Dogwoof

In cinemas 30 August, on DVD and On Demand 2 September

O’Bannon. Giger. Scott. A triptych of creators behind one of the classic SF movies of the 20th century…

Alexandre O Philippe’s documentary doesn’t start quite where you’d expect – to the extent that I skipped forward temporarily on the screener to ensure that I’d got the correct link. Far from the future worlds of Weyland-Yutani, Philippe takes us back to Delphi and forces that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to be linked to a movie about xenomorphs – and yet, as you quickly realise, the correlation is there.

Memory is the title of the screenplay that Dan O’Bannon penned almost a decade before Alien hit cinema screens, and Philippe charts the story’s flow from one to the other with aid of some of the key people, or their families. Carmen Giger and Diane O’Bannon are executive producers on the film, and opened their respective archives to allow a lot of material that hasn’t been seen before. Despite all the information that’s out there about this film – notably J.W. Rinzler’s excellent recent book – there’s still more to be learned.

Philippe blends ‘talking heads’ with those who were directly involved in the creation of the movie as well as archive footage, with the film focussing its attention in the latter part on the chestburster scene. There’s some fascinating discussion regarding Ian Holm’s performance as Ash during that sequence, and the way that Ridley Scott (who only appears in this in the archive material) edited it. It sets the record straight regarding what people did or didn’t know about what was coming out (“a penis with teeth” is one lovely description), and without doubt you’ll watch that portion of the film – if not the entire movie – in a different way in future.

Verdict: Absolutely unmissable for Alien fans, and fascinating for any cinephile. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to read our interview with director Alexandre O Philippe

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