I've Been Thinking About the Anatomy of Fear in the Human Form
The 1979 blockbuster Alien, created by Dan O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett, prodded a level of fear within audiences that had never been reached before. The franchise has since become a quintessential staple in the horror and science-fiction genres, garnering millions of fans worldwide. The fear that comes from the suspense and gore of the films is nothing compared to the fear that comes from the creature itself; the Xenomorph. Of course, when creating a creature feature, the most crucial part of production is the design of the creature itself. This now-iconic alien was created with one goal in mind: to horrify the audience. And what’s more terrifying than our own human bodies? According to the Alien team, nothing!
O’Bannon was greatly inspired by the work of H.R. Giger, whom he worked with on a scrapped adaptation of Frank Herbert’s novel, Dune in the mid-70s. Giger, a Swiss surrealist artist, was best known for his disturbing science-fiction-based airbrushed pieces. The blend of humanoid and metallic-looking structures, appropriately described as “biomechanical” in style, were unlike anything O’Bannon had ever seen. He described Giger’s work as “horrible and beautiful” and knew that Giger was the only person capable of designing the Xenomorph creature. After director Ridley Scott was brought onto the project, O’Bannon gave him a copy of Giger’s book, Necronomicon, during the pre-production phase of Alien, and Giger was appointed part of their visual effects team. It was the piece titled “Necronom IV” (shown below) that became the reference for the Xenomorph in the whole of the Alien franchise, spanning from the original in 1979 to today with Alien: Romulus.
Necronom IV, 1976 - H.R. Giger
To no one’s surprise, the original screenplay and design sketches were quite a lot for studios to take in. O’Bannon first went to 20th Century Fox with the screenplay but was ultimately shut down due to the ghastly violence displayed in the first drafts of the script. It was eventually picked up by Brandywine Productions and then finally approved by 20th Century Fox after some rewrites. Nonetheless, the theme of bodily imagery was to always be at the forefront of the story, with the alien ship openings and facehugger eggs resembling female reproductive organs and the facehuggers themselves resembling both male and female reproductive organs. The facehuggers, in early concept art as well as the final product, were modeled after human hands, and were designed to forcefully implant Xenomorph embryos down the throats of their victims. This is where the iconic chest-bursting scene was born.
The phallic nature of Giger’s work inspired much more about the creature than just its physicality. After seeing Giger’s art and the obvious references to the human body, Ridley Scott proposed the overarching theme of the first Alien film to reflect the horrors of sexual violence and forced pregnancy. Not just the act but the aftermath as well and the trauma that it does to the body and mind. In the 2002 The Alien Saga documentary, Scott said, “That’s how I’m going to attack the audience; I’m going to attack them sexually. And I’m not going to go after the women in the audience, I’m going to go after the men.” And that he did! He felt that films too often used violence against women as a plot device, so he instead made the violence unbiased in its victims. In the first film, the only forced alien pregnancy we witness is that of one of the male characters. O’Bannon and Shusett had written a script completely devoid of gender, stating that any character could be cast as any gender and the story would still come across the same. That is what makes the Xenomorph so horrifying. It is impartial, driven only by instinct and propagation, its only goal being to procreate by any means necessary.
Facehugger concept art by H.R. Giger, 1978
Facehugger concept art by H.R. Giger, 1978
The design of the Xenomorph was meant to be grotesque and entirely human. The designers even went as far as sculpting the alien form onto actor Bolaji Badejo’s body, using his nearly 7-foot-tall frame as part of the creature’s design. The visual effects team created the musculature and tendons out of torn-up condoms, molded the alien face using a human skull model, and used lube to adorn the alien’s iconic salivating mouth. The use of materials that are so distinctly human drives the theme even further; these creatures, though vicious and deadly, are part of a greater life cycle, and we, as humans, are just their means of evolution. Another design choice made by Giger in the visual effects development was to remove the eyes from the Xenomorph. He said, “We came to the conclusion that a creature without eyes, driven by instinct alone, would be far more frightening.” The suspense of the film is where it shines the most, creating an extremely unsettling atmosphere for the characters in the film as well as the audience. The biggest contributing factor to the suspense was the decision not to show the Xenomorph in its entirety until the last few scenes of the film. We see bits and pieces but never the full creature. So, when watching the final standoff between the alien and the main character, Ellen Ripley, we are experiencing the terror of facing this creature just as she is.
“The Monstrous Feminine” trope, first coined in 1993 by Professor Barbara Creed in her book of the same name, describes the idea that though women in film are often subject to torment and brutalization, the root of all monstrous ideals stems from fear of the female body. We see this in films like Carrie, with her overbearing and protective mother; Psycho, where a man is haunted by his mother’s voice which drives him to kill; Teeth, where a teenage girl discovers her reproductive organs harbor a set of razor-sharp teeth. Ridley Scott said his goal with these films was “to make the men in the audience cross their legs,” and I feel that his goal was more than accomplished! This trope elicits a primal fear in audiences, the fear of something we don’t understand. It’s no secret that knowledge and access to female health and reproductive education is greatly lacking in society today, and was even more scarce in the 70s when Alien was being produced. That is what is most terrifying about these films: take something we think we know and turn it into a destructive, nearly unkillable monster. “Female” is alien, and Alien is female.
Alien III, sideview III, 1978 - H.R. Giger
As a woman myself, I greatly appreciate all forms of media that choose to not capitalize on the suffering of women on the basis of just being a woman. We are far from perfect ourselves, and displaying us as perfect, pure, hypersexual creatures to destroy is as damaging as it is unrealistic. Ellen Ripley did not need to be sexualized for her character to be memorable, she was memorable because she was a woman who did not need saving and was no less than her male counterparts. At the time of Alien’s release, this was huge. Though Ripley suffers greatly throughout the Alien franchise, the root of her suffering is not a result of her gender but rather the construct of gender itself. The biology of procreation and the idea of an ever-evolving life cycle that we cannot even comprehend much less control, will always strike a chord with audiences as it’s something we face in our own lives. By creating a narrative where the men’s bodily autonomy is just as at stake as the women’s, you are met with fundamental dread.
Jayla Raye is a writer based in New Hampshire. Her Substack newsletter, "girl lore", is home to film reviews, recommendations, and general thoughts on media and life. She is most active on Letterboxd @jaylaraye and Instagram @jaylawatched.