What makes a creature scary? I think at least for one type there might be a formula, and that’s the extra terrestrial, the alien. We never met one, so as of now, we envision our own. Now how do we do that? We draw a self-portrait and add an extra finger or make the eyes huge and black like deep space. It’s not that we just make them ugly, we actually make them believable. We make them functional. They are far more evolved than us, and that makes us feel weak and exposed next to them. So basically, we design super human mutations, and that is exactly what scares the shit out of us.

“I always wanted my alien to be a very beautiful thing, something aesthetic. A monster isn’t just something disgusting – it can have a kind of beauty.”

H.R. Giger

YouTuber KaptainChristian produced a nice clip about the work of H.R. Giger, about “his” Alien and how one film became a nightmare on tape. Watch it here: