ALIEN: The Special Effects by Don Shay and Bill Norton Titan Books

For a small book there is a lot of information packed in to ALIEN: The Special Effects. The three chapters were originally three separate articles in Cinefax magazine. Here they are collected together to cover the special effects in all three Alien films: Alien, Aliens and Alien3.

All the articles are exceptionally detailed and give revealing glimpses behind the scenes as the special effects creators tell how they sweat blood to bring seemingly effortless visuals. They run through from the concept stage to actualisation of, principally, the monsters but also other SFX.

There is so much information that Titan, the publishers, could easily have doubled the size of the book to coffee-table book proportions by increasing the tiny font (similar to this magazine’s) and increasing the size of the superb "monsters in creation" photographs. As it is, the book spurns a forward, introduction and index but does have a cast and crew list for each film. It may seem a little pricey but there really is a lot of interesting stuff crammed into one place. For instance the problems they had with the "chest buster" scene in the first film: They had six people working on the effects and they used acid to weaken the shirt material so that it was easy for the little alien to break through. But when it came to the actual day the fake blood pumped through but the alien just kept bumping against the material and refused to burst through. They had to do the whole thing again but this time as well as the acid they cut a lot of tiny slits in the fabric with a razor and the alien busted through the "chest" perfectly.

Alien trivia at its best.

G. Hurry

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