Alien
Memorable Movie Quotes
Parker: It’s a robot! Ash is a goddamn robot!
Parker: It’s got a great defense mechanism… you don’t dare kill it…
Trivia
The blue laser lights that were used in the alien ship’s egg chamber were borrowed from The Who. The band was testing out the lasers for their stage show in the soundstage next door.
To get Jones the cat to react fearfully to the descending Alien, a German Shepherd was placed in front of him with a screen between the two, so the cat wouldn’t see it at first. The screen was then suddenly removed to make Jones stop advancing and start hissing.
For the chestburster sequence, Sir John Hurt stuck his head, shoulders and arms through a hole in the mess table, linking up with a mechanical torso that was packed with compressed air (to create the forceful exit of the alien) and lots of animal guts (which, according to Sigourney Weaver, caused the set to smell horribly). The rest of the cast were not told that real blood and guts were being used, so as to provoke genuine reactions of shock and disgust. Apparently, this worked so well that Yaphet Kotto went home in complete shock afterwards, locking himself in a room and refusing to talk to his wife for several hours.
The dead facehugger that Ash autopsies was made using fresh shellfish, four oysters, and a sheep kidney to re-create the internal organs. Filming had to be done quickly because the organic material would go bad very fast under the studio lights.
The original cut of this movie ran three hours and twelve minutes.
The slime used on the Alien was K-Y jelly.
The space jockey prop was twenty-six feet tall.
According to Sir Ian Holm, Ash’s head contained spaghetti, cheap caviar, and onion rings.
The first R-rated movie to receive a tie-in series of toys marketed towards children.
There is no dialogue for the first six minutes.
Goofs
When the members of the Nostromo are exiting the ship to leave to explore the Alien ship,the wind is blowing at high speeds, yet when the steam is shown from the lift it is just drifting down rather than being blown away at high speed. other scenes show the high wind blowing.
When trying to abort the countdown, the cancellation instructions Ripley follows with her finger are actually just a French translation of the detonation instructions she followed earlier.
Box Office Info In USA
Budget $11,000,000
Opening Weekend $3,527,881 (USA) (18 January 2004)
Gross $81,900,459
Filming Locations
Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, England, UK (studio)
Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire, England, UK (studio)
Acton Lane Power Station, Acton Lane, London, England, UK (Alien egg chamber)