In May Ridley Scott’s science fiction epic Alien celebrated 35 years. Since its release the film has received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2002, and was listed by the American Film Institute as the seventh best science fiction film. The movie’s success spawned a line of novels, comics, video games, and toys, along with 3 sequels. How did such a terrifying sci-fi movie get its start?

Released in 1979, the film starred Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, and Yaphet Kotto. The screenplay was written by Dan O’Bannon from a story he had written with Ronald Shusett. The movie begins quietly with the seven member crew of the commercial towing spacecraft Nostromo in stasis. They receive a message from a planetoid and are told by their employers to investigate the transmission. Upon investigation they find a derelict ship with an alien inside whose ribcage exploded from inside out. There’s also a chamber filled with eggs. From there all hell breaks loose.

Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon was studying at the University of Southern California when he made Dark Star, a science fiction comedy film with director John Carpenter and concept artist Ron Cobb. Their movie featured an alien made from a spray painted beach ball. O’Bannon wanted to make the movie scarier and shelved the idea. A few years later he worked on a similar story that would focus on horror when he was contacted by writer-producer Ronald Shusett who was working on an early version of Total Recall. Shusett was impressed by Dark Star and wanted to work with O’Bannon. They agreed to work together on O’Bannon’s film first since it would cost less. The first draft was 29 pages titled Memory comprising the first scene of the film showing the crew awaken during a voyage by a call from an unknown place. In the early script their ship breaks down on the surface, though at this point there wasn’t a clear picture of the alien.

While O’Bannon was working on another film he met artist H.R. Giger. He found Giger’s art disturbing, producing a visceral reaction in O’Bannon leading him to use a creature Giger had drawn. He combined that art with another idea he had of gremlins infiltrating B-17 bombers during World War II. The title then went through a transition to Star Beast before landing on Alien. Shusett and O’Bannon appreciated the double meaning of the word as a noun and adjective considering the aliens were attacking people and something alien was infiltrating their bodies. The rest of the script was drawn from inspiration of other science fiction and horror projects including the claustrophobic environment in The Thing from Another World, the crew getting killed off one by one like Forbidden Planet, the giant alien corpse is found similar to Planet of the Vampires, he was even influenced by the Clifford D. Simak short story Junkyard in which a crew found a chamber full of eggs on an asteroid.

Alien fans will be excited to see the Kenner large boxed figure available in Hake’s Americana & Collectibles November auction. Standing 18” tall, the plastic figure is boxed, which features photos from the film as well as the figure in different poses. The auction will be online on October 21, 2014.