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It's Grown! [36]

"We'll have to use flame-throwers on it"

Dallas

Brett's face imploded

Yep - it's another of the gruesome scenes that I would have been looking forward to drawing. I have a feeling that the older brothers of my friend Niall Farrington must have seen the film, and Niall gleefully passed on some of the choicest bits to me.

brett's face implodes

Not the cranial massage he was expecting

The disgusting method of attack shown here isn't in the novelisation so it's hard to know where else it might have come from but my lovely young mind. The novel reads:

"Something (...) reached downward. It descended in utter silence and conveyed a feeling of enormous power held in check. Fingers spread, clutched, wrapped completely around the engineer's throat and crossed themselves."

Novelisation - Alan Dean Foster

That vast space that Brett is stood in when he's attacked is an amazing set. I wondered why it was so huge and Cathedral-like. I think it actually houses the ship's landing gear and 'feet'. Scott did an amazing job at building this scene, with the clanking chains and backlit falling water. As usual, as we watch it we wonder why we don't get to see more of the terrifying creature? But what we do see sparks the imagination.

Art Notes

Today, you finally get to see what I thought the large ALIEN looked like. Funny eh? Remember, I'd only briefly got to flick through my uncle's Giger book in 1978 and had a quick look at the poster magazine in the large newsagent shop in Dublin city. It appears that I merely remembered a hint of exoskeletal forms, a long head, a forked earwiggy or snakish tongue and a tail. The image on the front of Giger's book has that earwiggy/snake-tongue.

Overall, it's reptilian looking, but the head seems to lend itself more to the shark in JAWS. See the round black shark eyes? I read about those over and over in the JAWS novel that I borrowed from the library. "He's got black eyes - dead eyes chief" - or words to that effect.

Actually, one of Scott's other masterstrokes was to hide the eyes - once again - just as he did with the facehugger and chest-burster. The monster's intentions are secret - you can't read what it'll do - except perhaps: to try and kill you.

A wee break

I'm afraid this'll be the last update until next Wednesday's usual slot. We're off to France tomorrow to bring 6 year old Johnny to the Eiffel Tower and Disneyland. He's been wanting to to see the tower since he was about 3!

Do you think they have a chestburster ride at Disneyland?

Until Wednesday then...