20 Mind-Blowing Facts About Alien Movies

Pretty much any Alien fan worth their salt knows that late, great Swiss surrealist artist H.R. Giger was the mind behind much of the design of the film’s eponymous villain in its various stages, from egg to phallic chestburster and from freaky facehugger to adult xenomorph.

And anyone with even the most basic knowledge of the Alien franchise knows that Giger’s nightmarish designs are terrifying. So scary, in fact, that even U.S. Customs were freaked out when they first peeked his designs for the facehugger.

Apparently when Giger airmailed his initial facehugger designs to the Alien team, customs officials were so perturbed by the creature that screenwriter Dan O’Bannon had to go down to LAX in person to pick them up and explain they were merely designs for an upcoming sci-fi horror.

Lord knows exactly what U.S. Customs thought the facehugger was – a new, weird cocaine smuggling device or some kind of really elaborate bomb design perhaps? – but thankfully O’Bannon was convincing enough for them to allow the design onto U.S. soil.