The Big Picture
- The practical effects used in the creation of Alien's Xenomorph egg were distressing, vile, and real, but necessary to achieve the premium quality of the film.
- The design of the egg, created by H.R. Giger, combined wet organic matter with cold industrial steel, resulting in a terrifying and disturbing aesthetic.
- The egg prop itself was entirely practical, with its interior made out of sheep intestines and a cow's stomach, and director Ridley Scott even got his hands dirty to enhance its realism.
When it comes to iconic films of horror cinema, pictures that culturally and artistically revolutionize their genre and filmmaking techniques and leave a lasting impact on audiences for decades to come -- very, very few movies can hold a candle to 1979's historic sci-fi marvel, Alien. Directed by the now-legendary Ridley Scott, Alien paved the way for the sci-fi horror subgenre, as well as revolutionized practical special effects and techniques that would then be used across the cinema for decades to come. Scott may not have known it then, but the approach that he and his crew took to bring the various slimy, grotesque lifeforms of the Alien universe to life would set a precedent for the practical effect-driven horrors of the '80s, with classics such as The Thing citing Alien as a direct inspiration. This approach was simple in concept, but would take true masters to execute: Make everything as disgustingly, grossly real as possible, and if that means using real-life stinky giblets of guts and intestines? Then so be it!
Yes, the way many of the Alien's most iconically terrifying scenes were brought to life was distressing, dirty, and vile. Still, these techniques were necessary to achieve the timeless, premium quality of the film for three main reasons: Time restraints forcing the crew to think outside the box, a relatively modest budget leading the VFX team to work with what they could afford, and the technological restrictions of the late '70s ruling out any possibility of using computer-generated effects. Any other approach simply wouldn't have worked because CGI just doesn't age very well, unlike practical effects which, if done with care and flare, will always immerse viewers more thanks to their very real, physical presence on set. So, whether it was pure genius or lightning in a bottle, the result of Alien's sticky, stinky practical effect props undeniably works, and one of the best scenes to exemplify this would be the iconic moment in which Dr. Kane discovers the Xenomorph egg.
Alien (1979)
In deep space, the crew of the commercial starship Nostromo is awakened from their cryo-sleep capsules halfway through their journey home to investigate a distress call from an alien vessel. The terror begins when the crew encounters a nest of eggs inside the alien ship. An organism from inside an egg leaps out and attaches itself to one of the crew, causing him to fall into a coma.
How Was the Xenomorph's Egg in 'Alien' Designed?
The Xenomorph's egg is the first form of life in the Xenomorph life cycle and, in reality, is more of a living organism than an actual egg. It serves as a sort of standalone womb, one with a symbiotic relationship to the Face Hugger that inhabits inside of it (the Face Hugger being the second organism of the Xenomorph life cycle). As the egg is the poster art for the film's release and a recurring element of promotional art in the decades to precede the film, it's also possibly the most well-known iconography of the Alien franchise alongside the Xenomorph itself and the Face Hugger. This is thanks in no small part to Ridley's decision to hire an illustrious, dangerously unique visual horror artist to create these lifeforms. All the different organisms that make up the Xenomorph's life cycle were designed by the late, great H.R Giger – a legendary painter of Freudian masterpieces that were infused with both horror and biological sexuality.
Giger's artistic style brought wet, organic matter together with cold, industrial steel, and drenched all of it in a contrasting blend of fear and eroticism. People who are unfamiliar with Giger's work may be asking themselves "How does that strange, contrasting combination of motifs look?" Well, terrifying and disturbing! The different creatures that inhabit Giger's paintings are possibly some of the most grotesque and fascinating fictional life forms to be birthed by a paintbrush, with highly detailed anatomy alongside sexualized elements protruding from their otherwise repulsive bodies... but these disturbing contrasts are what makes Giger's work so compelling. These unique artistic sensibilities would be what defined the iconic, threateningly believable aura of the Xenomorph and its various forms, as each organism of the creature's life cycle had both believable, evolutionary elements to their anatomy, and overtly sexual elements as well, such as different extremities being shaped like reproductive organs.
As per Entertainment Weekly, to represent the natural, biological order of life, gestation, and conception, as well as take the egg's concept as a sort of living womb to its natural conclusion, Giger originally designed the Xenomorph egg to resemble a female reproductive organ that would presumably "give birth" to the Face Hugger. However, producers feared that this would be pushing the boundaries of the film's sexual undertones a little too much and excessively disgust audiences, so the concept of conception was redefined to that of the holy conception: The top of the egg would blossom out from a cross, giving birth to the parasitic face hugger, the infernal angel come to deliver the final form of the Xenomorph. The Face Hugger would later find an unlucky host to impregnate with its "perfect organism", its life cycle's very own form of Christ: The Xenomorph. And with that, the stage was set for the creation of one of the stickiest, gooiest, and grossest practical props in cinema set history.
'Alien's Egg Prop Was Very Real
The egg opens its cross to reveal a horrifying, sticky interior made entirely practical with organic matter. As Dr. Kane (John Hurt) inspects the egg, it stretches its folds open to reveal the womb-like insides where the Face Hugger slumbers, followed by the terrifying creature leaping out from its resting place to tackle Dr. Kane and impregnate him with the Xenomorph. It's a truly harrowing sequence, amplified further by the very real, disgustingly organic presence and design of the egg. The egg's interior quivers, twitches, and shifts in an unbelievably life-like manner instilling the audience with dread and disgust as they gaze upon something that looks real, something that is clearly being recorded organically with a camera and with no special effect trickery, but it just... shouldn't exist. It DOESN'T exist, does it? This alienation and contrasting familiarity when looking at the egg is all down to its realistic, practical design, giving it its haunting presence.
The egg was entirely practical from its shell to its movement, allowing actor John Hurt to interact with it in a very palpable, believable way. The interior of the egg was created by stuffing the womb full of sheep intestines and then encasing them with a cow's stomach, giving it its horrifyingly believable look. Of course, intestines and stomachs do NOT smell good even on the best of days, but on the set of Alien, we can only imagine what the smell would have been like with the intense heat of studio lights rapidly causing them to decompose. So, when working with something so vile, you would think that director Ridley Scott would have steered clear from the icky stickiness of the prop, wouldn't you? Nope! According to Entertainment Weekly's report, to enhance the uncanniness of this fictitious creature even further, Scott himself stuffed his hands inside the guts and giblets and threw his arms around in twitchy, nervous flails. The crew recorded these movements from up close to capture the twitchy, life-like movements of the Face Hugger inside its womb.
Finally, what is likely one of the most terrifying jump scares in horror history ends this legendary sequence: the birth of the Face Hugger and its violent leap onto Dr. Kane's face. This moment, much like the rest, was also fully practical and entirely vile. What we see suddenly launch at the camera is a recording of the inside of the egg being lunged in the opposite direction away from the camera, the footage then being reversed in post. It's not the only reversed footage of the Xenomorph egg either, as we can see droplets of a whitish goo running UP the sides of the egg apparently against gravity, further amplifying the alienating aura of the egg. The scene ends with the Face Hugger latching onto the unfortunate Dr. Kane, cutting away to the deafening silence of a barren landscape on the alien world our unfortunate characters find themselves on, a silence that reminds us "we're all alone... And nothing can save us."
In the end, between the masterfully horrifying design of the egg from one of art's darkest imaginations to the very real innards of animals being handled and thrown around on set, to the studio lighting rapidly drying out and decomposing said innards and subsequently stinking out the entire place, we can agree that the egg discovery scene was a disgusting day on set and a vile scene on screen. But isn't that the magic of horror cinema? The creative minds who conceptualize these iconic moments have to spend hours of hard work and frustrating roadblocks to come up with outside-the-box solutions to immerse us in their fictitious worlds. The cast and crew have to then put up with foul odors and sticky surfaces for hours at a time to bring the frightfully exciting experience to life for audiences. All of this, just to entertain us... We owe thanks to everyone who worked on Alien, as we got one of the greatest horrors of all time through their hard work and strong resolve during scenes like the discovery of the Xenomorph egg.
Alien is available to stream on Hulu in the U.S.
