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I went to see the new ALIEN film ROMULUS last night at the local flicks. I'm always excited by a new ALIEN film.
Will you be going readers?
Cinema-going can be quite dear these days and the entrance fee now for adults is £11.99 in my bit of Britain. I used to go every week for years, when it was discounted but nowadays its only for certain movies. The last one I saw was Despicable Me 4 with my Grandson during the summer.
I've kept the ROMULUS ticket as I have for all my cinema visits many years. Somehow they seem important to me but I'm unsure why. Somewhere I've got my old ALIEN ticket!
Will you be going to the cinema readers? What was the last film you saw there?
With ALIEN ROMULUS creeping up on us I can't help thinking about one of my favourite ALIEN characters, the derelict pilot, the space jockey.
What a guy!
There's an interesting pictures essay here about the origin of Giger's Space Jockey. What do you think?
https://alienexplorations.blogspot.com/2009/02/paintings-that-inspired-space-jockey.html
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tinkering with an image of a micronometer I added a statue figure!
Like many of you I'm a life-long ALIEN fan, so I'm looking forward to the latest instalment, ROMULUS.
Here's the trailer.
Are you going to watch the film readers?
We can't have a Predators week without mentioning Predator the movie! Here's the original trailer from, yes, 1987! Its that long ago!
And for those of you who collected the action figures back in the day - it was 7 years before any were released - here's an old 1993 TV ad with Predator's new foe, ALIEN!
and perhaps the one ALIEN toy I would love to find in any condition is the 18 inch Kenner. A thing of legend and like those Mars Attacks cards decades earlier, this lofty beast was just too darn scary for Parents and some kids!
Its official, ALIEN was way scarier than Predator, so c'mon, forget about my tie, man!*
Here's the 18 incher's TV ad that says it all!
Did you or do you have any Predator or ALIEN toys or games or kits readers?
* This post is dedicated to the late great Carl Weathers, who played Colonel Al Dillon in Predator, who sadly passed away this year.
The HG Toys ALIEN Target Set is one of those legendary toys that hardly ever cross mortal hands.
The first time I became aware of it was in Andy Foley's TV Toy Zone catalogue around 1990. That was just a picture.
I then saw the real thing on the toy fair stall of the late Mr. Star Wars Jim Stevenson, a legend himself.
This example was on Worthpoint so I saved the pics.
Has anyone got an alien target?
I tried to watch Anti Life last night. Didn't know anything about it but there were various clues as to it's origin very early on.
When someone lies down in a long haul cryo-chamber with a clear screen you immediately think of ....
Even more blatant is a fluid dissolving a metal table. Really?
All that was missing was a nodding bird.
Anti Life is an ALIEN clone.
Rather like the creatures themselves, each clone is worse and ANtI LifE is a real gloopy mess. The name is even a poor anagram of ALIEN! I mean, C'mon!
Poor Bruce Willis. After such an illustrious career he more or less ends it before he got unwell with this knockoff drivel.
In the end I was bored senseless and began looking for Jonesy and switched off half way through
Did I miss anything?
I'd never seen a Snalien before until I came across the Hideous Plastic website from Oz.
I love these creations. They remind me of snail Netsuke from Japan.
But hey, what's this ....
Would you accept a sweet from its drooling extending jaws?
What would a facehugger Pez look like? Yuk!
All we need now is a Shaker Maker set customised as a shake and bake colony!
What a cool birthday prezzy it would make!
Like Wotan I've now seen Sputnik.
I watched this Russian movie on Netflix last night and I really enjoyed it. I was excited beforehand and that doesn't happen often nowadays. The last time was probably Alien Covenant.
Alien is a good cue to start discussing Sputnik. It has been called a Russian Alien but the nickname doesn't do it justice and certainly ignores the very unique character of this film. After all, being Russian, it was never going to look like an American flick.
I shan't be spoiling anything here though, as its still a film to watch. I can say that its a creature feature set in the 1980's Soviet Union. The Cold War is everywhere and time's are grim.
In fact the starkly bleak look of the Cold War interiors are as dominant a feature of the movie as the shockingly awful beast slithering its way through them.
If you have seen the TV series Chernobyl then you will know what I mean about the almost empty Soviet interiors and entire townscapes for that matter. There is a sparseness that's hard to fathom.
I suppose actually rather than Alien or Prometheus Sputnik has more in common with the American fantasy film The Shape of Water, which is located in equally industrial lab settings. Maybe the space flick Life a little too. Sputnik is no kids' film so forget ET. Its a gory movie like Alien.
Comparisons aside though, Sputnik is well worth a watch. I liked it a lot and has whet my appetite for more Soviet sci-fi. In the meantime I may return to Chernobyl and re-watch that.
Have you seen Sputnik?
I've just watched Inanimate, a movie on Prime. Its a sort of modern Alien/ the Thing mash-up set on an arctic crabbing trawler. It maybe possibly more Thing than anything.
From Alien it has the nodding birds and lots of dripping water. Then of course there's breaking all the safety protocols and bringing an inexplicable object on board because it beeps.
Then there's Lance 'Bishop' Henriksen for its Alien 3 chops and an annoying devious character like Ash - the wining University Professor who wants to take the object back and be its buddy.
On the Thing side we have burning the infected and that old chestnut the exposure question - who is infected and who isn't?
From Alien again we have a makeshift weapon - in Inanimate its a liquid nitrogen gun and very nasty.
In the film there is a clandestine female Russian agent too. Not sure where this fits my Alien/ Thing theory.
As a neat nod towards other creature disaster films we have the ship's name itself, Deep Six and the explosive charges placed round the ship near the end are reminiscent of those in Event Horizon or have I got the wrong flick?
I enjoyed Inanimate. Its not big league E.T. splatter but not bad at all. I'm almost inclined to class it as a tribute rather than a ripoff.
Have you seen it?
Can't imagine there were any toys or collectables!
Have you a favourite Thing/ Alien ripoff?
