Monster Movie of the Week: Alien 3 (1992)

Alien3 (1992)

Director: David Fincher

Genre: SciFi/Body Horror/Suspense

THE MOVIE

I grew up with the Alien movies. As a small child, I saw Alien on TV and loved it. When I was a little older my uncle took me to see Aliens and it became one of my favorite movies. As a seventeen year old, I was crazy psyched to see Alien3. Early looks at the movie promised that the Aliens would come to earth, the ads promised “three times” everything, and that “the bitch” would be back. I was already conditioned to expect any sequel to be twice as big and spectacular as the last one, much in the same way that Aliens was pumped up balls out version of Alien. However, Alien3 turned out to be a completely different creature than the other two movies. Instead of a hardcore action movie like its predecessor it is a moody and existential suspense movie that killed off most of the characters you came to care about in the previous movie. In fact, it has more in common with Ridley Scott’s movie than with James Cameron’s. For that reason, many people don’t like it; they feel that Alien3 is a step backwards in the series. But you have to admire a movie that is ballsy enough to give you something other than what you want or expect. One of the strengths of the Alien series is that each movie was worked on by a different gifted director with a different take on the material.

In this movie, Ripley often looks as though she is going to break out into "The Emperor's New Clothes."

Alien3 was the first feature of director David Fincher, who went on to make such movies as Fight Club and 7 both of which share a certain grimy visual style with his first movie. Alien3 was an extremely troubled production from the beginning. It had literally gone though a half a dozen distinct stories and over a dozen writers before settling on the final story. An early draft was written by science fiction writer William Gibson and focused on Hicks and Bishop and an alternative reproduction cycle for the Aliens. At one point, another version of the the movie was to be directed by Vincent Ward and to have taken place on a wooden planet on which lived a population of monks. At one point, the monks were going to be dwarves and there were going to have been seven of them. I suspect at some point there may not have been an Alien in the movie at all.

So the final script for Alien3 was distilled from many different sources, apparently by committee. And even the later drafts must have been significantly different, as proved by the teaser trailer that indicated that the movie would be set on Earth. So, Fincher was ultimately hired as an inexperienced director who would likely be easily controlled by the studio and to this day he doesn’t talk about the movie at all. He was the only series director to refuse to do a commentary for the Alien Legacy DVD boxed set.

Even the movie as it was filmed would have been significantly different. I remember at the time that Charles Dutton had said something to the effect that “The movie in the theater was not the movie we filmed.” Luckily you can now get a glimpse of this in the great Alien Legacy and the Alien Anthology Bluray set which includes an alternate and in many ways superior “Assembly Cut” of the movie which is about a half hour longer and includes numerous subplots and alternate story points.

I've been on this date. It's not fun.

The decision to have Ripley host the Alien was controversial but I think ultimately a good way to (at the time) end the series. It also brings the body horror of the Alien to the forefront. The movie then becomes about mortality and existential horror. Even the briefly reanimated Bishop gets emo: “I’ll never be top of the line again. I’d rather be nothing.” This is another horror movie that addresses the AIDS epidemic in an allegorical way as it is a story of someone who has a malignant presence in their body that will ultimately kill them. In 1992 that would have been a clear reference to the epidemic.

For me, as a teenager, the movie actually appealed to me in a totally different way than the others. I actually thought it was really cool. It was very dark and vaguely goth and punk. It was a very early ‘90’s kind of movie. And while the ending was a downer it was also very beautiful and tragic. Although it is clearly a flawed movie, Fincher’s brilliance shines through and I will always have a special affection for Alien3.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS

The Alien got a redesign in this movie, the justification being that it came from a quadruped host. This Alien, while smaller than the others, was the fastest and most deadly yet. This movie actually boasts the best Alien effects we would see until Alien vs. Predator twelve years later. A common misconception was that this movie featured an early version digital Alien but it was actually a combination of suitmation and a rod puppet that was digitally composited into live action shots.

It also returns to the smooth-domed Ridley Scott style head as opposed to the Cameron head ridges. Here, the body is a roachy brown color which goes well with the rusty prison facility. The back tubes from the previous movies are gone for a more streamlined effect.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

This movie is widely available on DVD on its own or in few different Alien boxed sets. As I stated above the Legacy and Anthology sets features the “Assembly Cut” which is definitely worth seeing. And I believe it is available in the single two-disc version as well.

The “Assembly Cut” is different in a few ways:

A lot the shots having to do with Ripley’s crash are much different. In the assembly cut she and the escape pod wash ashore. The pod is pulled back to the facility by oxen and it gives the planet a low tech effect.

There is a newly designed facehugger found, meant to represent the queen facehugger.

The chestburster comes out of an ox and not a dog.

There is an elaborate scene in which the prisoners succeed in capturing the Alien until it is let loose by the crazy prisoner.

The Alien does not hatch from Ripley’s chest as she dives into the melting pit at the end.

There are more character scenes overall in the assembly cut.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

I like the scene (in the theatrical cut) in which the Alien hatches from the dog which is intercut with Hicks and Newt being thrown into the melting pit as Dillon eulogizes them.

SEQUELS

Alien Resurrection 1997

TEASER TRAILER

Misleading, Alien-style teaser.

Monster Movie of the Week: The Fly II (1989)

THE FLY II (1989)

Director: Chris Walas

Genre: Body Horror

THE MOVIE

This is a movie that features about a dozen characters brutally killed, some in disgusting and graphic ways and yet it is most famous as “As that movie where that dog got mutilated,” which just goes to show you that in American movies you can do any horrible thing you want to people, but if you mess with our pets you better watch out. The Fly II is the sequel to the 1986 masterpiece The Fly. Director Chris Walas was the make-up director in the original movie and the focus for this sequel is on gore and creature work.

How did this dude come out of the union of Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis?

The movie picks up as Martin, the child of Seth Brundle and Veronica Quaife is born. Conveniently, Veronica dies in childbirth so that we only have a few shaky shots to see that we are dealing with a Geena Davis look-alike. A biogenetics corporation (the same one referenced in the original movie as having funded Brundle’s research) takes possession of the child and he is raised in a lab environment where he rapidly matures and displays a genius level of intelligence and capacity for science. One day he sneaks out of his area and comes across and lab where they are keeping a number of animals, including a dog, which he befriends. When he returns the next day the dog is being led to one of the teleporters from the first movie. The dog comes out of the machine horribly disfigured and aggressive. This traumatizes young Martin and he is told by his handlers that the dog had been euthanized.

Martin, looking like a guest star on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Soon after, Martin has reached physical maturity and strikes up a relationship with a woman who works at the company. Martin is also in charge of getting his father’s teleportation pods to work. One night while walking through the facility Martin discovers that his old dog is being kept alive for study and he puts the poor thing out of its misery in a scene that achieves real tragedy and is a little difficult to watch. Meanwhile, Martin begins going through the same kinds of changes that afflicted his father, eventually morphing into a human fly.

I would suggest throwing this mermaid back in the ocean..

The Fly II is far from a great movie but is an enjoyable exercise in horror and gore. That is if you can stomach the sad and disturbing dog subplot.

MONSTER/EFFECTS

This movie is more horror and gore oriented than the first and the effects are all quite nice. The idea behind the design of the new final Brundlefly is that the fly DNA is now better integrated into the monster so that he is less of a mutant and more of a new creature all together. He is faster and stronger than the final creature from the previous movie. In fact, he looks something like the titular opponent in Godzilla vs. Megaguirus. Hm. Anyway, Brundlefly II is realized mostly using lots of makeup and rod puppet technology.

SEQUELS

None. Although there has been talk of another Fly remake in the pipeline, rumored to be directed by David Cronenberg himself.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

I’m not trying to be all Fangoria or anything but I’m a big fan of the scene where dude gets his head popped by a descending elevator. I mean it is just so over the top and unnecessary. A close second would be the also gratuitous scene where a guy gets his face melted off by fly vomit.

Stay classy, Chris Walas.

DVD AVAILABILITY

Available is a surprisingly thorough two-disc DVD set, featuring commentaries and documentaries and everything. WTF?

MINORITY REPORT

Unless I am very much mistaken there is no one of color in this movie at all. I mean, I’m sure it was filmed in Canada, but come on!

TRIVIA

Ironically, Eric Stoltz was originally cast as Marty McFly in Back to the Future before they recast the role with Michael J. Fox. In this movie he plays a character named Mary who turns into a fly. How weird is that?

TRAILER

Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: The Fly (1986)

THE FLY (1986)
Director: David Cronenberg
Genre: Body horror/love story

Two things have always bothered me about the “Beauty and the Beast” story:

1) Usually the Beast is redeemed at the end and turns into some sort of handsome prince as though to reward Beauty for being able to love a monster. You can almost imagine Beauty wiping her brow at the end and thinking to herself “Whew! That was close!”

I always thought that the Beast should remain a beast otherwise the whole theme of the story is compromised.

2) As monsters go, the Beast is not usually that terrible to look at. Usually, he is depicted as some sort of leonine or ursine creature. He a beast, yes, but at least he’s a mammal, right? I think most people could fall in love with a sentient mammalian creature under the right circumstances. I always wanted to see a “Beauty and the Beast” story in which the Beast was some sort of horrible disgusting creature. Then Beauty’s love for the beast would mean something.

THE MOVIE:

This brings me to David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly with Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis, which is not only the ultimate work in the Body Horror subgenre but the most fully realized version of the “Beauty and the Beast” story ever put to film. The movie is famous for its extensive and Oscar-winning make-up, its gore, its good performances, and its overall quality given the subject matter. The Fly is one of the rare genre movies that is so good that it would win a flood of awards if not for the fact that it was a genre movie. If Jeff Goldblum hadn’t been covered in rubber and slime throughout most of the movie, he probably would have won an Academy Award for Best Actor.

This is gross and disturbing and he hasn't even gone through yet.

The Fly is the story of Seth Brundle, a scientist who has invented a set of pods that disintegrate matter, send it through space and restore it to its original form. He meets and falls in love with a journalist named Veronica (Geena Davis) and offers her the opportunity to cover the development of his teleportation pods. While the pods are able to send inanimate objects through space with no problem any living material sent through is horribly scrambled, as in the case of a baboon that is sent through with horrific results. Brundle makes a breakthrough and decides to try the pods out on himself, but unknown to him a fly enters the pod with him and his teleportation device becomes a gene splicer combining his DNA with that of a housefly and for the remainder of the film Brundle goes through a painful and disgusting transformation with his humanity literally sloughing off.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

Brundle goes through about four or five different stages in this movie, all but the last two are accomplished through prosthetic make-up. His transformation is slow and painful and many have speculated that this movie is a metaphor for the effects of AIDS and other degenerative diseases on the human body. Cronenberg has denied this and has stated that the film is a metaphor for the degeneration of aging, which I find hard to believe. The movie is clearly about disease and if you think about when the movie was made, how can it not be a metaphor for AIDS?

Brundle’s ultimate forms are realized through animatronics and are true fly/human hybrids. Having seen some of the concept art on the DVD I actually wish they had gone with some of the more fantastic designs they had available, but part of the movie’s impact is from its adherence to emotional and visual realism.

This scene put me off donuts for a while.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

The Fly features Brundlefly, a pissed off inside-out baboon and Monkey-Cat in the deleted scenes on the anniversary DVD.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

The heartbreaking end of the movie...and Brundlefly demonstrating how a fly eats donuts. I'm not going to forget that any time soon.

DVD AVAILABILITY:

An anniversary edition of this movie was released on DVD in 2006 which features extensive extras including a full-length documentary and deleted scenes, such as the infamous Monkey-Cat scene, which is disturbing in theory but kind of silly to watch. But in any case, it is a very good DVD set.

The movie has also been made available on Blu-Ray, but I don't know exactly what's on it and somehow, I don't know if I really want that extra layer of picture quality in this particular case. The movie is hard enough to watch as it is.

"Excuse me, can you tell me where the District 9 auditions are?"

SEQUELS:

The Fly II (1989)

So there was one sequel and now there is talk of a remake. But here is the twist: rumor has it that the remake will be directed by...David Cronenberg. Can we all have a collective "Whaaaaaaa?"

TRAILER:


SEE ALSO:

The Fly II, Alien 3 (1992), The Host (2006)

Bonus Monster Movie of the Week: Alien (1979)

ALIEN (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott

Genre: Science Fiction/Survival/Body Horror

THE MOVIE:

Ridley Scott’s Alien is a milestone in monster and horror cinema and features what is arguably the greatest movie monster of all time: The Alien, designed by Swiss artist H. R. Giger. The movie has spawned three sequels (each helmed by a different gifted director with radically different takes on the material), two cross-over prequels with the Predator franchise, and too many rip-offs to list here. It also helped to launch the careers of star Sigourney Weaver and director Ridley Scott. In addition to all of this, Alien and its sequels have also inspired a flood of spin-off comics, novels and videogames. It was one of the first genre movies to feature a woman as a strong protagonist and the ultimate survivor (this is heightened in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens in which Ripley becomes a bonafide action heroine) and Alien features what Bravo TV deems the second scariest movie moment of all time: the infamous dinner scene, one of the most shocking and disturbing sequences in the history of the movies.

Alien was produced as part of the great late 70’s sci-fi boom in the wake of Star Wars but in many ways it is the polar opposite George Lucas’ movie. Whereas Star Wars is an optimistic piece of bubblegum space fanstasy, Alien is a dark and cynical horror tale that is thoroughly unromantic about the exploration of space and what we may find once we get there. While Luke Skywalker desperately dreams of adventures off his humdrum planet, Ripley and her crew would have been better off staying home. Ultimately, they are only in space to work, not to save the universe.

At its core, Alien is a throwback to the Sci-Fi horror films of the 1950’s such as It! The Terror from Beyond Space, in which a spaceship is menaced by an alien that hides in the shadows picking off the crew one by one until it is blown out of the airlock. Alien does a better job of creating suspense and exploiting social tensions between the crew members. It shares with Star Wars a certain design aesthetic of a “used universe” unlike the sleek chrome rocket ships of classic Sci-Fi movies or the clinical whiteness of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The production design of Alien attempts to create a realistic utilitarian space in which a small crew lives in for long periods of time. The phase “truck drivers in space” was thrown around a lot during preproduction.

Ridley Scott’s film begins as the crew of the enormous interstellar shipping vessel “Nostromo” is awakened from an induced hibernation by a mysterious distress symbol. They receive instructions from their faceless employer (referred to throughout the film as “The Company”) to investigate this beacon. Once on the barren planet they discover a mysterious derelict space craft complete with a fossilized alien pilot and a cache of leathery eggs. When crewmember Kane examines an egg it hatches and a strange crablike creature attaches itself to his face. Kane ultimately ends up birthing The Alien which stalks the crew one by one until only Ripley is left.

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The real star of the movie is Giger’s Alien. Without this extraordinary and nightmarish creature the movie would not be as effective as it is. H. R. Giger designed The Alien through its various life stages as well as the derelict ship and it’s interior. From the moment we see this ship on a grainy video feed from one of the crewmember’s exo-suits we know that we are in for something special.


The ship itself is actually alien-looking. This is in itself remarkable because as often as you see extraterrestrials and their technology in movies the designs rarely look alien. Giger’s ship is vaguely horseshoe shaped but also asymmetrical with a strange bioorganic appearance. The crew enters through a weird sphincter-like orifice and one can see in that one shot that they simply do not belong there. One of the underlying themes of the movie is the very Lovecraftian, Men Do Not Belong in the Stars. This is powerfully reinforced in Giger’s design. The derelict ship is not made for men, it is the wrong scale, it is so alien as to be beyond human comprehension, the explorers stumble around it like children (not coincidentally children were used in these scenes so the sets could be constructed at half scale.)

The brilliance of the concept and design of Giger’s Alien is how it taps into people’s psychosexual fear and discomfort. The Alien itself is conceived in an act of oral rape, in which a creature attaches itself to Kane’s head and inserts a long tube down his throat with which it plants its seed. When we later see the underside of this “facehugger” we see organs that somehow manage to look like a penis and a vagina at the same time.


The infant alien later erupts from Kane in a bloody parody of childbirth. When we next see it, The Alien is spindly and asexual with a long phallic head. Novelist Anne Rice has speculated that movies like Alien and its imitators-in which sexualized or fetus-like Body Horrors exact their revenge on society-are exhibiting a kind of collective guilt over abortion.

In terms of special effects, the creature is realized primarily through suitmation and clever editing that rarely lets you see the entire Alien. The impression from watching the movie is that you ever know exactly what the Alien looks like.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

1 Alien.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE:

I like the exploration of the derelict ship. It’s very creepy and overwhelmingly Gigeresque.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY:

Widely available on its own or in boxed sets. There two different DVD boxed sets the first of which features Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 or the superior Alien Quadrilogy, set which features theatrical and alternate cuts of all FOUR movies. The special features for Alien include deleted scenes as well as a documentary on the making of the film as well as the usual trailers and interviews, as well as the exhaustive special features from the old Alien laser disc.

The Alien Anthology Bluray set is truly beautiful thing, with all of the above features and plenty of Bluray exclusive content, and it offers a customizable way to watch the bonus features according to what you are interested in seeing.

Out of all the movies in the series, Alien, really shines in this HD format. One really begins to appreciate the abundance of detail in the sets and costumes. The Anthology set is a must for any fan of this movie.

SEQUELS:

Aliens (1986), Alien 3 (1992), Alien Resurrection (1997), Alien Vs. Predator (2004) (Prequel), Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (2007)

It has recently been announced that fifth and sixth Alien movie will be produced...directed by none other than Ridley Scott! These will be prequels to the 1979 movie. Scott has been circling another Alien movie for years and he has previously said that he was interested in seeing the Alien home world and possible exploring the origins of the fossilized "Space Jockey"that we see aboard the derelict ship in Alien.

THE TRAILER:



SEE ALSO:

The Thing (1982), It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958), Species (1995)

Monster Movie of the Week: The Thing (1982)

The Thing (1982)
Director: John Carpenter
Genre: Horror/Suspense

THE MOVIE:

John Carpenter's The Thing is the story of a small group of men who are manning a remote American Antarctic outpost. Their isolation is interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious dog which is chased by a helicopter from a distant Norwegian settlement. Attempting to kill the dog, the helicopter and it's pilot are destroyed. MacReady (Kurt Russell) and some others from the American base investigate the Norwegian settlement to find it destroyed. They also find what appears to be a flying saucer half buried in the ice and a mangled semi-human body.

When they return to the American station, the mysterious dog begins to mutate into some sort of Lovecraftian tentacle monster, attempting to absorb and mutate the other dogs in its pen but is torched by the crew before it can finish. From here we can very well have Alien On Ice, after all, this was produced immediately after the success of Ridley Scott's movie. No doubt, the success of Alien allowed The Thing to be made. However, the twist offered by Carpenter's movie is that this alien creature is able to assume the form of any other organism, so from a dramatic point of view it offers the suspense of never knowing which members of the crew are human and which have been infected by the monster. This fact alone helps underscore the tension and heighten the relationships between the characters, adding a nice mystery element to the story. It's the rare movie of this genre that gives its actors something to do other than running around screaming.

The Thing was released at the tail end of the late '70's and early 80's sci-fi movie boom and was lost in the shuffle, actually being released the same month as Blade Runner and E.T. At the time of it's release it was criticized for its excessive gore and disgusting special effects. It is one of those movies that actually found its legs on the subsequent home video market, which was barely existent when it was first released. The movie has spawned a number of comic book sequels as well as a video game.

The Thing is actually a remake of a fifities sci-fi movie, The Thing From Another World, which in turn was loosely based on the novella "Who Goes There?" written in the '30's by John W. Campbell, which seems to have borrowed the Antarctic setting and themes from "At The Mountains of Madness" by H. P. Lovecraft. Carpenter's remake actually stays closer to the plot of the novella, and restores the movie's idea that the creature can assume anyone's shape or identity. It also seems to have inspired the first season X-Files episode "Ice."

THE MONSTER/EFFECTS:

The Thing is a seriously gory and disgusting movie but the effects are groundbreaking and imaginative and push the envelope of pre-digital effects. You don't really see effects this imaginative until T2 is released in 1991. I can even say that for a movie released in 1982 there are a few shots that DONT look dated today, which is pretty good for a movie that relies on stop-motion and animatronics.

The monster is only recognizable as a monster when it is in midtransformation, when it is a mismatched collection of tentacles and bizarre flowery appendages, with human and animal parts randomly thrown in. Sadly, one never gets to see the alien's true form which would have been cool at the finale. Perhaps it doesn't have one.

MONSTERS FEATURED:

"The Thing" in various forms.

DVD AVAILABILITY:



Collector's Edition released in 1998 with an 80 minute documentary, commentary from Carpenter and Russell and deleted scenes.

There is also a Blu-Ray which I haven't yet seen.

SEQUELS:

None, but there have been rumors over the last five years or so about a sequel/prequel/remake. Right now, it looks likely to be a prequel set in the Norwegian base.

SEE ALSO:

Alien (1979), The Fly (1986), The X-Files "Ice" 1993

TRAILER: