Alien

In the opening scene, we see the reflection of a computer screen on the helmet with a cup on the right.

When we see the helmet again, it is showing a different screen, so the cup is not present.

When Kane, Dallas, and Lambert are in their spacesuits exploring the alien ship, all are wearing white/gray fabric covers on their heads under the domes of their helmets.

These are like the "communication carriers" or "Snoopy hats" worn by Apollo and later astronauts.

But when Kane's helmet is cut off in the sick bay, no Snoopy hat.

The amount of alien slime on Dallas's hand changes between shots.

During the conversation about Brett being a parrot, the length of his cigarette constantly changes.

Blood squib visible during chest-bursting scene.

During the "chestburster" scene, Parker is holding Kane's arm when he is convulsing.

However, after the alien arrives and Parker has clearly backed away with arms in the air, you can still see Parker holding Kane's arm.

The two holes caused by the facehugger's acid blood in the ceiling of the two different decks have exactly the same shape (re-used shot).

The milky "sweat" that drips down Ash's forehead before he fights Ripley disappears after he throws her onto the desk.

It was not wiped away, because his head is perfectly clean, rather than smeared.

Just before Dallas is taken by the alien, Ash's headset disappears.

Just before Brett is taken and the alien drops down behind him you can clearly see wires attached to the alien.

During Parker's fight with Ash, the sleeve on his right shoulder suddenly becomes torn and a safety pin is visible holding it together.

In the next shot we see his shirt intact and we see Ash tearing it.

When the alien is popping out of Kane, the camera changes angle and there is a significant amount of blood missing from his shirt.

Then when the angle changes again, the blood comes back.

When Ripley comes out of the closet with her spacesuit on in the shuttle to try and get rid of the Alien and she straps herself into the seat the straps are up over her shoulders.

Then she scene switches to her fingers pushing the switches and the scene then goes back to her in the seat and the straps are down on her arms.

The next time the scene changes again the straps are up over her shoulders.

When trying to abort the countdown, the cancellation instructions Ripley follows with her finger are actually just a French translation of the detonation instructions she followed earlier.

During the introduction scenes of the Nostromo, the stars in the background are maintained even though the spaceship is shown from different angles.

Right before Dallas is taken by the alien he touches a patch of alien slime on the floor.

In the next shot he has more slime on his hand than there was on the floor.

When Dallas is crawling around through the bowels of the Nostromo before he is taken by the alien, you can see a dolly track lining the floor.

When Ripley consults Mother, she puts her left hand on a ledge and begins to type with her right.

In the close-up she is typing with both hands, but when we cut back to the wider shot, she is still leaning on the ledge with her left.

When Lambert comes to tell the rest of the crew that it will be ten more months until they reach Earth, Ripley is leaning forward listening to her.

In the next shot she is leaning against the wall when she says, "Oh God.

" When Ripley visits Parker and Brett to inspect their progress, she says "Yeah, you'll get whatever's coming to you.

" But the word "Yeah" is missing entirely from the soundtrack, and the rest of the sentence is out of sync with the video.

This error is not present on the original Alien DVD box set, where Ripley's "Yeah" is muffled but quite audible.

But the 2003 theatrical release and the new "Alien Quadrilogy" boxed set both have the word entirely absent.

Just after the time limit to override the self-destruction of the ship has expired, the clock starts counting down from 5 minutes to 0.

We see the clock counting down and it cuts away when the timer reaches 4:57, and then mother says "ship will self-destruct in T-minus 5 minutes.

" Just before Ripley enters the Narcissus (shuttle), she is carrying Jones's carrier with the "window" to the front.

The next shot shows her holding the carrier with the window to the rear.

A crewman with a black panel of some kind is visible through the smoke as Ripley runs through the corridors at the end of the film.

Near the end when Ripley is in the shuttle closet putting on the space suit there are 2 axes hanging on the wall.

When she puts the helmet on they have vanished.

Throughout the film, at numerous points, what is reflected in the crew's helmets doesn't agree with what should be reflected.

A close-up of the Alien egg when Kane is looking at it shows water droplets falling upwards off the egg, revealing that the shot was done with the camera upside down.

(according to Trivia, this is an intended effect by 'Ridley Scott' (qv)) After Lambert hits Ash with the electric prod, the camera pans down and we can see wires on the ground leading to the prop Ash torso atop Parker.

The torso has no legs, ending at the waist.

(Visible in 1979 theatrical wide-screen and full-screen versions, but not in 2003 director's version).

After Ash wrestles Parker to the deck, Lambert runs over, grabs Ash (the prop torso) and throws him aside.

In the next scene, Ash is still atop Parker.

Lambert then hits Ash with the electric prod.

When Ash wrestles Parker to the deck, Lambert can be seen dragging Ripley through a hatchway into an adjoining corridor.

In the next scene, Lambert is just picking Ripley up.

She moves Ripley only a short distance toward the hatch before dropping her to assist Parker.

When the crew is sharing a meal after Kane regains consciousness, Parker is shown to be talking.

The shot changes to show the crew from a closer angle, and although we can still hear Parker speaking, he is shown to be laughing softly and not speaking at all.

The planetoid where the Nostromo finds the alien spaceship is said to be 1200 kilometers diameter with a surface gravity of.

(Earth is 1G.

) The horizon would curve visibly on a moon that tiny.

By Newton's Law of Gravitation, a body that small would need a density of 50 grams per cubic centimeter to achieve.

This is more than twice the density of osmium, the densest element known.

It's unlikely that the moon would be made of a massive ball of some hitherto unheard-of, super-dense, stable element.

Together, this indicates that the size of the moon is incorrect.

When Ripley finds out the truth from Mother, Ash is seen standing next to her.

A brief scuffle ensues and Ripley leaves the room.

As she leaves there is no injury to her but when the door opens on the other side she has a bloody right nostril.

When Dallas is first entering Mother, as he passes through the last doorway.

when he is seen outside the door, one of the lights on the door-frame is burned out (on his left) but in the next shot, it is lit.

The landscape of LV-426 is obviously a segment of the larger planet landscape.

There is no sound in space, but it plays on the soundtrack for dramatic effect.

During the chest-burster scene, Kane's shirt is not tucked in during the initial struggle but becomes tucked in when the alien breaks out of his chest (the fake chest).

When Dallas is climbing through the air shafts of the Nostromo, a ladder he uses wobbles.

As Ripley blows the alien out of one of the Narcissus' aft nozzles, the engine exhaust is obviously water because it dribbles down the camera.

Ridley Scott stated that they used water as a substitute for some sort of plasma.

At any rate, there's no reason for the exhaust - whatever it is - to dribble down a camera glass that isn't supposed to be there.

Several shots early in the movie where the crew are at their stations the monitor images are projected onto their faces.

This is impossible - they would have to look into projectors instead of monitors, so this effect just doesn't make sense.

Just after the alien bursts from Kane's chest, you can see 2 steel rods supporting either side of the head.

They disappear into the neck when the body is raised high enough.

Mother's reports of the remaining time in the countdown to self-destruct all say that the explosion will occur "in T minus minutes".

In fact, as she is saying that the event will occur after a certain period, the "T minus" is unnecessary.

She should simply say that the event will take place "in minutes".

When the Nostromo approaches the planet, there is too short time between the phases of the approach - such distances in space would require either much more time or much greater speed.

In the latter case the deceleration required for orbital insertion would have a lethal effect on the crew.

The alien's tail snakes between Lambert's feet, but it's not her feet that are shown.

Lambert wears cowboy boots; the feet shown wore joggers.

The feet and legs were 'Harry Dean Stanton' (qv)'s (see Trivia).

Mother's two 30 second countdowns take 36 and 37 seconds respectively.

During the landing sequence, Kane issues the instruction "Roll 90 degrees port yaw.

" Roll and yaw are two separate directional axes.

The correct instruction (and what the ship actually does) is "Roll 90 degrees port.

" In the split second shot where the alien drives its tongue into Parker's head, you can see he is bald, but throughout the rest of the movie, he has hair.

Also, in a freeze-frame of the shot you can see the alien tongue is white, not airbrushed like the rest of the creature.

At the very beginning, when Dallas is going through the computer login sequence to communicate with Mother, and all the green-lettered commands are flashing by, the word "ALIGNMENT" is spelled "ALLIGNMENT".

The computer readout says to "insure" the safe return of the organism rather than to "ensure" it.

One of the moons in the system containing LV-426 (the target moon) is out of phase with the others.

Jones vanishes from his carrier as Ripley boards the Narcissus.

This is deliberate because the fiery explosion effects in the scene would be traumatic for the trapped animal.

However, as a consequence, 'Sigourney Weaver' (qv) handles the carrier more roughly than Ripley would if Jones was inside.

During the chest-burster scene just before Lambert is sprayed with blood there is a quick shot of alien bursting out of Kaneon a freeze-frame a hole is clearly seen in the table right under Kane's raised hand.

During their fight, just before Ash throws Ripley into a bunk, the camera operator obviously knocks the wind chimes.

Ian Holm even looks towards the sound, puzzled.

A moving dippy bird toy is show in the opening scene.

Dippy birds require water to work.

As the crew is in hibernation and has been for some time, the water in the glass in front of the dippy bird would have long ago evaporated, so the toy would be motionless, not dipping.

When Ripley is preparing to enter hypersleep, she removes Jones from his carrier and puts him into one of the freezer tubes and closes it.

Later, after disposing of the alien, she gets into the other tube; the closing shot shows her asleep with her hands resting on her abdomen.

In Aliens, when the salvage crew enters the shuttle and finds Ripley, Jones is curled up on her stomach; he wasn't there in the closing shot - he was in the other tube.

When Dallas asks the computer for advice, his typing is supposed to be underlined whilst the responses are not, but this arrangement goes awry.

Dallas informs the crew that Mother, the ship's computer, has interrupted their journey having intercepted a transmission of unknown origin, an acoustical beacon that repeats at intervals of 12 seconds.

Acoustics is a branch of science dealing with sound.

Sound is a mechanical wave that requires a medium, like air or water, in order to propagate.

There is none of that in space.

The tagline of the movie, "In space no one can hear you scream" also applies to an acoustical beacon.

When Parker and Brett are walking through a long hallway and complaining that none of the other crew "come down here", their reflection can briefly be seen in a mirror behind them.

Mirrors were used to make the set hallways look much longer than they actually were.

When the rest of the crew is watching Dallas and Ash try to get the facehugger off of Kane, Parker asks, "How come they don't freeze him?" but his lips don't move when we hear this.

When attempting to remove the facehugger by cutting one of its fingers, acid is bled out getting on the gauze, the surgical instrument and the floor but only melts away the floor.

During Ripley's final log entry, she identifies herself as the "3rd officer.

" She is technically the 3rd in command, or "2nd officer.

" (Dallas is Captain, Cain is the 1st officer, Ripley is the 2nd officer).

The company's orders received by Mother state "Priority One - Insure return of organism".

'Insure' is the wrong verb.

The statement should be "Ensure return of organism".

When Dallas, Kane and Lambert are inside the alien ship containing the space jockey, there is light coming from the left side of the screen, despite them being inside an internal chamber of the derelict spacecraft.

There are relatively few films in history that are so solid and well made that they are the definition of a 4/4 star movie. Alien is one of those films.

The trailer from Alien let you know you weren't in Kansas anymore: In space, no one can hear you scream." Released on year after Star Wars, Alien became the antithesis of the blockbuster film.

This is it. This is the one that everyone needs to see.

I think many people will disagree with me but I think that this movie have some huge flaws. I liked the creepy atmosphere which the director of this movie succeeded to make, the Alien looked great and the idea was pretty original for that time movie.

Highly effective Sci-Fi horror involving a spaceship crew intercepting an S.O.

Alien seems a unique and innovative film when you first see it. It becomes inspired instead of being inspirational.

...just to be able to watch Alien over and over again.

At the outset, I want to say that although I rate the film 7/10, I was disappointed by it. When I first came across the film, its title, its filmmaker and its general acclaim by the public, I was looking forward to something completely different.

One of the most original, suspenseful & terrifying films you're ever going to come across, Ridley Scott's breakthrough feature is a masterful blend of horror & science-fiction and is a triumph of imagination, art direction, set design, special effects, unsettling score, perfect cast, terrific performances & quality narration that today is widely & rightly regarded as one of the greatest motion pictures of all time.