Editorials
The Most Horrifying Scene in Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’: The C-Section from Hell
The Alien franchise has always been a story of pregnancy horror. Ridley Scott‘s original film follows the destruction of an otherworldly creature that spawns by implanting the human body with an embryo that rapidly grows until it rips a jagged hole in the victim’s chest.
Midway through Scott’s Alien (1979), the audience watches as Kane (John Hurt), an industrial spaceship’s crewmember, begins seizing over his dinner plate just hours after his body is attacked by a spider-like entity now called a facehugger. Known as the chestburster scene, this infamous sequence concludes with a baby xenomorph pulsing against Kane’s fracturing ribcage, ultimately tearing a fatal hole in his chest. Merging body horror with pregnancy, this revolutionary moment in genre history forced male audiences to confront the pain we’ve long-since accepted as commonplace in female life.
Following this jaw-dropping scene, the franchise leans into the terror of birth as a variety of parasitic monsters use the human body to procreate. While Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus makes the allegory explicit, perhaps no film in franchise history parallels Kane’s disturbing death like Prometheus and its harrowing c-section scene.
While this medical ordeal is a stomach-churning example of body horror, perhaps most disturbing is the way the scene encapsulates the dehumanizing struggle to seek reproductive care in the modern United States. Released ten years before the fall of Roe v. Wade — a Supreme Court decision guaranteeing the right to abortion care — Prometheus offers a prophetic glimpse of the hell many women must now navigate.
Elizabeth Shaw’s Pregnancy and the Horror of Lost Bodily Autonomy
Heralded as Scott’s long-awaited return to the Alien world, connections to the franchise remained vague until a post-credits scene featured a prototypical xenomorph. Functioning as a prequel to the 1979 film, Prometheus begins with a humanoid figure drinking a mysterious black liquid, which causes his body to disintegrate. Close views of this visceral death reveal his DNA reconstructing itself into what may be the beginning of human existence. Millenia later, archaeologists and partners Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) will call these beings Engineers and track them across the galaxy to unravel the secrets of life itself.
Unfortunately, they arrive on a distant moon to find the Engineers have long since died. Not only that, but LV-223 appears to be a military outpost dedicated to creating a biological weapon intended to destroy humanity. While exploring their deserted station, the crew’s android David (Michael Fassbender) secretly returns to the ship with an inky, black liquid he subtly slips into Holloway’s drink. When this results in the archaeologist’s mysterious death, Shaw finds herself under quarantine. David scans her body and thankfully pronounces her free from illness, but declares that she is three months pregnant.
Shaw is shocked by this diagnosis, insisting that it’s impossible. We remember a recent conversation with Holloway in which she tearfully reveals that she cannot conceive, pushing back on her partner’s callous comment about the easy nature of creating life. Anyone who has struggled with infertility likely sees themselves in her somber rebuttal as Shaw reminds us that women are not defined by their wombs or their ability to carry a child. But the frightened archeologist is also disturbed by the timing of this pregnancy. Though she was intimate with Holloway, their encounter happened the night before.
Three months ago, she and the rest of the crew were in deep cryosleep on the multi-year journey to LV-223, implying an unconscious assault. Thankfully, David allays this fear while introducing a more frightening scenario: the fetus’s size proves that her pregnancy is not “traditional.”
Horrified, Shaw begs for a c-section, demanding David “get it out of me.” With a placating grin that reveals his intentions, David gently states — without consulting the crew’s medical officer — that they do not have the personnel onboard to perform this relatively simple procedure. In his opinion, the best course of action is to return her body to cryosleep as the mysterious pregnancy runs its course. Considering Holloway’s grisly death, Shaw knows that allowing the fetus to fully gestate will likely be a death sentence. As David gives her a sedative, she becomes a living incubator, her own life now less valuable than the collection of cells in her uterus.
Fortunately, Shaw has a backup plan. Fighting her way out of quarantine, she rushes to the ship’s MedPod, an automated surgery table presumably reserved for the crew’s ultra-wealthy captain. Initiating the device’s emergency protocols, Shaw tries to program a cesarean, only to find that this MedPod has been calibrated to service only male bodies. Yet another impediment to accessing care, it’s a hurdle familiar to millions of women. Much of Western medical research has been built around the concept of the 70-kg Man.
Also known as Reference Man, this model was assumed to be the standard human body type and used to study everything from the effects of radioactivity to organ transplants and public health. While this framework may provide a baseline for comparison, it’s a limited and myopic paradigm that ignores physiological differences between the bodies of women and children, not to mention men of varying sizes.
An Extreme C-Section From Hell
Though Scott will eventually reveal the reason for this MedPod calibration, its setting reflects an unfortunate truth about the medical world. With male bodies viewed as the norm, women are treated as variants, and women’s health is viewed as an optional specialty. Female patients have routinely been left out of clinical trials studying ailments like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The agony of IUD insertion is still widely dismissed, and companies did not test feminine hygiene products with actual human blood until the year 2023. We’ve been conditioned to see pain as an acceptable part of female life and told that legitimate symptoms are in our heads, harkening back to the days of hysterectomies and lobotomies performed on inconvenient and ungovernable women.
But in the year 2089, Shaw is able to find a workaround. Describing her condition as a penetrating wound, she recalibrates the machine to perform the removal of a foreign body.
Shaw climbs into the machine and injects herself with local painkillers, bracing herself for surgery. As the fetus visibly pulses inside her womb, a laser descends to make an incision across her abdomen while mechanical arms spread the wound apart. Metal forceps then plunge into her belly and pull out what looks like a grayish sack. This membrane instantly bursts, splashing blood and viscera all over her torso. Shaw frantically reaches inside herself to roughly sever the umbilical cord while the squid-like creature tries to escape the grip of the MedPod’s metal arms.
This moment of extreme body horror is frighteningly similar to cesarean birth. The mother is typically strapped to an operating table and remains awake throughout the procedure, numbed with a spinal block or epidural. On the other side of a surgical drape, doctors create an incision similar to Shaw’s and manually stretch the skin apart. Many believe that doctors remove vital organs, placing them on top of the mother to get to the baby. While organs typically stay inside the body, it’s common to feel aggressive movement as the bladder and intestines are jostled around. Once a pathway has been cleared, the baby is cut from the uterus and then taken to receive its own medical care.
The MedPod Scene Reflects Real-World Fears
While cesarean deliveries can be beautiful and empowering, Shaw’s experience is unthinkable. She is not presented with a crying infant, but an alien creature desperate to attack the body from which it emerged. Seconds after the machine closes the eight-inch incision, shooting rapid-fire staples into her flesh, Shaw frantically opens the MedBay doors and slides past the writhing creature. This again mirrors the experience of a cesarean birth, as many women begin nursing their infant while doctors are stitching their bodies back together. That’s not to mention those denied maternity leave who must return to work before they’ve adequately recovered from major surgery.
I do not write this essay to problematize C-sections or vilify the dedicated doctors and nurses who perform them every day. I was born through a cesarean and delivered both of my children surgically. But I wish someone had prepared me for the torturous experience of an emergency c-section, not to mention the pain of recovery. Like Shaw, I remember being horrified by the feeling of hands moving inside my body, pushing and pulling my organs around. We’ve been conditioned to see birth as a beautiful moment of bonding and connection between mother and child, leaving first-time parents unprepared for the messy and often frightening reality.
Women living in the United States now have fewer reproductive rights than they did when a baby xenomorph burst out of Kane’s chest in 1979. Prometheus and its hellish c-section remain a mirror to this frightening scene, but now reflect a more hellish reality, confronting modern audiences with the terror of healthcare denied. After all, it shouldn’t be only in science fiction where pregnant women have the resources to save their own lives.
Editorials
Before ‘The Blair Witch Project’, ‘Alien Autopsy’ Showed How Real Found Footage Could Feel
The line separating artist from con man is a lot thinner than you might initially believe. While I think we can all agree that lying for the sake of profit is actively malicious behavior, isn’t it also true that the faux documentary aspect of The Blair Witch Project is half the reason why that film became such a cultural phenomenon? After all, if there’s one thing filmmakers have in common with stage magicians, it’s that misleading and misdirecting audiences is simply part of the job.
That’s why I’ve developed a habit of mostly ignoring the moral quandaries behind many of film and television’s biggest “hoaxes” in favor of appreciating the narrative elements that drive productions like Mermaids: The Body Found and even Animal Planet’s highly underrated The Cannibal in the Jungle. However, if there’s a definitive case of a highly publicized broadcast fooling the world into taking it seriously, it has to be Fox’s infamous 1995 TV special Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction.
It’s been over three decades since that eerie footage first haunted television screens right at the peak of the ’90s ufology craze, and in that time, the video has taken on a life of its own. From countless parodies and references in everything from The X-Files to Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (as well as John Dower’s recently released tell-all documentary The Alien Autopsy Scandal, which I’d highly recommend to genre fans everywhere), there’s no denying the legacy of the Alien Autopsy video. However, I rarely see the tape discussed as what it truly is: a highly convincing found footage film directed by a passionate stage magician and brought to life by masterful practical effects work.
That’s why I’d like to invite readers to join me on a deep dive into one of the most infamous broadcasts of all time in an attempt to reevaluate the footage as a fascinating narrative experience rather than a complete hoax.
The TV Special That Convinced Millions It Was Real
Ray Santilli next to Extraterrestrial replica in ‘The Alien Autopsy Scandal’
For starters, regardless of whether or not you believe that there was in fact an extraterrestrial crash in Roswell during the summer of 1947 and that some form of autopsy was performed on the victims, the producers behind the black & white recordings, Ray Santilli and Gary Shoefield, insist that their video was a “restoration.” Though I’d argue that the proper word is “remake”of genuine footage that was too damaged to air on television. That’s why the duo went on to recruit filmmaker and eccentric magician Spyros Melaris and sculptor/monster designer John Humphreys to bring their version of the autopsy to life and sell it to the highest bidder.
This is where the story of the Alien Autopsy as a narrative experience really begins. Melaris claims that his approach to the faux recording consisted of striving for extreme period accuracy in both shooting equipment and setting while also planting subtle details that would initially seem like mistakes but could later be revealed to actually fit the time period. That being said, the filmmaker was under the impression that the short would be released for free as a PR stunt, with the team later producing and selling an informative documentary chronicling exactly how the footage was faked and commenting on how easy it is to manipulate public perception with a good old-fashioned magic trick.
This obviously isn’t how things went down, and that’s likely the reason why Melaris has since distanced himself from everyone else involved with the project. Yet, no amount of behind-the-scenes drama can undermine the genuine effort that went into making the short as impressive as it is. From the sourcing of real animal organs from a local butcher to make the organic part of the creature more lifelike to the highly detailed sculpt that made use of a hollowed-out underlayer that could be filled with fake blood and assorted viscera, there’s a reason why so many Hollywood specialists are still impressed with the artistry on display here.
Of course, the believability is only half the story, as I think that the best part of the autopsy is how Melaris builds on the existing tension by obscuring certain details and often embracing the chaos of what a real examination of extraterrestrial life could feel like. The camera often goes out of focus at just the right time to make certain effects hit even harder, and we can only speculate as to what the hazmat-suited doctors are gesticulating about during the operation. There’s a real air of mystery to the whole thing that almost makes it feel like a cosmically terrifying, cursed film containing forbidden knowledge that civilians were never meant to see.
So when Fox’s Fact or Fiction brings in the specialists to comment on the film and its otherworldly subject, it’s no surprise that we end up with one of the most memorable mockumentaries of all time – albeit one where the participants are unaware that the footage they’re commenting on is basically a large-scale practical joke. A joke that the network was obviously in on, as many participants claim that the TV special cut out significant portions where guests point out that they believe the footage to be an elaborate hoax.
The Lasting Impact of the Hoax Turned Cultural Event
Regardless, I remember going to bed terrified after watching reruns of the special and thinking about the respected pathologist who claimed that the body was almost certainly inhuman, with even effects maestro Stan Winston commenting on how difficult it would be to recreate some of these visuals through practical puppetry. That’s not even mentioning Jonathan Frakes’ dramatic hyping up of the disturbing imagery as if he was talking about the tape from The Ring, with his spooky demeanor here likely being responsible for his later role as the host of Beyond Belief: Fact or Fiction a few years later.
Personally, I’d argue that the Alien Autopsy phenomenon had just as much of an impact on me as a horror fan as The Blair Witch Project, a film that was almost certainly influenced by the success of this immensely popular hoax (to the point where they even produced their own TV special commenting on Heather’s found footage). Even if Fox didn’t intend to produce a narrative feature about the aftermath of the Roswell crash, the end product still holds up remarkably well as a highly entertaining mockumentary exploring the idea that we may not be alone in the universe.
While neither Santilli nor the rest of the production team has ever commented on this, I also think it’s very likely that the idea of a faux Alien Autopsy could have been influenced by Dean Alioto’s The McPherson Tape/UFO Abduction. I’ve already written about how this granddaddy of found footage was co-opted by rogue ufologists who began selling bootlegs of the tape at conventions as if it were real evidence of a close encounter, so it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that Santilli and company could have heard about this phenomenon and been inspired to come up with their own highly profitable hoax.
At the end of the day, it’s unlikely that the Alien Autopsy film is recreating any real footage from Roswell, but I can still appreciate the short and the accompanying television event as a standalone horror story that still influences the way we see found footage to this very day.
After all, the possibility that something could be real is often much scarier than finding out for sure – and that’s why I think Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction is still worth revisiting three decades down the line.
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