Alien Bonus Disk Review

The Documentary

The Alien Legacy Bonus Disc was already included in the region 2 release of the Alien Legacy set as opposed to the region 1 set. The disc contains a 67-minute documentary showing different aspects of how the film Alien was brought about and made and takes a look at behind-the-scenes. It shows deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews with people who worked on the movie. Among the people interviewed are the director of Alien, Ridley Scott, screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, executive producer Ronald Shusset and artist H.R. Giger.

The documentary is split into eight sections which are called Conception, Cast, Costume Design, Archivist of Fantastic Cinema, Nostromo, The Planet, Alien on Board and Final Report. The Conception section is about the development of the movie and initial designs of the creature, sets, etc. H.R. Giger talks about the design of the alien of it was developed. In the Cast section, Ridley Scott talks about the character development in the movie and how each person’s personality was created. The Costume Design section is obviously about the clothes that the cast wore when filming. John Mollo talks about the space suits the characters wore on the surface of the planet.

In the Archivist of Fantastic Cinema, Bob Burns shows us a few of the props used in the film. In the Nostromo section, crew talks about the design of the spaceship, the Nostromo and the creation of the dark corridors throughout the ship. The Planet section is about the planet the characters land on to investigate the extraterrestrial signal. The derelict spacecraft and the pilot is discussed in detail. Alien on Board is about the creature which runs about on the spacecraft. Right from the Facehugger to the Chestburster and finally to the fully-grown Alien. In the final section, The Final Report, people speak about the success that Alien has had even 20 years down after it was first released.

The Picture

This is an adequate transfer that is acceptable given the varying source materials used. The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio that varies between 1.33:1 and 2.35:1. The image was acceptably sharp and clear, though a lot of the archival material is quite blurred and distorted which is to be expected.

The Sound

There is only one audio track on this DVD which is the English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. The dialogue is clear and easy to understand and there was little in the way of audio distortion, and there were no audio sync problems.

Overall

Overall the Bonus Disc is a great addition to Alien and is really interesting to find out how things were accomplished in the film. It’s a shame this documentary wasn’t included in the Quadrilogy but I guess there wasn’t enough room. Still, if you’re desperate for it, you can also buy it fairly cheaply on ebay.

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