When Kane is in the egg pit on the alien ship and shines his light on one of the eggs, the shape we see moving inside is in fact the hands of director Ridley Scott clad in rubber gloves.
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In regards to the self destruct mechanisim of the Nostromo, It is said that the time from the setting to detonation will be 10 minutes. This is also confirmed by the voice of "Mother" who says, right after Ripley initiates the sequence, that the detonation will take place in "T-Minus 10 minutes" However, in the next shot you see one of the monitors which shows a countdown with 10 minutes and an extra 30+ seconds on it. See more...
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Directed by Ridley Scott, starring John Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt (add more)
When Kane is in the egg pit on the alien ship and shines his light on one of the eggs, the shape we see moving inside is in fact the hands of director Ridley Scott clad in rubber gloves.
Jon Finch was originally cast to play the part of Kane, but had to drop out on the first day of filming due to a severe attack of diabetes.
Originally, director Ridley Scott wanted "Alien" to have a much darker ending. His intention was to have the alien get back on board the shuttle, rip Ripley's head off and then calmly sit down in her chair and record the final transmission, speaking in her voice. The producers understandably found this a little too extreme, so Scott tried changing it to having Ripley go to sleep as normal only for the camera to pull back out of the airlock's window and reveal an alien egg, in the process of hatching, attached to the outside of the shuttle (after the "Brett/Dallas egg mutation" scene was deleted, this also had to go).
Originally the design for the alien called for it to have pulsing brains in its head (the idea being so we could see the creature 'thinking' while it moved around). The effects department accomplished this by having live maggots placed underneath the transparent dome on the head. Unfortunately the maggots refused to wriggle and move around on command, so the effects dept. doused them with LSD right before the cameras started rolling. Sadly the idea was later scrapped.
For the wide shots where we see Kane and Co. walking around outside the Nostromo, Ridley Scott used children (two of which were his own) in special child sized space suits so the sets would appear bigger in comparison to the people on screen. He used the same tactic again when they discover the fossilised space jockey on the alien ship.
You may also like: Aliens | Alien Resurrection | Alien 3 | Alien Vs. Predator | Star Wars
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