H.R. Geiger: Dark side of the mind

Swiss artist and designer HR Giger, the genius behind the creature in the movie 'Alien', was synonymous with challenging works, often showing macabre scenes of humans and machines fused into hellish hybrids.

Surrealist artist and set designer HR Giger's chest-bursting monster in the 1979 film Alien gained him worldwide acclaim.

Several elements were vital to the effectiveness of the 1979 horror film Alien, which was essentially an old-fashioned haunted house story relocated to deep space. (Its own director, Ridley Scott, called it “a C-movie done in an A-way”.) Chief among them was the visceral and disquieting design work by the Swiss surrealist artist HR Giger, who died on Monday aged 74 from injuries sustained in a fall.