10 Brilliant Practical Effects from Alien (1979)

Brillante análisis. Muy digno de una cátedra de doctorado. GRACIAS...!!!

Very nice video! I thank you so much !
I'm from Italy and i watched the movie in 1979 in a small village my family and I were used to go for summer holidays. I was just ten years old and I was attracted by the poster of the film and by the (Italian)tagline: "Il film shock dell'anno".
Me and a little friend of mine were always hanging around together all the time and we didn't have any money, but I knew for some time that the theatre had an emergency exit ajar(maybe faulty). So we decided to enter the theatre from there, and we did it.
And it was really shocking!
Particularly for two ten years old kids like us.
I remember that I couldn't stay alone at home or in a room for days... Maybe weeks. I was terrified!
That's how I approached what immediately became one of my favourites movies ever.
I hope to not have been too boring with this long story, but I just needed to tell it. 😊🛸🖤🎶

I always thought the cat Jonsi is the only friend of Alien.😂

You forgot to mention Carlo Rambaldi engineered the puppetry of the Alien head with the working inner-jaw mechanism. And of course, with copious amounts of KY Jelly

I always thinks the creatures mouth looks like a vagina with clitoris and pussy lips... is that it?

My fav film too....cheers.

Simon Deering (God bless) did some great modelmaking on this movie, for example the crashed spaceship at the beginning.

Excellent work on this video. Thank You.

Great film one of my all time faves. Still unbeaten 2023!

No CGI.. just art

My fiancé is not a fan of scifi and usually totally dislikes horror movies. Therefor it took me a lot of convincing to make her watch it with me. After watching it she said: "This movie....it's...a piece of art. It's beautiful, despite being creepy and ugly at the same time. It has some many layers, so many themes..." And so finally, she understood that scifi and horror isn't automatically trash made for pure entertainment, but can be so much more. Alien has this power...

CGI destroyed the realism created by actual models.

swear to God, the practical effects look a lot more realistic than CG

A great thing about practical effects is that the actors are seeing it, and can act accordingly.

An EXCELLENT video in every respect! Thank you so much.. The film truly is a cinematic masterpiece and it's artistic and cultural influences are simply incalcuble!

I was sent to see 'Alien' the second day it was out, as I was a toy designer and sci fi toys were beginning to rage. Especially after ALL the toy manufactorers foolishly turned down the licensing for 'Star Wars'. All that is except 'Kenner', who had the vision to eat up virtually all the important categories: action figures, play sets, etc.

I previously tried to talk my company into getting 'Star Wars' toy licensing, as the 20th Century license promo looked gorgeous and totally unique.
But I was firmy told, " Science Fictioni is a dead toy category and you cant give it away." Yeah....right!

Hard working days of movie production.

Great vid and channel, love finding channels like this.

It's too bad we had to wait until 2012 for Jennifer Lawrence to show us the first female action hero.

Nice to see the worst editing/effects cut in history did not feature, when it cuts from the Ash real head to the fake head.

Did you record the audio down a well?

2001 a space Odyssee has the best Effects in the movie history!

l'epoque où ils avaient de grandes idées...c'est plus le cas

Wonderful analysis! I always thought there was something mysteriously frightening about just the name "Nostromo" itself.

Enjoyed this video, but your audio narration is really echo-ee; I suggest you use a lav mic or at least run your audio through the lines of FCPX voice isolation.

Chicken parts.

It’s always chicken parts.

Awesome video. I’ll never stop loving this film.

Imagine if ALIEN was shown in theaters in the early heyday of the campy SiFi films of the 1950s.

In space no one can smell your farts.

Saw that movie upons its release at age 16. Still amazing to this day at age 60….

Greatest Ever! #2 & #3 going to '82 The Thing & '86 ALIENS, though I like '88? The Blob too#

Here's my problem with alien: the chest burster bursts out of Kane's chest and scuttles off, and within hours is larger than an adult male. How? Where did the matter to create its body come from? What did it consume in order to grow so large so quickly? It either had to expand its original mass to that of a large human, meaning it would have the density of a marshmallow, or it had to find protein to create new body mass.

you can always learn something new and interesting about the old classics. but not about the endless series of multi-million dollar movie failures in the last 10-15 years. the magic has definitely left hollywood.

My wife was pregnant with our son when we went to see the film…

I never realized how incredible this movie was until doing acid one day than once fully grounded and back to reality was driven to a friends house where we watched it perfect ending to the day. I was stunned once I saw how much more artistic it was than I ever knew about

How come Kathleen Kennedy hasn't gender flipped Ripley yet?

Excellent coverage of the mechanics of good film making. Thanks!
I was lucky. I only learned of the film on the day it opened in our local small town theater. All I could find out was that it was "science fiction". I am not necessarily a horror fan but love my sci-fi. However.... this film scared the water out of me. I screamed out loud in the theater when the chest burster did his thing. Did not do that again for 30 years during my first viewing of 28 Days Later. Anyways, Starlog magazine had a "full frontal" view of the alien on the cover the following month. THAT gave me "wake up screaming in the night" nightmares for weeks afterward. Fortunately, I like my nightmares. Lucky me.

I beg to argue that John Carpenters The Thing is the greatest Sci-Fi Horror ever made.

No.8 'The Perfect....' ok ok so I initially misread it.

ALIEN is my favorite movie of all time. Grew up watching godzilla, creature feature, ultraman and all of the old classics. Never been more terrified and captivated at the same time

How did you miss the acid blood ??? I want to see how the acid blood is done.

Honestly my favourite effects are the strobe lights during the self destruct sequence, combined with mothers droning voice and the alarms the whole sequence is super moody

Bilbo Baggins in space.

CGI sucks compared to old school FX

Speaking of practical effects, I loved all the "tech." The switches, the displays, the control panels. I understand they took some scrap from some old aircraft to enhance the realism. One of my favorite pieces of tech is the ridiculous self-destruct mechanism. So ingenious. :-)

This is also my favorite movie. Simply put...It is brilliant!