10 Insane Ways Directors Appeared In Their Own Movies

The xenomorph from Ridley Scott's Alien is one of the truly great pieces of movie monster design and a real triumph of practical effects work. And, when it came to the creature's introduction, that practicality meant Scott getting particularly hands on with making the alien come to life.

We get our first glimpse of what will become the alien, the first stage of its complicated life-cycle, when John Hurt's Kane discovers a chamber of eggs on LV-426. Here, before the shock of the facehugger springing out of the egg and into Kane's helmet, we get our first inkling of something uncanny and monstrous in the writhing, pulsating mass within the egg.

It was all achieved by filling the shell of the egg with sheep intestines and topping it with the lining of a cow's stomach. But all of that needed that element of movement to give it a real unsettling quality, and that's when the director with admirable dedication rolled up his sleeves and got elbow-deep in that mess of animal guts to do just that.

So, when you see Hurt approach the alien egg and peer over it as it opens, that's Scott's own hands making it move. Really, then, the director himself is the first person to play the part of his alien, but he wouldn't be the last director to do so...