It's Alec Gillis from ADI and apparently a behind the scenes shot from an Alien film.

Unless it's some sort of industrial sized marshmallow toaster then I don't recall ever having seen this particular weapon before.

Anyone else?







Chris

Prototype for the Nostromo flame unit from the first movie, maybe?

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CPL Sean Maio A01/TQ2.0.72156E1
Public Relations Division (Temporary Cross-Assignment)
M-56 Smartgun Operator, A/3Btn, II CMEF, USS Sephora

Anyone else think he looks like Bruce Campbell in the second shot? "...this is my boomstick!"

My guess would be an unused weapon for ALIEN RESURRECTION. Not positive though. It's design looks to "military" compared to the units used on the Nostromo. It seems to resemble a smartgun - especially in the second photo.

...though it would be a tad unwieldy for military use. Not that this would be a precedent in military history.

Where did you find the photos?

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Strangely enough in the Quadrilogy Alien3 bonus extras disc - Production - ADI Workshop section.

Beats me that's for sure.



Chris

It's funny you should say ALIEN 3... I was just thinking it's design would fit in well with the W-Y shock troops at the end of the film.

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Yeah that's a good possibility.

I read somewhere last night Terry made a load of the trooper masks for the movie ( 24 i believe ). Maybe this was a prop weapon designed for these extra Troopers and neither made it into the film?

I guess it would be plausable to say that through Ripley's account etc it was stated the Alien didn't like fire so perhaps one of them ( or maybe more ) was equipped with one of these?

All speculation of course.



Chris

I have a couple of connections that lead to someone involved in the production of the Quadrilogy box set. I'd posed the question as to what this flame unit was intended for. Not sure when I'll get an answer, but I'll be sure to pass it along when I do.

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TOTALLY Bruce Campbell! "Come get some!"

Nice flamethrower unit too.

Although I know that 20th Century Fox produced these films, I couldn't help but notice the Paramount Pictures t-shirt a guy is wearing in the background. Apparently they aren't as strict around their shop when it comes down to different studios dropping by for a visit.

We ran into this issue a lot at my previous company because we printed up signage and marketing displays for rival customers. If the suits from Coca-Cola were coming by for a tour, we'd have to hide all of the Pepsi stuff. If the boys from Pepsi were stopping by for a visit, all of the Coca-Cola stuff would have to be stashed away.

The same happened for McDonalds and Burger King.

It was kind of funny really.

Speaking of which... I suppose if Bruce Campbell wanted his burger flame-broiled, he could go anywhere, not just Burger King.

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Rick "Ripstick"
A03/TQ3.0.12142E1

Looks like a stripped down flame unit from Alien; the back half past the 'fuel tank' might be meant for off screen operation...

A point about other studios and the SFX industry:

Most guys are freelancers. They pop from one studio to the next, from job to job, as they come up. So the guy wearing a Paramount shirt could have gotten it from his last movie and he was called in to work some stuff up for Alien 3. Crew shirts from a plethora of movies show up around the studio here - most notably of recent Inkheart and Hellboy 2.

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I would definitely say that the picture does not look old enough to be from the first film.

My guess is that it was a prototype made for Alien 3 before that major script change. I remember them talking about how they made a ton of props/sets before being told that they were changing the script.

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OK, so it looks like this was not intended to be a weapon. This is from Charles de Lauzirika about the above flame unit:

"I don't think that was ever meant to be in the film. They just used that to shoot controlled fire bursts into various shots for the scene when they try to trap the Alien in the toxic waste dump."

For those who don't know of Charles he's the person responsible for digging-up/compiling the supplemental material for the ALIEN QUADRILOGY, and the BLADE RUNNER 5 disc Collectors edition. He was also head honcho in restoring the ALIEN3 Assembly Cut.

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Wow great work there Mike. Nice to get these obscure items kind of accounted for. Now for the 398 other Alien3 oddities I have on my list (joking)

Cheers



Chris