http://weyland-yutaniarchives.blogspot.co.nz/2012/05/aliens-unseen-lesser-known-scenes.html Only just found this blog. Pretty cool. I knew of a few of these.
Thanks for this - I LOVE anything "Aliens". One of my ALL TIME favourite films!!! The bit with Burke checking his watch is a great little character moment. Shows his insincerity in offering condolensces to Ripley and his real intentions - the importance of the job. Typical corporate slug. I thought the bit with the WY workers outisde tying down the tarps was just an FX test shot or something, since on the doco it looked very rough and actually looked like a test. I also really like Drake's line. Growing up I had MANY friends who said pretty much the same thing! Sad that ultimately Fox felt the same way. Good stuff.
One thing I didn't know (for Alien) is that Lambert was supposed to die in the unfinished/unfilmed/abandoned Airlock scene. She would apparently have been sucked out of the breach and into space. That would've left Ripley and Parker alone towards the end. Because the scene was scrapped she carried on and a new death scene obvious crafted.
No, I've read the multiple versions of the script. The only time anyone died in the airlock scene was the first "Starbeast" draft - and the character there, Faust, is closest to the final film's Brett. The airlock scene was included in Alan Dean Foster's novelization (based directly on the shooting script minus the cast's adlibbed dialogue), and Lambert survived it.
It was a Ridleygram that never came to be: http://weyland-yutaniarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/alien-unseen-part-one-ridleygrams.html Considering there was a lot of adlibbing going on I'm not surprised there were several variations of scenes turning up, like the two versions (or extended version) of Brett's 'death'.
Never knew about the Lambert airlock thing - pretty cool! I LOVE how all this stuff is coming out now.
I'm rather glad such a scene was never realized. Merciful Mogg, I rolled my eyes when the "hybrid" in Alien Resurrection was squeezed through that inch wide hole in the viewport. Either that creature was composed of gelatin and its bones of soda crackers, or the PSI in that chamber had to be rated in the thousands! No, under a certain diameter, a person wouldn't get blown through a hole open to vacuum. At worst, someone may stumble against it and get one h3ll of a hickey (bruising of the skin as the capillaries rupture), until he pries himself away. It would not be much worse than messing around with a really strong shop vac. Didn't MythBusters demonstrate an average sized person would not get blown out an airliner "window" even if all the plexiplas gave way? (Meaning Goldfinger would have, instead, simply "corked" the hole and kept the remaining cabin pressure intact.) Sorry, back on topic, having Lambert blown out a softball sized hole would have "taken me out of the story". Sincerely, Bill
Since the scene was never realised we don't know how big the hole would've been. It might've ripped it's appendage off and splattered a great deal of acid around as it was trying to escape.
I'll concede that possibility. My eyes just gravitated towards the sentence, "Lambert is caught full on and is sucked out through the small hole," and that reminded me of the ludicrous conditions presented in "...Resurrection". Then I veered on a tangent and considered plausible circumstances. Sincerely, Bill