Dan O'Bannon's Mysteries

Leading from: Alien 

a. Dan's love of science fiction

Dan had a great knowledge of Science Fiction books and movies. We see some of this in the many different themes and ideas that he added to his Alien script, we see themes and ideas recognisable by fans of writers Clifford D. Simak, Van Vogh, Philip José Farmer, H. P. Lovecraft and movies such as Planet of the Vampires, The Thing from Outer Space and numerous others.

b. Love for Lovecraft

H P Lovecraft

Dan O'Bannon had a great knowledge for and admiration of the works of H. P. Lovecraft who was a writer of science fiction horror novels. Right from the earlier stages of it development O'Bannon's script for Alien encapsulated themes from the mythology apparent in Lovecraft's works. 

The final Alien movie has been regarded by many as a Lovecraftian movie linking in with the mythos about the Old Ones and the Yog-Sothoth from At The Mountains of Madness and Dan in his 2003 essay found himself agreeing that this was the thought he had while writing, while of course nothing similar in description to the creatures from Lovecraft's stories were to be found in the movie Alien.


H. P. Lovecraft, as part of his Cthulhu mythos in his novels wrote about a book of spells for summoning demons called The Necronomicon and Dan O'Bannon went as far as to write his own version of the book to provide a version of it for the public that was probably near enough to the imagined actual thing. There has been a lot of confusion about whether the book mentioned was actually real or not, and many people have come forth with their versions of the real Necronomicon for the book markets and these would never quite be the book that Lovecraft described.

1. Dan O'Bannon"One especially insightful critic- I wish I remembered who - wrote that Alien evoked the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, but where Lovecraft told of an ancient race of hideous beings menacing the Earth, ALIEN went to where the Old Ones lived, to their very world of origin. He was right, that was my very thought while writing. That baneful little storm-lashed planetoid planetoid halfway across the galaxy was a fragment of the Old Ones' homeworld, and the Alien a blood relative of the Yog-Sothoth" (Something Perfectly Disgusting (essay found in the Alien Quadrilogy set))

c. UFOlogy

We find an interest in mysteries as they were talked about then such as UFOlogy, in this case the Zeta Reticuli Incident.

1. The character Broussard (later in the movie for this instance changed to Lambert in the movie) who identified the position of the Nostromo in the depths of space said "Just short of Zeta II Reticuli. We haven't even reached the outer rim yet.", the star system is a reference to the Betty and Barney Hill Alien abduction case. (see The Galactic Geography Of Alien) 
2. Jon Sorensen who worked on special effects for Alien mentioned at AlienExperience.com about the reference to Zeta II Reticuli "It sounds very much like a piece of Dan O'Bannon dialogue. He loved that stuff." (taken from AlienExperience.com Re: ALIEN Makers Documentary thread Reply #540 from Jon Sorensen , on: June 29, 2009 )
3.  In 1997, when he appeared in a documentary called Area 51: The Alien Interview about extra terrestrials and UFOs where as an actor he played a man interviewing an extra-terrestrial. 

d. Pyramidology by way of Von Däniken 

1. He was known to have an interest in pyramidology as we can see with the inclusion of a pyramid on the planetoid in his original Alien script. Walter Hill said the words in relation to talking about the presence of a pyramid in the original script "Dan was deeply into pyramidology at the time".   (Starlog July 1979, p95,)
2. However Walter Hill talked about Dan O'Bannon with derision, so anything he said in regard to Dan O'Bannon and his work ought to be questioned because Walter Hill and his writing partner found themselves prone to errors and exaggeration. Walter Hill told Cinefantastique  that "In one story conference I recall, He (Dan O'Bannon) wanted the ship to sail into some kind of Bermuda Triangle in space. There was this genuflect to pyramidology, the alien eggs were in the bottom of a pyramid." As unreliable as Walter Hill might be here, it brings us to add Bermuda Triangles and Pyramidology as two subjects that would have interested Dan O'Bannon.   (Cinefantastique Vol 9, Issue 1: p16)
3. It was definite that Walter Hill really didn't have much interest in the Pyramidology in the script, and thought it was extraneous, he told Film International that " they had pyramids and hieroglyphics on the planetoid, a lot of Von Däniken crap ". (see also Inspired by Erich Von Däniken)