Book Review: The Alien Archive

I recently purchased a tomb of Alien info called the Alien Archive. This books covers all four movies and is a wealth of Alien concept art used and unused, set photos, insider info and interviews.
The opening chapter is an interview with Sigourney Weaver on how working on these movies and playing Ripley had a prefound effect on her life.
Later sections show case the amazing work of Ron Cobb and Syd Mead and their wonderful concpets for Alien and Aliens.
You get a look at the unused idea's for Vincent Ward's Bosch like wooden planet and idea for what the Runner alien may have looked like. Hell even the Alien Resurrection stuff is wicked to look at. The concept art and design was wicked.
The down side is there very little written about the movies but a whole lot of wicked photos and art work do make up the bulk of this beast. Good thing or bad thing.....I'll leave that up to you.

Not lying this book was steep setting me back €45 but if your an hardcore Alien fan like myself you should own a copy of this book.

Did the Alien rape Lambert?

So one of the most disputed and controversial theory in the Alien movie lore is the suggested rape of the other female crew member Lambert. There are a number of things that point to the fact she was indeed violated buy the xenomorph. First off the creature itself. If it was indeed able to savagely impregnate a man think of what the beast could do to a female human.

The noise's Lambert made over the intercom sounded vile and made one think her death was long and painfull.

Another point is the tail going between her legs, fact is that Bretts legs scott just reused the scene to symbolise what was going to happen.

When Ripley finds Parker and Lambert. Lamberts nude body seems to be strung up and her bloodly legs exposed.

Game over man Review: Aliens Infestation

So in what mad world to a handheld game out do it console counter part...this one. While I do have a soft spot for it Aliens:Colonial Marines it was still a fucking uber let down. It was a sub par attempt at doing the Aliens movie on video game format yet at the same time Aliens Infestation was released for the DS and it rocked. The story goes along the same as Alien:CM. Your the rescue team for Hicks unit and you board the Sulaco and thats were the game parts from Aliens:CM. In this game they take elements from the expanded universe and even unused scripts. The main human foe is Wayland Yutani but the U.U.P (Union of Progressive Peoples) space commies for want of a better term. The U.U.P have harvested xeno's and are breeding them as weapons. So you gotta stoped them on both LV426 and their main base on Mars moon of  Phobos. The U.P.P soldiers are challange who like the player use a cover system. Theres also some robots who take a fair pounding.

The Alien enemies are wicked too. The Warrior Aliens sound like Aliens, they can attack from the ground wall and roof. But its not just warrior Aliens theres fucking GORILLA xeno's too. Thats right Kenner style baby...these are tough motherfuckers and even have a pretorian version. You fight a number of Queen boss's and a Jockey xeno...and no no that fucking Deacon. 

Game play is old school side shooter with a great range of weapons which can be upgraded...the shotgun being the best. Playing this is like playing Contra on PCP. You can also use vehicals such as the powerloader and APC. 

Your giving a roster of 16 characters to use and each has his own personality. The game also makes great use of the botton screen and stylus using it to active switchs, weld things, select thing and bring up the map. The bottom screen also has this wicked little mine game based on the Bishop knife trick where you gotta stab the stylus between the fingers of the hand on screen as fast as you can in a selected order.

I cant tell you enough how awesome this game is and at the end of the day if your an Aliens fan and you have a DS you need to buy this game. 

Now to try and plow through Alien Isolation without browning my pants so I can review it for you good people.

Dark Horse Comic review: Aliens series one to three

So after the release of Aliens Darkhorse picked up the comic rights to the franchise and made series which picked up 10 years after the events of Aliens and left us with a scared Hicks and and an emotionally scared Newt. The comics written buy Mark Verheiden were dark edgy and got the vibe off the movies right off and then some expanding the universe 10 fold. Then in 1992 Alien3 came out and in an effort to remain in line with fox continuity They changed Hicks to Wilks and Newt to Billie when the books were reprinted. You can if your lucky still get early editions where the named are changed. For this review Im going to keep the movie names and give you the title of the collected graphic novels.

Aliens Book one: Outbreak
Taking place some 10 years after Aliens the story begins with a deep space salvage crew encountering a xeno on board wrecked ship and is slaughtered. Hicks who has been in and out of the USCM stockade due and bars because of been shunned from the other marines is brought to the high brass. He told they used the info from the attacked ship to find the xenomorph homeworld.Before he goes he decides to vist Newt and learns she's going to be lobotomized. Rather then let that happen to her he smuggles her onboard the ship for the mission. Meanwhile a rival company to Wayland-Yutani bring backs an infected crew member of the salvaged ship and cause's a wide spread outbreak on earth.
Mark Neilson art style has dated badly and the story is kinda all
over the place. While not shit its not the best its not too bad either
so if your a fan check it out.







Aliens Book two: Nightmare Asylum
Taking place after Hicks and Newt escape a now infested earth one to land on a planet ruled buy a power mad General Spears who breeds xeno's with a mad scheme to train them and use them to take back earth. This of course makes Hicks relise that Spears is nuts. Spears while weary of them keeps them alive because their experience of the bugs.Newt still comes to terms wth the loss of her lover she had in the first book and Hick trys to lead an uprising to stop Spears plan.

This book is wicked..the story wicked, the action wicked...the art work buy Den Beauvais fantastic.
This is a vast improvement from the the last book. and is a must for an Aliens fan.

Aliens book three: Female War

So after Spears attempt failed which causes Ripely to come out of hiding joining up with Hicks and Newt and formulates a plans to lure the high Queen to one city drawing the rest of the hive and nuking it.
Ripley's departure and absence is explained well and does make a number of nods to the movies. He relationship is with Newt is strained and Hicks doesnt trust her which is far more intresting then the main story. 

The art work buy Sam Keith who worked on Sandman and while intresting I did not think it was ideal for the story. With a silly plot and odd set of stylized art work it not the most impressive of the books but still needed for completion sake for an Aliens fan.

So if your going start collecting comics those three books are a good starting point. All three can be found in Aliens Omnibus volume one.

Alien Art attack.

Check out yet another amazing piece of work from Aga Romanska....it is wicked.

You can check out more from this talented young lady here. https://www.facebook.com/ArtsyStuffOfAga
or mangakapoof.tumblr.com.

Ridley does what Ripley could not....killing the Alien!

So the final nail in the cinematic existence of the xenomorph was hammered in today when Scott made it clear their would be no xenos appearing in Prometheus 2 or 3 or any other movies in that universe for that matter. Now I like many people were let down with Prometheus but the thing that kept me clinging on was the explanation of the existence of the xeno in the next movie and not to think the creature which appeared at the end was indeed the starbeast its self.  The Story will focus more on the Jockeys....well thats cool and all but I was always told ne school to finish one fucking maths question before moving on to another......what he did was give a wrong fucking answer and hoped no one would notice.....well we fucking did.

Dont get me wrong I see whats he means buy staying theres not much he can do with it but still for fuck sake at least give us a bit more then a third rate cocktease at the end of the movie with a wicked looking rod puppet.

Christ I hope Alien Isolation is good or Im going to be a SAD fucking Panda.

For more infor on this clusterfuck check out this site here. http://spinoff.comicbookresources.com/2014/09/25/ridley-scott-has-had-enough-of-aliens-iconic-xenomorph-that-beast-is-done/
Cheers to Char for supplying me with the info.

Shlocktober

They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery....well we'll find out in the lead up to Halloween in something I like to call Shlocktober on both the my Aliens and Savage Cinema blog I'll be reviewing some of the best and worst Alien and predator copy cat movies of all time. These include
Night Beast
The Deadly Spawn
Galaxy of Terror
The Borrower
The Relic
and a whole host of others.