听 It鈥檚 a good time to be a fan of the Alien movies. This Quadrilogy boxset is a stunning resource with features-rammed discs to explore and the films presented like never before. It's a five-star set, and here's why...
You're On Candid Camera
Each Alien movie gets two discs in the nine-disc set. As there is so much to cover, each DVD and its special features have been reviewed individually (see links right). What's refreshing about the special features is that the problems in making all the films have not been hidden away in some corporate PR clean-up. Therefore you get Ridley Scott growling about the people who moaned to him on the set of Alien; find out how there was nearly a crew revolt on James Cameron's Aliens, see David Fincher lose his rag shooting the unwieldy Alien鲁; and Sigourney Weaver openly wondering if another sequel wasn't just getting silly with Alien: Resurrection.
What About The Legacy?
Those of you who bought the Alien Legacy DVD boxset will want to keep hold of it as some extra features don't appear here, including Ridley Scott's original commentary, Jerry Goldsmith's isolated score, Easter eggs, an alternate music and production track, and various studio promotional featurettes. Will you miss them? Not really as the Quadrilogy really is quality all the way with no irritating puff filler.
Disc Nine
By the time you reach disc nine, you'd swear there isn't anything left to glean about the Alien series. To an extent that's true. The Channel 4 Alien Evolution documentary on disc nine, running at over an hour and hosted by Mark Kermode, gives an excellent overview of the series, but if you've watched the other eight discs, you won't learn anything new.
Added to that you get some a couple of promotional featurettes, a pile of trailers, plus all the extra material that came on the laserdisc releases of Alien and Aliens. Most of this is text- and image-based but you do get interview footage, including James Cameron admitting that Fox at the time thought he'd never pull off an alien-infested movie with only six alien suits to play with.
The Last Stand
The quality of the above is fine but lacks the tight editing and slick presentation of the extra features on the other discs. Fox doesn't let things fizzle out, though. There is still a large gallery of images from the Dark Horse Alien comics to explore plus a fascinating featurette on a man called Bob Burns. If you collect movie memorabilia, prepare to watch this featurette with your mouth gaping. To cut a long story short Bob asked if he could borrow some props from Alien. Fox said OK, and then a few weeks later asked if he'd like to keep the stuff and if he wanted any more. Lo and behold, a truck and crane turned up with the rest!
Bob has since built a private museum that houses all the stuff and more from the sequels. He keeps it safe, promises never to sell it, and loans it back to Fox when asked. We get to be jealous. It's hard to be too resentful, though, as Bob takes us on a great tour of just a fraction of his massive collection (find out how 'Blue Peter' some of the props are) and promises that anyone can come see the stuff - we may hold you to that, Bob!
The End
As a final note to the collection, perhaps the best way to compliment it is that in these days of features-rammed DVDs, some are frankly a pain to review. That nine discs should stay so consistently entertaining and revealing throughout is one hell of an achievement by Fox.
This DVD was reviewed on a JVC XV-N5 DVD player.
