One of this years FFF special screenings celebrated the film’s Alien 30th anniversary.

Genre: Sci-fi horror thriller

In 1979 I was six years old and could know nothing about it. Now I’d love to travel in time to an Alien’s premiere at a theatre, exactly at the moment when Chestburster breaks out of that chap’s body and flees whipping around its tail. The astonishment and hysterics of the cast are said to be quite genuine. Nobody was warned what was going to happen in that episode. And how must had felt a guy who’d just bought a ticket and relaxed in his theatre seat with his new date? A guy who hadn’t been on the set and maybe seen some of the props there? A guy whose friends had not painted the Alien and other of H.R. Giger’s creatures all over the ceiling of their living room? A guy who’d never played a computer game with an Alien in it? A guy who had never ever heard about someone named Giger? Giger had been chosen as production designer exactly because there was something “disturbing” in his works. Giger is a guy who probably still meditates in a black room and suffers from night terrors all his life. Not just nightmares, but a genetic sleep disorder, when a person has a panic attack in his sleep, but can not wake up and shake it off. His first works are said to have been a part of a therapy. Creators of the movie somehow came across Necronom IV painted in 1976, and decided that this was how the Alien would look. They had to convince the studio’s management really hard, because the design was seen as too ghastly (for a movie the idea of which had been successfully sold the same management as “Texas chainsaw massacre in space”). At the height of the 80’s videoboom I had seen many things. As they say, the guts were hitting the fan. Though I remember that something held me back from watching Alien. I passed on several occasions, before making up my mind. I had seen some fragments and there was something disturbing indeed… And then I suddenly have to admit, that I was probably simply afraid. Of a movie! And you know, there is no other movie of which I can say the same.

Valters Verners

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