Some facts about the movie Alien

Alien (1979) marked a milestone in science fiction with the horror genre as a driving element and a heroine as the protagonist (Ellen Ripley) in the story written by screenwriters and producers Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon (Total Recall).

The success of Star Wars (1977) prompted the same studio that produced George Lucas' film, 20th Century Fox, to begin production on Alien.

It was directed by Ridley Scott (Gladiator) while the design of the alien creature was the work of Swiss artist H. R. Giger, who won an Oscar for the film's visual effects. Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen) composed the soundtrack.

Scott wanted to make a predominantly horror film and Goldsmith was up to the task with an atmospheric and claustrophobic score.

The eerie, atonal tone of the music foretells that "something bad is going to happen" on the Nostromo ship.

Goldsmith's score was a revolution in concept and experimentation in sonorities.

Unfortunately the composer did not have a pleasant experience with Alien as his music was subject to changes perpetrated by Scott and editor Terry Rawlings in post-production being cut in length, eliminated in certain scenes and even replaced by another score composed by Goldsmith himself for a 1962 film called Freud.

For example, the film's main theme at the opening, a trumpet solo over a string sustain emphasizing the loneliness of the astronauts in the vastness of space, was replaced by another more mournful and mysterious piece that Goldsmith had to write again at the director's request once the recording with the National Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Lionel Newman was finished.

The final theme, a variation of the main theme with a slower tempo, was directly replaced by Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2, a piece that has nothing to do with the context of the film.

These and other changes imposed by Scott ended up blurring the musical thematic unity that Goldsmith had originally composed for Alien. Ridley Scott and Jerry Goldsmith worked together again in Legend (1985) whose soundtrack was directly removed from American distribution.