Death and the Maiden - the little HR Giger Page

"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