Surrealist artist and set designer HR Giger's chest-bursting monster in the 1979 film Alien gained him worldwide acclaim.
Several elements were vital to the effectiveness of the 1979 horror film Alien, which was essentially an old-fashioned haunted house story relocated to deep space. (Its own director, Ridley Scott, called it “a C-movie done in an A-way”.) Chief among them was the visceral and disquieting design work by the Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger, who died on Monday aged 74 from injuries sustained in a fall.