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Alien T-Shirt Transfer (1979)

Totally wicked and extremely rare iron-on. I think there were only four transfer designs in total: The egg, the Nostromo, the space jockey, and this one. The Giger-inspired title probably wasn’t recognizable enough at the time—nothing like it appears in the trailer, the theatrical posters, etc.—but it’s unmistakable now.

UPDATE (9/17/14): Jason at Contra Dextra Avenue identified the “Roach” on the transfer as most likely the t-shirt design company Roach Studios—very popular in the ’70s. Check out a vintage ad below.

Movie Theater Marquees: Alien (1979)

Published May 13, 2014 '70s Movies/TV , Alien Trilogy , Movie Theaters/Marquees , Sci-Fi Production Design 3 Comments

The first photo shows the Alien premiere at the Criterion Theater, New York, 1979. The second two are of the premiere at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

The showing at the Egyptian was special. Many of the props, models, and even parts of the set were on display. After you stood in line for an hour or two, you got to walk through a corridor of the Nostromo to get into the lobby, and in the courtyard sat Giger’s massive “Space Jockey.” The masterpiece was promptly vandalized and had to be removed (note the hand touching it in the photo).

All of the pics below are from Lisa Morgan, who unearthed them a few years ago.

(Images via Bow Tie Partners, Aliens and Predators Tumblr, fancollectorgeek.com, and cinriter/Lisa Morgan)

Movie Theater Marquees: Friday the 13th, Don’t Go in the House, and Aliens (1980, 1986)

Published October 25, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Alien Trilogy , Horror Movies/TV , Movie Theaters/Marquees , Sci-Fi Movies/TV 3 Comments

The Warner Cinerama Theatre in New York, originally The Strand Theatre, opened in 1914. It was demolished in 1987.

Don’t Go in the House is a very low budget slasher about (the IMDb description is brutally succinct) “a victim of child abuse… who grows up to become a maniacal construction worker. He stalks women at discos, takes them home, then hangs them upside-down in a special steel-walled room and sets them on fire.” The trailer is here.

Below is the same theater seen from the opposite side. You can see a Howard the Duck poster to the left of the marquee.

I saw Aliens four or five times at the theater in the summer of ’86. It was a perfect movie then, and it’s a perfect movie now.

(Images via Jane R. Fink/Pinterest and Cinema Treasures)

Ertl’s Die-Cast Blade Runner Cars (1982)

Published June 13, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Alien Trilogy , Blade Runner , Sci-Fi Movies/TV , Sci-Fi Production Design , What the Future Looked Like 5 Comments

My mom took me to see Blade Runner at the theater because I convinced her that it was a Star Wars sequel. I was 10. After Leon shot Holden in the first five minutes (“My mother? Let me tell you about my mother…“), she tried to forcibly remove me, but I wouldn’t budge. I was totally mesmerized by Ridley Scott’s haunting, desperate, Promethean vision of the future. I still am.

I’d forgotten about the toy cars, but they really did exist, and that makes me happy. Kids would have seen the “spinners” (designed by conceptual artist Syd Mead) prominently featured in the trailer, but most wouldn’t have been lucky enough (or duplicitous enough) to get a peek at the movie. It was a brilliant try by Ertl, anyway.

Toys and other kid-marketed merchandise were almost always designed to extend the experience of the production they were based on. (I’ve talked about this before.) In the case of Blade Runner and other R-rated features, that merchandise was meant to replace the experience of the film. Think of all the Alien stuff from ’79: Target Set, Movie Viewer, Board Game, Trading Cards, Kenner’s wicked 18″ action figure.

We’d seen the previews, we gleaned what we could from the adults willing to talk to us, but that’s it. Like Ridley Scott, we had to invent a world and a story for those spinners and that alien to inhabit.

UPDATE (5/8/15): David Augustyn spotted a mistake on the four-pack. Rachael’s Spinner is labeled as Bryant’s Police Spinner and vice versa. The Spinner second from right is clearly a cop car and even has “Police” written on the side.

(Images via eBay)

James Cameron Painting a Matte for Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)

Published May 17, 2013 '80s Movies/TV , Alien Trilogy , Roger Corman , Sci-Fi Movies/TV , Special Effects/Visual Effects 3 Comments

Above: Cameron paints the hero’s village—a beautiful, surreal design—from BBTS.

Below: Cameron painting the skyline for Escape from New York.

And here’s a short magazine blurb on Galaxy of Terror. The man squatting next to the pyramid is Robert Skotak. The two also worked together on Battle Beyond the Stars and Escape from New York, and Cameron later hired Skotak as visual effects supervisor for Aliens, The Abyss, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and Titanic.

Cameron remembers his friends, I’ll give him that, and Aliens is the greatest sci-fi action movie ever made.