MOVIE URBAN LEGEND: H.R. Giger's designs for the alien in Alien were so shocking that United States Customs held up the designs when they arrived in the United States from Europe.

H.R. Giger was a Swiss painter who drew attention in the late 1970s for his grotesque drawings of horrific monsters. While screenwriter Dan O'Bannon was in Paris working on a film project that ended up going nowhere, he was exposed to Giger's artwork, specifically Necronom IV...

Horrific as heck, right?

Well, O'Bannon was so impressed with his work that he began to channel Giger's vision into a project that he had been working on for a while about a group of astronauts see their journey interrupted. He did not know who the antagonist of the film would be, but once he saw Giger's work, he knew that he wanted the bad guy to be a Giger monster.

When O'Bannon and fellow screenwriter Ronald Shusset came up with the original story for the film, but obviously they were not far enough into the process to actually specifically have a Giger-designed monster. Finally, when the project was picked up by 20th Century Fox and Ridley Scott was hired, then O'Bannon brought Giger's work to Scott. Scott already envisioned the movie being more of a horror film than anything else, so he was thrilled with using Giger's designs.

Scott flew to Giger's home in Switzerland and Giger agreed work on the film. However, Giger always remained in Switzerland, even when the film began filming in England.

Before that point, Giger sent designs of the alien in the film to O'Bannon and Scott in Hollywood.

The problem was that Giger's designs were a bit TOO scary...

O'Bannon later recalled in the commentary for the film:

Giger mailed these large photographic transparencies to us at Fox. They came through customs, who didn't understand what they were and were alarmed, and we had to personally go down to LAX and pick these things up. And I finally got these photographs that Giger had made of the designs he had done for the facehugger and I held them up to the light where I could see them. I was stunned at what I saw!

Obviously, customs believed that the photographs were of something disturbing but less of the fictional variety.

What's interesting is that the studio had not yet officially agreed to use Giger's designs, but, well, come on, how do you turn down something so freaky as that?

Obviously, the Giger designs were used and the film ended up winning an Academy Award for Best Visual Arts.

The legend is...

STATUS: True

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