Memory: The Origins of Alien [+ Art Cards]

Basically comes off as being a bit of a con by throwing a ton of interviews in off the years old alien anthology documentaries. And the rest consists of interviews of so called 30's somthing hipster types discussing the taboo subject of male rape and every thing us awful fellas do to ladies! (we should all be muzzled and on a database!) was expecting a really in depth look at Dan o'bannan, giger, scott and somthing new, but alas no. If you know nothing about Alien its watchable, if you do, you will start getting quite wound up. At least the guy who runs the Alien vault website talks sense and is interesting, but the other lot just come off as pretentious know it alls who are trying to tie thier interests and theories into the film we know and love. Very dissapointing. Glad it didnt come out on bluray as it would have cost more than the £9.99 price tag, and £9. 98 was too much.

For a 40th anniversary documentary of such a classic film it's a missed opportunity to tell us something we did not know. It cover the creation,writing and making of the film but seems to be obsessed with the chest burster scene. The whole thing runs out of steam 40 mins in.A greatly missed chance to tell us something new.

The documentary could not make its mind up, if going to be about alien or dan o'bannon or sjw issues.

This documentary is far better than I was expecting given some of the lower scoring reviews on here. I found almost everything in this documentary to be of interest to me, and I found the presentation to be largely of a professional standard. I speak here as a die-hard fan of the film who has spent many years and a considerable amount of money pursuing my interest in it, and the work of H.R. Giger. For £7 this documentary is a worthy addition to my collection.However, there are some negatives which I would like to mention, the first of which is a very annoying woman with a loud, whiny voice who appears to have little of interest to contribute and could have done with being edited out entirely. A bit like having Bugs Bunny cracking jokes in the shower scene in Schindler's List. I also agree with a number of reviewers who have referred to the somewhat ponderous and pretentious introduction. It is soon over though and both of these issues are hardly deal breakers.Ultimately, I really enjoyed watching this documentary and I really do recommended it to fans of Alien.

I swear this was marketed as a Dan O'bannon-centric retrospective, which it was, briefly, for all of 25 mins. The rest was turgid claptrap from nobodies and regurgitated lines from the surviving cast & crew. The one thing this doc really did was hit home that I'm missing Jodorowsky's Dune from my collection. I hope the teased 'vault' of O'bannon's unfinished & early works makes its way into print in the future. Memory is sadly unmemorable.

Has some interesting ideas, and you can tell the directors/producers came at this from a passionate and thoughtful angle, but why oh why do people need to read so much into a film. Can't it just be what it is, I'm fairly certain Ripley Scott, Dan O'Bannon et al weren't trying to make a social commentary, or a new version of Greek mythology, or comment on the patriarchy. They just wanted to scare the crap out of you whilst making something better than the 70's shlock around at that time. Buy it if it's cheap, or rent if you're not a big Alien fan, otherwise it's just a bunch of people trying to justify their qualification/viewpoint mixed in with some true fans.

Very disappointed, hardly any mention about the Alien itself.

I rented this on demand through Amazon. I consider myself an Alien franchise fan, thought I had seen it all but found enough new content in this documentary to enjoy myself. The mixed reviews on Amazon.com also interested me. Especially the criticism on the modern approach to older views and beliefs. It is not as bad as some reviews would have you believe. I only found one of the people interviewed objectionable and completely off topic.