Hours of interviews and rare photos into the making of Alien, from the people who actually made Alien, legally downloadable or watchable online. Yet strangely missing from this week's Blu-ray Alien Anthology release...

There are fans and there are fans. A lot of them are enthusiastic enough to make movie tributes, even short documentaries about the franchises, films and other cult media that they love. And a lot of what they do is what gives YouTube and similar video-hosting sites genuine cultural value.

But not many of them are professional film-makers who have worked on A-league motion pictures for decades. Dennis Lowe is. He worked on the visual effects department of Ridley Scott's Alien in 1978, later working as special/visual effects supervisor on such projects as The NeverEnding Story (1984), Labyrinth (1986), Frankenstein (1994), The English Patient (1996), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Cold Mountain (2003) and Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (2006).

Over the last few years, Lowe has self-produced a series of full-length documentaries about the making of Alien, featuring interviews with key personnel such as visual effects supervisor Brian Johnson and model-maker Martin Bower, among many others. As you can imagine, these are not 'amateur' productions, but insightful and unique glimpses into the creation of one of cinema's legendary sci-fi/horror franchises, all punctuated with extraordinary and unexpected bursts of CGI integration of designs from Alien.

Here's the opening of the first of Lowe's four full-length documentaries, Alien Makers...

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Lowe has produced three sequels: Alien Makers II, Alien Makers III (now off-line, as it dealt primarily with H.R. Giger's contribution to Alien) and Alien Makers IV, which latter documentary you can watch right here...

Additionally Lowe has made a documentary about the fans of Alien. Here's the run-down on the complete set of documentaries, including LEGAL torrent links to image files that you can burn as playable DVDs...

Alien Makers (1 hour 20 mins)
Featuring contributions from Ron Hone, Roger Nichols, Neil Swan, Brian Eke, John Hatt, Martin Bower, Simon Deering, Jon Sorensen and Bill Pearson.

Watch it here, or at the mirror video-hosts Alien Experience.
Torrent: NTSC / PAL

Alien Makers II (1 hour 33 mins)
Featuring contributions from Ivor Powell (Associate Producer), Brian Johnson (SFX Supervisor), Sandy Lieberson (Vice President 20th Century Fox - Europe in 1979), Tim Ayling (Son of Denys - Model Lighting Cameraman) and Terry Rawlings (Film Editor).

Watch it here, or at the mirror video-hosts Alien Experience.
Torrent: NTSC / PAL

Alien Makers III (43 mins)
H.R. Giger created one of the great iconic symbols of the cinema for the Alien - here he talks about his work and the future of his projects including his Museum and Giger Bar at Gruyeres, Switzerland.

Currently unavailable

Alien Makers IV (90 mins)
Featuring contributions from Nick Allder, Michael Seymour and Dennis Lowe.

Watch it in the embedded video above or at Lowe's site.
Torrent: NTSC / PAL

Alien Fans (93 mins)
These are no ordinary fans. Featuring contributions from a selection of people that have been influenced by the 'Alien' franchise in one way or another, including Mike Lynch, Julian Bloom, Michael Seigel, Philippe Carini, Marc Caro, Aaron Percival, Fred Blanchard, Graham Langridge, Bijan Aalam, John Milas and Dominic Kulcsar.

Watch it at Lowe's site.

It's a shame that none of these unbelievably effortful documentaries, straight from the horse's mouth, made it into this week's release of the Alien Anthology Blu-ray set.

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