1979’s original Alien cut one of its darkest moments, but deleting the sequence allowed the franchise to introduce one of its most iconic villains in the 1986 sequel Aliens. When Alien was released, the “haunted house in space” sci-fi horror became a huge hit in part because the two genres were not often mixed. Although there had been a handful of corny sci-fi horrors in the ’50s (including Alien’s inspiration It! The Terror From Beyond Space), since the horror genre became far gorier and more explicit in the ‘70s, it had rarely been fused with sci-fi before Alien arrived.

However, not all of Alien’s most brutal moments made it to the big screen intact. One of the darkest scenes that director Ridley Scott shot was the gruesome moment when Ripley encounters Dallas cocooned by the Xenomorph, a sequence that ended up on the cutting room floor. However, had this horrifying Alien scene not been cut, the entire life cycle of the Xenomorph may have been altered.

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Originally, Dallas’ still-living body was found cocooned by the Xenomorph, but the scene was cut by Scott before Alien’s release. A lot of Alien’s original script ended up being jettisoned during production but this sequence was one of few that was shot and then edited out, and its elision directly affected the plot of the movie's sequel Aliens. Cutting the scene allowed director James Cameron’s sequel to introduce the Alien Queen, who would not serve a function if the Xenomorphs were a cocoon-using, non-hive species as seen in the Alien deleted scene. Thus, although the scene would have made Alien darker, the sequence would also have deprived the sequel of perhaps its most famous addition to the Alien franchise.

Dallas Alien

However, Alien 3’s novelization went on to imply that Xenomorphs can reproduce through both methods, confusing the monster’s life cycle further. The Xenomorph’s life cycle has always been a bone of contention among the creators of the franchise. The original script for Alien featured erudite, scholarly adult Xenomorphs and revealing that only the juvenile aliens are murderous monsters, while Scott’s later Alien prequels further confused viewers by dragging the Engineers into proceedings and thus introducing the possibility that the Xenomorph wasn’t a naturally occurring species at all, but rather a bioweapon built for purpose by another race of advanced aliens.

Given how complex the Xenomorph’s origins and capabilities became as the Alien series wore on, it is little wonder that Scott’s original Alien opted to cut out a scene that shed light on their biology. Keeping the eponymous monster a mystery keeps the alien scarier, whereas in contrast starting to explain and untangle its knotty biology leads to all sorts of logical quandaries like why the Xenomorph’s acid blood doesn’t burn through the spaceships they hide out on. Thus, despite the cut depriving Alien of one of its darkest scenes, Scott’s original movie was better off without its creepy cocoon sequence and did Aliens a favor by deleting the moment.

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