John Hurt Wasn't The Original Victim Of Alien's Famous Chestburster Scene
It's easy to take for granted the weirdness and shocking nature of the extraterrestrial's lifecycle in Ridley Scott's seminal 1979 horror film "Alien."
In "Alien," John Hurt plays Kane, a crew member of the futuristic space tug Nostromo who finds an outsize, leathery egg while exploring a mysterious alien vessel. The egg opens, and a strange monster — part lobster, part bladder — leaps out and grabs his face. He immediately goes comatose. Later, it is discovered that the monster, while still attached to his face, has inserted an unsettling biological tube down his throat. Kane's crewmates are unable to remove the monster from his face; when they pull on it, it begins to strangle Kane with its tail, and when they cut it, it bleeds acid that can eat through metal.
After a spell, the monster drops off Kane's face of its own volition and dies. What happened? It's only when Kane is enjoying a meal with his crewmates that the horrors of the facehugger are revealed. Kane begins to have some sort of attack, convulsing and choking and screaming in pain. He falls on his back on the dining table and wails as blood explodes from his abdomen. From within his stomach, another creature — a phallic thing with teeth — bursts out. It skitters away, leaving Kane dead.
These details are a well-worn part of the pop media landscape now, but in 1979, it must have seemed unbearably strange. The clawed monster used Kane's body as an incubator. That likely made men writhe in discomfort and women who have been pregnant shudder in recognition.
As was covered in Empire Magazine's oral history, however, Hurt wasn't director Ridley Scott's original choice to play Kane. Initially, Scott cast British actor Jon Finch from "Macbeth" and "Frenzy" in the role.
The inimitable Jon Finch
Jon Finch, who passed away in 2012, was perhaps best known for his Shakespearean work, and he appeared in several of the BBC's Complete Works of Shakespeare series in the late '70s and early '80s. He played King Henry IV in the Plantagenet Tetralogy (that's "Richard II," "Henry IV part I," "Henry IV part II," and "Henry V" for laypeople), as well as Don Pedro in the BBC's "Much Ado About Nothing." Prior to those, Finch appeared in two notable Hammer horror films, "The Vampire Lovers" and "The House of Frankenstein."
Notable to this story is that Finch was diabetic and notoriously fainted on the set of the 1974 film "Diagnosis: Murder," wherein he played Inspector Lomax opposite Judy Geeson and Christopher Lee. Finch dealt with diabetes and bronchial infections his entire life, and he would sometimes faint on set. This, it seems, happened in the early days of making "Alien." As Scott recalled:
"I had cast Jon Finch, who was Polanski's 'Macbeth,' as Kane. First day, first shot, Jon collapsed. I talked to him and he said, 'I'm a diabetic [...]' He had gone yellow and couldn't get up — we had to lift him out of the scene. He was fine, but he had to recuperate. He hadn't taken his insulin and was drinking too much Coca-Cola. That night we looked at the book and came across John Hurt, who I have always liked."
It was, as producer Eddie Powell pointed out, back to square one. Finch's recuperation time would have delayed the entire production, and the film couldn't wait. The filmmakers returned to the casting sheets and scanned down until they came upon Hurt's name.
Finch recalls
Luckily, Hurt lived near to the shooting location and was able to arrive on set swiftly. Scott recalled their very brief agreement:
"John lived in Hampstead, so we called and I drove up there. We sat down with a drink. I said, 'Do you want to do this?" He said, 'Yeah [...] I trust you, when do I start?' 'Tomorrow morning, a car will come for you.'"
And that was that. Hurt was now playing Kane. A few of Finch's scenes needed to be re-shot, but Hurt stepped in without any drama.
As for Finch, he did recall his brief experience on the "Alien" set in an on-camera interview for a making-of documentary. It seems that Finch had nearly worked with Scott on his film "The Duellists" a few years prior, so the director was on his radar. He was cast in "Alien," but he clarified that is was a lung ailment that left him bedridden for a fortnight that took him off the film. In Finch's words:
"We did 'Alien.' And I did, I think, about three days on that, plus all the building of the chest and the neck and the head and all that stuff, you know. And after three days I had an extremely bad bronchial attack for the first time in my life. Never happened since either. And ended up in intensive care and had to take two weeks off after that. So, you know, I lost the, I couldn't work it. So sadly, I missed that one."
Finch would eventually appear in Scott's 2005 film "Kingdom of Heaven" as Heraclitus. It was his final film role.
Both Finch and Hurt are amazing actors, so Scott and the world's many "Alien" fans were going to be lucky either way.