Alien 3

Alien 3 title

Tag line : The Bitch is Back.

Alien 3 The third instalment in the alien saga is by far the worst to date. Directed by David Fincher, the film apparently came about from a mixture of different idea's that didn't really work out when they finally put them together on film.

Following on from ALIENS, Ripley, Hicks, Newt and the android Bishop are still in hypersleep on board the "Sulaco" as it returns to earth. Unfortunately a facehugger had somehow stowed away on board (how?), and tries to break into one of the chambers. Injuring itself in the process, acid blood flies everywhere and starts an electrical fire. The ship explodes moments later (blimey, next time I'll take the train).

Ripley and co are saved by the ship's computer, which transfers their chambers into an escape pod, but their problems are far from over as the pod crashes down on a prison colony, and only Ripley survives the impact. To make matters worse, something else survives the crash (no prizes for guessing what), with unfortunate consequences for the pet dog of one of the inmates.

So the scene is set for another onslaught as several of inmates fall prey to the creature before they realise what is going on. Unfortunately the rest of the film is made up of the prisoners being chased round by the creature, as they run around trying to lure it into a trap (boooooring), owing to fact the director thought Sigourney Weaver's idea of having no weapons in the film and show have the people trying to outwit the creature by other means would make a more interesting movie (WRONG!!!!).

This film was supposed to be more like the original, a sci-fi/horror, but instead it's just plain awful. The plot stinks, there's no real action, no real suspense, or fear (despite what the cinema advert claimed) and there's not enough shots of Sigourney in her underwear. Not only this but killing off Hicks, Newt and Bishop, who were extremely popular characters from the last film, during the intro was a really bad idea and would wholeheartedly recommend you give this film a miss, except that you really need to see it to understand parts of Alien 4.

Overall marks : 4/10.

Other Information.

A different poster from the one above, used for the films promotion, showed a curled up alien queen embryo, with the alternate tag line "This time it's hiding in the most terrifying place of all"
This was actually David Fincher's first picture as a major director, and unfortunately it shows. He did however, go on to have greater success with the film "SEVEN".
One problem with the film, which actually started as an interesting idea, had the creature moving in a different way, as it had developed some of the characteristics of its host (the dog). This idea had only been previously touched on in the comic book series. However, to do this the vast majority of shots where filmed using "stop motion" animation and tacky computer graphics, which didn't look quite right on screen.
There were several additional and alternate scenes filmed, but not used for the theatrical release. Although some of these could be seen in some of the trailers and were later used in a "special edition" DVD release of the film. These showed Dr Clemens outside the prison complex seeing the escape pod crash down, a differant take of the prisoners recovering the pod and Clemens finding Ripley washed up on the shore. There was also a scene showing the alien bursting out of a cow, instead of a dog, and them later trapping it in a holding tank, only to be later released by one of the other prisoners. In addition several other scenes ran longer and had additional lines of dialogue.
The DVD release of the film that appears on the 2003 Alien Quadrilogy boxset contains both the extended special edition release and the original theatrical version.
The initial budget for Alien 3 was $35,000,000 but quickly mounted to $65,000,000 due to the amount of "mucking about" with the hiring of staff and the constant re-writing and changing of the script.
Click "Here" to see the list of production problems that resulted in this film being a complete mess!