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OMFG: Rick Baker Reveals ‘Night Skies’ (Original ‘E.T.’) Aliens!!!

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10 years ago

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One of the coolest stories out of the Hollywood history books is that of Steven Spielberg’s Night Skies, his horror-themed alien movie that was set to follow his 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The movie never came into fruition, and eventually was worked into both Poltergeist and E.T.

But before the movie was placed in the shredder, effects legend Rick Baker had been working diligently on the film’s three main aliens. More on that in a second…

Explains Wikipedia:

Spielberg based the story on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, where a Kentucky family claimed that they had been terrorized by gremlin-like aliens. Spielberg had heard the story from UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek while doing research for Close Encounters.

In Spielberg’s original treatment for Watch the Skies, eleven malicious extraterrestrial scientists try to communicate with chickens, cows, and other livestock in an attempt to discover which of Earth’s animal species are sentient, before turning their unwelcome attentions on the human family and dissecting their farm animals.

The most interesting story behind Spielberg’s decision to not direct the film was Melissa Mathison’s reaction to the screenplay, which actually gave birth to E.T.

While Baker worked on the aliens, Spielberg was having second thoughts about Night Skies. “I might have taken leave of my senses. Throughout [the production of] Raiders, I was in between killing Nazis and blowing up flying wings and having Harrison Ford in all this high serialized adventure, I was sitting there in the middle of Tunisia, scratching my head and saying, ‘I’ve got to get back to the tranquillity, or at least the spirituality, of Close Encounters.'” While on the set of Raiders, Spielberg read the Night Skies script to Melissa Mathison (who was there to see her then-boyfriend and future husband Harrison Ford) and she cried after hearing it because “the idea of an alien creature who was benevolent, tender, emotional and sweet… and the idea of the creature’s striking up a relationship with a child who came from a broken home was very affecting”.

Anyways, there’s a whole lot about Night Skies over at Wikipedia, and I think many of you would highly enjoy the “what could have been” story.

But what promoted this entire news post is that Rick Baker decided to share a series of shocking behind-the-scenes shots of the in-progress aliens! From 1980, it’s incredible to see what was in the works, and how terrifying these aliens were. But what’s most interesting are the shots of the more caring E.T.-esque alien, also shown below.

This is historic stuff guys, really take a moment to relish this!

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Horror movie fanatic who co-founded Bloody Disgusting in 2001. Producer on Southbound, V/H/S/2/3/94, SiREN, Under the Bed, and A Horrible Way to Die. Chicago-based. Horror, pizza and basketball connoisseur. Taco Bell daily. Franchise favs: Hellraiser, Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Scream and Friday the 13th. Horror 365 days a year.

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Movies

Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey Man’ Is Now Available to Watch at Home!

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10 hours ago

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April 23, 2024

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After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.

You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!

Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.

Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”

“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.

She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”

Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.

Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.

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