Several elements were vital to the effectiveness of the 1979 horror film Alien, which was essentially an old-fashioned haunted house story relocated to deep space. (Its own director, Ridley Scott, called it "a C-movie done in an A-way".) Chief among them was the visceral and disquieting design work by the Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger, who has died aged 74 from injuries sustained in a fall.
Giger's "biomechanical" style was born out of his experience of night terrors and the art therapy in which he partook to combat this sleeping disorder. It is fair to say that he has been responsible in his own way for disrupting the sleep of others. "People are either thrilled or terrified by Giger's art," said the Austrian artist Ernst Fuchs. "No one else knows how to depict the most horrific nightmares so stunningly beautifully." The novelist and film-maker Clive Barker observed: "Giger seems to be painting aliens but the closer you look, the more you realise he's painting twisted versions of us."
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