TonyPH

Plot hole: Dr. Tuskin warns that if Regan were to remember the events of her possession it could be so traumatic for her it could lead to suicide, even though Regan's therapy seems to be based almost entirely on what she can remember about the events of her possession.

TonyPH

Trivia: Walter Hill and David Giler's initial story outline given to Cameron as a rough basis to write the script from was written in an amusingly casual and irreverent style, at one point jokingly referring to the space jockey from the first film as "the dental patient." Cameron recalls of their treatment, "I'll never forget this - the outline concluded with the sentence; 'And then some other bullshit happens.'"

TonyPH

Factual error: Father Lamont tears out the Regan doppelganger's heart from where her stomach should be. Even allowing that she's a manifestation of a demon and may not conform to human anatomy, it isn't plausible that Lamont would know to grab for her heart through her abdomen.

TonyPH

Stupidity: I won't begrudge Father Lamont for instinctively grabbing for the first thing in reach to try to smother the box on fire (even if it is a pair of wooden crutches), but you'd think at some point he'd notice that he's just spreading the fire and making it much, much worse, but he keeps at it until the doctor finally returns with the extinguisher.

TonyPH

Trivia: Early marketing research ahead of the film's release showed that a significant number of people mistook 'Aliens' for the original movie 'Alien.' To address this, the studio made sure commercials referred to the film as "Aliens: the new movie" and gave the film a logo visually distinct from the one for 'Alien.' To this day, 'Alien' and 'Aliens' are treated almost as separate brands; merchandise and tie-in media tend to evoke one or the other, rarely both.

TonyPH

Trivia: After first seeing the film, Stanley Kubrick called up Ridley Scott to ask how they did the chestburster scene. Scott not being used to fame at the time and Kubrick being one of his career idols, Scott assumed he was speaking with an imposter playing a prank, and promptly told Kubrick to "fuck off."

TonyPH

Plot hole: The aliens provide coordinates for a place to make a rendezvous with humans but do not specify a time. It's possible they're monitoring and will arrive when they see enough humans gathering at Devil's Tower, but the humans seem to expect the aliens to come more or less exactly when they actually do, somehow.

TonyPH

Trivia: James Cameron, who directed Aliens, said David Fincher was a "bastard" for killing off Hicks and Newt, and he wanted to "wring his neck." Though he said he eventually got over it and he and Fincher became pals.

TonyPH

Trivia: For the landing sequence the crew rigged paint mixers beneath the seats on the bridge set so that they would vibrate to simulate turbulence. One effects supervisor noted wryly that when they turned them on Sigourney Weaver would get "a little smile on her face."

TonyPH

Plot hole: The shuttle "won't take four" crew members. Considering it only has two cryotubes (and hypersleep appears to be necessary for any hope of survival), it doesn't seem to accommodate three people, either. (Admittedly I would still go for it, too, if I were up against a 7-foot-tall acid-blooded alien monster with two sets of jaws, but there doesn't seem to be much difference whether there's three or four people onboard).

TonyPH

Trivia: A few scenes that showcased the crew's casual attitude toward sex and bisexuality were planned at various points, including: a sex scene between Ripley and Dallas after Kane's death; a "post-coital" moment between Dallas and Parker; and a moment in which Ripley speaks intimately with Lambert and finds it odd that Ash hasn't tried to sleep with either of them. This last scene was the only one of these filmed and it, too, was cut in order to make the crew relationships more ambiguous.

TonyPH

Trivia: Despite (or maybe because of) their similar style, a bitter rivalry developed between artists H.R. Giger and Roger Dicken. Giger said Dicken's work looked "terrible, like a dinosaur from Disneyland." Dicken in turn called Giger's designs "repulsive abominations." In response, Giger described Dicken as "an awfully aggressive nut" who was "on the verge of a nervous breakdown." The finished film features both artists' designs: Giger's adult xenomorph, and Dicken's facehugger and chestburster.

TonyPH

Revealing mistake: In a scene near the end, the camera operator appears to bump into Sigourney Weaver from behind, prompting her to momentarily break character. Weaver had been frantically running down a corridor with the camera following closely behind. When she reaches a ladder, the view passes her for a split-second and bounces back a step from an apparent soft collision. Weaver glances back at the camera with a look as if meaning to say, "Are you all right?" but immediately resumes climbing the ladder. (01:39:35)

TonyPH

Question: Is there any particular reason the ghosts are still there after Tangina has declared the place clean, other than these are just the biggest, baddest ghosts on the block? I'm fine with that explanation but I always wondered if there was more to it.

TonyPH

Trivia: When the film opens with the 50s tune "Mr. Sandman" over the soundtrack, it's not just a simple reminder of 'Halloween II', but a signal that this film is continuing from 'Halloween II' rather than its immediate predecessor 'Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers'. As "Mr. Sandman" was the last thing heard before 'Halloween II's closing credits, 'Halloween H20' in effect picks up where 'Halloween II' left off.

TonyPH

Trivia: When Betsy Palmer first read the script her reaction was "What a piece of shit!" But she figured it wouldn't matter because likely few people would see the movie anyway, much less remember it years later. Of course the movie was a big hit and spawned a decades-long franchise, and while she never said publicly whether she'd changed her mind about the film, she did genuinely appreciate everyone who did enjoy it and happily made public appearances to meet with the movie's fans.

TonyPH

Audio problem: On Ceti Alpha V after Chekov urges Captain Terell, "We need to get out of here," we hear Terrell respond with "But the tricorder..." But his lips actually say "But the child..." The line referred to a deleted scene so it was recorded over in post.

TonyPH

Trivia: A working title during preproduction was 'Raiders of the Temple of Death' before it was decided to base the title scheme around Indiana Jones (and of course "Death" was later changed to "Doom").

TonyPH

Question: I always feel like I'm missing something with the scene where Kirk orders the Enterprise to reverse at the beginning of the battle. It confuses the Klingons and leads to a short respite in taking fire, which I would assume was exactly Kirk's intention, but then Kirk himself expresses confusion that the Klingons had stopped firing. What else could Kirk have been trying to do with that action?

TonyPH

Trivia: While understandably spooky, this movie's use of natural skeletons was not outrageous or even that unusual (they were not actually rotting or unsanitary, just made to look that way). Even today natural bones can still be ordered, typically for use in classrooms. Special effects supervisor Craig Reardon has expressed his disgust that the use of skeletons has been used to fuel rumors of a "curse" that he feels make a mockery of the unrelated tragic, untimely deaths of some of the film's actors.

TonyPH