to circulate that "Apocalypse Now" had several endings, but Richard Beggs, who worked on the sound elements, said, "There were never "five" endings, but just the one, even if there were differently "edited" versions". These rumors came from Coppola departing frequently from the original screenplay. Coppola admitted that he had no ending because Brando was too fat to play the scenes as written in the original script. With the help of Dennis Jakob, Coppola decided the ending could be "the classic myth of the murderer who gets up the river, kills the king, and then himself becomes the king – it's the Fisher King, from "The Golden Bough"". Principal photography ended on May 21, 1977, after 238 days.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The budget had doubled to over $25 million, and Coppola's loan from United Artists to fund the overruns had been extended to over $10 million. UA took out a $15 million life insurance policy on Coppola. By June 1977, Coppola had offered his car, house, and "The Godfather" profits as security to finish the film. When "Star Wars" became a gigantic hit, Coppola sent a telegram to George Lucas asking for money. The release date was pushed back to spring 1978.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Japanese composer Isao Tomita was signed to provide an original score, with Coppola desiring the film's soundtrack to sound like Tomita's electronic adaptation of "The Planets" by Gustav Holst. Tomita went as far as to accompany the film crew in the Philippines, but label contracts ultimately prevented his involvement. In the summer of 1977, Coppola told Walter Murch that he had four months to assemble the sound. Murch realized that the script had originally been narrated but Coppola abandoned the idea during filming. Murch thought that there was a way to assemble the film without narration but that it would take ten months, and decided to give it another try. He put it back in, recording it all himself. By September, Coppola told his wife that he felt "there is only about a 20% chance [I] can pull the film off". He convinced United Artists executives to delay the premiere from May to October 1978. Author Michael Herr received a call from Zoetrope in January 1978 and was asked to work on the film's narration based on his well-received book about Vietnam, "Dispatches". He said that the narration already written was "totally useless" and spent a year creating a new narration, with Coppola giving him very definite guidelines.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Murch had problems trying to make a stereo soundtrack for "Apocalypse Now" because sound libraries had no stereo recordings of weapons. The sound material brought back from the Philippines was inadequate because the small location crew lacked the time and resources to record jungle sounds and ambient noises. Murch and his crew fabricated the mood of the jungle on the soundtrack. "Apocalypse Now" used novel sound techniques for a movie, as Murch insisted on recording the most up-to-date gunfire and employed the Dolby Stereo 70 mm Six Track system for the 70 mm release, which used two channels of sound behind the audience as well as three channels from behind the movie screen. The 35 mm release used the new Dolby Stereo optical stereo system, but due to limitations of the technology at the time, the 35 mm release that played in most theaters did not include surround sound. In May 1978, Coppola postponed the opening until spring of 1979. The cost overruns had reached $18 million, for which Coppola was personally liable, but he had retained rights to the picture in perpetuity.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: A water buffalo was slaughtered with a machete for the climactic scene in a ritual performed by a local Ifugao tribe, which Coppola had previously witnessed with his wife Eleanor (who filmed the ritual later shown in the documentary "") and film crew. Although it was an American production subject to American animal cruelty laws, such scenes filmed in the Philippines were not policed or monitored; the American Humane Association gave the film an "unacceptable" rating.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Real human corpses were bought from a man who turned out to be a grave-robber. The police questioned the film crew, holding their passports, and soldiers took the bodies away. Instead, extras were used to pose as dead bodies in the film.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: During filming, Dennis Hopper and Marlon Brando did not get along, leading Brando to refuse to be on the set at the same time as Hopper.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In April 1979, Coppola screened a "work in progress" for 900 people; it was not well received. That year, he was invited to screen "Apocalypse Now" at the Cannes Film Festival. United Artists was not keen on showing an unfinished version to so many members of the press. However, since his 1974 film "The Conversation" had won the Palme d'Or, Coppola agreed to screen "Apocalypse Now" with the festival only a month away.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The week prior to Cannes, Coppola arranged three sneak previews of a 139-minute cut in Westwood, Los Angeles on May 11 attended by 2,000 paying customers, some of whom lined up for over 6 hours. Other cuts shown in 1979 ran 150 and 165 minutes. The film was also shown at the White House for Jimmy Carter on May 10. Coppola allowed critics to attend the L.A. screenings and believed they would honor an embargo not to review the work in progress. On May 14, Rona Barrett previewed the film on television on "Good Morning America" and called it "a disappointing failure". This prompted "Variety" to believe the embargo had been broken, and it published its review the following day, saying it was "worth the wait", calling it a "brilliant and bizarre film". They also noted that it was the first "70mm presentation without credits", for which Coppola had obtained permission from the various guilds (Screen Actors Guild, Directors Guild, and Writers Guild of America) and instead provided a printed program with credits. The title appeared scrawled on a wall on a temple in the last third of the film. "Daily Variety" reported that the first, 8 p.m. screening was received with "limited, if enthusiastic, applause".


title: Apocalypse Now

text: At Cannes, Zoetrope technicians worked during the night before the screening to install additional speakers to achieve Murch's 5.1 soundtrack. A three-hour version of "Apocalypse Now" was screened as a work in progress at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, May 19, 1979 and met with prolonged applause. It was the first work in progress ever shown in competition at the festival. At the subsequent press conference, Coppola criticized the media for releasing premature reviews and for attacking him and the production during their problems filming in the Philippines. He said, "We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little we went insane", and "My film is not about Vietnam, it "is" Vietnam". His comments upset newspaper critic Rex Reed, who reportedly stormed out of the conference. "Apocalypse Now" won the Palme d'Or for best film, along with Volker Schlöndorff's "The Tin Drum" – a decision reportedly greeted with "some boos and jeers from the audience".


title: Apocalypse Now

text: On August 15, 1979, "Apocalypse Now" was released in North America in only three theaters equipped to play the Dolby Stereo 70 mm prints with stereo surround sound: the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City, the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles and the University Theatre in Toronto. The film, without credits, ran 147 minutes and tickets were $5, a new high for L.A.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: It ran exclusively in these three locations for four weeks before opening in an additional 12 theaters on October 3, 1979. On October 10, 1979, the 35 mm version, with credits, was released in over 300 theatres.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: At the time of the film's release, discussion and rumors circulated about its supposed various endings. Coppola said the original ending was written in haste, where Kurtz convinced Willard to join him and together they repelled the air strike on the compound. Coppola said he never fully agreed with Kurtz and Willard dying in fatalistic explosive intensity, preferring to end the film in a more positive way.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: When Coppola originally organized the ending, he considered two significant versions. One had Willard leading Lance by the hand as everyone in Kurtz's base threw down their weapons; Willard then piloted the PBR slowly away from Kurtz's compound, and this final shot was superimposed over the face of a stone idol, which then faded to black. The other version had the base spectacularly blown to bits in an air strike, killing everyone left within it.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The original 1979 exclusive theatrical release ended with Willard's boat, the stone statue, and the fade to black with no credits, save for '"Copyright 1979 Omni Zoetrope"' at its very end. This mirrored the lack of opening titles and supposedly stemmed from Coppola's original intention to "tour" the film as one would a play: The credits appeared on printed programs provided before the screening began.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: There have been, to date, many variations of the end credit sequence, beginning with the 35 mm general release, where Coppola elected to show the credits superimposed over shots of the jungle exploding into flames. The explosions were from the detonations of the sets. Rental prints circulated with this ending, and can be found in the hands of a few collectors. Some versions had the subtitle "A United Artists release", while others had "An Omni Zoetrope release". The network television version of the credits ended with "...from MGM/UA Entertainment Company" (as it made its network debut shortly after the merger of MGM and UA). Another variation of the end credits can be seen on both YouTube and as a supplement on the current Lionsgate Blu-ray.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: When Coppola later heard that the audiences interpreted this as an air strike called by Willard, he pulled the film from its run and added credits on a black screen. The "air strike" footage continued to circulate in repertory theaters well into the 1980s, and was included in the 1980s LaserDisc release. In the DVD commentary, Coppola explains that the images of explosions were not intended as part of the story, but were simply a graphic background he had added for the credits.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Coppola explained he had shot the explosion footage during demolition of the sets, whose destruction and removal were required by the Philippine government. He filmed the demolition with cameras fitted with different film stocks and lenses to capture the explosions at different speeds. He wanted to do something with the dramatic footage and decided to add them to the credits.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The film was re-released on August 28, 1987, in six cities, to capitalize on the success of "Platoon", "Full Metal Jacket", and other Vietnam War movies. New 70 mm prints were shown in Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Louis and Cincinnati —cities where the film had done well in 1979. It was given the same kind of release as the exclusive 1979 engagement, with no logo or credits, and audiences were given a printed program.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "Apocalypse Now" holds an approval rating of 98% based on 96 reviews, with an average rating of 9.00/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Francis Ford Coppola's haunting, hallucinatory Vietnam War epic is cinema at its most audacious and visionary." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 94 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Upon its release, "Apocalypse Now" received mixed reviews. In his original review, Roger Ebert wrote: ""Apocalypse Now" achieves greatness not by analyzing our 'experience in Vietnam', but by re-creating, in characters and images, something of that experience." and named it "The best film of 1979". In his review for the "Los Angeles Times", Charles Champlin wrote: 'as a noble use of the medium and as a tireless expression of national anguish, it towers over everything that has been attempted by an American filmmaker in a very long time.' Other reviews were less positive; Frank Rich, writing for "Time" said: 'While much of the footage is breathtaking, "Apocalypse Now" is emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty.' Vincent Canby argued: 'Mr. Coppola himself describes it as 'operatic', but..."Apocalypse Now" is neither a tone poem nor an opera. It's an adventure yarn with delusions of grandeur, a movie that ends — in the all-too-familiar words of the poet Mr. Coppola drags in by the bootstraps — not with a bang, but a whimper.'


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Ebert added Coppola's film to his list of The Great Movies, stating: ""Apocalypse Now" is the best Vietnam film, one of the greatest of all films, because it pushes beyond the others, into the dark places of the soul. It is not about war so much as about how war reveals truths we would be happy never to discover."


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Commentators have debated whether "Apocalypse Now" is an anti-war or pro-war film. Some evidence of the film's anti-war message includes the purposeless brutality of the war, the absence of military leadership, and the imagery of machinery destroying nature. Advocates of a pro-war stance view these same elements as a glorification of war and the assertion of American supremacy. According to Frank Tomasulo, 'the US foisting its culture on Vietnam', including the destruction of a village so that soldiers could surf, affirms the film's pro-war message. Anthony Swofford recounted how his marine platoon watched "Apocalypse Now" before being sent to Iraq in 1990 to get excited for war. Nidesh Lawtoo illustrates the ambiguity of the film by focusing on the contradictory responses the movie in general – and the "Ride of the Valkyries" scene in particular – triggered in a university classroom. According to Coppola, the film may be considered anti-war, but is even more anti-lie: '...the fact that a culture can lie about what's really going on in warfare, that people are being brutalized, tortured, maimed, and killed, and somehow present this as moral is what horrifies me, and perpetuates the possibility of war'. In 2019, however, Coppola told Kevin Perry of The Guardian that he hesitated to call the film anti-war, stating "...an anti-war film, I always thought, should be like [Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 post-second world war drama] The Burmese Harp – something filled with love and peace and tranquillity and happiness. It shouldn't have sequences of violence that inspire a lust for violence. Apocalypse Now has stirring scenes of helicopters attacking innocent people. That's not anti-war."


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In May 2011, a new restored digital print of "Apocalypse Now" was released in UK cinemas, distributed by Optimum Releasing. "Total Film" magazine gave the film a five-star review, stating: 'This is the original cut rather than the 2001 'Redux' (be gone, jarring French plantation interlude!), digitally restored to such heights you can, indeed, get a nose full of the napalm.'


title: Apocalypse Now

text: "Apocalypse Now" performed well at the box office when it opened on August 15, 1979. It initially opened in three theaters in New York City, Toronto, and Hollywood, grossing $322,489 in its first five days. It grossed over $40 million domestically, with a worldwide total of over $100 million.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Today, the movie is regarded by many as a masterpiece of the New Hollywood era. Roger Ebert considered it the finest film on the Vietnam War and included it on his list for the 2002 "Sight & Sound" poll for the greatest movie of all time. In the 2002 "Sight & Sound" director's poll of the "greatest films of all time", it was ranked No. 19. It is on the American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Movies" list at number 28, but dropped to number 30 on their 10th anniversary list. Kilgore's quote, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning", written by Milius, was number 12 on the AFI's "100 Years ... 100 Movie Quotes" list and was also voted the greatest movie speech of all time in a 2004 poll. In 2006, Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay, by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, the 55th greatest ever. It is number 7 on "Empire"s 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time. "Empire" re-ranked it at #20 in their 2014 list of "The 301 Greatest Movies of All Time", and again at #22 on their 2018 list of "The 100 Greatest Movies". It was voted No. 66 on the list of "100 Greatest Films" by the prominent French magazine "Cahiers du cinéma" in 2008. In 2010, "The Guardian" named "Apocalypse Now" "the best action and war film of all time". In 2016, "The Hollywood Reporter" ranked it 11th among 69 winners of the "Palme d'Or". "The New York Times" included it on its "Best 1000 Movies Ever" list. "Entertainment Weekly" ranked it as having one of the "10 Best Surfing Scenes" in cinema.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In 2002, "Sight and Sound" magazine invited several critics to name the best film of the last 25 years, and "Apocalypse Now" was named number one. It was also listed as the second-best war film by viewers on Channel 4's "100 Greatest War Films", and was the second-best war movie of all time based on the Movifone list (after "Schindler's List") and the IMDb War movie list (after "The Longest Day"). It is ranked number 1 on Channel 4's "50 Films to See Before You Die". In a 2004 poll of UK film fans, Blockbuster listed Kilgore's eulogy to napalm as the best movie speech. The helicopter attack scene with the "Ride of the Valkyries" soundtrack was chosen as the most memorable film scene ever by "Empire" magazine. (The scene is recalled in one of the last acts of the 2012 video game "Far Cry 3", when the music is played while the character shoots from a helicopter. It was likewise adapted for the "Cat's Eye" anime episode "From Runan Island with Love" and the Battle of Italica scene in "Gate: Jieitai Kano Chi nite, Kaku Tatakaeri".)


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In 2009, the London Film Critics' Circle voted "Apocalypse Now" the best film of the last 30 years. It was also included in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In 2011, actor Charlie Sheen, son of the film's leading actor Martin, started playing clips from the film on his live tour and played the film in its entirety during post-show parties. One of Sheen's films, the 1993 comedy "Hot Shots! Part Deux", includes a brief scene where Charlie is riding a boat up a river in Iraq while on a rescue mission and passes Martin, as Captain Willard, going the other way. As they pass, each man shouts to the other "I loved you in "Wall Street"!", referring to the 1987 film that featured both of them. Additionally, the promotional material for "Hot Shots! Part Deux" included a mockumentary that aired on HBO titled "Hearts of Hot Shots! Part Deux—A Filmmaker's Apology", a parody of the 1991 documentary "Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse" about the making of "Apocalypse Now".


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The film is credited with creating the Philippines surfing culture around the town of Baler, where the helicopter attack and surfing sequences were filmed.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: On January 25, 2017, Coppola announced that he was seeking funding through Kickstarter for a horror role-playing video game based on "Apocalypse Now". It was later canceled by Montgomery Markland, the game's director, as revealed on its official Tumblr page.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: "The Sympathizer", a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Vietnamese-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen, features a subplot that Nguyen describes as a critique of "Apocalypse Now." He told "the New York Times" that ""Apocalypse Now" is an important work of art, but that doesn't mean I'm going to bow down before it. I'm going to fight with it because it fought with me." He said that the film centered on American perspectives of the war rather than Vietnamese experiences. He was especially critical of the scene where all the passengers of a boat were unjustly killed by the traveling party: "People just like me were being slaughtered. I felt violated."


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The Seiko 6105 and its subsequent reissues have been nicknamed the "Captain Willard", in reference to its use by the eponymous character.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In 2001, Coppola released "Apocalypse Now Redux" in cinemas and subsequently on DVD. This is an extended version that restores 49 minutes of scenes cut from the original film. Coppola has continued to circulate the original version as well: the two versions are packaged together in the "Complete Dossier" DVD, released on August 15, 2006, and in the Blu-ray edition released on October 19, 2010.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: The longest section of added footage in the "Redux" version is the "French Plantation" sequence, a chapter involving the de Marais family's rubber plantation, a holdover from the colonization of French Indochina, featuring Coppola's two sons Gian-Carlo and Roman as children of the family. Around the dinner table, a young French child recites a poem by Charles Baudelaire entitled "L'albatros". The French family patriarch is not satisfied with the child's recitation. The child is sent away. These scenes were removed from the 1979 cut, which premiered at Cannes. In behind-the-scenes footage in "Hearts of Darkness", Coppola expresses his anger, on the set, at the technical limitations of the scenes, the result of shortage of money. At the time of the "Redux" version, it was possible to digitally enhance the footage to accomplish Coppola's vision. In the scenes, the French family patriarchs argue about the positive side of colonialism in Indochina and denounce the betrayal of the military men in the First Indochina War. Hubert de Marais argues that French politicians sacrificed entire battalions at Điện Biên Phủ, and tells Willard that the US created the Viet Cong (as the Viet Minh) to fend off Japanese invaders.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Other added material includes extra combat footage before Willard meets Kilgore, a scene in which Willard's team steals Kilgore's surfboard (which sheds some light on the hunt for the mangoes), a follow-up scene to the dance of the "Playboy" Playmates, in which Willard's team finds the Playmates stranded after their helicopter has run out of fuel (trading two barrels of fuel for two hours with the Bunnies), and a scene of Kurtz reading from a "Time" magazine article about the war, surrounded by Cambodian children.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: A deleted scene titled "Monkey Sampan" shows Willard and the PBR crew suspiciously eyeing an approaching sampan juxtaposed to Montagnard villagers joyfully singing "Light My Fire" by The Doors. As the sampan gets closer, Willard realizes there are monkeys on it and no helmsman. Finally, just as the two boats pass, the wind turns the sail and exposes a naked dead Viet Cong (VC) nailed to the sail boom. His body is mutilated and looks as though the man had been flogged and castrated. The singing stops. As they pass on by, Chief notes out loud, "That's comin' from where we goin', Captain." The boat then slowly passes the giant tail of a shot down B-52 bomber as the noise of engines high in the sky is heard. Coppola said that he made up for cutting this scene by having the PBR pass under an aircraft tail in the final cut.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: A 289-minute "First Assembly" circulates as a video bootleg, containing extra material not included in either the original theatrical release or the "redux" version. This cut of the film does not feature Carmine Coppola's score, instead using several Doors tracks.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: In April 2019, Coppola showed "Apocalypse Now Final Cut" for the 40th anniversary screening at the Tribeca Film Festival. This new version is Coppola's preferred version of the film and has a runtime of three hours and three minutes, with Coppola having cut 20 minutes of the added material from "Redux"; the scenes deleted include the second encounter with the Playmates, parts of the plantation sequence, and Kurtz's reading of "Time" magazine. It is also the first time the film has been restored from the original camera negative at 4K; previous transfers were made from an interpositive. It was released in autumn 2019, along with an extended cut of "The Cotton Club". It also had a release in select IMAX theaters on August 15 and 18, 2019, in a collaboration between IMAX and Lionsgate.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: Lionsgate released a 6-disc 40th anniversary edition on August 27, 2019. It includes two 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and four standard Blu-ray discs, containing the theatrical version, "Redux", and the "Final Cut" featuring 4K restorations from the original camera negative. Previous extras (including the "Hearts of Darkness" documentary) have been re-used for this release, along with brand new content including a Tribeca Film Festival Q&A with Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Soderbergh and never-before-seen B-roll footage.


title: Apocalypse Now

text: "" (American Zoetrope/Cineplex Odeon Films) (1991) Directed by Eleanor Coppola, George Hickenlooper, and Fax Bahr


title: Apocalypse Now

text: "Apocalypse Now – The Complete Dossier" DVD (Paramount Home Entertainment) (2006). Disc 2 extras include:


title: Alien (film)

text: Alien is a 1979 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott and written by Dan O'Bannon. Based on a story by O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett, it follows the crew of the commercial space tug "Nostromo", who, after coming across a mysterious derelict spaceship on an undiscovered moon, find themselves up against an aggressive and deadly extraterrestrial set loose on the "Nostromo". The film stars Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. It was produced by Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill through their company Brandywine Productions, and was distributed by 20th Century Fox. Giler and Hill revised and made additions to the script; Shusett was the executive producer. The Alien and its accompanying artifacts were designed by the Swiss artist H. R. Giger, while concept artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss designed the more human settings.


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" premiered on May 25, 1979, as the opening night of the fourth Seattle International Film Festival, presented in 70 mm at midnight. It received a wide release on June 22 and was released on September 6 in the United Kingdom. It was met with mixed reviews on release but was a box-office success, winning the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, three Saturn Awards (Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Cartwright), and a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. Critical reassessment since then has resulted in "Alien" being widely considered to be one of the greatest science fiction and horror films of all time. In 2002, "Alien" was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In 2008, it was ranked by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre, and as the 33rd-greatest film of all time by "Empire".


title: Alien (film)

text: The success of "Alien" spawned a media franchise of films, novels, comic books, video games, and toys. It also launched Weaver's acting career, providing her with her first lead role. The story of her character's encounters with the alien creatures became the thematic and narrative core of the sequels "Aliens" (1986), "Alien 3" (1992), and "Alien Resurrection" (1997). A crossover with the "Predator" franchise produced the "Alien vs. Predator" films: "Alien vs. Predator" (2004) and "" (2007). A prequel series includes "Prometheus" (2012) and "" (2017), both directed by Scott.


title: Alien (film)

text: The commercial space tug "Nostromo" is returning to Earth with a seven-member crew in stasis: Captain Dallas, Executive Officer Kane, Warrant Officer Ripley, Navigator Lambert, Science Officer Ash, and engineers Parker and Brett. Detecting a transmission from a nearby moon, the ship's computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Per company policy requiring any potential distress signal be investigated, they land on the moon despite Parker's protests, sustaining damage from its atmosphere and rocky landscape. The engineers stay on board for repairs while Dallas, Kane, and Lambert investigate the terrain. They discover the signal originates from a derelict alien ship and enter it, losing contact with the "Nostromo". Ripley deciphers part of the transmission, determining it as a warning, but cannot relay the information to those on the derelict ship.


title: Alien (film)

text: Meanwhile, Kane discovers a chamber containing hundreds of large, egg-like objects. When he touches one, a creature springs out, penetrates his helmet, and attaches itself to his face. Dallas and Lambert carry the unconscious Kane back to the "Nostromo". As the acting senior officer, Ripley refuses to let them aboard, citing quarantine regulations, but Ash overrides her decision and lets them inside. Ash attempts to remove the creature from Kane's face but stops when he discovers that its extremely corrosive acidic blood could hurt Kane and potentially damage the hull. It later freely detaches and is found dead. The ship is partially repaired, and the crew continues their journey back to Earth. Kane awakens with some memory loss but seems to be otherwise unharmed. During a final crew meal before returning to stasis, he suddenly chokes and convulses. A small alien creature bursts from Kane's chest, killing him, and escapes into the ship, with Ash dissuading the rest from killing it.


title: Alien (film)

text: After ejecting Kane's body out of an airlock, the crew attempts to locate the creature with tracking devices and capture it with nets, electric prods, and flamethrowers. Brett follows the crew's cat, Jones, into a landing leg compartment, where the now-fully-grown alien attacks Brett and disappears with his body. After a heated discussion, the crew decides the creature must be in the air ducts. Dallas enters the ducts, intending to force the monster into an airlock, but it ambushes and seemingly kills him. Lambert, realizing that the alien intends to kill the crew one by one, implores the others to abandon ship and escape in its small shuttle, but Ripley, now in command, explains it will not support four people and insists on continuing Dallas' plan of flushing out the alien.


title: Alien (film)

text: Accessing Mother, Ripley discovers the company has secretly ordered Ash to return the alien, with the crew considered expendable. She confronts Ash, who tries to choke her to death. Parker intervenes and clubs Ash, knocking his head loose and revealing him as an android. He, Ripley, and Lambert reactivate Ash's head, and they learn that he was assigned to ensure the creature's survival. He expresses admiration for the creature's psychology, unhindered by conscience or morality, and taunts them about their chances of survival. Ripley cuts off his power and Parker incinerates him.


title: Alien (film)

text: The remaining crew decides to self-destruct the "Nostromo" and escape in the shuttle. However, Parker and Lambert are ambushed and killed by the creature while gathering life-support supplies. Ripley initiates the self-destruct sequence but finds the alien blocking her path to the shuttle. She retreats and attempts unsuccessfully to abort the self-destruct. With no further options, she flees to the shuttle, carrying Jones, and narrowly escapes as the "Nostromo" explodes.


title: Alien (film)

text: As Ripley prepares for stasis, she discovers that the alien is aboard, having wedged itself into a narrow space. She dons a spacesuit and uses gas to flush the creature out. It approaches Ripley, but before it can attack, she opens an airlock door, almost blasting it into space. However, it hangs on by gripping the frame. Ripley shoots it with a grappling hook, but the gun catches as the airlock door closes, tethering the alien to the shuttle. It pulls itself into an engine exhaust, but Ripley fires the engines, blasting it away into deep space. After recording the final log entry, she places Jones and herself into stasis for the trip back to Earth.


title: Alien (film)

text: While studying cinema at the University of Southern California, Dan O'Bannon had made a science-fiction comedy film, "Dark Star", with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb. The film featured an alien (created by spray-painting a beach ball and adding rubber "claws"); the experience left O'Bannon "really wanting to do an alien that looked "real"." A "couple of years" later he began work on a similar story that would focus more on horror. "I knew I wanted to do a scary movie on a spaceship with a small number of astronauts", he later recalled, ""Dark Star" as a horror movie instead of a comedy." Ronald Shusett, meanwhile, was working on an early version of what would eventually become "Total Recall". Impressed by "Dark Star", he contacted O'Bannon and the two agreed to collaborate on their projects, choosing to work on O'Bannon's film first, as they believed it would be less costly to produce.


title: Alien (film)

text: O'Bannon had written 29 pages of a script titled "Memory", containing what would become the opening scenes of "Alien": a crew of astronauts awakens to find that their voyage has been interrupted because they are receiving a signal from a mysterious planetoid. They investigate and their ship breaks down on the surface. He did not yet have a clear idea as to what the alien antagonist of the story would be.


title: Alien (film)

text: O'Bannon soon accepted an offer to work on Alejandro Jodorowsky's adaptation of "Dune", a project that took him to Paris for six months. Though the project ultimately fell through, it introduced him to several artists whose work gave him ideas for his science-fiction story including Chris Foss, H. R. Giger, and Jean "Moebius" Giraud. O'Bannon was impressed by Foss's covers for science-fiction books, while he found Giger's work "disturbing": "His paintings had a profound effect on me. I had never seen anything that was quite as horrible and at the same time as beautiful as his work. And so I ended up writing a script about a Giger monster." After the "Dune" project collapsed, O'Bannon returned to Los Angeles to live with Shusett and the two revived his "Memory" script. Shusett suggested that O'Bannon use one of his other film ideas, about gremlins infiltrating a B-17 bomber during World War II, and set it on the spaceship as the second half of the story. The working title of the project was now "Star Beast", but O'Bannon disliked this and changed it to "Alien" after noting the number of times that the word appeared in the script. Shusett and he liked the new title's simplicity and its double meaning as both a noun and an adjective. Shusett came up with the idea that one of the crew members could be implanted with an alien embryo that would burst out of him; he thought this would be an interesting plot device by which the alien could get aboard the ship.


title: Alien (film)

text: In writing the script, O'Bannon drew inspiration from many previous works of science fiction and horror. He later stated,"I didn't steal "Alien" from anybody. I stole it from "everybody"!" "The Thing from Another World" (1951) inspired the idea of professional men being pursued by a deadly alien creature through a claustrophobic environment. "Forbidden Planet" (1956) gave O'Bannon the idea of a ship being warned not to land, and then the crew being killed one by one by a mysterious creature when they defy the warning. "Planet of the Vampires" (1965) contains a scene in which the heroes discover a giant alien skeleton; this influenced the "Nostromo" crew's discovery of the alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. O'Bannon has also noted the influence of "Junkyard" (1953), a short story by Clifford D. Simak in which a crew lands on an asteroid and discovers a chamber full of eggs. He has also cited as influences "Strange Relations" by Philip José Farmer (1960), which covers alien reproduction, and various EC Comics horror titles carrying stories in which monsters eat their way out of people.


title: Alien (film)

text: With most of the plot in place, Shusett and O'Bannon presented their script to several studios, pitching it as ""Jaws" in space." They were on the verge of signing a deal with Roger Corman's studio when a friend offered to find them a better deal and passed the script on to Gordon Carroll, David Giler, and Walter Hill, who had formed a production company called Brandywine with ties to 20th Century Fox. O'Bannon and Shusett signed a deal with Brandywine, but Hill and Giler were not satisfied with the script and made numerous rewrites and revisions. This caused tension with O'Bannon and Shusett, since Hill and Giler had very little experience with science fiction; according to Shusett, "They weren't good at making it better, or, in fact, at not making it even worse." O'Bannon believed that Hill and Giler were attempting to justify taking his name off the script and claiming Shusett's and his work as their own. Hill and Giler did add some substantial elements to the story, including the android character Ash, which O'Bannon felt was an unnecessary subplot but which Shusett later described as "one of the best things in the movie...That whole idea and scenario was theirs." Hill and Giler went through eight drafts of the script in total, concentrating largely on the Ash subplot, but also making the dialogue more natural and trimming some sequences set on the alien planetoid. Despite the fact that the final shooting script was written by Hill and Giler, the Writers Guild of America awarded O'Bannon sole credit for the screenplay.


title: Alien (film)

text: Despite these rewrites, 20th Century Fox did not express confidence in financing a science-fiction film. However, after the success of "Star Wars" in 1977, the studio's interest in the genre rose substantially. According to Carroll: "When "Star Wars" came out and was the extraordinary hit that it was, suddenly science fiction became the hot genre." O'Bannon recalled that "They wanted to follow through on "Star Wars", and they wanted to follow through fast, and the only spaceship script they had sitting on their desk was "Alien"". "Alien" was greenlit by 20th Century Fox, with an initial budget of $4.2 million. "Alien" was funded by North Americans, but made by 20th Century-Fox's British production subsidiary.


title: Alien (film)

text: O'Bannon had originally assumed that he would direct "Alien", but 20th Century Fox instead asked Hill to direct. Hill declined due to other film commitments, as well as not being comfortable with the level of visual effects that would be required. Peter Yates, Jack Clayton, and Robert Aldrich were considered for the task, but O'Bannon, Shusett, and the Brandywine team felt that these directors would not take the film seriously and would instead treat it as a B monster movie. Giler, Hill, and Carroll had been impressed by Scott's debut feature film "The Duellists" (1977) and made an offer to him to direct "Alien", which Scott quickly accepted. Scott created detailed storyboards for the film in London, which impressed Fox enough to double the film's budget. His storyboards included designs for the spaceship and space suits, drawing on such films as "" and "Star Wars". However, he was keen on emphasizing horror in "Alien" rather than fantasy, describing the film as ""The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" of science fiction".


title: Alien (film)

text: Casting calls and auditions for "Alien" were held in both New York City and London. With only seven human characters in the story, Scott sought to hire strong actors so he could focus most of his energy on the film's visual style. He employed casting director Mary Selway, who had worked with him on "The Duellists", to head the casting in the United Kingdom, while Mary Goldberg handled casting in the United States. In developing the story, O'Bannon had focused on writing the alien first, putting off developing the other characters. Shusett and he had intentionally written all the roles generically; they made a note in the script that explicitly states, "The crew is unisex and all parts are interchangeable for men or women." This freed Scott, Selway, and Goldberg to interpret the characters as they pleased, and to cast accordingly. They wanted the "Nostromo"s crew to resemble working astronauts in a realistic environment, a concept summarized as "truckers in space". According to Scott, this concept was inspired partly by "Star Wars", which deviated from the pristine future often depicted in science-fiction films of the time.


title: Alien (film)

text: To assist the actors in preparing for their roles, Scott wrote several pages of backstory for each character explaining their histories. He filmed many of their rehearsals to capture spontaneity and improvisation, and tensions between some of the cast members, particularly towards the less-experienced Weaver; this translated convincingly to film as tension between the characters.


title: Alien (film)

text: Roger Ebert notes that the actors in "Alien" were older than was typical in thriller films at the time, which helped make the characters more convincing:


title: Alien (film)

text: David McIntee, author of "Beautiful Monsters: The Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Alien and Predator Films", asserts that part of the film's effectiveness in frightening viewers "comes from the fact that the audience can all identify with the characters...Everyone aboard the "Nostromo" is a normal, everyday, working Joe just like the rest of us. They just happen to live and work in the future."


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" was filmed over 14 weeks from July 5 to October 21, 1978. Principal photography took place at Shepperton Studios near London, while model and miniature filming was done at Bray Studios in Water Oakley, Berkshire. The production schedule was short due to the film's low budget and pressure from 20th Century Fox to finish on time.


title: Alien (film)

text: A crew of over 200 craftspeople and technicians constructed the three principal sets: the surface of the alien planetoid, and the interiors of the "Nostromo" and the derelict spacecraft. Art director Les Dilley created -scale miniatures of the planetoid's surface and derelict spacecraft based on Giger's designs, then made moulds and casts and scaled them up as diagrams for the wood and fiberglass forms of the sets. Tons of sand, plaster, fiberglass, rock, and gravel were shipped into the studio to sculpt a desert landscape for the planetoid's surface, which the actors would walk across wearing space-suit costumes. The suits were thick, bulky, and lined with nylon, had no cooling systems, and initially, no venting for their exhaled carbon dioxide to escape. Combined with a heat wave, these conditions nearly caused the actors to pass out; nurses had to be kept on-hand with oxygen tanks.


title: Alien (film)

text: For scenes showing the exterior of the "Nostromo," a landing leg was constructed to give a sense of the ship's size. Scott was not convinced that it looked large enough, so he had his two young sons and the son of Derek Vanlint (the film's cinematographer) stand in for the regular actors, wearing smaller space suits to make the set pieces seem larger. The same technique was used for the scene in which the crew members encounter the dead alien creature in the derelict spacecraft. The children nearly collapsed due to the heat of the suits; oxygen systems were eventually added to help the actors breathe. Four identical cats were used to portray Jones, the crew's pet. During filming, Sigourney Weaver discovered that she was allergic to the combination of cat hair and the glycerin placed on the actors' skin to make them appear sweaty. By removing the glycerin she was able to continue working with the cats.


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" originally was to conclude with the destruction of the "Nostromo" while Ripley escapes in the shuttle "Narcissus". However, Scott conceived of a "fourth act" to the film in which the alien appears on the shuttle and Ripley is forced to confront it. He pitched the idea to 20th Century Fox and negotiated an increase in the budget to film the scene over several extra days. Scott had wanted the alien to bite off Ripley's head and then make the final log entry in her voice, but the producers vetoed this idea, because they believed the alien should die at the end of the film.


title: Alien (film)

text: Editing and post-production work on "Alien" took roughly 20 weeks to complete, concluding in late-January 1979. Terry Rawlings served as editor, having previously worked with Scott on editing sound for "The Duellists". Scott and Rawlings edited much of the film to have a slow pace to build suspense for the more tense and frightening moments. According to Rawlings: "I think the way we did get it right was by keeping it slow, funny enough, which is completely different from what they do today. And I think the slowness of it made the moments that you wanted people to be sort of scared...then we could go as fast as we liked because you've sucked people into a corner and then attacked them, so to speak. And I think that's how it worked." The first cut of the film was over three hours long; further editing trimmed the final version to just under two hours.


title: Alien (film)

text: One scene that was cut from the film occurred during Ripley's final escape from the "Nostromo"; she encounters Dallas and Brett, who have been partially cocooned by the alien. O'Bannon had intended the scene to indicate that Brett was becoming an alien egg, while Dallas was held nearby to be implanted by the resulting facehugger. Production designer Michael Seymour later suggested that Dallas had "become sort of food for the alien creature", while Ivor Powell suggested that "Dallas is found in the ship as an egg, still alive." Scott remarked, "they're morphing, metamorphosing, they are changing into...being consumed, I guess, by whatever the alien's organism is...into an egg." The scene was cut partly because it did not look realistic enough, but also because it slowed the pace of the escape sequence. Tom Skerritt remarked that "The picture had to have that pace. Her trying to get the hell out of there, we're all rooting for her to get out of there, and for her to slow up and have a conversation with Dallas was not appropriate." The footage was included with other deleted scenes as a special feature on the Laserdisc release of "Alien", and a shortened version of it was reinserted into the 2003 Director's Cut, which was re-released in theaters and on DVD.


title: Alien (film)

text: The musical score for "Alien" was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, conducted by Lionel Newman, and performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra. Scott had originally wanted the film to be scored by Isao Tomita, but Fox wanted a more familiar composer and Goldsmith was recommended by then-president of Fox Alan Ladd Jr. Goldsmith wanted to create a sense of romanticism and lyrical mystery in the film's opening scenes, which would build throughout the film to suspense and fear. Scott did not like Goldsmith's original main title piece, however, so Goldsmith rewrote it as "the obvious thing: weird and strange, and which everybody loved." Another source of tension was editor Terry Rawlings' choice to use pieces of Goldsmith's music from previous films, including a piece from "", and to use an excerpt from Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 ("Romantic") for the end credits.


title: Alien (film)

text: Scott and Rawlings had also become attached to several of the musical cues they had used for the temporary score while editing the film, and re-edited some of Goldsmith's cues and rescored several sequences to match these cues and even left the temporary score in place in some parts of the finished film. Goldsmith later remarked, "you can see that I was sort of like going at opposite ends of the pole with the filmmakers." Nevertheless, Scott praised Goldsmith's score as "full of dark beauty" and "seriously threatening, but beautiful." It was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, a Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, and it won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music. The score has been released as a soundtrack album in several versions with different tracks and sequences.


title: Alien (film)

text: O'Bannon introduced Scott to the artwork of H. R. Giger; both of them felt that his painting "Necronom IV" was the type of representation they wanted for the film's antagonist and began asking the studio to hire him as a designer. 20th Century Fox initially believed Giger's work was too ghastly for audiences, but the Brandywine team were persistent and eventually won out. According to Gordon Carroll: "The first second that Ridley saw Giger's work, he knew that the biggest single design problem, maybe the biggest problem in the film, had been solved." Scott flew to Zürich to meet Giger and recruited him to work on all aspects of the alien and its environment including the surface of the planetoid, the derelict spacecraft, and all four forms of the alien from the egg to the adult.


title: Alien (film)

text: The scene of Kane inspecting the egg was shot in postproduction. A fiberglass egg was used so that actor John Hurt could shine his light on it and see movement inside, which was provided by Scott fluttering his hands inside the egg while wearing rubber gloves. The top of the egg was hydraulic, and the innards were a cow's stomach and tripe. Test shots of the eggs were filmed using hen's eggs, and this footage was used in early teaser trailers. For this reason, the image of a hen's egg was used on the poster, and has become emblematic of the franchise as a whole—as opposed to the alien egg that appears in the finished film.


title: Alien (film)

text: The "facehugger" and its proboscis, which was made of a sheep's intestine, were shot out of the egg using high-pressure air hoses. The shot was reversed and slowed down in editing to prolong the effect and reveal more detail. The facehugger itself was the first creature that H.R. Giger designed for the film, going through several versions in different sizes before deciding on a small creature with human-like fingers and a long tail. Dan O'Bannon, with help from Ron Cobb, drew his own version based on Giger's design, which became the final version. Cobb came up with the idea that the creature could have a powerful acid for blood, a characteristic that would carry over to the adult Alien and would make it impossible for the crew to kill it by conventional means, such as guns or explosives, since the acid would burn through the ship's hull. For the scene in which the dead facehugger is examined, Scott used pieces of fish and shellfish to create its viscera.


title: Alien (film)

text: The design of the "chestburster" was inspired by Francis Bacon's 1944 painting "Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion". Giger's original design, which was refined, resembled a plucked chicken. Screenwriter Dan O'Bannon credits his experiences with Crohn's disease for inspiring the chest-bursting scene.


title: Alien (film)

text: For the filming of the chestburster scene, the cast members knew that the creature would be bursting out of Hurt, and had seen the chestburster puppet, but they had not been told that fake blood would also be bursting out in every direction from high-pressure pumps and squibs. The scene was shot in one take using an artificial torso filled with blood and viscera, with Hurt's head and arms coming up from underneath the table. The chestburster was shoved up through the torso by a puppeteer who held it on a stick. When the creature burst through the chest, a stream of blood shot directly at Cartwright, shocking her enough that she fell over and went into hysterics. According to Tom Skerritt, "What you saw on camera was the real response. She had no idea what the hell happened. All of a sudden this thing just came up." The creature then runs off-camera, an effect accomplished by cutting a slit in the table for the puppeteer's stick to go through and passing an air hose through the puppet's tail to make it whip about.


title: Alien (film)

text: The real-life surprise of the actors gave the scene an intense sense of realism and made it one of the film's most memorable moments. During preview screenings, the crew noticed that some viewers would move towards the back of the theater so as not to be too close to the screen during the sequence. The scene has frequently been called one of the most memorable moments in cinema history. In 2007, "Empire" named it as the greatest 18-rated moment in film, ranking it above the decapitation scene in "The Omen" (1976) and the transformation sequence in "An American Werewolf in London" (1981). "IGN" ranked the scene 10th out of the 100 best movie moments of all time.


title: Alien (film)

text: For the scene in which Ash is revealed to be an android, a puppet was created of the character's torso and upper body, which was operated from underneath. During a preview screening of the film, this scene caused an usher to faint. In the following scene, Ash's head is placed on a table and reactivated; for portions of this scene, an animatronic head was made using a face cast of the actor, Ian Holm. However, the latex of the head shrank while curing and the result was not entirely convincing. For the bulk of the scene, Holm knelt under the table with his head coming up through a hole. Milk, caviar, pasta, fiber optics, and Foley urinary catheters were combined to form the android's innards.


title: Alien (film)

text: Giger made several conceptual paintings of the adult alien before settling on the final version. He sculpted the creature's body using plasticine, incorporating pieces such as vertebrae from snakes and cooling tubes from a Rolls-Royce. The creature's head was manufactured separately by Carlo Rambaldi, who had worked on the aliens in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Rambaldi followed Giger's designs closely, making some modifications to incorporate the moving parts that would animate the jaw and inner mouth. A system of hinges and cables was used to operate the creature's rigid tongue, which protruded from its mouth and featured a second mouth at its tip with its own set of movable teeth. The final head had about 900 moving parts and points of articulation. Part of a human skull was used as the "face", and was hidden under the smooth, translucent cover of the head. Rambaldi's original alien jaw is now on display in the Smithsonian Institution, while in April 2007, the original alien suit was sold at auction. Copious amounts of K-Y Jelly were used to simulate saliva and to give the alien an overall slimy appearance. The creature's vocalizations were provided by Percy Edwards, a voice artist famous for providing bird sounds for British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the whale sounds for "Orca: Killer Whale" (1977).


title: Alien (film)

text: For most of the film's scenes, the alien was portrayed by Bolaji Badejo. A latex costume was made to fit Badejo's slender frame by taking a full-body plaster cast. Scott later commented that the alien "takes on elements of the host – in this case, a man." Badejo attended t'ai chi and mime classes to create convincing movements for the alien. For some scenes, such as when the alien lowers itself from the ceiling to kill Brett, the creature was portrayed by stuntmen Eddie Powell and Roy Scammell. Powell, in costume, was suspended on wires and then lowered in an unfurling motion.


title: Alien (film)

text: Scott chose not to show the full Alien for most of the film, keeping most of its body in shadow to create a sense of terror and heighten suspense. The audience could thus project their own fears into imagining what the rest of the creature might look like: "Every movement is going to be very slow, very graceful, and the alien will alter shape so you never really know exactly what he looks like." Scott said:


title: Alien (film)

text: The Alien has been referred to as "one of the most iconic movie monsters in film history", and its biomechanical appearance and sexual overtones have been frequently noted. Roger Ebert remarked that ""Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do... The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its 'open, dripping vaginal mouth.


title: Alien (film)

text: The sets of the "Nostromo"s three decks were each created almost entirely in one piece, with each deck occupying a separate stage. The actors had to navigate through the hallways that connected the stages, adding to the film's sense of claustrophobia and realism. The sets used large transistors and low-resolution computer screens to give the ship a "used", industrial look and make it appear as though it was constructed of "retrofitted old technology". Ron Cobb created industrial-style symbols and color-coded signs for various areas and aspects of the ship. The company that owns the "Nostromo" is not named in the film, and is referred to by the characters as "the company". However, the name and logo of the company appears on several set pieces and props such as computer monitors and beer cans as "Weylan-Yutani". Cobb created the name to imply a business alliance between Britain and Japan, deriving "Weylan" from the British Leyland Motor Corporation and "Yutani" from the name of his Japanese neighbor. The 1986 sequel, "Aliens," named the company as "Weyland-Yutani", and it has remained a central aspect of the film franchise.


title: Alien (film)

text: Art director Roger Christian used scrap metal and parts to create set pieces and props to save money, a technique he employed while working on "Star Wars". For example, some of the "Nostromo" corridors were created from portions of scrapped bomber aircraft, and a mirror was used to create the illusion of longer corridors in the below-deck area. Special-effects supervisors Brian Johnson and Nick Allder made many of the set pieces and props function, including moving chairs, computer monitors, motion trackers, and flamethrowers.


title: Alien (film)

text: H. R. Giger designed and worked on all of the alien aspects of the film, which he designed to appear organic and biomechanical in contrast to the industrial look of the "Nostromo" and its human elements. For the interior of the derelict spacecraft and egg chamber, he used dried bones with plaster to sculpt much of the scenery and elements. Veronica Cartwright described Giger's sets as "so erotic...it's big vaginas and penises...the whole thing is like you're going inside of some sort of womb or whatever...it's sort of visceral". The set with the deceased alien creature, which the production team nicknamed the "space jockey", proved problematic, as 20th Century Fox did not want to spend the money for such an expensive set that would only be used for one scene. Scott described the set as the cockpit or driving deck of the mysterious ship, and the production team was able to convince the studio that the scene was important to impress the audience and make them aware that this was not a B movie. To save money, only one wall of the set was created, and the "space jockey" sat atop a disc that could be rotated to facilitate shots from different angles in relation to the actors. Giger airbrushed the entire set and the "space jockey" by hand.


title: Alien (film)

text: The origin of the jockey creature was not explored in the film, but Scott later theorized that it might have been the ship's pilot, and that the ship might have been a weapons-carrier capable of dropping alien eggs onto a planet so that the aliens could use the local lifeforms as hosts. In early versions of the script, the eggs were to be located in a separate pyramid structure, which would be found later by the "Nostromo" crew and would contain statues and hieroglyphs depicting the alien reproductive cycle, contrasting the human, alien, and space-jockey cultures. Cobb, Foss, and Giger each created concept artwork for these sequences, but they were eventually discarded due to budgetary concerns and the need to shorten the film. Instead, the egg chamber was set inside the derelict ship and was filmed on the same set as the space-jockey scene; the entire disc piece supporting the jockey and its chair was removed and the set was redressed to create the egg chamber. Light effects in the egg chamber were created by lasers borrowed from English rock band The Who. The band was testing the lasers for use in their stage show on the sound stage next door.


title: Alien (film)

text: O'Bannon brought in artists Ron Cobb and Chris Foss, with whom he had worked on "Dark Star" and "Dune", respectively, to work on designs for the human aspects of the film such as the spaceship and space suits. Cobb created hundreds of preliminary sketches of the interiors and exteriors of the ship, which went through many design concepts and possible names such as "Leviathan" and "Snark" as the script was developed. The final name of the ship was derived from the title of Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel "Nostromo", while the escape shuttle, called "Narcissus" in the script, was named after Conrad's 1897 novella "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'". The production team particularly praised Cobb's ability to depict the interior settings of the ship in a realistic and believable manner. Under Scott's direction, the design of the "Nostromo" shifted towards an tug towing a refining platform long and wide. Cobb also created some conceptual drawings of the alien, but these were not used. Moebius was attached to the project for a few days, as well, and his costume renderings served as the basis for the final space suits created by costume designer John Mollo.


title: Alien (film)

text: The spaceships and planets for the film were shot using models and miniatures. These included models of the "Nostromo", its attached mineral refinery, the escape shuttle "Narcissus", the alien planetoid, and the exterior and interior of the derelict spacecraft. Visual-effects supervisor Brian Johnson and supervising modelmaker Martin Bower and their team worked at Bray Studios, roughly from Shepperton Studios. The designs of the "Nostromo" and its attachments were based on combinations of Scott's storyboards and Ron Cobb's conceptual drawings. The basic outlines of the models were made of wood and plastic, and most of the fine details were added from model kits of warships, tanks, and World War II bombers.


title: Alien (film)

text: Three models of the "Nostromo" were made: a version for medium and long shots, a version for rear shots, and a , rig for the undocking and planetoid surface sequences. Scott insisted on numerous changes to the models even as filming was taking place, leading to conflicts with the modeling and filming teams. The "Nostromo" was originally yellow, and the team filmed shots of the models for six weeks before Johnson left to work on "The Empire Strikes Back". Scott then ordered it changed to gray, and the team had to begin shooting again from scratch. He asked that more and more pieces be added to the model such that the final version (with the refinery) required a metal framework so that it could be hoisted by a forklift. He also took a hammer and chisel to sections of the refinery, knocking off many of the spires that Bower had spent weeks creating. Scott also had disagreements with miniature-effects cinematographer Dennis Ayling over how to light the models.


title: Alien (film)

text: A separate model, about long, was created for the "Nostromo" underside from which the "Narcissus" would detach and from which Kane's body would be launched during the funeral scene. Bower carved Kane's burial shroud out of wood; it was launched through the hatch using a small catapult and filmed at high speed. The footage was slowed down in editing. Only one shot was filmed using blue-screen compositing - that of the shuttle racing past the "Nostromo". The other shots were simply filmed against black backdrops, with stars added by double exposure. Though motion control photography technology was available at the time, the film's budget would not allow for it. The team, therefore, used a camera with wide-angle lenses mounted on a drive mechanism to make slow passes over and around the models filming at frames per second, giving them the appearance of motion. Scott added smoke and wind effects to enhance the illusion. For the scene in which the "Nostromo" detaches from the refinery, a docking arm was created using pieces from model railway kits. The "Nostromo" was pushed away from the refinery by a forklift covered in black velvet, causing the arm to extend out from the refinery. This created the illusion that the arm was pushing the ship forward. Shots of the ship's exterior in which characters are seen moving around inside were filmed using larger models which contained projection screens displaying pre-recorded footage.


title: Alien (film)

text: A separate model was created for the exterior of the derelict alien spacecraft. Matte paintings were used to fill in areas of the ship's interior, as well as exterior shots of the planetoid's surface. The surface as seen from space during the landing sequence was created by painting a globe white, then mixing chemicals and dyes onto transparencies and projecting them onto it. The planetoid was not named in the film, but some drafts of the script gave it the name Acheron after the river which in Greek mythology is described as the "stream of woe"; it is a branch of the river Styx, and forms the border of Hell in Dante's "Inferno". The 1986 sequel "Aliens" named the planetoid as "LV-426", and both names have been used for it in subsequent expanded-universe media such as comic books and video games.


title: Alien (film)

text: The title sequence was developed by R/Greenberg Associates "to instill a sense of foreboding, the letters broken into pieces, the space between them unsettling." It is referenced as one of the most iconic opening sequences of all time.


title: Alien (film)

text: An initial screening of "Alien" for 20th Century Fox representatives in St. Louis was marred by poor sound. A subsequent screening in a newer theater in Dallas went significantly better, eliciting genuine fright from the audience. Two theatrical trailers were shown to the public. The first consisted of rapidly changing still images set to some of Jerry Goldsmith's electronic music from "Logan's Run", with the tagline in both the trailer and on the teaser poster "A word of warning...". The second used test footage of a hen's egg set to part of Goldsmith's "Alien" score. The film was previewed in various American cities in the spring of 1979 and was promoted with the tagline "In space, no one can hear you scream."


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" was rated "R" in the United States, "X" in the United Kingdom, and "M" in Australia. In the UK, the British Board of Film Censors almost passed the film as an "AA" (for ages 14 and over), although concerns existed over the prevalent sexual imagery. 20th Century Fox eventually relented in pushing for an AA certificate after deciding that an X rating would make it easier to sell as a horror film.


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" opened in a limited release in American theaters on May 25, 1979. The film had no formal premiere, yet moviegoers lined up for blocks to see it at Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, where a number of models, sets, and props were displayed outside to promote it during its first run. It received a wide release in the United States on June 22. Vandals set fire to the model of the space jockey, believing it to be the work of the devil. The film started its international release in Japan on July 20 and then Brazil on August 20. In the United Kingdom, "Alien" premiered at a gala performance at the Edinburgh Film Festival on September 1, 1979, before starting an exclusive run at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on Thursday, September 6, 1979, for one week before expanding slowly until opening wide in Britain in 180 theaters on October 1, 1979. The film opened in France and Spain in September before expanding to other markets in October 1979.


title: Alien (film)

text: The film was a commercial success, opening in 90 theatres across the United States (plus 1 in Canada), setting 51 house records and grossing $3,527,881 over the 4-day Memorial Day weekend with a per-screen average of $38,767, which "Daily Variety" suggested may have been the biggest per-screen opening in history. In its first 4 weeks it grossed $16.5 million from only 148 prints before expanding to 635 screens. In the UK, the film grossed $126,150 in its first 4 days at the Odeon Leicester Square, setting a house record. By the beginning of October 1979, the film had grossed $27 million internationally including $16.9 million in Japan, $4.8 million in France and $3.7 million in the UK. It went on to gross $78.9 million in the United States and £7,886,000 in the United Kingdom during its first run. Including reissues, it has grossed $81.8 million in the United States and Canada, while international box-office figures have varied from $24 million to $122.7 million. Its total worldwide gross has been listed within the range of $104.9 million to $203.6 million. In 1992, Fox noted the worldwide gross was $143 million.


title: Alien (film)

text: Despite this apparent box-office success, 20th Century Fox claimed that in the 11 months since its release, "Alien" had lost the studio $2 million. Seen as an example of Hollywood creative accounting used by Fox to disguise the film revenue and limit any payments to Brandywine, the claim was decried by industry accountants, and by August 1980, Fox readjusted the figure to $4 million profit, although this was similarly refuted. Eager to begin work on a sequel, Brandywine sued Fox over their profit distribution tactics, but Fox claimed that "Alien" was not a financial success and did not warrant a sequel. The lawsuit was settled in 1983 when Fox agreed to fund an "Alien II".


title: Alien (film)

text: Critical reaction to the film was initially mixed. Some critics who were not usually favorable towards science fiction, such as Barry Norman of the BBC's "Film" series, were positive about the film's merits. Others, however, were not; reviews by "Variety", "Sight and Sound", Vincent Canby, and Leonard Maltin were mixed or negative. (Maltin reassessed the film upon the release of the Director's Cut and gave "Alien" a positive review.) A review by "Time Out" said the film was an "empty bag of tricks whose production values and expensive trickery cannot disguise imaginative poverty". In their original review on "Sneak Previews", critics Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film "two 'yes' votes." Ebert called it "one of the scariest old-fashioned space operas I can remember." Siskel agreed that it was scary but said it was basically a "haunted house film" set "in a spaceship" and was "not the greatest science fiction film ever made." Siskel gave the film three stars out of four in his original print review, calling it "an accomplished piece of scary entertainment" and praising Sigourney Weaver as "an actress who should become a major star," but listed among the film's disappointments that "[f]or me, the final shape of the alien was the least scary of its forms."


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" won the 1980 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was also nominated for Best Art Direction (for Michael Seymour, Leslie Dilley, Roger Christian, and Ian Whittaker). It won Saturn Awards for Best Science Fiction Film, Best Direction for Ridley Scott, and Best Supporting Actress for Veronica Cartwright, and was also nominated in the categories of Best Actress for Sigourney Weaver, Best Make-up for Pat Hay, Best Special Effects for Brian Johnson and Nick Allder, and Best Writing for Dan O'Bannon. It was also nominated for British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) awards for Best Costume Design for John Mollo, Best Editing for Terry Rawlings, Best Supporting Actor for John Hurt, and Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Role for Sigourney Weaver. It also won a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was nominated for a British Society of Cinematographers award for Best Cinematography for Derek Vanlint, as well as a Silver Seashell award for Best Cinematography and Special Effects at the San Sebastián International Film Festival. Jerry Goldsmith's score received nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score, the Grammy Award for Best Soundtrack Album, and won a BAFTA Award for Best Film Music.


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" has been released in many home video formats and packages over the years. The first of these was a 17-minute Super-8 version for home projectionists. It was also released on both VHS and Betamax for rental, which grossed it an additional $40,300,000 in the United States alone. Several VHS releases were subsequently issued both separately and as boxed sets. LaserDisc and Videodisc versions followed, including deleted scenes and director commentary as bonus features. A VHS box set containing "Alien" and its sequels "Aliens" and "Alien 3" was released in facehugger-shaped boxes, and included some of the deleted scenes from the Laserdisc editions. When "Alien Resurrection" premiered in theaters, another set of the first three films was released including a "Making of Alien Resurrection" tape. A few months later, the set was re-released with the full version of "Alien Resurrection" taking the place of the making-of video. "Alien" was released on DVD in 1999, both separately and, as "The Alien Legacy", packaged with "Aliens", "Alien 3" and "Alien Resurrection". This set, which was also released in a VHS version, included a commentary track by Ridley Scott. The first three films of the series have also been packaged as the "Alien Triple Pack".


title: Alien (film)

text: In 2003, 20th Century Fox was preparing the "Alien Quadrilogy" DVD box set, which would include "Alien" and its three sequels. In addition, the set would also include alternative versions of all four films in the form of "special editions" and "director's cuts". Fox approached Scott to digitally restore and remaster "Alien", and to restore several scenes which had been cut during the editing process for inclusion in an expanded version of the film. Upon viewing the expanded version, Scott felt that it was too long and chose to recut it into a more streamlined alternative version:


title: Alien (film)

text: The "Director's Cut" restored roughly four minutes of deleted footage, while cutting about five minutes of other material, leaving it about a minute shorter than the theatrical cut. Many of the changes were minor, such as altered sound effects, while the restored footage included the scene in which Ripley discovers the cocooned Dallas and Brett during her escape of the "Nostromo". Fox released the Director's Cut in theaters on October 31, 2003. The "Alien Quadrilogy" boxed set was released December 2, 2003, with both versions of the film included along with a new commentary track featuring many of the film's actors, writers, and production staff, as well as other special features and a documentary entitled "The Beast Within: The Making of Alien". Each film was also released separately as a DVD with both versions of the film included. Scott noted that he was very pleased with the original theatrical cut of "Alien", saying that "For all intents and purposes, I felt that the original cut of "Alien" was perfect. I still feel that way", and that the original 1979 theatrical version "remains my version of choice". He has since stated that he considers both versions "director's cuts", as he feels that the 1979 version was the best he could possibly have made it at the time.


title: Alien (film)

text: The "Alien Quadrilogy" set earned "Alien" a number of new awards and nominations. It won DVDX Exclusive Awards for Best Audio Commentary and Best Overall DVD, Classic Movie, and was also nominated for Best Behind-the-Scenes Program and Best Menu Design. It also won a Saturn Award for Best DVD, and was nominated for Best DVD Collection and Golden Satellite Awards for Best DVD Extras and Best Overall DVD. In 2010 both the theatrical version and Director's Cut of "Alien" were released on Blu-ray Disc, as a stand-alone release and as part of the "Alien Anthology" set.


title: Alien (film)

text: In 2014, to mark the film's 35th anniversary, a special re-release boxed set named "Alien: 35th Anniversary Edition", containing the film on Blu-ray, a digital copy, a reprint of "Alien: The Illustrated Story", and a series of collectible art cards containing artwork by H.R. Giger related to the film, was released. A soundtrack album was released, featuring selections of Goldsmith's score. Additionally, a single of the Main Theme was released in 1980, and a disco single using audio excerpts from the film was released in 1979 on the UK label Bronze Records by a recording artist under the name "Nostromo". "Alien" was re-released on Ultra HD Blu-ray and 4K digital download on April 23, 2019, in honor of the film's 40th anniversary. The 4k Blu-ray Disc presents the film in 2160p resolution with HDR10 High-dynamic-range video. Several previously released bonus features on the 4k Blu-ray include audio commentary from Director Ridley Scott, cast and crew, the final isolated theatrical score and composer's original isolated score by Jerry Goldsmith, and deleted and extended scenes.


title: Alien (film)

text: Critics have analyzed "Alien" sexual overtones. The film is often cited as a major work of abjection, as outlined by Julia Kristeva in her 1980 work "Powers of Horror". According to Kristeva, the abject refers to that which signifies the breakdown of conventional borders and rules. It confronts the subject with the fallibility of the human body and societal norms, and thus exposes how the supposedly sacred distinctions between what is Self and what is Other are arbitrary. She suggests that this confrontation—often manifesting in excrement, bodily invasion and corpses—is an inherently traumatic interruption of subjectivity, and thus all evidence of abjection is hidden in conventional society. Much of "Alien" effectiveness as a work of horror has been attributed to its indulgence in abject themes and imagery, and has thus functioned as a major framework for critics, such as Barbara Creed, in their analysis of the film. Following Creed's assertion that the alien creature is a representation of the "monstrous-feminine as archaic mother", Ximena Gallardo C. and C. Jason Smith compared the facehugger's attack on Kane to a male rape and the chestburster scene to a form of violent birth, noting that the alien's phallic head and method of killing the crew members add to the sexual imagery. Dan O'Bannon, who wrote the film's screenplay, has argued that the scene is a metaphor for the male fear of penetration, and that the "oral invasion" of Kane by the facehugger functions as "payback" for the many horror films in which sexually vulnerable women are attacked by male monsters. David McIntee claims that ""Alien" is a rape movie as much as "Straw Dogs" (1971) or "I Spit on Your Grave" (1978), or "The Accused" (1988). On one level, it's about an intriguing alien threat. On one level it's about parasitism and disease. And on the level that was most important to the writers and director, it's about sex, and reproduction by non-consensual means. And it's about this happening to a man." He notes how the film plays on men's fear and misunderstanding of pregnancy and childbirth, while also giving women a glimpse into these fears.


title: Alien (film)

text: Film analyst Lina Badley has written that the alien's design, with strong Freudian sexual undertones, multiple phallic symbols, and overall feminine figure, provides an androgynous image conforming to archetypal mappings and imageries in horror films that often redraw gender lines. O'Bannon described the sexual imagery as overt and intentional: "I am going to put in every image I can think of to make the men in the audience cross their legs. Homosexual oral rape, birth. The thing lays its eggs down your throat, the whole number."


title: Alien (film)

text: "Alien" roots in earlier works of fiction have been analyzed and acknowledged extensively by critics. The film has been said to have much in common with B movies such as "The Thing from Another World" (1951), "Creature from the Black Lagoon" (1954), "It! The Terror from Beyond Space" (1958), "Night of the Blood Beast" (1958), and "Queen of Blood" (1966),


title: Alien (film)

text: as well as its fellow 1970s horror films "Jaws" (1975) and "Halloween" (1978). Literary connections have also been suggested: Philip French of the "Guardian" has perceived thematic parallels with Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" (1939). Many critics have also suggested that the film derives in part from A. E. van Vogt's "The Voyage of the Space Beagle" (1950), particularly its stories "The Black Destroyer", in which a cat-like alien infiltrates the ship and hunts the crew; and "Discord in Scarlet", in which an alien implants parasitic eggs inside crew members which then hatch and eat their way out. O'Bannon denies that this was a source of his inspiration for "Alien" story. Van Vogt in fact initiated a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox over the similarities, but Fox settled out of court.


title: Alien (film)

text: Several critics have suggested that the film was inspired by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava's cult classic "Planet of the Vampires" (1965), in both narrative details and visual design. Rick Sanchez of IGN has noted the "striking resemblance" between the two movies, especially in a celebrated sequence in which the crew discovers a ruin containing the skeletal remains of long dead giant beings, and in the design and shots of the ship itself. Cinefantastique also noted the remarkable similarities between these scenes and other minor parallels. Robert Monell, on the DVD Maniacs website, observed that much of the conceptual design and some specific imagery in "Alien" "undoubtedly owes a great debt" to Bava's film. Despite these similarities, O'Bannon and Scott both claimed in a 1979 interview that they had not seen "Planet of the Vampires".


title: Alien (film)

text: Writer David McIntee, as well as reviewers for "PopMatters" and "Den of Geek", have noted similarities to the "Doctor Who" serial "The Ark in Space" (1975), in which an insectoid queen alien lays larvae inside humans which later eat their way out, a life cycle inspired by that of the ichneumon wasp. McIntee also noted similarities between the first half of the film, particularly in early versions of the script, to H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness", "not in storyline, but in dread-building mystery", and calls the finished film "the best Lovecraftian movie ever made, without being a Lovecraft adaptation", due to its similarities in tone and atmosphere to Lovecraft's works. In 2009, O'Bannon said the film was "strongly influenced, tone-wise, by Lovecraft, and one of the things it proved is that you can't adapt Lovecraft effectively without an extremely strong visual style ... What you need is a cinematic equivalent of Lovecraft's prose." H. R. Giger has said he liked O'Bannon's initial "Alien" storyline "because I found it was in the vein of Lovecraft, one of my greatest sources of inspiration."


title: Alien (film)

text: Findings from an international audience research project conducted by staff from Aberystwyth University, Northumbria University and University of East Anglia were published in 2016 by Palgrave Macmillan as "Alien Audiences: Remembering and Evaluating a Classic Movie". 1,125 people were surveyed about their memories and opinions of the film in order to test some of the theories offered by academics and critics about why the film became so popular and why it has endured for so long as a masterpiece. The study discusses memories of "Alien" in the cinema and on home video from the point of view of everyday audiences, describing how many fans share the film with their children and the shocking impact of the "chestburster" scene, among other things.


title: Alien (film)

text: In a 1980 episode of "Sneak Previews" discussing science fiction films of the 1950s and 1970s, the reviewers were critical of "Alien". Roger Ebert reiterated Gene Siskel's earlier opinion, stating that the film was "basically just an intergalactic haunted house thriller set inside a spaceship." He described it as one of several science fiction pictures that were "real disappointments" compared to "Star Wars", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", and "". However, in both episodes Ebert singled out the early scene of the "Nostromo" crew exploring the alien planet for praise, calling the scene "inspired," said that it showed "real imagination" and claimed that it transcended the rest of the film. Over two decades later, Ebert had revised his opinion of the film, including it on his "Great Movies" list, where he gave it four stars and said "Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original." In 1980, the film was included in "Cinefantastique"s list of the top films of the 1970s while failing to make the magazine's top ten. Frederick S. Clarke, the magazine's editor, wrote that "Alien" was "an exercise in style, refreshingly adult in approach, wickedly grim and perverse, that manages to compensate for a lack of depth in both story and characters." In 1982, John Simon of the "National Review" praised the cast of "Alien", particularly Sigourney Weaver, and the film's visual values. Simon also wrote, "For fanciers of horror, among whose numbers I do not count myself, "Alien" is recommendable, provided they are free from hypocrisy and finicky stomachs".


title: Alien (film)

text: Despite initial mixed reviews, "Alien" has received critical acclaim over the years, particularly for its realism and unique environment, and is cited one of the best films of 1979. It is seen as one of the most influential science-fiction films. It holds rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews and an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "A modern classic, "Alien" blends science fiction, horror and bleak poetry into a seamless whole." Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 89 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". "Halliwell's Film Guide" awarded it a full four stars, describing it as "a classic of suspense and art direction". Alan Jones of "Radio Times" awarded it five stars out of five, describing it as a "revolutionary 'haunted house in space' thrill-ride [...] stunning you with shock after shock", praising the "top-notch acting [...] and imaginative bio-mechanical production design", as well as "Ridley Scott's eye for detail and brilliant way of alternating false scares with genuine jolts, which help to create a seamless blend of gothic horror and harrowing science fiction".


title: Alien (film)

text: Critical interest in the film was re-ignited with the theatrical release of the "Director's Cut" in 2003. Roger Ebert ranked it among "the most influential of modern action pictures" and praised its pacing, atmosphere, and settings:


title: Alien (film)

text: David A. McIntee praises "Alien" as "possibly the definitive combination of horror thriller with science fiction trappings." He notes that it is a horror film first and a science fiction film second, since science fiction normally explores issues of how humanity will develop under other circumstances. "Alien", on the other hand, focuses on the plight of people being attacked by a monster: "It's set on a spaceship in the future, but it's about people trying not to get eaten by a drooling monstrous animal. Worse, it's about them trying not to get raped by said drooling monstrous animal." Along with "Halloween" and "Friday the 13th" (1980), he describes it as a prototype for the slasher film genre: "The reason it's such a good movie, and wowed both the critics, who normally frown on the genre, and the casual cinema-goer, is that it is a distillation of everything that scares us in the movies." He also describes how the film appeals to a variety of audiences: "Fans of Hitchcockian thrillers like it because it's moody and dark. Gorehounds like it for the chest-burster. Science fiction fans love the hard science fiction trappings and hardware. Men love the battle-for-survival element, and women love not being cast as the helpless victim."


title: Alien (film)

text: David Edelstein wrote, ""Alien" remains the key text in the 'body horror' subgenre that flowered (or, depending on your viewpoint, festered) in the seventies, and Giger's designs covered all possible avenues of anxiety. Men traveled through vulva-like openings, got forcibly impregnated, and died giving birth to rampaging gooey vaginas dentate — how's that for future shock? This was truly what David Cronenberg would call 'the new flesh,' a dissolution of the boundaries between man and machine, machine and alien, and man and alien, with a psychosexual invasiveness that has never, thank God, been equaled."


title: Alien (film)

text: In 2008, the American Film Institute ranked "Alien" as the seventh-best film in the science fiction genre as part of "AFI's 10 Top 10", a CBS television special ranking the ten greatest movies in ten classic American film genres. The ranks were based on a poll of over 1,500 film artists, critics, and historians, with "Alien" ranking just above "" (1991) and just below Scott's other science fiction film "Blade Runner" (1982). The same year, "Empire" magazine ranked it 33rd on its list of the 500 greatest movies of all time, based on a poll of 10,200 readers, critics, and members of the film industry. In 2021, Phil Pirrello of Syfy ranked it at number two in the "25 scariest sci-fi movies ever made". He described it as a "groundbreaking science fiction classic" and "a movie so influential that it's hard to think of a time before "Alien"".