Inside the Making of the Alien Suit: How H. R. Giger's Dark Vision Came to Life in Ridley Scott's Film

"Its cre­ation demand­ed the ded­i­cat­ed efforts of an inter­na­tion­al group of pro­fes­sion­als includ­ing spe­cial effects artist Car­lo Ram­bal­di, who'd engi­neered the giant ape head in the 1976 King Kong remake and the aliens in Close Encoun­ters of the Third Kind (and would lat­er work on an even more icon­ic extrater­res­tri­al for E.T.). Charged with design­ing the alien, and even­tu­al­ly with over­see­ing its fab­ri­ca­tion and assem­bly, was the artist H. R. Giger, whose artis­tic sen­si­bil­i­ty occu­pied the inter­sec­tion of organ­ism and machine, Eros and Thanatos."

"In the whole of Alien, the tit­u­lar enti­ty only appears on screen for about three min­utes. That's one rea­son the movie holds up so well against the oth­er crea­ture fea­tures of its era: in glimpses, you nev­er get a chance to reg­is­ter signs of the alien's being an arti­fi­cial con­struc­tion. That's not to say it was a shod­dy piece of work; quite the con­trary, as explained in the new video above from Cin­e­maTyler."

The creature in Alien appears on screen for only about three minutes, which intensifies its menace and mystery. Its creation required an international team of dedicated professionals, including special effects artist Carlo Rambaldi and designer H. R. Giger. Giger oversaw fabrication and assembly and brought a biomechanical aesthetic that fused organism and machine, Eros and Thanatos. That aesthetic permeates the film's visual tone. The movie's dark, dank, dysfunctional environments contrast with sleek sci‑fi norms, lending a grimy realism that makes the alien's hidden threats feel palpably more real in shadowed spaces.

Read at Open Culture