Alien Mechanics: The Med-Lab Facehuggers Part One

Stan Winston and his team faced many challenges while working on Aliens. Cameron's script called an elaborate sequence involving Ripley and Newt confronted by facehuggers while trapped inside the med-lab The team needed to work out the many variants of the creature needed to be assembled to perform a specific role within the numerous action sequences the scene had.
 
The facehugger in Alien did very little after it sprang from the egg latching onto Kane. After which, the creature is seen pulsating on Kane's face followed by the facehugger being examined after its death. And let's not forget the acid scene. The facehuggers in Aliens now have an active role which acquired them to do a whole more than its predecessor. This time the facehuggers leaped, attacked and scurried.

Work on the new facehuggers took place before Stan, and his crew shipped to London. The original facehugger was acquired as a template for the sculpture which was done by Alec Gillis. Some minor changes were made for the new facehugger. The finger appendages were made to look even more like fingers; the tail was extended by six inches, and a completely new underbelly with the embryo tube now visible protruding outwards.

"We tried to be as true to the original film as we could, without disallowing ourselves a little bit of artistic freedom to do things that we considered - if not improvements - something to keep your head above water so you're not just doing what was done before."

- Stan Winston, The Official Aliens Movie Book -- © 1986

The first time we see the med-lab facehuggers six are contained, submerged in water, inside stasis tubes. Only the one creature was mechanical and articulated and was to lunge towards Burke as he takes a close look. This version of the facehugger was water-tight with its mechanism and cables operating it extending out the back of the stasis tube with water tight seals, which proved problematic from the start. The next task was working out how to make the creatures tail whip around inside such a confined space. Both air and water pressure techniques were attempted, but neither technique worked. It was Ray Lovell, who came up with a working concept. Ray devised a spring-loaded-tail that was cable operated. Pulling on the cable made the tail tighten, releasing the cable made it whip open, a further two cables operated the base of the tail giving it a pivot motion as the tail was whipping.

Later in the film the two remaining live facehuggers are freed from their stasis tubes inside the operating room with Ripley and Newt trapped inside. For this sequence three mechanical facehuggers and multiple floppy facehuggers, with articulated fingers, were used. It was Cameron's idea for Stan to have some 'dummy' facehuggers built instead of using something sophisticated for scenes that involved the facehuggers leaping or being thrown. We'll talk about those in part two.

"We'd be wondering what sort of fancy doodad to come up with for a particular shot, and Jim would say, 'let's just make up a bunch of dummies - we'll throw them and blow them up.'  And for quick cuts that worked.

- Stan Winston, Cinefex 27 -- © 1986 Don Shay

Cameron's Mechanism Sketch

Stan's next challenge was to make a facehugger scurry across the floor convincingly. Cameron suggested using a small electric motor or a gasoline engine taken from a model airplane in order to make it move. However, neither attempt worked. Stan then went for a pull-toy mechanism idea but was unsure how to pull it off when Cameron remembered how he'd made a fish in Pirahna II wiggle it's tail by pulling it along over a wire with a little mechanism inside the fish. Cameron then phoned Stan and related his idea sketching a diagram of how the small mechanism would work and had it sent over to Stan to work from.

The Finished Mechanism

It was Rick Lazzarini, who had the task of constructing the facehugger and its mechanism. Lazzarini began construction and found Cameron's design had a few faults. Ironing out any faults Lazzarini continued on, keeping a video diary of his progress along with demonstrations and explanation of its workings.

Rick Lazzarini with the Facehugger

Facehugger Near Completion

The mechanism had one large gear, which would move six other smaller gears the creature's legs were connected to. A wire was wrapped around the larger gear so as the facehugger is pulled, the larger gear moved, as did the small gears, the legs would rotate giving the illusion; the facehugger was scuttling towards you. Once finished the facehugger was then shipped over to London to be filmed. To make the creature scuttle towards Ripley the facehugger was elevated from the ground by the thin wire that was threaded around the large gear of the mechanism. Two operators had a second wire to pull the facehugger back and fourth along the first wire in order to make it appear as if it was actually moving by itself. I was nine years old when I first saw Aliens. Seeing the facehugger scuttling towards Ripley, I had chills. Even to this day, I still love that shot.

To be continued...