*Hello ma baby, hello ma honey, hello ma rag-time gal...

The Demon was off gallivanting again last night. That left me with a whole evening to myself which I decided to spend in the company of an old friend, namely the DVD of Ridley Scott's 1979 masterpiece, Alien.

There's no question in my mind that this is without doubt one of the greatest films of all time. It works SO well on SO many levels and I never tire of watching it. The Demon on the other hand thinks that it's rubbish, mostly due to it's complete lack of flowers or handbags or nice things.
It's sci-fi, it's horror, it's a thriller, it's just an an amazing piece of work, more so when you consider that it's been almost 30 years since it changed Hollywood forever.

I only ever watch the Alien trilogy of films (don't get me started on Alien Resurrection or the Alien Vs Predator shite) on my own nowadays, mostly because I don't want any interruptions and also because I'm word perfect on Alien and it's sequel, Aliens. This leads to me sitting on the couch mumbling to myself like Rain Man. The Demon finds that quite annoying.

I won't bore you with my review of the film, there are far more eloquent people who have done that, but what I will do is tell you some of the trivia surrounding the film which you may, or may not, know:

The majority of the time the Alien is on screen it's being played by seven foot tall Masai tribesman Bolaji Badejo. He attended Tai Chi classes to make his movements in the suit seem more graceful and fluid.

When Jones the cat hisses at the Alien in the scene where Brett (Harry Dean Stanton) is taken into the ceiling (my favourite scene in the film and the one that's at the top of this post), he's actually hissing at a dog that was hidden behind a screen.

The film was originally going to be called 'Star Beast'. If it had, I suspect we wouldn't be talking about it nowadays.

The blue laser lights that were used in the alien ship's egg chamber were borrowed from The Who. The band was testing out the lasers for their stage show in the soundstage next door.

The slime used on the Alien was K-Y jelly.


*There are 5 bonus points to anyone who can tell me the link between Alien and the title of this post.
(PS - This question isn't open to Andrew Glazebrook as it's like asking other people "what's 2 + 2?")

Answers on a postcard . . .