Death and the Maiden - the little HR Giger Page

© EVEERETT/TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

ing piqued by a Life magazine pictorial onJean Cocteau's 1946 version of Beauty andthe Beast. In the 1950s, he began workingas a draftsman for the Meissen architecturalfirm, and followed that with a stint in artschool. He soon began to explore hisbizarre imagination on canvas, where hefound success if not fame or fortune."Some people say my paintings show afuture world and maybe they do," Giger hassaid. "But I paint from reality. I put severalthings and ideas together, and perhaps,when I have finished, it could show thefuture. If people want to interpret my workas warnings about too much overpopulation,disease and mechanization in thefuture, then that is up to them. I like tocombine human beings, creatures and biomechanics.And I love to work withbones—they are elemental and functionaland, after all, are part of human beings. Ihave many bones in my home in Zurich,and I study them and use them as models.Some people say my work is often depressingand pessimistic, with the emphasis ondeath, blood, overcrowding, strange beingsand so on, but I don't really think it is.There is hope and a kind of beauty in theresomewhere, if you look for it."Indeed, the artist even refuses to acceptthat his famous alien is evil. "It's easy tofeel that way because [it] kills almost theentire crew," he told Questar magazine."However, I had nothing to do with theplot of the film —it's very violent and quiteugly. You see, I love my creatures. Maybethey do terribly evil things, but they arestill nice to look at. They are elegant,sleek—nice in a strange way, I suppose.What I hate to see in films are unformedthings like slime."hatever the alien's true nature, it isn'tthe result of parental neglect. Gigerworked on every aspect of the alien,from the "face-hugger"—which ejects itselfout of its egg and attaches to the face of aNostromo crewmember before entering hisbody and gestating there —to the "chestburster,"which rips free from its human22 C I N E S C A P E

"womb," to the full-grown creature."The first creature is like a crab sittingin the egg," Giger has said. "I worked as anindustrial designer in Zurich, so whenthey told me what the alien had to do, Icould see the beast in terms of its functions.I designed the face-hugger with atightly coiled tail so it could jump out ofits egg, using the tail as a spring. I gave thefirst one a tail the shape of a spring,because its function commanded that itcould jump out at the face. And also twohands so it could grab a hold of the head."The second [form of the] alien wasborn through the crab," he added, notingthat the chest-burster was inspired by modernIrish expressionist Francis Bacon, who,like Giger, dealt with grisly subjects. "Bacondid a crucifixion in 1945, and there is akind of beast in it that has a head that isonly a mouth. Ridley said he wanted somethinglike that. It was logical. This beast hasto come out, to chew and claw its way outsuddenly, unerringly. I started thinking thatthat long skull ought to have a function,too. I prefer always to have these big longheads for the monster. Every object needsto have a function. So if it has a long head,there's space for a long tongue. And I alsogave his tongue teeth. I thought it was verygood as a filmic device."The alien, in the end, was the film:Alien would succeed or fail based on thecreature. So, like a Hollywood publicist ofyore, Scott decided to keep his unknownstar shrouded in mystery, a decision Gigerembraced. "More often than not, horrorfilms show the monster for much toolong," Giger has said. "And once you haveseen it you can leave the theater. There isno point in watching on. So we decided toshow the monster very briefly, detail bydetail, reserving a full view for the end.Otherwise it may well have been dull."The alien can be accused of almostanything but that. •of a man's chest. The only importantthing is teeth. I tried to doseveral things with the chestburster.At first it had these two littlearms, but they were kind of likefreak arms. Now he's like the longskull of the big alien —a long skullwith teeth and a tail."The big problem was with the[full-grown] monster," he concluded."In the first design, he had bigblack eyes, but somebody said helooked too much like a Hell'sAngel, all in black with the blackgoggles. Then I thought it wouldbe even more frightening if therewere no eyes. [So I] made himblind. So when the camera coniesclose, you see only the holes of theskull. Now that's really frightening.Because even without eyes healways knows exactly where hisvictims are, and he attacks directly,SCARE TACTICS: In the bigger-budgeted sequels, the drooling, squawking creature evolved [opposite].For the bewildered crew of the Nostromo [above], however, the slimy face hugger was scary enoughC I N E S C A P E23