Not Dan O’Bannon.
That one can have a hand in both one of the greatest of late-20th-century sci-fi/horror films, and a hand in one of the most risible, could just be a coincidence that’s all part of the moviemaking game, I suppose. But I prefer to think it has to do with having, in John Podhoretz’s strangely opportune (at least in this context) phrase, an interesting sensibility.
Dan O’Bannon scripted Ridley Scott’s inspired, groundbreaking 1979 Alien, crafting a bleak and sly terror machine out of the raw materials that first made up the B semi-classic It! The Terror From Beyond Space and productively mining Planet of the Vampires and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre as well. And some time, he scripted 1985’s Lifeforce, another vampires-from-outer-space movie, this one featuring a never-once-clothed Matilda May (above) redefining the phrase “what a way to go.” By the midpoint of this lively mess (directed by Chainsaw’s Tobe Hooper, as it happens), one suspects it’s being funny on purpose, but one can never quite be sure. The toggling between scares and laughs is handled with a surer grasp by O’Bannon himself in his ’85 directorial debut, Return of the Living Dead. Even more resonant than that film’s quasi-tagline “More brains!” is one zombie’s description of his state: “It hurts…to be dead.”
Cultists of all stripes are fond of his early collab with John Carpenter, the 1974 space spoof Dark Star. One of my personal O’Bannon faves is 1981’s underappreciated Dead and Buried, directed by Gary Sherman, replete with great scares, vicious mayhem, nifty grindhouse/exploitation elements, but all with an old-school classic horror spine. That’s the one I may watch tonight. In recent years he seemed tob be working more as a genre cheerleader than a creative force, which was and is a shame; his sensibility and chops have been sorely missing from the horror filmscape for a while. O’Bannon died last night, aged 63.
R.I.P O’Bannon. Thanks for all the chills and thrills.
“Watch your tongue, boy, if you like this job!”
I haven’t seen DARK STAR in ages. I should give that another look.
“I used to think you were cute.”
RIP
Alien had such an effect on me when I watched it at a sleepover in the late 80s–I couldn’t sleep that night! Lifeforce, ridiculously awful though it is, was also a favourite sleepover film (more for Ms. May than Patrick Stewart’s small role) and I have a deep affection for Return of the Living Dead–zombies and LA punks! Rest easy, Mr. O’Bannon.
Dead and Buried left quite an impression on me when I saw it as a teenager. I remember it was billed as “From the writer of Alien” I think. I must have watched it a dozen times on cable. The joke at the end is superb. I never put together that the same person was behind Return of the Living Dead, but it surely doesn’t surprise me now. Return of the Living Dead is also very underrated.
And don’t forget his Moebius collaboration “The Long Tomorrow” – a key influence on Blade Runner. Very sad news.
Actually, most of what made Alien work, like retooling the characters, was done by the film’s producers, in spite of the fact that the way they went about rewriting O’Bannon and his partner’s script was part greed and part brilliance, knowing that it needed a lot of work. One could argue that the legendary chest burster scene and the concept of the face huggers, which WERE O’Bannon’s biggest contribution to the original script, are what made Alien become what it is today. But I still groan whenever people mention him as THE WRITER of Alien, (as if he wrote alone), because there was so much drama behind making it the masterpiece it became. It’s obvious when you look at how different the films he wrote from 1980 on up are from Alien, making it clear that he may have stumbled on some clever ideas, but in the end, it was a pair of greedy, underhanded producers who brought Alien together as a whole. If only the same producers had come in and retooled his other scripts, and he may have had something as lasting as Alien.
Mathilda May! A creation of a caring and benevolent God. Has female nudity ever been used to more spectacular effect in a motion picture?