Somewhere I'd heard that the cast of "Alien" was caught completely unaware by the scene where the Alien burst out of the chest of the poor crew member who'd served as its incubator, producing completely genuine expressions of suprise, shock, and nauseated horror.

As I'd been telling people this anecdote for ages, I'd been glad to see it reconfirmed by a recent news story about the movie:

The alien birth scene was done in one take, with no advance warning to the actors about the logistics of the sequence. John Hurt, who played the unfortunate parent of the creature, was crouched under a table, where a fake chest was mounted and filled with sheep's intestines. There were pumps to spray fake blood; the set was covered in sheets to guard against the mess; and the film crew wore goggles and smocks.

"I thought they'd do special effects later on," said Kotto. "I had no idea what was going to happen. We were laughing and joking and then (Hurt) falls over to the side. As he's screaming and moaning we hear a thump and the top of his chest pops up at us and then the head came bursting out with blood. The camera was never able to pick up the aftermath of the blood and yuk and gook they put in that thing.

"Afterwards, I saw different cast members sitting in different solitary places. I thought about the fact that I'd been on Broadway, I'd done Shakespeare. I thought, `Has it come to this? Man, what have you done with your career?' It took me three or four days to get over it."

Strangely, as I'm writing this, I'm (randomly) listening to Lux Aetnerna, which is one of the creepier segments of the soundrack of 2001: A Space Oddesy.