Alien 5: Blomkamp's video initiation

leading from 

Neil Blomkamp and Alien 5

 
a) Umhlanga TV Mystery
Neill Blomkamp's family owned a holiday flat in the coastal town of, called Umhlanga, next to  Durban and when he was about five or six years old, he once saw forty minutes of the film on TV, the earlier part of the movie showing scenes of the space ship, egg silo, the space jockey, and up to the chestburster scene, and suddenly his family wanted to go down to the beach, he suddenly lost control of himself because he wanted to watch the movie. Having seen this forty minutes of the film, he would never get to see it again for several years.

Lighthouse at Umhlanga beach front

b) The VHS machine at the bottom of the apartment block
Years later, he discovered that there was a VHS machine at the bottom of the apartment block, and the woman at the base of the building would cycle films that were filtered through all the different flats, and eventually it got to the point where he was asking "what is that you were playing?" and it took two years for him to get to the bottom of the whole matter in a pre-internet age. Later he would also see Aliens which would become his favourite film,  and during the years that video tapes were used, he watched these films over and over again so many times that he wore them out.

Source quotes

1. SIGOURNEY WEAVER: You know, I never think about it, erm, I never wanted to manufacture a sequel, I don't think that works, but this happened very organically, and I know that he is one of the greatest fans. I think he wore those VH or tapes out, 
   MTV: VCR
   SIGOURNEY WEAVER: VCR tapes out, 
   MTV: Yeah, yeah, yeah
   SIGOURNEY WEAVER: but when he was a kid, so there's no greater lover of these movies than Neill so we'll see what happens( (Sigourney Weaver Discusses The Possible Neill Blomkamp 'Alien' Sequel | MTV 13 Feb 2015)
2. Neill Blomkamp: You know, ironically the first film that I've seen in my life was Alien and it was in a coastal town in South Africa that we used to have like sort of a holiday flat in , called, Umhlanga, it's next to Durban, and I saw like, I was really young, I mean, I was probably six or five, and I saw maybe 40 minutes of it and then my family wanted to go down to the beach and I think I was spazzed like fully because I wanted to keep watching it and then over the years I found out that there was a VHS machine at the bottom of the apartment block that the woman at the base of the building would like cycle films that were filtered through all the different flats, and I was like "what is that you were playing?", you know, it took me like two years actually to get to the bottom of it, like this pre-internet, like, super young phase. So, yuh, it was Alien, I had no idea what it was. 
   Interviewer: And were you, were you terrified by it by (then)?
   Neill Blomkamp: I, I, I , er, I saw everything up until the chestbursting scene, right so it, most of it, like my memory of it, was in the ship, with the eggs, and the er, the space jockey, like that was the image that that, and then I didn't see it again, like it was forty minutes and then I never saw it for like several years, so I did, the scary fact wasn't in there yet. (Total Film ,"Neill Blomkamp: My Life In Sci-fi" https://www.youtube.com, 5 Mar 2015)