The Weekly Planet - Alien - Caravan Of Garbage

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

Alien 1979 is a beautiful combination of sci-fi and horror which has rarely been replicated since. With Ridley Scott's direction, HR Giger's unique visual design, unsettling special effects, tight script and a unique exploration of both alien life and artificial intelligence it's no wonder it went to spawn multiple sequels, prequels and spin offs. Probably too many really. Thanks for checking out or Caravan Of Garbage reviewSUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4SUBSCRIBE HERE ►► http://goo.gl/pQ39jNVideo Edition ► https://youtu.be/9qubm5z66pcHelp support the show and get early episodes ► https://bigsandwich.co/Patreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesJames' Twitter ► http://twitter.com/mrsundaymoviesMaso's Twitter ► http://twitter.com/wikipediabrownPatreon ► https://patreon.com/mrsundaymoviesT-Shirts/Merch ► https://www.teepublic.com/stores/mr-sunday-movies The Weekly Planet iTunes ► https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekly-planet/id718158767?mt=2&ign-mpt=uo%3D4 The Weekly Planet Direct Download ► https://play.acast.com/s/theweeklyplanetAmazon Affiliate Link ► https://amzn.to/2nc12P4 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Picture this, you're at a picnic with pals and bam, you suddenly feel unwell. But going to the clinic, not the ideal weekend plan. Well, those days are over. Maple's Virtual Care has got your back with 24-7 access to licensed doctors and nurse practitioners within minutes. Need a diagnosis or prescription?

Sorted right from your phone, right in time for your next picnic. Download the Maple app today and have more summer this summer. Hi, it's Fido. Start the semester with a new phone and a plan full of data without breaking your budget. We have everything you need for an A-plus year.

Come check out our special back-to-school offers. They'll leave you with more cash in your pocket for the stuff you love. So life plans even include data overage protection so you can go all out without going over. Don't wait, our back to school offers are only available for a limited time. Go to Fido.ca or a Fido store near you and save all semester long. Fido.

At your side. Welcome back everybody to another episode of Caravan of Garbage where we're talking about the Alien franchise. Ah, I'm scared already. For equally good movies if you average them out. Because some of them are so good, they make the other ones better. That's actually true, yeah.

You're absolutely right. Yeah, yeah. Don't think about it the other way. No, no, no. Also, you can just not watch the bad ones. That's true. I mean, we're gonna watch the bad ones. I mean, we have to.

We have to. We have to. For scheduling reasons. What if we only to. We have to. We have to. For scheduling reasons. What if we only watched good things on this Mason? That'd be great I'd feel so good. Well then you should be happy because this week we are talking about Alien 1979. I wouldn't feel that sense of dread. Not just because I'm watching an alien movie because I have to watch bad movies you know. Yeah I understand that. Well please give a like for Mason because he has to watch a bad movie sometimes. And you might be like,

oh, a movie from the seventies, yuck, yucko. I wasn't like that. Is that what you think I'm like? I meant the listeners. Oh, okay. But is that what you think I'm like? Kind of, yeah. Okay, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you like some old movies. I like- You like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Yeah, I like that really famous movie that everybody likes. That's right, I'm unique like that. You like Star Wars, 1977, if you can believe that. I do like Star Wars, yeah. I do like Star Wars. Yeah, you like The Rise of Skywalker, that old movie. I love that movie. Two good movies.

And if you average them out, they're both good, right? I don't even know about that. I think the ratio skews the wrong way if you're to do that. Well, look, speaking of Star Wars, Ridley Scott's inspiration in taking this on was the grubbiness from the original Star Wars. Absolutely. Right? 2001, A Space Odyssey for its depictions of outer space and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the horror elements. All the goop and gore and such. Yeah, the reason this got greenlit because 20th Century Fox were like,

We need space and this was sitting there and they went, that one. We need another Star War. You got anything in the can that's ready to go that's a Star War? Yeah, basically this. Yeah, basically this. It is, it's Star Wars but grubby, but not at all. It's Star Wars but everyone's wearing white underpants. Look, that's my first note. You could never start a sci-fi horror movie these days

like this, with everybody waking up in big white underpants. So unflattering. Character actors in big white underpants? It wouldn't happen. I completely agree. They'd have to be young and sexy. Yeah. And then it'd be too sexy.

Yeah, it'd be too sexy and then we'd boo. Yeah. Now people might not know what the story is on the original Alien. People, I'd say the most famous Alien movie is probably Aliens. I mean, that was my favorite as a kid. That's the first one I saw

and because it was on TV the most I imagine. And I remember thinking, I don't want to go back to Alien. Like after I watched this and it's Colonial Marines, you know, they're cool, tough dudes and they're shooting down waves of aliens. I don't want to go back to, oh, one alien. Sounds difficult. Maybe if I was in my big white underpants, I'd find this difficult. But it's, it's, you know, this is the origin of everything. Yeah, exactly. And the year is 2122 and cigarettes are back.

Oh, cigarettes indoors are back. God, they've gotten through the dark ages, i.e. the late 20th, early 21st century, where we couldn't smoke indoors. Yeah, yeah. But then there was a new age our oppressors you know the people revolted against their oppressors were like we want to smoke indoors want everything to smell disgusting breakfast with a cigarette scrambled eggs with a

big cigarette yes please yum yum bit of ash bit of ash in the white of the of the egg oh but actually this movie I want to talk about yeah so yeah originally this was called star beast in Dan O'Brien's original draft. It started as kind of a... And then they were probably like, we say aliens a lot in this script. That's exactly what they did, yeah. It started as kind of a gremlin on a bomber,

like a World War II bomber kind of story and evolved over the years. I like that Outer Limits episode with William Chatham. Exactly, it was co-written also by Ronald Schussett, who came up with the idea of how to get the alien on board. And of course, H.R. Giger. Giger? Giga? I say Giga. Yeah. And of course, H.R. Giga came on board and changed the design elements of it, which informed this whole franchise. This whole franchise and a generation or more of

subsequent just sci-fi and fantasy movies generally. Alien versus Predator movies. I read years ago that apparently at one point he was, they were flying his production sketches, you know, across country and they got stopped at an airport because they were so off putting that the people, the employees of the airport were like, I don't know what's happening here but I'm pretty sure it's a crime. These are all exploding penises.

It's basically what he makes. Yes they are but it's for a movie all right. This is Hollywood stuff you don't understand. You're just working in an airport. Settle down. Incredible design though. I just and not just like visually but you know that you've got the look of the movie the idea behind the incubation cycle of the alien where you get the face aggro puts an egg in you you think you're fine and then an alien bursts out and the alien runs around. You would not think you were fine. They thought he was fine. Does it also release hormones in your body so you're like, no I'm fine, I got this.

Maybe it does. The sound design, this is amazing. Even things like the facehugger apparently originally was supposed to be green, but if you keep it kind of unpainted and flesh coloured, it's way more upsetting. Absolutely. And the inside of everything is like the inside of the alien egg and that face hugger itself They're like real animal and like sea creature innards and all of that. It's just it's disgusting. Yeah, it's a disgusting movie disgusting movie the

The the alien navigator the enormous kind of Alien space. Yeah, I loved the design of the Nostromo, although again, before I'd seen the movie Alien, I had seen the British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf. So the Nostromo does give me big Red Dwarf vibes. I'm like, why don't they just escape on Starbug? Or Blue Midget. Maybe on Blue Midget. They said Blue Midget. I don't like saying that, just to be clear.

Yeah, that engineer room, they were gonna take that out initially though. Like, I don't know, just put an alien in the corridor and Ridley Scott was very much like, no, maybe we should put some thought into this. Pretty much. Yeah, just put an alien in a corridor, okay. Why don't we even make movies?

Movies suck. No, no, I'm an auteur and I say put some thought into it. Because it adds to the scope of the movie. It's a location you only visit once. And you think if you built something like that, you would keep coming back to it but they don't so it feels like there's a bigger story at play here when essentially this is it's a slasher movie basically yeah but it sells it as this sprawling space opera.

I think Gene Siskel at the time when he reviewed this said yeah this is just a haunted house movie but it's in space and it's that that is true. I mean sure yeah I mean movies are just multiple images like flash quickly you can break anything down. But I also think the difference I think is as well you know it is in space sure but it's also like when I think of a slasher movie in a haunted house kind of situation I always think of like arrogant privileged teens you know kind of thing yeah and I like in this version it's just professionals are having the worst day of their lives and they are sick of this.

And you know, the the the conceit of this is that the company they work for, you know, they have a protocol that if they encounter evidence of aliens that the employees have to drop everything, they have to drop everything and they have to investigate, listen to the robot. Exactly. They're all sort of going into this, you know, with the idea that if they encounter some sort of incredible alien technology or species or something like that, the company is going to cut them in on the profits. But you can tell they're like, we're going to put an overtime for this and

they are going to lose those time sheets, man, we are not getting paid for this at all. Absolutely. And we're going to die. Like I know, again, I know they have to go and investigate this, but I reckon I'd go to the room with a big navigator man and be like, this is aliens for sure. Let's leave. Let's get on starbug Send someone else. Yeah, I don't yeah, but just just a great crew I think it's just and not knowing if you didn't know going into this who's the main character, right? You think it's like it's Dallas. No, he's dead Tom Skerritt gets top billing I always forget. Yeah, you know, we always think of this as the Sigourney Weaver the the Ripley show

Yeah, the Ripley franchise becomes. Yeah, yeah, that's true. You know, she's a final girl, essentially. Yeah, that's true. We get John Hurt, we get Yafford Cotto, I love him in this. He blew up like a balloon in that James Bond movie. He sure did, he was cananger. We get Harry Dean Stanton, just rocking the hell out of that look, you know what I mean? This is the iconic kind of dirtbag crew archetype, you know what I mean?

You see it oft replicated, but rarely this effective. Replicated. Wow, very good. And that happens later. They even made the name- I'll save that for later. I'll save that for three movies down the track. We'll be like, this is where I say this movie's replicated.

Yeah, they even made all the names unisex. So basically anybody can be anyone. That's true. And I've got a fascinating bit of trivia concerning that later the character of Ash speaking of fascinating he was added by Walter Hill and David Giller who did uncredited rewrites on this it's a whole kind of schmoss all about who wrote this and at what point but what a strange man I know he's not a man obviously but go back and watching this and observing him. There's so much in him.

So much, a lot of milk and ball bearings. That's what's in him. Spaghetti and caviar and whatever. There's also a scene where he and Ripley have a conversation about and Ripley's like why did you let the alien in etc. You're breaking quarantine procedures and then she leaves and Ian Holmer's ash is like tired of this conversation. He takes a big sip of his glass of milk and it it's like, has he been doing that the whole movie? Has he been doing that the entire journey? And everybody's like, you just drink ball bearings and milk.

What is? What's going on? You on a diet or something? You on a diet of cigarettes and ball bearings and milk? Like the rest of us? Yeah. Yeah. There's a moment where just before they explore this crashed alien vessel,

he does a little pump up a run. Yeah, yeah. And he's a robot. So why is he even, why is he doing that? He's pumping his hydraulics. I guess he is. There's little moments also where you see him flick off the X-ray because you can see the alien

kind of embryo inside John Hurt's chest. And you see him sitting across the table from him. If you look at him, he's just watching him like the entire time, just like. Picture this, you're at him, he's just watching him like the entire time. Just like... have an access to licensed doctors and nurse practitioners within minutes. Need a diagnosis or prescription? Sorted right from your phone, right in time for your next picnic. Download the Maple app today and have more summer this summer. Hi, it's Fido. Start the semester with a new phone and a plan full of data without breaking your budget.

We have everything you need for an A-plus year. Come check out our special back-to-school offers. They'll leave you with more cash in your pocket for the stuff you love. So life plans even include data overage protection so you can go all out without going over. Don't wait. Our back to school offers are only available for a limited time. Go to Fido.ca or a Fido store near you and save all semester long. Fido, at your side. Fido. At your side. Something's going to happen here. Check this out. He's got that look that's he's got that Bill

Bo Baggins look of like, I know a little secret. I know a little secret that's going to happen. And of course, that sequence, like famously, the cast knew, you know, what was going to happen, but not to that extent. It's the false torso and then, you know, the explosion of blood and gore. People, the reactions there, then the explosion of blood and gore. The reactions there are for the most part real. Apparently, Yafford Cotto went home after this incomplete shock and locked himself in his room, refusing to talk to his wife for

several hours. That's the story at least. But everybody, even before that happens, they really just sell the scene. Like the comradery and then the panic of it. It's just it's it's terrifying Like it's genuinely terrifying still even though he just looks like a little little penis puppet man He does look like that. Yes. Yeah, but isn't that scary? Yeah, it's a little covered in blood. You're like what happened? What kind of bloody night did I have? Good Lord. Yeah, should I go to the doctor? No, don't worry about that's fine Probably yeah, and look on the whole I think all of it looks very good. I think there's probably one exception

is the animatronic head of Ash. Like apparently the latex shrunk. So it is, you can tell when it's him and when it's not, but they were just like, well, it's the seventies and we're just gonna keep going. Yeah. Yeah. Can we CGI this? No, that technology doesn't exist.

What do you even mean? Can we what this? Can we smoke a cigarette in a corner? Is that what you're talking about? So the alien itself though, played by Balahi Badao, he was 208 centimeters tall. What's that in the old money? Six foot ten Mason. That's pretty tall. Like very thin and gangly. He was in that suit all day and at the start he had to stand because you can't sit in that because it's got a big tail on it.

So they made a special swing for him to sit in they could put a thing in the tail You think they could but they didn't make the tile Yeah, he completely disappeared after this he moved back to Nigeria to open an art gallery He passed away in 1992 with from complications Related to sickle salamania just I mean, yeah I feel like just like the unsung hero of this yeah, and just being in that and doing that and it is like Just like how John Claude Van Damme was fired from Predator exactly he's the unsung hero of that movie for getting fired because he got out of the way

yeah just amazing and that alien also like it there was sometimes it's a gymnast when he's like hanging up in the ceiling sometimes it's like a puppet head when it's you see like the closeup of the mouth coming out of the mouth two mouths hashtag. Hashtag two mouths. And it's blasted out the airlock at the end. That's pretty cool and pretty standard alien procedure, isn't it? Absolutely. If you're going by all of these movies, except for the third one when it falls into a lava. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I would have also done that. Yeah. I would have done it earlier, probably. Yeah. It would have made the movie easier for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just quickly, Jerry Goldsmith's score is incredible, though. He wasn't because because they took tracks from his movie for the secret passion and just a movie

No one's ever seen Jerry. Yeah, Jerry and it's got some kind of unsettling kind of motifs Which they they fed into this. Okay, so a lot of school that people love from this is not the stuff that he loves Okay, which is kind of an interesting kind of you know, it's like well done on your work I don't understand why someone would take some musical tracks from that movie about psychosexual, some sort of psychosexual lunacy and put it in this movie, this normal alien movie. Absolutely.

Speaking of normal, are you familiar with egg morphing? Well, depending on the version that you watch, because there's like director's cuts and whatever. Oh yeah. Ridley Scott's director's like directors cuts and whatever. Oh, yeah Ridley Scott's director's cut is shorter than this. It is so yeah, add some stuff. A rare turn. Absolutely add some stuff took out some stuff Let's put in some of that stuff we took out because it didn't work. Let's make our directors cut longer Good call Ridley Scott shorter. Yeah, absolutely. So um, there's a moment when Ripley's escaping, you know She's running through everything. She's eggscaping. She's eggscaping and she comes across Dallas who looks like he's being kind of formed into an alien facehugger egg.

Right, okay. This isn't in the original version but it was kind of floated around. Oh, it's implied that you get reverse engineered back into a facehugger? Basically the idea is, and James Cameron kind of threw this out in the next movie because it wasn't official at the time, that it's not a Queen scenario. An alien that replicates by taking people and turning them into eggs and then they create more eggs. But the official-ish canon-ish because it's probably both but there's you know there's people dispute this is that it's both. So if one of these gets out on its own it can

make an egg to make a queen or there's just a queen just laying lots of eggs. So you can have it whatever way you want. Slay queen. That's right but you can't have it neither it has to be won. Anyways it's time for oh you love this segment. Is it thoughts and prizes? What? Okay alright I do love it. What did you say? I love thoughts and prizes. What are you talking about? What is that? This is his twist in the tale. Twist? He thinks he thinks we don't remember I don't know what's happening. I was talking about Olivia. Oh alien trivia. Okay. Are you okay? You okay? I mean no, but I've never been okay

based on based on concept art the derelict ship in this would have appeared in Neil Blomkamp's version of alien So for a time Eve course was doing alien 5 slash alien 3 Which gets rid of alien 3 and 4 and becomes the new alien 3 Camp's version of Alien. For a time Eve of course was doing Alien 5 slash Alien 3, which gets rid of Alien 3 and 4 and becomes the new Alien 3. It was the Terminated Dark Fate of its day that never got made. That's what they were always calling it. That's what Jane Siskell called it. That's right. This is just the Terminated Dark Fate of its day. Except it didn't get made. Also I think

I'm dead now? I don't know. Also concerning that ship, there's no real official backstory. Like the alien canon is, I think it's mostly everything is real unless it's contradicted in the movies. Right. Also like in either Dark Horse comics or- Yeah, yeah. It all counts unless it doesn't. Unless you find a thing that says it doesn't. Yeah. But that ship though does feature in Alien River of Pain. It's in Alien Isolation and a bunch of like non-canon appearances, but we still don't know officially like what is the deal there.

Like we saw what happened in Prometheus, but that's a different ship to this ship. Oh yeah, sure. And whose fault is that? I don't know, probably Damon Lindelof. Copywriter Barbara Gips came up with the famed tagline, in space, no one can hear you scream, but I can sing.

That's cool. That is cool. Did you get anything for that or? No. Just a note in this YouTube video? Great. That's right. You're welcome. She probably got $19 in 1978. She's probably part of that elite club with, you know,

the person who came up with the Nike swoosh and got 50 bucks or whatever, you know? Exactly, yeah. All those other ones, the person who invented the chicken nugget. Yeah, yeah. All those other ones, the person who invented the chicken nugget. Yeah, yeah. Here's something fascinating which people would not take well these days. The character of Lambert is trans.

So in the movie Aliens, the follow up to this, her profile reads, subject is despen corvette at birth, male to female. That's right, yeah. So far no indication of suppressed trauma related to gender alteration. I think that's fascinating. This was something they added that long ago and people didn't notice and don't care. Whereas I feel like if it was now, not everybody,

a lot of people would be crying. They would be crying. They would be frothing and crying. Dallas's bio in Aliens also reads, Single and ready to mingle. It is the 70s or the 2130s. Whatever it is, yeah. That and former employers are the Tyrell Corporation.

That's from Blade Runner. That's right. This is the Blade Runner universe also. Like Soldier. Like Soldier. The Soldier universe. Kurt Russell Soldier universe. And sometimes the Predator universe, but the Alien versus Predator movies are in a different universe.

Okay. Now, of course, because Ridley Scott directed Blade Runner. I was going to say, did he ask the guy who directed Blade Runner? But it was him. Yeah, he did. Yeah, great. Box office for this, on a budget of $11 million, it got a bit of a boost after Ridley Scott storyboarded the whole thing and they went, oh, okay, you know, he knows what he's doing, it seems.

And then they reduced the budget when they saw the HR Giga sketches again. They're like, I don't know. Gross. We're gonna need money for lawyers, I think. Yeah, I'd had a return of $184.7 dollars. That's not bad you just basically for something like this It's a basically an R rated movie in space and then it spawned a trillion imitators the YouTube channel bad movie Bible Oh, yeah has a couple of videos on all the alien

Sort of homages and ripoffs from throughout the world throughout the 80s and 90s fascinating We've got a couple of videos, don't we, on our channel also? We've got a couple of videos. Yeah, you can check them out. Oh, we have done the Alien vs Predator movies, if you are interested, but listen, forget that. We're gonna be talking aliens next week.

But if you do wanna see that earlier, you can actually head over to BigSandwich.co, where for $9 a month, you can support us. That's right. Help keep this sponsorship free. It is a ramshackle spaceship floating through the worldwide galaxy internet.

True. There we do a comic book club. We've got something very special and aliens related going up there. Very special. We do movie commentaries. I think we have done one on Alien versus Predator maybe. Yeah, probably.

Maybe. We are doing Prometheus though. That is coming up. Terrific. And we do video game let's plays. I'm hoping to cover Alien Colonial Marines. Oh yes. Yeah. The one that nobody likes?

No, I'm working my way through it and boy it's uh... You like it? Yeah, I love it. That's great. It's really good. Sounds like you don't love it. I don't love it actually. That's all exclusive at BigSandwich.co.

But if you don't want something else from us, we have a podcast called The Weekly Planet where we talk movies and comics and TV shows that comes out every Monday. Yeah, we cover some alien stuff. We talk about Red Dwarf every second week. That's right. And we're going to be covering a new alien movie when that comes out very soon. Alien. Alien, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are they going to do with the continuity this time? We don't know.

No. It'll be a blend of alien and aliens though, I'd say. Yeah. Do you think we'll get old man Guy Pearce again? Oh, I'm so old. I'm young now. This is the past what happened to me, but I'm old It's probably cuz I didn't believe in the magic of Christmas It taking a hard left turn in this yeah, yeah, I'm gonna have December. So what are you know? No, it's not. I don't know All right. Thanks everybody. Grab that Jimmy guys. We'll see you next week. And thank you to Lawrence for the edits. Thank you Lawrence