Alien (1979) - 44 mistakes

Continuity: Near the start, when Dallas is at the entrance to Mother, one of the lights to his left, the fifth one down from the ceiling, is not lit. The next shot from inside Mother looking out shows that light is now lit. This exact same thing happens a second time when Ripley is entering mother later in the movie. These two scenes must have been shot at the same time.

Factual error: The menu selection screen on "Mother" has "L. ALLIGNMENT" mis-spelled.

Continuity: When the search party goes into the boneship, they are wearing full space suits, and hoods under their helmets. When Kane's helmet is first cut off, he has no hood on.

Revealing: They use the same shot three times when showing the acid eating throughout the ship. After the try to cut the finger off of the face sucker, acid begins to burnt through the decks. When they have gone down 1 deck and look up the see where the acid came through. This is shown at 0:39:50. They then move down 1 more deck and look up again. The acid is just beginning to burn through. Then they look up again and it is the same shot that was used before. The same hanging acid on the right with the drip on the left. This is at 0:40:20. After the acid has neutralized, they look up at the hole. It is the same shot again at 0:40:57.

Continuity: After the alien leaves Kane's face and the rest of the crew are looking for it in the infirmary, there is one shot that bears re-watching. When Ripley is looking upwards over the prone Kane, you begin to see the dangling tentacles of the alien in the background. At the same time, the collar on her outfit begins to pull downward, un-naturally, until the alien drops onto her shoulder. I believe there was some sort of string or rope fed from below, through her clothing, and was attached to the alien and was pulled to have the creature drop onto her.

Visible crew/equipment: When Kane is struggling on the table shortly before the alien rips through his chest, just before the first patch of blood appears, his T-shirt rides up and something strapped to his chest can be seen. This is some sort of pack containing fake blood that discharges onto his T-shirt. (Best viewed in slow motion.)

Continuity: While the Alien is bursting out of Kane's chest, notice how the blood stain on his shirt changes in size from a large stain to a small one and finally back to a large one.

Continuity: During the alien chest-burster/death of Kane sequence, Kane's shirt switches back and forth from being tucked-in, to being un-tucked throughout the scene.

Visible crew/equipment: Following the chest-burster scene, as the camera pans around the darkened corridors on the Nostromo just prior to Dallas ejecting Kane's body, what appears to be a boom mic is visible only for approximately two seconds to the left of the screen.

Other: When the crew split into two teams of three, Ash gives Ripley a movement sensor, which he tells her detects movement in the direction its pointing. However, when Ripley points the sensor at Brett and Parker (who are both moving at the time) it doesn't detect their movement.

Continuity: When Dallas is in the air vent trying to flush the Alien out of the ship he is carring a flamethrower. Right before his demise, he is told by Lambert to "Get out of there" or something to that effect. In the next shot you see him descending a ladder clearly WITHOUT the flamethrower. However, in the shot after that (when he is lowering himself to the bottom of the ladder, right before the alien gets him) he somehow has the flamethrower again (it even got reslung around his shoulder).

Continuity: When Ripley is in Mother, you can almost read the words on her face as if a small projector is beaming these words on her. The screen she is looking at has 4 lines of green text. The image on her face is 1 line of white text.

Factual error: When Ripley is talking to "mother" by typing, it types "Emergency command overide 100375". "Override" should be spelt with two R's.

Continuity: Disappearing Android Fluid- When Ash has gone crazy and is attacking Ripley, his white android juice/sweat/fluid is flowing from his forehead. After he throws Ripley into the room with the nude pictures on the wall, there is a new shot. In it, Ash is walking into the room, but there is no android fluid on his forehead.

Revealing: while Parker is decapitating Ash with the fire extinguisher his T-shirt is not torn, just after he says "Ash is a goddam robot" his T-shirt is now torn and held together with a safety pin.

Revealing: When Ash attacks Ripley and Parker beats him off, the android gets up again and tackles Parker. Look closely as Parker crawls up against the wall...the body of Ash isn't a body at all...it's half a mannequin that doesn't even have a lower body connected to it, and it is visible when Parker's legs spread and you can see that there is nothing under Ash's torso except a big hole where the lower half should connect.

Continuity: When Lambert deactivates Ash by using a cattleprod, you will notice that she is wearing brown cowboy boots. Minutes later as the Alien goes to wrap its tail round the back of her legs, she is now wearing a sneaker - though you only see the toe cap it is clearly not a brown cowboy boot.

Continuity: When Ripley reconnects the dismembered Ash droid, the switch from dummy to actor is blatantly visible. A few minutes later the android is incinerated, at which point the dummy head has reappeared and the android's left arm has disappeared.

Revealing: When Parker shoots the blowtorch at Ash, Ash's face begins to melt off. When the skin melts off we see, in slo mo, that the dummy they used has a sealed mouth.

Revealing: As Ripley stumbles away from the self-destruct system, The cooling rods are not visible. A few seconds later, in close-up, they can be seen to be above the edge of the compartment they are in.