The "chestburster" in Alien

Anniversaries can be sobering events when coming to terms with one's own aging. It has been 30 years since Ridley Scott's Alien first appeared in theaters, but it seems like only yesterday that I was seeing set designs published in Omni and eagerly awaiting the chance to see the movie. The special effects artwork for the crashed ship, the "facehugger" and the alien itself were remarkable for their time.

Today, two things I (you) didn't know about the "chestbuster." First, the design was based on a triptych by the artist Francis Bacon ("Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion). When the work was displayed in 1945...

Patrons and critics alike were unnerved by the sight of the work. Russell describes being shocked by "images so unrelievedly awful that the mind shut with a snap at the sight of them. Their anatomy was half-human, half-animal, and they were confined in a low-ceilinged, windowless and oddly proportioned space. They could bite, probe, and suck, and they had very long eel-like necks, but their functioning in other respects was mysterious. Ears and mouths they had, but two at least of them were sightless."

Secondly, an article in The Guardian this week explains how Ridley Scott was able to get such dramatic responses from his actors when the chestbuster appeared:

Scott famously shot the film in one take with four cameras, and purposely kept the actors in the dark as to what, exactly, they were about to witness. It is safe to assume that none of them were as startled as Veronica Cartwright (playing the Nostromo's navigator), who is shown recoiling in genuine horror from a spray of blood. "What you saw on camera was the real response," recalls co-star Tom Skerritt. "She had no idea what the hell happened. All of a sudden this thing just came up."

Clever.