Trivia
These tidbits come from various commentaries, making-of documentaries, and IMDB.
Jon Finch (pictured above) was originally cast as Kane until he inexplicably fell sick and was rushed to a nearby hospital. The doctors discovered he had diabetes.
130 alien eggs were built for the Egg chamber inside the Derelict.
The face of the Alien costume was created from a cast of a real human skull.
The Space Jockey prop was 26 feet tall.
Concept artist Ron Cobb came up with the idea that the Alien should bleed acid. This came about when Dan O'Bannon couldn't find a reason why the Nostromo crew wouldn't just shoot the Alien with a gun.
All the main characters' names were changed by Walter Hill and David Giler when they revised the original script by Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett. The script by O'Bannon and Shusett had a clause indicating that all of the characters are "unisex," meaning they could be cast with male or female actors; however, the two never thought of making Ripley female.
After seeing Ridley Scott's detailed storyboards, Fox doubled the film's budget from $4.2 million to $8.4 million. Scott's work was inspired by Jean "Moebius" Giraud, a famous French comic book artist. The director was also quite fond of the illustrated fantasy/sci-fi magazine Heavy Metal.
The dead facehugger that Ash dissects had fresh shellfish, a sheep kidney, and four oysters to substitute for its internal organs.
Much of the dialogue was developed through improvisation.
At the start of shooting, Ridley Scott had to contend with 9 producers being onset at all times, querying the length of time he was taking over each shot.
H.R. Giger's designs were changed several times because of their blatant sexuality.
Veronica Cartwright was originally meant to play Ripley, but the producers chose Sigourney Weaver instead. Cartwright found this out when she was first called in to do some costume tests for the character of Lambert.
Three full-sized Aliens were made: a model and two suits. One of the suits was for the 7 foot tall Masai tribesman Bolaji Badejo, and the other was for a trained stunt man.
The model for the shoot had to be repainted every evening because the slime used on-set removed the acrylic paint from its surface.
The Nostromo's original name was Snark. This was later changed to Leviathan before settling on the spacecraft's final name.
The screen test that bagged Weaver the role of Ripley was her signing off speech aboard the Nostromo's shuttle at the end of the film.
During production, an attempt was made to make the Alien character transparent or at least translucent.
Ridley Scott is reportedly quoted as saying that originally he wanted a much darker ending. He planned on having the Alien bite off Ripley's head in the escape shuttle, sit in her chair, and then start speaking with her voice in a message to Earth. Apparently, 20th Century Fox wasn't too pleased with this.
Walter Hill was supposed to direct the film until he backed out.
An early draft of the script had a male Ripley, making this one of at least three films where Sigourney Weaver played a character originally meant to be a man. The second is The TV Set (2006), and the third is Vantage Point (2008).
"Nostromo" is the title of a Joseph Conrad novel. The name of the escape shuttle is a reference to another book by the author, "Narcissus."
Dallas hunting down the Alien in the air ducts as well as the intercut footage of the crew backing him up was shot in a single day.
Airplane graveyards supplied a lot of parts for the Nostromo's interior sets.
The Chestburster scene was shot in one take with four cameras.
The character of Ash wasn't in Dan O'Bannon's original script. Walter Hill and David Giler added him and made the science officer an android.
No dialogue occurs for the first 6 minutes.
During the undocking sequence for the Nostromo, the vector graphics that appear on Ripley's screen were also used for the aircar launch sequence in Blade Runner (1982).
For the segment where the crew wakes up from hypersleep, Sigourney Weaver and Veronica Cartwright had to wear white surgical tape over their nipples to not offend certain countries.
Ridley Scott's 2003 Director's Cut largely came about when over 100 boxes of footage of his 1979 film were discovered in a London vault.

Spider wasps inspired the Alien's characteristic of laying eggs in a person's chest that later burst out. These insects are said to plant their eggs "in the abdomen of spiders." This image greatly disturbed Dan O'Bannon so he used it to write the film's story. But spider wasps (pompilidae) lay eggs on their prey, not inside them, after which the wasp maggots simply snack on the sting-paralyzed spiders. O'Bannon may have been thinking of either ichneumon wasps or braconid wasps instead. The ichneumon drills a single egg into a wood-boring beetle larva while braconids inject eggs inside certain caterpillars. Both result in fatal hatch-outs more similar to O'Bannon's Alien.
To simulate the thrust of the Nostromo's engines, Ridley Scott had his crew shake and wobble the seats of the actors.
The rumor that the cast, except for John Hurt, did not know what would happen during the Chestburster scene is partially true. The scene had been explained for them, but they did not know specifics. For instance, Veronica Cartwright did not expect to be sprayed with blood.
"Star Beast" was the movie's original title.
Carlo Rambaldi constructed three Alien heads based on H.R. Giger's designs: two mechanical models for use in various close-up work and an elementary model for medium-to-long shots. Rambaldi was not available to operate his creations on the actual shoot, but he did spend two weeks in the UK as a technical advisor to Ridley Scott and his crew.
Ash's blood is colored water. Milk wasn't used since it would've gone bad extremely quickly under the hot studio lights. Milk was used though for the close-up of his innards along with pasta and glass marbles.
Jerry Goldsmith was very upset over the changes made to his score by Ridley Scott and his editor Terry Rawlings. Scott felt that Goldsmith's first attempt at the score was far too lush and needed to be a bit more minimalist. Even then, Goldsmith was horrified to discover that his amended score had been dropped in places by Rawlings who inserted segments from Goldsmith's score to Freud (1962) instead. Rawlings had initially used these as a temp track only, but they ended up being preferred to Goldsmith's revised work. Many other crucial cues were either rescored, ill-placed, or deleted altogether, and the intended end title was replaced with Howard Hanson's "Symphony No. 2 (Romantic)". The original intended score was featured as an isolated track on the now out-of-print 20th Anniversary DVD.
According to Ridley Scott, the mechanism used to make the Alien Egg open was so strong that it could tear off a hand.
In order to get Jones, the cat, to hiss at the descending Alien behind Brett, a German Shepherd was placed in front of him with a screen between the two so the cat wouldn't see it at first. Once Jones walked over, the screen was suddenly removed to make the cat stop and start hissing.
H.R. Giger's initial designs for the Facehugger were held by US Customs who were alarmed at what they saw. Writer Dan O'Bannon had to go to LAX to explain that they were designs for a horror movie.
The words "Weylan Yutani" (the name of the company) appear in green at the bottom of one of the computer screens during the landing sequence.
The genesis of the film arose out of Dan O'Bannon's dissatisfaction with his first feature, Dark Star (1974), which John Carpenter directed. Because of that film's severe low budget, the Alien was literally a beach ball. For his second attempt, O'Bannon wanted to craft an altogether more convincing specimen. The goofiness of Dark Star also led him toward an intense horror movie.
The adult-sized creature is never filmed directly facing the camera due to the humanoid features of its face. Ridley Scott, determined at all costs to dispel any notion of a man in a rubber suit, filmed the beast in varying close-up angles of its ghastly profile, very rarely capturing the beast in its entirety.
Dan O'Bannon first encountered H.R. Giger's unique style while the two were briefly working on Alejandro Jodorowsky's ill-fated attempt at making Dune.
Ridley Scott was keen to take on the project as the one that he had been previously working on at Paramount, Tristan + Isolde (2006), was stuck in development hell.
The writing partnership between Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett came about when Shusett approached O'Bannon about helping him adapt a Philip K. Dick story. Shuset had acquired the rights to "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," which later became Total Recall (1990). O'Bannon then said he had an idea that he was stuck on about an Alien aboard a spaceship. Shusett agreed to help out, and they tackled the Alien movie first as they felt it would have been the cheaper of the two to make.
The blue laser lights that were used in the Derelict's Egg chamber were borrowed from "The Who." The band was testing out the lasers for their stage show in the soundstage next door.
According to John Hurt, he was considered at the beginning of casting to play Kane, but he had already committed to another film that was set to take place in South Africa so he didn't get the part. However, two separate incidents occurred that got Hurt the role. First was the fact that he was banned from South Africa because the country mistook him for actor John Herd who strongly opposed the Apartied (Hurt opposed to it too but was lucky enough not to get blacklisted) so he couldn't do the other film. Second, the other actor who got the gig became seriously ill and had to pull out. Ridley Scott immediately called Hurt, pitched him the script over a weekend, and Hurt arrived on the set Monday morning with little to no sleep to start filming.
The Nostromo is 800 feet long while the craft she tows is a mile and a half.
The Alien costume included Plasticine and Rolls Royce motor parts.
The screech of the Alien as it bursts from Kane's stomach was actually voiced by animal impersonator Percy Edwards. He was personally requested by director Ridley Scott to do the sound effect, and it was recorded in one take.
The spacesuits worn by Tom Skerritt, John Hurt, and Veronica Cartwright were huge, bulky items lined with nylon that had no outlets for breath or condensation. As the actors were working under hot studio lights in conditions in excess of 100 degrees, they spent most of their time passing out. A nurse had to be on hand at all times to keep supplying them with oxygen. It was only after Ridley Scott's and cinematographer Derek Vanlint's children were used in the suits for long shots in which they passed out too, that some modifications were made to the costumes.
The first day she shot a scene with the cat, Sigourney Weaver's skin started reacting badly. Horrified, the young actress immediately thought she might be allergic to cats, and that it would be easier for the production to recast her instead of trying to find 4 more identical animals. As it transpired, Weaver was reacting to glycerin sprayed on her skin to make her look hot and sweaty.
After the first week of shooting, Dan O'Bannon asked if he could attend the viewing of the dailies, and was somewhat staggered when Gordon Carroll refused him. To get past that, O'Bannon viewed the dailies by standing beside the projectionist while he screened them for everyone else.
For the Chestburster sequence, John Hurt stuck his head, shoulders and arms through a hole in the dinner 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. The rest of the cast were not told that real guts were being used so as to provoke genuine reactions of shock and disgust.
While he was working on the visual effects for this film, Brian Johnson was simultaneously working in the same capacity on Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
In the wide shots of the Space Jockey, Ridley Scott used his two sons to make the creature seem bigger.
For Parker's death, a fiberglass cast of Yaphet Kotto's head was made, and then filled with pigs' brains. The forehead was made of wax so that the Alien's teeth could penetrate it easily. Indeed barbed hooks were fastened to the end of the teeth to make sure it broke the wax surface without any problems.
For the Alien's appearance in the shuttle, the set was built around Bolaji Badejo, giving him an effective hiding place. However, extricating himself from the hiding place proved more difficult than anticipated. The Alien suit tore several times, and, in one instance, the whole tail came off.
A sex scene between Dallas and Ripley was in the script, but it wasn't filmed. You can learn more about it in the Deleted Scenes subsection.
A scene originally cut, but re-inserted for the Director's Cut shows Lambert slapping Ripley in retaliation for Ripley's refusal to let her, Dallas, and Kane back on the ship. According to both Ridley Scott and Veronica Cartwright, every time she went to slap Sigourney Weaver, Sigourney would shy away. After about three or four takes of this, Scott finally told Cartwright, "Not to hold back. Really hit her." Thus, the very real shocked reactions of Weaver, Yaphet Kotto, and Harry Dean Stanton.
The Nostromo was built to then-current NASA specifications for spacecraft.
The decal on the door of the Nostromo is a "checkerboard square," the symbol on Purina's pet food label; it designated Alien Chow.
According to a quote from Veronica Cartwright, in the scene where the Alien's tail wraps around her legs, they are actually Harry Dean Stanton's legs in a shot originally filmed for his death scene. An image of this is in the Bloopers subsection.
The embryonic movements of the Facehugger, prior to jumping out of its Egg, were done by Ridley Scott using rubber gloves on his hands.
In "The Blue Planet" (2001), David Attenborough said the Alien monster was modeled after the Phronima, a creature spotted by submersibles at great depths, but there's little evidence to support this claim. The original Alien design was based on a previous painting by Giger, "Necronom IV," which bears little resemblance to the Phronima. Giger's agent, Bijan Aalam, claims, "He never inspired himself by any animals, terrestrial or marine."
The computer screen displaying Nostromo's orbit around the planet contains a hidden credit to Dr. Brian Wyvill, one of the programmers for the animation. Within the top frame entitled "Deorbital Descent," it's possible to isolate the letters "BLOB," Dr. Brian Wyvill's common nickname.
Ridley Scott did all the hand-held shots himself.
The background sound in the lab scene where Kane has the Facehugger attached is also heard in Deckard's apartment in Blade Runner (1982).
The original cut of the film ran 3 hours and 12 minutes.
The Nostromo's grid-like flooring was achieved using upturned milk crates that were painted over.
Originally, no studio wanted to make this film. 20th Century Fox had even passed on it. They stated various reasons with most saying it was too bloody. The only interested producer was Roger Corman. It wasn't until Walter Hill came onboard that everything changed. Fox agreed to make the picture as long as the violence was toned down. Later, they still rejected the first cut for being "too bloody."
In an interview for Métal Hurlant, Ridley Scott revealed that to make the action more realistic, the flight deck was wired so that flipping a switch at one console would trigger lights somewhere else. The cast then developed "work routines" for themselves where one would trip a switch, leading another to respond to the changes at his work station and so on.
Despite releasing a new version of the film titled, "Alien: The Director's Cut," Ridley Scott wrote a statement in the film's packaging saying that he still feels the original theatrical cut was his perfect vision of the film. The newer version is titled, "The Director's Cut" for marketing purposes, featuring deleted scenes many fans wanted to see incorporated into the film.
The vapor released from the top of the spacesuit helmets (presumably exhausted air from the breathing apparatus) was actually aerosol sprayed from inside the helmets. In one case, the mechanism broke and started spraying inside the helmet.
A closer look at the Alien Eggs right before the Facehugger stirs inside reveals that slime on the outside is dripping from bottom to top. Ridley Scott did this intentionally by shooting with the camera upside down.
20th Century Fox Studios almost didn't allow the Space Jockey to be in the film. This was because, at the time, props for movies weren't so large.
According to Ian Holm, Ash's head contained spaghetti, cheap caviar, and onion rings.
Yaphet Kotto (Parker) actually picked fights with Bolaji Badejo, the actor inside the Alien suit, in order to help his onscreen hatred of the creature.
Bolaji Badejo beat out Peter Mayhew (famous for Chewbacca) for the part of the Alien.
Copywriter Barbara Gips came up with the famed tagline: "In space, no one can hear you scream."
The plasma that comes pouring out of the escape shuttle's engines was actually just water with strong arc lights around it.
Bolaji Badejo who plays the Alien in the movie was a graphic artist who was discovered at a pub by one of the casting directors. Being a Masai, he was about 7 feet tall with thin arms. Just what they needed to fit into the Alien costume. He was sent for Tai Chi and Mime classes to learn how to slow down his movements. A special swing had to be constructed for him to sit down during filming as he couldn't sit down on a regular chair once he was suited up because of the Alien's tail.
The slime used on the Alien was K-Y jelly.
The incubation of the Alien has also been interpreted as a metaphor for pregnancy, and the Nostromo's computer is named "Mother."
During the opening sequence, as the camera wanders around the corridors of the Nostromo, we can clearly see a Krups coffee grinder mounted to a wall; this is the same model that became the "Mr. Fusion" in Back to the Future (1985).
Many producers have professional "readers" that read and summarize scripts for them. The reader in this case summarized it as "It's like Jaws (1975) but in space."
Roger Dicken, who designed and operated the Facehugger and the Chestburster, had originally wanted the latter to pull itself out of Kane's torso with its own little hands, a sequence he felt would have produced a much more horrifying effect than the gratuitous blood and guts in the release print.
A lawsuit by A.E. van Vogt, claiming plagiarism of his 1939 story "Discord in Scarlet" (which he had also incorporated in the 1950 novel "Voyage of the Space Beagle"), was settled out of court.
Potential directors, who either were considered by the studio or wanted to direct, included Robert Aldrich, Peter Yates, Jack Clayton, Dan O'Bannon, and Walter Hill.
The inside of the Alien Eggs contained real organic material. Director Ridley Scott used cattle hearts and stomachs. The tail of the Facehugger was sheep intestine.
Bill Paterson turned down a part.
When casting the role of Ripley, Ridley Scott invited several women from the production office to watch screen tests, and thus gain a female perspective. The women were unanimously impressed with then-unknown actress Sigourney Weaver, whose screen presence they compared to Jane Fonda's.
Ridley Scott cites three films as influences on his movie: Star Wars (1977) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) for their depiction of outer space, and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) for its treatment of horror.
Shredded condoms were used to create tendons of the beast's ferocious jaws.
Entertainment Weekly voted this as the third scariest film of all time.
Both times the crew is eating (right after they first wake up and before the Chestburster tears out of Kane), if you freeze the frame, you can clearly see the "Weylan Yutani" brand on the can Dallas is drinking from.
The Chestburster scene was considered the second scariest movie moment of all time on Bravo's "The 100 Scariest Movie Moments" (2004).
A green monitor visible behind Ripley while the crew discusses Kane's condition outside the kitchen shows nonsense characters as well as the word "Giler," obviously a nod to producer David Giler.
The literal translations of some of this film's foreign language titles include "Alien: The Eighth Passenger" (Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Canada, Denmark and France) and "Alien: The Uncanny Nature from a Strange World" (West Germany).
Ranked #7 on the American Film Institute's list of the 10 greatest films in the genre "Sci-Fi" in June 2008.
During this production, only H.R. Giger and Bolaji Badejo were permitted to view the rushes of the Alien with Ridley Scott, enabling them to better discuss and refine aspects of the beast's look and movements.
Ridley Scott's first exposure to early Alien (1979) drafts were sent to him by Sanford Lieberson, then head of 20th Century Fox's London headquarters. Lieberson had seen Scott's The Duellists (1977) and was adequately impressed to consider the filmmaker.
Ridley Scott stated that the role of Ripley ultimately came down to Sigourney Weaver or Meryl Streep. The two actresses had been schoolmates at Yale.
In H.R. Giger's original illustrations, the creature has eyes. For the movie, Giger insisted that the creature have no eyes, thus giving the bleak appearance of a cold and emotionless beast.
The Hungarian translation of the title means, "The 8th Passenger is the Death." From then on, all the other Alien movies had titles ending with the word "death." Aliens (1986) became "The Name of the Planet: Death." Alien3 (1992) turned into "Final Solution: Death" while Alien Resurrection (1997) translated as "Reawakens the Death." Furthermore, the Alien is referred to as "death" in the Hungarian title of Alien vs. Predator (2004): "The Death Against the Predator."
For the scene in which the Facehugger attacks, the Egg was upside down above the camera, and the operator thrust it down toward the lens like a hand puppet.
The production designers, in an effort to cut costs while still remaining creative, constructed several of the sets in such a way as to make them usable in more than one scene. A good example of this is the Space Jockey room and the Egg chamber. The sets were built so that the ship's pilot and the revolving disc on which it sat could be removed. Then the empty space was redressed with the Eggs. Combined with a matching matte painting, this created a vast cavern full of Alien spores.
Kay Lenz auditioned for the role of Ripley.
As a child, Veronica Cartwright had appeared in The Birds (1963), opposite Doodles Weaver, Sigourney Weaver's uncle.
The large Space Jockey sculpture was designed and painted by H.R. Giger himself who was disappointed he couldn't put any finishing touches on it by the time filming started. The prop was later burned and destroyed by a vandal the day before it was going to be exhibited at the movie's premiere in Los Angeles. The unfortunate event was covered by local TV stations that evening.
When the movie was broadcast in Israel, its title was changed to "The Eighth Passenger" in Hebrew.
H.R. Giger successfully sued 20th Century Fox 18 years later over his lack of screen credit on Alien Resurrection.