H.R. Giger (1940 - 2014)
"Making dreams & nightmares come true"
The Daddy of Alien
Note: Sexual themes, Creature spoilers
“I just liked the way it looked.”
Who is Hansruedi Giger?
Pronounced “Ghee-gher,” H.R. Giger is responsible for the visuals of 1979’s Alien; the design of the creature itself, in its multiple forms, and various set pieces like the planetoid.
His work is foundational to the biomechanical art style which fuses human anatomy and machine.
As a kid, he was surrounded by the symbols of death. He recounts living in a house with nearly no light, experiencing claustrophobic nightmares, and receiving human and animals skulls from his father’s pharmaceutical job. “‘To hold death in your hands like that is - well it’s not very pleasant,” he tells a documentarian at age 74.
In his youth, he and his sister visited an Egyptian museum, where he saw a mummy; it scared him so bad, he began to cry and his sister laughed and laughed at him. He returned every Sunday for weeks until it didn’t scare him anymore. It’s this tenacity and obsession that followed him into his adult life and defined his career.
He earned a degree in architecture and industrial design and synthesized his influences of death, ancient Egypt, the body, surrealism, and LSD into a massive collection of work that earned him a reputation in the fine art world.
How Salvador Dali Got Giger Into Film
Prior to Alien, H.R. Giger and screenwriter Dan O’Bannon met on the set of Dune. No, not that one: the one that doesn’t exist.
Alejandro Jodorowsky, hot off of the underground success of cult films El Topo and The Holy Mountain, set his sights on producing a blockbuster adaption of Frank Herbert’s Dune.
He put together a rockstar group of collaborators including Mick Jagger and Orson Welles for roles, Pink Floyd for the soundtrack and sci-fi legends Chris Foss and Mœbius for visuals, but he was still looking for another visual inspiration.
He approached Salvador Dali, who accepted a role as the Emperor, but turned down the art job. Dali instead recommended a Swiss designer he admired: H.R. Giger. Giger’s art was so wholly different from anything Jodorowsky had seen, he hired him immediately.
Jodorowsky believed in his Dune project so deeply he trained his own son to play Paul Atriedes for two years, but the runtime (10-14 hours minimum) and budget (∞?!?) kept expanding and the production fell through.
The inspirational drawings and storyboards still live on, including Giger’s work.
Alien
Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon tied up the last year or two working on Dune, but when it was kaput, his saving grace was Star Wars.
The space epic premiered in 1977 to wild success, and studios were looking for any and all science-fiction scripts laying around, which is how O’Bannon’s Alien script, which had been languishing for years, got picked up. O’Bannon reached out to the weird art guy from the failed Dune project for creature design, and brought him on to the production using Giger’s art book, Necronomicon as a resume.
When it came time to design the Creature, there was no conversation. Director Ridley Scott decidedly pointed to this piece:
H.R. Giger was flown out to head a 150-person craftsman team, lovingly referred to as The Monster Department, with as much freedom and budget as the studio could muster.
The original design for the Creature’s egg phase featured a single slit at the top, which executives were concerned looked too much like a vagina for foreign and Christian markets. Giger redesigned them with two slits as a cross.
Regarding the change, he remarks, “Now they’re doubly obscene,” with a knowing smirk.
“He was nicknamed Count Dracula by the droll grips and sparks of [the studio]…no matter how hot those soundstages got, Giger would be dressed head-to-toe in black leather, hair slicked back, eyes blazing with secret intensity.” (Alien Vault)
Under his direction, the crew used cow, sheep, and pig offal for the Chestburster scene and freshly boiled animal bones from the slaughterhouse for the planetoid’s walls.
Legacy
“The greatest compliment is when people get tattooed with my work, whether it’s done well or not. To wear something like that your whole life is the largest compliment someone can pay to you as an artist.” (Alienated)
One of his former wives has gone on record saying that one time she was in the hospital, and Giger told her he needed her to get better, because if he was taking care of a sick person, he wouldn’t have time to make art, and if he didn’t make time to make art, he would go mad.
There’s a certain cost we allot for the True (white male) Artists in society — the ‘obsessive geniuses.’ Giger nearly walked off the Alien production at one point for lack of budget.
But even his genius didn’t protect him from certain artistic milestones; he worked on Alien³ (1992), but was never properly credited, he faced obscenity charges for album art, and wasn’t properly paid for certain collaborations.
While part of me rolls my eyes at his artistic proclivities, a bigger part of me feels for his desire to create, and mourns the movie-making magic of days gone.
A great deal of the 2023 Hollywood union strikes revolved around artists’ continued diminished ability to create; fighting against smaller writers’ rooms, shorter television seasons, shorter film schedules, and artificial intelligence. Do we still get 150-person design teams for American1 productions? Do we give them the adequate time and budget to work through ideas?
Alien is undoubtedly, a visual masterpiece. Giger’s style from his favorite themes to his color palette permeate every frame of the film. Alien without Giger is a concept that has been explored; the original screenplay was adapted into a comic book without Giger’s influence, as a fun experiment, and it kinda sucks. They chose brightly colored tentacles for the creature; a Lovecraft derivative.
There’s also his output; he was constantly drawing, painting, airbrushing, sculpting, with little sketching and underpainting, usually creating a piece all in one go. At the time of his death, his home was stacked to the ceiling with books, his paintings displayed on every wall inch. He had a model train of biomechanical body parts running through his house. He dined on a table of his paintings. A heavy metal musician became his acolyte and assistant for decades, contributing to Giger’s ability to work constantly, but he spoke of nothing but compassionate love for the artist.
Giger loved cats, LSD, and creating. He had a cheeky, dark sense of humor and apologized after seeing Alien for his “outbreaks of rage.”
His works contain explicit themes of death, the feminine, and the sublime but when asked about what his work means, he answers, “I just liked the way it looked.” And the way it looks is fucking cool.
There’s a scene in the documentary Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World where Giger is signing autographs, and person after person sheds their clothes to show him their Giger-inspired tattoos. Not just Alien; back pieces or sleeves taken directly from the Necronomicon.
His passing in 2014 marks the death of one of the last great artists; he has a museum in Switzerland dedicated to his work and he also designed for nu metal band, Korn.
There’s no shortage of talent in this world, but I worry there’s a shortage of the circumstances that allowed Giger to thrive; and if he still wasn’t properly compensated in the 20th century, how can the artists of now, where everything is done more cheaply and quickly than ever, even begin to dream of getting paid to create the greatest nightmare ever put to film?
Recommended Watchlist
Visual stunners, besides Alien.
The Creature from The Black Lagoon (1954)
Maybe my favorite Universal Monster film. The “Gill-man” was created by Disney animator and monster lover, Milicent Patrick, whose Hollywood historical mark was only recently unearthed by Mallory O’Meara for her 2019 novel, The Lady from the Black Lagoon.
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)
A film that is so singularly designed, its visual influence is monumental to everything that came after. German expressionism!
The Ritual (2017)
One sick creepy mythological-looking Creature design.
Thanks and see ya next week!
xo,
your reflection in the mirror that seems to move as you do, blink as you do, but sometimes, out of the corner of your eye, looks just like allie lembo baring her teeth.
Resources:
Jodorowsky’s Dune (2013) dir. Frank Pavich.
Dark Star: H. R. Giger's World (2014) dir. Belinda Sallin.
Memory: The Origins of Alien (2019) dir. Alexandre O. Philippe.
Reproduction: ALIENATED: Interview with H.R. Giger. (1994) Seconds.
Alien Vault: The Definitive Story of the Making of the Film by Ian Nathan
The Official Website of H.R. Giger
Alien: The Original Screenplay by Cristiano Seixas, Guilherme Balbi (Illustrator), Candice Han (Color Artist), Dan O'Bannon (Screenplay), Walter Simonson (Illustrator)
Alien is a co-production between the U.S. and England.
Loved this research and history of the artists and what influenced their life's work! excellent
explanations Really. enjoyed this piece!
I so appreciated this focus on the artist. Great research and commentary. What an amazing talent!!!