r/LV426 • u/bil-sabab • Sep 17 '24
Cast / Behind The Scenes Sigourney Weaver tries out the flame thrower for Alien (1979)
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u/gremlinguy Sep 17 '24
This is a flammenwerfer. It werfs flammen
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u/0rangeAliens Sep 17 '24
“The hills are aliiiiiiiiiive with the sound of…. Aw I’ve run out of flame”
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u/Creeperguy05 Sep 17 '24
That goddamn piece of paper!
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u/josh-afi Sep 18 '24
Imagine being so angry you outsmarted the game with a bunch of paper coordinates.
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u/Scoobert_McDoobert Sep 17 '24
Anything we can do about that heat?
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u/ratman____ ULTIMATE BADASS Sep 17 '24
Thank heavens it actually worked waaaaaaay beyond what was needed and wasn't just some shitty prop used by a trained stunt double, I absolutely love that.
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u/stoofa69 Sep 17 '24
Fun fact, I was on set that day. Had an uncle who worked at the studio. Can’t say I saw that exact shot but I did see the stunt team using it. Long gone now but they did give me a Nostromo crew t shirt as a gift
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u/TreshKJ Sep 17 '24
This is so good! Kinda looks like bluescreen too.
Check out her face! Priceless
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u/bil-sabab Sep 17 '24
Mad Crazy Sigourney walking round the park blasting flamethrower. I'd watch that
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u/East-Violinist Sep 17 '24
Man I thought that it’d be like a lawn torch or something at most. Apparently Parker is one hell of an engineer!
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u/Shadoweclipse13 Sep 17 '24
This is why he was so frustrated about the bonus situation. My man knew what he was worth.
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u/Ocbard Sep 17 '24
They're surprisingly easy to make, when I was a kid, a friend and I made one out of a thing to spray herbicide. It wasn't as spectacular as this and I 'm glad we had no accidents. I think our fuel was methanol and the flame was invisible . Also we put the whole tank under pressure to get the required thrust, which I since learned is highly dangerous.
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u/East-Violinist Sep 17 '24
Well I believe this probably had a thickening agent added like most military flamethrowers. Also Jesus y’all pretty much made a bomb there, glad everything turned out alright
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u/Ocbard Sep 17 '24
Yeah, I bet the methanol with a residue of whatever herbicide my friend's dad had used wasn't the best idea either. We tried the thing, it worked and then we decided to just desmantle it again for safety. It was indeed a bomb, and the invisible flame, you could see by the shimmer in the air that it reached a good 5 feet or something ... it just wasn't the same.
Another great bad idea was filling an old nose spray dispenser with lighter fluid, it would make nice 3 ft high jets of flame (vertically) but the plastic spraying tip would deform and the fuel was too fluid for the container, so after a few jets your hand would also be wet with it, which posed obvious safety issues. Still you know, teenagers having fun. At least the herbicide spray can had a metal tip....
Kids in the eighties, we didn't have internet, but we still knew how to do stupid shit all by ourselves.
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u/Unknown-Pleasures97 Sep 17 '24
Is this real? They really used a real flamethrower?
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u/bil-sabab Sep 17 '24
It was gimmicked but technically yes
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u/Unknown-Pleasures97 Sep 17 '24
Wasn't it dangerous to use on set?
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u/RockMech Sep 17 '24
In some of the cast commentaries and interviews, they mention that everyone was scared to death of the "working" flamethrower (there were apparently a couple that were gas-fed and only puffed out a small bit of flame, for closeups and the like).
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u/GonzoThompson Jones Sep 17 '24
‘Hey, Harry! Come here! I want to light one of your cigarettes for you!”
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u/Taograd359 Sep 17 '24
SIGOURNEY TRIES A WHAT!?
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u/bil-sabab Sep 17 '24
There's an alternate cut where she just cooks The Big Chap. It's on the Ultimate Deluxe Final Legacy Platinum edition that's 5 minutes shorter than the Directors cut.
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u/boringxadult Nuke from Orbit Sep 17 '24
We just watched aliens and I was commenting how much fun is must have been to make that movie.
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u/Gusto082024 Sep 17 '24
I don't think anyone has ever had a pleasant experience working on a Cameron movie
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u/bil-sabab Sep 17 '24
It's Jim Cameron production. So he probably bored everyone to death with his hardcore style))
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u/boringxadult Nuke from Orbit Sep 17 '24
The behind the scenes photos all look pretty fun. But I’m mostly projecting.
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u/UltraMegaKaiju Stay Frosty Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24
it was the opposite of this due to a culture clash between british movie industry standards and james cameron
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u/Sanpaku Sep 17 '24
Suggest you view behind the scenes docs on The Abyss. Cameron is very hard on cast and crew.
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u/BustyPneumatica Sep 17 '24
This is the picture you would want for your obituary if you had her life!
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u/Extra_Jeweler_9314 Sep 17 '24
So weird. I drove past the spot this took place and told my Mrs about this shot. Imagine the heat off that thing in an enclosed space. No wonder she’s sweating.
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u/Nowhereman2380 Sep 17 '24
Wouldn't this have been behind the scenes for Aliens, sometime in the 80s?
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u/GunnyStacker Nuke from Orbit Sep 17 '24
It was a working single unit? I thought for sure there would have been a hidden hose connected to the real fuel tank off-screen.
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u/TK421raw Sep 17 '24
Parker did a good job rigging those incinerator units. But for fucks sake can we talk about the bonus situation?
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u/TheFilmForeman Sep 18 '24
"Wooooo! Ripley crisping them fuckin aliens!....that's too hot...can we do something about that heat?"
"Sigourney....it's a flamethrower"
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u/RngrRuckus Sep 18 '24
"Wooooweee...that is hot. Is there any way we can turn that heat down? Might make the scene a bit easier."
"It's a flamethrower Rick."
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u/Efficient_Working539 Game over, man! Sep 18 '24
I've always thought she was hot. This only proves it.
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u/Itchy-Ad-4314 Sep 17 '24
I thought she was anti-gun?
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u/MantiH Sep 17 '24
Shes testing a prop for a science fiction movie dude. Same movie where shes also using a science fiction gun.
Theres a pretty significant difference between actorsa using props for a movie, and their IRL beliefs.
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u/JasonVeritech Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24
This is the flame thrower from Alien, Ripley didn't use a gun until Aliens. ETA: and she had to be talked into using guns in aliens by Cameron himself. She only agreed because of the Newt angle making it more of a momma bear thing than just blasting monsters.
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u/HurlinVermin Sep 17 '24
Anti-gun or not, it's a science fiction movie about people shooting monsters that want to kill them. What else were they supposed to use? Harsh language?
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u/JasonVeritech Sep 17 '24
There was no requirement for the movie to be an action film, there was a requirement for rising A-lister Sigourney Weaver to return for the sequel to the highest grossing horror film of all time at that point. The final product is the result of all parties (including the notoriously inflexible James Cameron) negotiating to an acceptable set of terms. Given the resulting blockbuster , it seems to have worked out to everyone's benefit in the end to have done so.
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u/HurlinVermin Sep 17 '24
Cameron was always going to do a military-themed action-oriented sequel due to his previous involvement with co-writing the screenplay for Rambo II. That's how he pitched it to the studio execs before Weaver was even involved: https://www.lofficier.com/cameron.htm
The point I was trying to make is that I doubt Sigourney's supposed reservations about guns in Aliens encompasses the whole truth.
She admitted to hurriedly reading the script prior to filming, but then claimed to be dismayed when guns appeared on set, claiming that she didn't read the stage directions where all the gun play is described: https://variety.com/2024/film/festivals/sigourney-weaver-aliens-guns-not-thrilled-james-cameron-convinced-ripley-defend-herself-1236123206/
That sounds like BS though, because if she read the script, she damn well knew the film was action-oriented and heavily involved a futuristic military team getting their asses kicked by aliens.
So--for whatever reason--I think she's not really being truthful about that aspect of her involvement.
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u/ChanceVance Sep 17 '24
Aliens is pretty much the only time Ripley uses a gun except for one Xeno kill in Resurrection before she hands it over. Although she's an ace shooting hoops in that one.
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u/bil-sabab Sep 17 '24
Gun ain't flamethrower.
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u/The_bagel___ There's somethin' in da wa'er Sep 17 '24
It's weird seeing Ellen Ripley on land. Actual, pretty,touchable grass and land.