Alien and Xtro:
Attack of the Block's Joe Cornish and Edgar Wright's
fascinating but blurred views on the alien suit performers

leading from

a) Misperceptions about Bolaji Badejo performing as the alien 
 
Edgar Wright executive producer of "Attack The Block" talked on the commentary of the dvd with the director Joe Cornish briefly about Alien and Xtro. 
 
They talked about how Bolaji Badejo during the making of the movie Alien had to wear the alien suit backwards so that the knees would be seen to be going the other way, and most likely this was the shot where Bolaji Badejo dressed in the suit was doing his crab walk in the scene where the alien is about to kill Lambert and Parker. 
 
Badejo meanwhile had his suit on correctly but with his long limbs and small body appeared to be able to scuttle around on fours quite inhumanly.




b) Misperception about the wearer of the creature suit in Xtro
 
Joe Cornish talked about the alien suit performer in Xtro being someone who could walk on all fours upside down, like, like a back flip, and then they designed the suit around the person, doing an upside down back flip. 
 
Although the performer could walk on all fours with his back to the ground, perhaps it was almost quite unremarkable other than to think performer could move around backward in the suit he was wearing at all effectively.  
 
Admittedly, neither of the two had actually seen the film completely.




Source quotes
  1. Edgar Wright: The big change in movies, I mean in the sort of, especially in the 50s and onwards would be the sort of, you know, the man in suit films, and plenty of B movies have like a big tall Johnson type actor in a suit. But then the big change was Alien and the way that they did that and the amount of experimentation that went into that like finding the tallest thinnest person they could, somebody that erm, they even tried the actor wearing the suit backwards, the idea that like the knees going the other way, so there was a lot of experimentation that they tried

    Joe Cornish:
    You and I talk a lot about a film called Xtro

    Edgar Wright:
    Oh yeah

    Joe Cornish:
    Which was a Brit, is it British, Xtro or American?

    Edgar Wright:
    Yeah, yeah

    Joe Cornish:
    British and you better do the dates again for this

    Edgar Wright:
    I think Xtro, it's definitely after ET, because it was promoted as being the sort of antidote

    Joe Cornish:
    Sort of slated

    Edgar Wright:
    I think it's probably 1983, 1982 or 1983, it's definitely post-ET

    Joe Cornish:
    You know what, I've never seen it, I've only ever, I've only ever, I've only ever seen the photos and read about it

    Edgar Wright:
    I've seen bits of it. I've seen, I've seen most of it late night on, I remember it was one of, I never used to have a VCR when I was little, and so a lot of these films which erm, should have been my time that were 18s or 15s, I never

    Joe Cornish:
    not allowed to watch, but

    Edgar Wright:
    but I was allowed to watch, I know Chris Cunningham is.. is obsessed with Xtro

    Joe Cornish:
    Right

    Edgar Wright:
    And, I could kind of see it, because it's, it's a very strange movie

    Joe Cornish:
    It's, it's, it's an Alien, it's an Alien movie, but but the big thing with it is they've, they've obviously thought about this, they thought about how, how they can create a new paradigm in terms of creature suits so that, they they found a performer who could walk on all fours upside down, like, like a back flip, and then they designed the suit around the person, doing an upside down back flip

    Edgar Wright:
    Yep

    Joe Cornish:
    So, they were immediately, they were, they freed themselves from the basic human physiognomy which was always what you're trying to get away from and what we tried to cut with our creature. (from the Attack The Block: Executive Producer commentary)

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