Ximena Gallardo, the author of Alien Woman: The Making of Lt. Ellen Ripley, describes the monster of the Alien franchise as "a nightmare vision of sex and death. It subdues and opens the male body to make it pregnant, and then explodes it in birth. In its adult form, the alien strikes its victims with a rigid phallic tongue that breaks through skin and bone. More than a phallus, however, the retractable tongue has its own set of snapping metallic teeth that connects it to the castrating vagina dentata."
Has it ever been put better than that? Since the release of the original Alien film in 1979, we've been terrified, fascinated and maybe even a little turned on (whether we realized it or not) by this "endoparasitoid extraterrestrial species." It all began when Alien co-screenwriter Ronald Shusett woke from a dream and figured out how to get the Alien on board the good ship Nostromo: "The monster screws one of them." The Alien has continued to morph, adapt and evolve with each installment in the Alien franchise, becoming more grotesque - and, disturbingly enough, sometimes more human - as Ellen Ripley continues her nightmarish journey. Here we take a look at the different incarnations of this magnificent beast, from Alien to Alien Resurrection - and beyond!
