Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi/horror classic, Alien, pushed boundaries in a lot of ways that left Scott needing to leave many scenes – some of which were later released as deleted scenes and extras, or part of his director’s cut – on the cutting room floor. Some of these scenes included a lot more sexual content that the film didn’t have after his edits.

Alien almost got an X-rating, originally, though more due to violent content than sex, as the film was largely sexless after scenes were deleted or excluded from the script entirely. Even so, the franchise on the whole is connected to sexual themes and allegories through design alone. H.R. Giger’s Xenomorph drawings were very phallic in nature, and incorporated aspects that were thinly veiled as such, including the Xenomorph’s secondary mouth and even the Nostromo’s doors, which resembled genitalia.

The chestburster was another aspect of lewd sexuality that made it into the film despite its hidden meaning, which was a commentary on male sexual assault; writer Dan O’Bannon didn’t want a female character to undergo this sort of alien invasion, as rape was commonly included in the genre against women, and he felt taking a different route would make viewers more uncomfortable and produce a bolder, stronger statement about such types of violation transcending gender. However, nonconsensual sexual content wasn’t all that Alien tried to include in its early stages.

Alien’s Deleted Scenes Had More Sex

One particular scene that is commonly talked about is the sex scene between Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) and Captain Arthur Dallas (Tom Skerritt). There are storyboards that show the beginning parts of this scene, which was filmed as a screen test for Weaver, but was not part of the final cut as it didn’t include the proper actor; it was also not reshot with Tom Skerritt. As is visible in the screen shots from the scene, Ray Hassett (Star Wars) stood in for the role instead. While certainly more sexual in nature, the scene wasn’t cut from the film for being too “raunchy”, as is the commonly held belief. In a draft of the 1978 screenplay, the sex scene between Ripley and Dallas was included. The scene was originally set in Nostromo’s ventral observation dome, but was moved to the Narcissus shuttlecraft, where Dallas can be seen relaxing and listening to classical music. Ripley comes in “seeking relief” and strips naked.

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In the early draft of the script, crew members regularly had sexual encounters with one another on the Nostromo, and this was a main facet of their camaraderie. As was referenced in the scene that was originally drafted with Ripley and Dallas, this was done to seek “relief” from the daily monotony of being in space. Most elements of this were cut from the final film, but one scene remains that discusses sex. In this scene, Ripley asks Lambert (Veronica Cartwright) if she ever had sex with Ash (Ian Holm), but other than that, Alien is largely sexless. Though it might have been interesting to include some of this in order to show the personal lives of the Nostromo’s crew, it might have left a more tangled web that ultimately detracted from Ridley Scott’s storytelling, which is one of the film’s strongest aspects.

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About The Author


Jack Wilhelmi
(581 Articles Published)

Jack Wilhelmi is the horror features editor at Screen Rant, and has been with the site since 2019. He is a lifelong fan of the horror genre, and loves any excuse to discuss genre-related topics, since none of his friends dare challenge him in horror trivia. He has been published on the independent horror blog Morbidly Beautiful, and has covered major genre film festivals such as Cinepocalypse in Chicago. He has also served as a judge for the Ax Wound Film Festival.

In his free time, he is a devoted dog dad to a high-spirited rescue pup named Peter Quill and enjoys volunteering with various animal rescue organizations. Jack likes to travel and explore dark tourism-related and other various haunted locations. He enjoys studying psychology, the paranormal, and will watch literally any schlocky B-movie on the planet for a laugh.

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