Science Fiction

There’s a case to be made that the Xenomorph is the greatest movie monster ever conceived. It’s certainly among the most iconic. H.R. Giger, the Swiss artist who designed the title creature of Alien, took inspiration from Francis Bacon and Rolls-Royce, and emerged with a biomechanical killing machine that’s instantly identifiable in silhouette. Cross a tapeworm with a shark, a cockroach, a dinosaur, and a motorcycle, and you’re close to describing the nightmare Giger and director Ridley Scott inflicted on unsuspecting moviegoers in 1979.

A monster so unforgettable sells itself. One look is all it would take to know that you had to see the cursed thing in action. And yet, there’s barely a glimpse of the alien in any of the original advertising for Alien. The beast is completely absent from the posters, and the trailer contains only a borderline-subliminal flash of its earliest larval stage, the face hugger. Unless you subscribed to a select few science fiction fan magazines — the ones boasting some enticing behind-the-scenes images, all part of a final “hard push” to get asses in seats — you were going into Alien blind, completely unprepared for the exact nature of the threat faced by its cast of unlucky galaxy-traversing characters.
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