Giger painted "Necronom IV" (above) in 1976, and it later ended up becoming the inspiration for the Alien design he did for Ridley Scott when he began working on the film. You can definitely see the beginnings of the final Alien creature here, except for those sunglasses and what can only be described as an alien dickhead.

Giger's painting "Necronom V" (seen below) presents an alien being in stark contrast to the one shown in IV, and looks much more sensuous and feminine than the one in IV. Thank god he lost the sunglasses and shortened that head up a bit, because it looks a bit more ridiculous than scary. Of course, if we saw anything coming at us that had been drawn by Giger, it would surely result in a bladder-emptying race in the opposite direction.

Check out the video below where he explains what went into the design, and how he loathes the light. We always figured him for some sort of undead creature of the night.

• Close Encounters Of The Third Kind: Spielberg sure knows how to milk it. We've already had a Special Edition of this come out, complete with new footage. However, not content to just swim in pools full of thousand-dollar bills, he's now putting out the 30th Anniversary Collector's Edition. Okay, it's the best the film has looked, and it has all three versions of the movie in the set. Just, enough already. We get it. Don't make us go Richard Dreyfus loco.
• Battlestar Galactica: Razor: This just aired on TV a couple of weeks ago, but you can now own it without the annoying Quiznos commercials, plus there's a frakload of extra features, deleted scenes, and flashbacks on here for you to spend your time with while you hide from Aunt Mildred and her holiday fruitcake. You can also put it under your pillow and rock yourself to sleep at night while you wait for Season Four.
• Battlestar Galactica: Season One: While both the original miniseries and Season One have already been available in DVD sets, this one gives you both in high-definition. Once you make the jump to HD, you'll never go back. So say we all. This newly-available set includes all the extras from the previous editions as well. If you have been waiting on trying this show out, stop waiting and learn to start loving the Cylons.
• Heroes: Season One: This is what started it all, and it's filled with a load of extras. The commentaries on these discs are great, especially the ones with Jack Coleman, Greg Grunberg, and Sendhil Ramamurthy, who basically joke their way through the whole thing. But some of the extras are just plain dorky. There's one where Grunberg "Reads Your Mind." Young kids might find amusing, but why not just dump some of that content from the NBC.com site onto the discs? Okay, enough bitching. The episodes look amazing (especially in the high-def version), and it's a great way to catch up on or try out the show while the writer's strike keeps it off the air.
• Blade Runner: The Final Cut: Warners really scraped the bottom of the tank on this one to make sure they satisfied every Blade Runner fan on the planet. If you go for the briefcase version, you get all of the versions of the film, plus a ton of extra junk, including a scale model of one of the "Spinner" flying police cars, a replica of the origami unicorn that Gaff (Edward James Olmos) makes, and a lenticular motion card featuring Harrison Ford encased in carbonite... crap, we mean lucite. It's not all just fanwank toys either: there's a ton of new material about the movie, including a feature length "Dangerous Days" documentary about the making of the movie. Yes, it includes new interviews with Harrison Ford too.
• X-Files: The Ultimate Collection: This is your ultimate gold-standard fanjob edition that other studios should set the bar by. It features all nine seasons of the show, plus the feature film. It's also housed in a cool black box that has a slide-out drawer on the bottom containing a comic book, a guide to the series, trading cards, a poster, and your dignity. This monster contains over 9,000 minutes of television, so make sure you clear a little room on your holiday calendar. The only thing that makes us sad is that they didn't toss in the complete The Lone Gunmen spinoff series, which only ran for 13 episodes. We're sure they'll release another version of this to bleed dry the remaining fans out there, but until then, have at it.

Peoples mentions he was brought in to work on the Blade Runner script after the studio had exhausted Hampton Fancher with multiple drafts. Then Hauer came in and added some of his own stuff to People's pages, ad-libbing the famous "tears in the rain" off the cuff. Nice to know that an ad-lib led to one of the most memorable lines from the film.

Peoples went on to write Ladyhwake, also starring Rutger Hauer, Unforgiven for Clint Eastwood, and the time-traveling viral classic, Twelve Monkeys. Looks like having Rutger Hauer drop in a few lines wasn't such a bad thing.

Sammon's remarks, which came during a recent interview about his updated book Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner are sure to cause involuntary shudders and waves of nausea amongst fans of the original. Although the film is based on Philip K. Dick's classic Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep, author K.W. Jeter has written three novels as sequels to the movie. These novels have generally been panned by critics, and only enjoyed by rabid Blade Runner megafans who long for a return to this dystopian vision of the future, while the rest of us would like to see this film remain untouched, sequel-wise.

Ridley Scott hasn't made a sequel to any of his films, and would rather move on to new territory than revisit somewhere he's been before. Let's hope Sammon's words are just wishful thinking.

Blade Runner II? {SciFi Scanner]

Apparently star Andre Braugher isn't a big fan of the novel, "Crichton's book doesn't hold up to the test of time and so not much happens. When you go back to 1968 and read that book it's anti-climactic, period, so this is a re-telling of the story with the same premise." Let's hope fans of the novel aren't rankled too much by that. As long as he's nitpicking, he might as well say that the 1971 film based on the same novel doesn't hold up that well either. What's going to make their version so much better?

He's very stingy with the details, and basically only tells us that he's playing the military man who is brought in to deal with the situation, while Benjamin Bratt plays the "hot-headed scientist" who is trying to track down the virus. Does Benjamin Bratt have any roles where he isn't hot-headed? According to Braugher, the film will have some elements of Sphere in it (please dear god, let him mean the novel and not the awful movie version), and promises that the virus won't be benign as it is in the novel, but will be "malignant and on the loose."

Hear that folks? It's another "rampant virus on the loose" sci fi tale. Steel yourselves, and think about investing in a hazmat suit.

Braugher on Strain [Bloody Disgusting]

Famous Names: Ridley Scott (Dir.), Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt, Tom Skerritt (Cast).

Crunchy Goodness: 5

Sequels: Aliens, Alien 3, Alien 4, Alien Vs. Predator and the forthcoming Alien Vs. Predator 2.

Sights You'll Never Unsee: John Hurt's awkward and immensely painful "birthing" sequence, and Ian Holm as a paranoid android with a very gloppy systems problem.

Design Breakthrough: H. R. Giger's phallic creatures may have needed better effects to make them move and groove in the later films, but that original design has haunted a million nightmares, and for good reason.

Alien Movies Resource: Includes scripts, trivia, bloopers, cut-scenes and more!