Alien (1979): how did a failed script become a horror classic?

Alien (1979), starring Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt and John Hurt, began with a writer's frustration in the early 1970s and became, in my view, one of the best horror movies of all time. It isn't only a perfect blend of science fiction and horror. It's one of the best movies I have ever seen.

Here is how the first Alien came together, nearly 55 years after its story began, followed by why I think it works so well even though it lacks the things I usually value most in a film.

Dan O'Bannon's Dark Star left him wanting a more real science fiction movie

The story begins with writer Dan O'Bannon in 1970. O'Bannon was a science fiction writer who had started work on Dark Star, a science fiction dark comedy, with director John Carpenter, who went on to direct Halloween in 1978 and The Thing in 1982. Dark Star wasn't a serious science fiction movie. Its alien was a beach ball, spray painted, with rubber claws attached.

That experience left O'Bannon wanting to make science fiction that felt more real. He began a screenplay titled Memory, about a crew of astronauts whose voyage is interrupted by a signal from a mysterious planet. The crew would investigate the planet, and their ship would break down. That premise clearly ended up inspiring the opening of what would become the first Alien movie.

Jodorowsky's Dune, H.R. Giger and Ronald Shusett reshaped the Alien script

Memory wasn't the only thing that fed into Alien. In 1975, Alejandro Jodorowsky was working on his adaptation of Dune, and O'Bannon accepted an offer to work on the project, which took him to Paris for six months. The project fell through, and Jodorowsky never made his Dune movie.

While working on it, though, O'Bannon met H.R. Giger, a science fiction artist whose work was very disturbing. That artwork inspired O'Bannon to revisit his Memory script with another writer, Ronald Shusett. Shusett suggested a different direction: gremlins invading a B17 bomber during World War II, with the second half of the story set on a spaceship. The project was titled Starbeast, but neither writer loved the name, and they eventually settled on the simple title Alien.

One night during the writing, it was said, Shusett came up with the idea that one of the crew could be implanted with an alien embryo that would burst out of him. He saw it as a plot device that would get the alien aboard the ship. O'Bannon loved it, and it became the central premise of his script from then on.

O'Bannon said he stole Alien from everybody, and its influences show

O'Bannon famously said he didn't steal Alien from anybody; he stole it from everybody. Alien has countless influences. The Thing from Another World (1951) inspired the idea of a crew pursued by an alien inside an enclosed, claustrophobic space. Forbidden Planet (1956) inspired the idea of a ship that doesn't want to land, with the crew killed by an alien for defying that warning.

Planet of the Vampires (1965) inspired a crew discovering a giant skeleton and investigating it. Any Alien fan can see how each of these fed the film. All O'Bannon had to do was stitch the ideas into a single coherent story, and Giger's artwork was also a strong influence on the screenplay.

Why the 1970s were ready for science fiction that was truly horror

The 1970s were an interesting time for science fiction and horror. The 1950s had plenty of science fiction and horror movies, but they often reflected anxieties about the Cold War, the atomic age and rapid advances in technology. The 1970s had plenty of films about space exploration, but there was a lot of optimism in them.

The decade also had many horror movies, usually slashers built around a single killer terrorizing a group of people. But it had been a while since science fiction truly meant horror. O'Bannon pitched his script to 20th Century Fox as Jaws in space. Fox liked it and came up with the idea of an android character who would turn on the humans. O'Bannon didn't love that idea, but it stayed in.

Even so, the script sat on the shelf for years, because devoting that kind of money to a science fiction movie didn't seem plausible. That changed in 1977, when Star Wars was released. Science fiction was suddenly the buzz, and Fox went looking through its scripts for another science fiction movie. It had only one available: Alien. Production got underway in 1977 on a budget of $4.2 million, roughly $22.2 million in 2025 terms.

How Ridley Scott, director of The Duellists, landed Alien

O'Bannon assumed he would direct, but Fox wanted someone new. Peter Yates, John Boorman, Jack Clayton, Robert Aldrich, Robert Altman and even Steven Spielberg were considered. Shusett and O'Bannon weren't thrilled with these picks. They feared those directors wouldn't take the horror seriously and would treat it as a simple monster movie.

Later that year, the team saw The Duellists, the debut film from Ridley Scott. Fox offered Scott the job, and he quickly accepted. Scott drew storyboards inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars, but with a horror twist. His approach to the film was a science fiction version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Alien's crew was written as unisex, and the cast skewed older

Casting began in 1978. The most interesting part is that none of the characters had a specified gender. Each of the seven crew members of the Nostromo was written as unisex.

The only mildly unusual thing was that the characters were older than in most horror films. The eventual cast was mostly in their 40s and 50s. The youngest actor was Sigourney Weaver, aged 28, who made her film debut with Alien.

Shepperton sets, miniatures and the chest burster scene

Principal photography began in July 1978 and took roughly 14 weeks at Shepperton Studios. The shoot wasn't long because of budget constraints, and Fox wanted the movie finished on time.

One of the most notable parts of the production was its practical effects. Because the whole movie takes place on a spaceship or an alien planet, entire sets had to be built. A gigantic Nostromo set let the actors feel like they were truly aboard the ship, and the same goes for the alien ship on the planet. Miniatures were used too, especially for wide shots of the Nostromo, and those shots give the movie its scale.

The most impressive work went into the creature itself. The face hugger and the alien had a tremendous amount of detail. The alien was a suit worn by an actor, yet a clear wide shot of it doesn't come until the end. Scott took the Jaws approach of showing as little of the alien as possible, often in close ups that show off that detail.

The most famous behind the scenes story is the chest burster scene. The actors didn't know the chest burster would spray blood everywhere, so when it happened their surprise was genuine. The scene was filmed in one take, and that take is the one in the final cut.

Ridley Scott's fourth act and the cuts that shaped the final film

The ending was originally going to be the Nostromo's destruction: Ripley escapes, blows up the ship, and the movie ends. Scott famously came up with a fourth act in which Ripley fights the alien one last time, in large part creating the trope that the monster is only defeated when you see it defeated on screen. Scott negotiated with Fox for it, and the studio agreed. He initially wanted Ripley to die at the hands of the alien in the shuttle, but Fox rejected that, wanting the alien defeated at the end.

Post production lasted roughly 20 weeks. Jerry Goldsmith scored the film, and his iconic score would dominate the franchise for movies to come. The first cut ran three hours. Fox didn't like that, so a lot was removed. One of the most famous deleted scenes has Ripley finding Dallas slowly turning into an alien egg. As terrifying as it is, it was cut because it ruined the pacing of the ending.

Production concluded in January 1979, and Alien was released on May 24, 1979. It was a success for Fox: on a final budget of about $11 million, it grossed about $79 million in its original release.

Alien's characters work as "truck drivers in space"

Alien is an unusual film for me to review. It's the first horror movie I've reviewed, and unlike its sequels, it is without question a horror movie. It also doesn't have deep character work. I usually stress the importance of character arcs and the themes carried through characters, and Alien has neither. There's also no main character: not until two thirds of the way through do we realize Ripley is the final girl.

But no arcs and no single protagonist doesn't mean the characters aren't well realized. What the movie does so well is make them feel like ordinary people. They're on a spaceship landing on an alien planet, yet they couldn't feel more ordinary. The famous description of these characters was "truck drivers in space," and the movie pulls it off. Each crew member has a defined role, we understand it, and there's nothing exceptional about them.

Apparently, a handful of moments between the characters were improvised, such as when they're all eating dinner and chatting. That worked. There's something relatable about how they interact that grounds the film. I love that Parker spends most of the movie talking about wanting to go home and get paid. That's maybe the most relatable part. Apart from Ash, who turns out to be a plant from Weyland Yutani, none of them has any clue what's going on, and they always react the way normal people would.

Why having no protagonist and a competent Ripley raises the stakes

I think the lack of a protagonist benefits the movie, because it's about the crew as a whole rather than one person. We aren't rooting for a single survivor; we're rooting for the entire crew, and at times we feel like part of it. We also don't know who will live or die. If we woke up with Ripley and saw everything from her perspective, we might assume she'd survive. Instead, Kane wakes up first and dies first. Dallas gets the most screen time until his death, but he's the third to die. That uncertainty adds stakes missing from other horror movies.

None of these characters are idiots, either. Everyone makes realistic and sometimes even smart decisions, and Ripley turns out to be the smartest member of the crew, which makes it easy to root for her when she's the last one left. One of the most underrated characteristics is competence, and despite being a normal person, Ripley is competent. So while Alien doesn't have arcs and themes, it mastered character in the way it needed, and that's what any great movie does.

Alien's horror feels violating

Beyond the characters, there was nothing like Alien. Science fiction and horror had never gelled the way they do here. More than the novelty, though, it's how unique the horror is. A guy in a mask chasing you with a big knife or a chainsaw is terrifying, but the almost sexual way this movie implements its horror feels violating. That's maybe the best word for it.

A creepy little creature wraps itself around your face, chokes you with its slimy tail, sticks its tongue down your throat, impregnates you, and then an alien bursts from your chest shortly afterwards. The sexual look of the xenomorph only adds to that. The greatest horror movies make you feel something other than horror, and Alien does: it feels violating.

The claustrophobic Nostromo, where no one can hear you scream

Working in tandem with this is the setting. Many have described how claustrophobic the movie feels, and that's without question a big part of it. The Nostromo is the perfect setting for this kind of horror. The ship is big yet claustrophobic at the same time. The characters feel trapped in small spaces, but the ship is big enough that you never know where the alien might be, and all the pipes and wires make it feel like it could hide anywhere.

Space itself feels limiting. I love the wide shots of the Nostromo because, despite how vast space is, it leaves you trapped. The famous tagline is "In space no one can hear you scream," and there's an added horror in that: no matter what you do or where you go, no one can save you. When the alien attacks, nothing can save the crew except escape.

Alien's fear of the unknown, before the prequels

Setting aside the prequels that came 30 years later, both the audience and the characters enter this movie knowing nothing. They walk into a dark spaceship and learn nothing about it. What is the space jockey? Why is there a hole? Why are there so many eggs? The movie never answers, and that makes everything feel eerie.

The alien's progression is full of unknowns too. What is the face hugger doing on Kane's face? Why does it suddenly die? Where did the little alien go? How did it grow so big so quickly? What will it do to you: eat you, capture you? We don't know, and that suits the violating nature of the film. When you don't know what's coming, you can only use your imagination, and your imagination always thinks of the worst. These elements work together in a way very few other Alien movies manage.

Tension is what Alien masters most

Impressive as all that is, what Alien masters more than anything is tension. Even the most mundane parts feel tense in a way that's hard to describe, and once the crew is back on the ship, every scene keeps up the suspense. When the face hugger falls off Kane's face and dies, the movie could easily have had the characters walk in and find it dead on the floor. Instead, it drags the scene out for an extra minute so you fear where the face hugger went.

None of it feels cheap. There's no horror baiting here; each scene has a moment of tension and a payoff. Even an apparent misdirection, like the crew finding Jonesy the cat, leads to the first reveal of the alien in its final form, which is a terrifying scene. The best way to describe Alien is that it never lets you breathe. From beginning to end you are in a constant state of suspense, and that is what makes it one of the best horror movies of all time.