No, it in fact does. Otherwise there’s no point in his saying that.
That’s not at all what that quote says, though. He says they rewrote it completely, and also that they added the android subplot. The android subplot was part of the “complete rewrite.” It was not necessarily the whole of the “complete rewrite.” You can tell this, because if you take out the ash subplot, what you’ve got left still isn’t It! The Terror from Beyond Space.
At any rate, even if O’Banion’s original script was a scene-for-scene remake of a previous movie, that script isn’t what got turned into Alien - it was rewritten, per Giler, “completely.” What actually made it up on the screen resembles It! only in the broadest outlines: there’s a monster on a spaceship, and the crew are trying to kill it before it kills them.
As an Old, I will always argue that one of the greatest PR hits the word ‘liberal’ took was when Supertramp rhymed ‘liberal’ with both ‘fanatical’ and ‘criminal’ in The Logical Song.
Don’t forget “radical”. Though I doubt that it had a lot of sociological impact. Weren’t most of the fans of Supertramp liberals anyway? I know I was, and I was only 11 years old. It was the first single I bought.
Yeah, ‘radical’ was the word which preceded ‘liberal’, good memory.
You know, as I said, it was the first single I bought, and I got the album “Breakfast in America” too a short time later, from which I wore the grooves out. This song’s ingrained in my memory.
No, but B&W was still common enough that the start of the film didn’t look odd. And color was still new enough that the WoO film posters specifically mention it.
It’s a guild pissing match. A credit fight. Per Starlog, June, 1979:
Another credit problem involves the screenplay itself. O’Bannon’s original script, co-written with executive producer Ron Shussett, was re-worked by Walter Hill, one of the film’s co-producers…The official journal of the American Film Institute subsequently published an article suggesting that Hill, more than O’Bannon, was responsible for the professionalism, suspense and tightness of the shooting script. O’Bannon felt the article’s startements to be a “professional insult” and informed STARLOG that the writing credits for Alien are under review by the Writer’s Guild to determine whether Hill’s name should be removed from the credit. [It was…JAQ]
O’Bannon: “Hill’s contribution was largely characterization, and he put the script into his own format.”…“My script was professional and tight - the suspense was there.”
While this puts the Giler comments into persepective, neither it nor the Cinefantastique article do anthing to answer the IT! question. IMO, it doesn’t matter - Alien is different enough from IT! as to be an entirely different movie.
Star Wars is OBVIOUSLY a remake of 633 Squadron, The Hidden Fortress and The Dam Busters, but if anyone says it’s a bad film because of that, they’re nuts.
Awhile back I read that Alien has an intentional subtext of rape and used a component of the horror of that to scare men. Even if it was a fan wank, it’s got some merit.
In general Sci-Fi should and does illuminate other viewpoints with allegory.
As against the obvious and more common idea that people are afraid of rape because they don’t like the idea of having something put inside them.
Something foreign and unwanted growing inside you.
I think that’s the same idea?
If you think that eating because you are hungry is the same as being hungry because you are eating.
Fun movie-making trivia about the change from B&W to color in Wizard of Oz — Watch closely, and you’ll see it happens in a single shot. The camera is behind Dorothy, inside her house, in B&W. She walks to the door and opens it, and the world outside is in color.
This is not a visual effect. This was done in-camera. They had a black-and-white interior set and a body double for Judy Garland dressed in a black-and-white costume. After the double opens the door, she steps out of frame, and Garland, in regular costume, enters the colorful set.
Super clever and very effective. This is movie magic.
You lost me there.
I have already lost him here.
Yes, that’s true. H.R. Giger specifically mentioned he wanted a strong sexual component to the alien. In the original alien concept art the ‘inner mouth/tongue’ is a phallus.
On a side note Giger’s “Space Jockey” is my favorite art piece of all time.
I think I get what Melbourne is saying: if I understand, he’s suggesting that both rape and Alien are scary because of the same root fear of having something unwanted put inside of you. The fear of both are branches of that root, one (Alien) doesn’t come from the other (rape).
If so, I’m not sure that’s correct. Giger’s art is really sexual and erotic and disturbing, and I think there’s an undercurrent of that in the movie (although it’s been yonks since I’ve seen it). It goes beyond the common root fear. And I think there’s more to the terror of rape than that, anyway, but am not remotely qualified to pontificate on that.
Well, the plague story is still the one I like best, so that’s what I’m going to go with. 
That’s directly opposed to the board motto and I’m afraid we’ll have to take steps.