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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Before Lambert is killed, the alien twists its tendrils around her leg, and we see that she has sneakers on. However, when Ripley notices Lambert's dead body (hanging?) she is barefoot. [An editing, rather than pure continuity mistake, as the rest of the scene was cut. According to the novelization, Lambert was actually intended to be shown completely naked and sexually ravaged. Director Ridley Scott had toyed with the idea of creating the illusion of the Alien having raped her before her death. He thought better of it and cut the scene. Still a mistake, but there's why.] 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 | Avatar | Alien 3 | Alien Vs. Predator | Alien Resurrection
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