sus

Moderator
I like the Alien x Dracula idea a lot. Tolerance, adaptation. We keep seeing in these films first contact, over and over. Slow dawning horror. Which is great suspense the first time but again, you need a new structure and it's much more interesting to see what a savvy evolved equilibrium between man and alien would be than another clumsy first encounter where people are stupid and clueless and die in stupid clueless ways
 

version

Well-known member
I like the Alien x Dracula idea a lot. Tolerance, adaptation. We keep seeing in these films first contact, over and over. Slow dawning horror. Which is great suspense the first time but again, you need a new structure and it's much more interesting to see what a savvy evolved equilibrium between man and alien would be than another clumsy first encounter where people are stupid and clueless and die in stupid clueless ways

The main issue I can see with the Dracula idea is how you'd explain the aliens not just swarming the village and killing everyone as soon as they make contact, like with the colonists in Aliens.
 

sus

Moderator
There's a deleted scene from the first one where Ripley finds Dallas still alive and cocooned into the wall and Brett in a similar situation and being turned into an egg. It's intriguing and pretty horrifying, but I can see why they cut it.

One scene that was cut from the film occurred during Ripley's final escape from the Nostromo; she encounters Dallas and Brett, who have been partially cocooned by the alien. O'Bannon had intended the scene to indicate that Brett was becoming an alien egg, while Dallas was held nearby to be implanted by the resulting facehugger. Production designer Michael Seymour later suggested that Dallas had "become sort of food for the alien creature", while Ivor Powell suggested that "Dallas is found in the ship as an egg, still alive." Scott remarked, "they're morphing, metamorphosing, they are changing into...being consumed, I guess, by whatever the alien's organism is...into an egg." The scene was cut partly because it did not look realistic enough, but also because it slowed the pace of the escape sequence. Tom Skerritt remarked that "The picture had to have that pace. Her trying to get the hell out of there, we're all rooting for her to get out of there, and for her to slow up and have a conversation with Dallas was not appropriate."​


This scene ended up in Aliens, yeah?

Interesting too the rotting maggots. Parasitism and rotting decomposers sorta tied up. Flesheating organisms
 

version

Well-known member
This scene ended up in Aliens, yeah?

You see people cocooned, yeah, but there's no suggestion they're being morphed into eggs because they have a queen in that one that's already laying them. The people in the walls are just held in place as hosts for the facehuggers.

 

sus

Moderator
You see people cocooned, yeah, but there's no suggestion they're being morphed into eggs because they have a queen in that one that's already laying them. The people in the walls are just held in place as hosts for the facehuggers.


Yeah I think the kill me/flame thrower similarities are what I had in mind
 

0bleak

Well-known member
It's free on youtube.
You would prolly see connections - aliens from a dying world taking over and creating a new way of being, for just an example.
 

version

Well-known member
Aliens is different structurally, they go in prepared (in theory) and Bishop surprises by not being a baddy. I wish they'd stopped with that one.

Yeah, Burke takes on the Ash role of the company man instead. It's similar to the way Cameron flipped Sarah and the terminator in the second film and had her become more machine as the machine became more human.

Another difference with Aliens is the presence of the little girl, Newt. You had people saving the cat, Jones, in the first one, but the protector role's obviously massively heightened when you throw in a child, particularly when you learn Ripley had a child of her own who grew up and died of old age while she was drifting through space for decades.

 

version

Well-known member
Nah not yet but meaning to

The body snatchers films would be interesting to watch in order of release to see how the story changes in relation to the period. You've got one made in the 50s, one in the 70s and one in the 90s. What did social conformity look like in each of those American decades? What were the predominant fears and anxieties? How did people think of and approach the body?
 
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version

Well-known member
I've been thinking that critical commentaries would be a great format. The main thing preventing it ostensibly is copyright yeah? But maybe you could release standalone audio to layer over

The way that upload seems to have gotten around it is by playing the audio in full whilst chopping up and freezing the video.
 
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sus

Moderator
The body snatchers films would be interesting to watch in order of release to see how the story changes in relation to the period. You've got one made in the 50s, one in the 70s and one in the 90s. What did social conformity look like in each of those American decades? What were the predominant fears and anxieties? How did people think of and approach the body?
The Nosferatu versions show this really really well. It's a good idea V
 

sus

Moderator
Giger's Taschen book is worth checking out too. Very weird weird weird Taschen book they really give him free reign
 

version

Well-known member
Giger's Taschen book is worth checking out too. Very weird weird weird Taschen book they really give him free reign

The Necronomicon and 'NY City' books are good too.




Interesting comment under the vid leaning on Paglia.

@edwardrichardson8254
2 years ago

Thank you! Those were the "Fort Apache: The Bronx"/ "Death Wish" years, the David Bowie "Diamond Dog" dystopia heroin-fueled punk rocker years with Times Square a peep show lit asshole of America where hookers screeched obscenities' from trash-laden corners. Although to my knowledge the two never met, during those years William Burroughs was living in the former locker room of a 19th-century former-YMCA on New York City’s Lower East Side where he said he could feel the psychic traces of adolescent boys move through him. That time in NYC would've certainly inspired Giger's work for the option-hell unmade movie "The Tourist" years later. That Cronenberg did not hire him for "Naked Lunch" is a sin.

It is incorrect to call label this artist a surrealist. He was a Fin de siècle Decadent in the style of Felicien Rops and especially Alfred Kubin. Decadence is an art form of ritual and stasis, and it's no coincidence Art Nouveau came from it. Art Nouveau freezes nature's writing action into what Camille Paglia called 'growth without fruitfulness." Paglia's chapter on Decadent Art in the phenomenal "Sexual Personae" (Ch 19: Apollo Daemonized) is what you need to read if you want to understand Giger. She could be talking about him here:

"Art Nouveau is a harvest of spines and thorns. It shows the modern city as a Sodom in black flames. It shows nature as cold biology writhing in final spasms. Art Nouveau combines the primitive with the sophisticated, a decadent technique invented by Hellenistic art and turned into cruel fun and games by the Roman emperors."​

Decadence makes the organic "invincibly metallic" With Giger and the Decadents like the Pre-Raphaelites, nature is petrified and frozen into prison bars, sadomasochistic acts are flash-frozen, gelled, mummified, and candied for the enflamed eye to voyeuristically, coolly observe.
 
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IdleRich

IdleRich
Kubin wrote a novel which is worth a read

The Other Side tells of a dream kingdom which becomes a nightmare, of a journey to Pearl, a mysterious city created deep in Asia, which is also a journey to the depths of the subconcious, or as Kubin himself called it, 'a sort of Baedeker for those lands which are half known to us'. Written in 1908, and more or less half way between Meyrink and Kafka, it was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the artists and writers of the Expressionist generation. Franz Marc called it a magnificent reckoning with the 19th century and Kandinsky said it was almost a vision of evil, while Lyonel Feininger wrote to Kubin. 'I live much in Pearl, you must have written it and drawn it for me'. It will appeal to fans of Mervyn Peake and readers who like the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque in their reading.
 

version

Well-known member
Kubin and the other artists I've come across reading about Giger recently all seem to have good stuff. You can absolutely see the overlap between the two in something like this.

alfred+kubin+1.jpg


Félicien Rops, the other bloke mentioned in that YouTube comment, too.

Felicien-Rops-42-Agonie.jpg


There's a negative of a Rops image on the cover of that recent edition of The Twenty Days of Turin.

H20232-L324582474.JPG
 
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