Tales from the Video Vault

Dan O’Bannon was never a household name, not like James Cameron, John Carpenter or any of the other directors he worked with. But for the last 30 or so years, O’Bannon dwelled in the shadows of genre filmmaking and is, in a way, responsible for a good chunk of the modern landscape of sci-fi and horror filmmaking. O’Bannon did it all, from aliens to zombies to space vampires.

And he did it well, too. O’Bannon wrote the screenplay and the original story for “Alien,” and, 30 years after its initial release, the movie remains compelling and terrifying. O’Bannon’s script, which he co-wrote with Ronald Shusett, creeps along methodically, the dread mounting until it’s almost unbearable. The alien itself is scary, but it’s all that waiting beforehand that’s so damn horrifying. O’Bannon is even partially responsible for the toothsome creature that Sigourney Weaver ultimately defeats—O’Bannon met H.R. Geiger, whose striking, erotic, horrific, futuristic, fetishistic art inspired the creature in “Alien,” while working on a failed adaptation of “Dune.” O’Bannon brought Geiger in during the early stages of production on “Alien,” and the rest is chest-bursting, face-hugging history.

O’Bannon’s influence is felt elsewhere in the genre. He followed “Alien” with a screenplay for “Dead & Buried,” an under-appreciated zombie flick that, like “Alien,” relies on a slow buildup of terror to shock the audience. James Farentino stars as Sheriff Dan Gillis, the lone lawman of Potter’s Bluff, a sleepy coastal town caught up in a wave of murders. Gillis’ investigation takes him down strange avenues, but nothing prepares him for the truth: the townspeople themselves are committing the murders. It’s not a terribly graphic film (save for the infamous syringe-in-the-eyeball scene), but it is atmospheric and strange, building up layers of suspense and paranoia that eventually crush the hapless protagonist.

After co-creating and writing two segments in 1981’s “Heavy Metal,” O’Bannon returned to the zombie genre with “The Return of the Living Dead.” This time, he stepped behind the camera in addition to writing the screenplay. In “Return,” O’Bannon demonstrated he was just as good at comedy as he was with horror, paying homage to “Night of the Living Dead” while spoofing it. The zombies in “Return” don’t shamble, they run—and talk, too, as when a hungry zombie grabs the CB in an ambulance and radios in for someone to “Send… more… paramedics.” 

O’Bannon returned to space for his next project, a screenplay based on Colin Wilson’s novel “The Space Vampires.” The film, later dubbed “Lifeforce” and directed by Tobe Hooper, was the polar opposite of “Alien” and “Dead & Buried,” a bombastic exercise in utter insanity that starts out as a sci-fi flick, wanders into horror and ends with the apocalypse. While O’Bannon’s earlier scripts used restraint to draw out terror, his screenplay for “Lifeforce” goes for broke immediately. Once she’s brought back to earth, the lead space vampire (played by the stunning Mathilda May) roams through London, naked, preying on unsuspecting Londoners and bringing about the end of the world.

And that was all within a six-year period. Never mind that O’Bannon and John Carpenter co-wrote “Dark Star,” an early film that gave Carpenter the exposure and attention he needed to make “Assault on Precinct 13” and, later, “Halloween.” Or that “Alien” paved the way for “Aliens,” the flick that helped further cement James Cameron’s reputation as a director. O’Bannon even worked on “Star Wars” in the computer animation department. His output slowed in the mid ’90s and early 2000s, but two of his scripts, for “They Bite” and “Silvaticus 3015,” are currently in development.

Would we have the fast, scrambling zombies of “28 Days Later,” or Cameron’s pitched battles between aliens and human soldiers in “Avatar,” without O’Bannon? Maybe—but chances are they wouldn’t be the same. Send more paramedics? Nah—just send a few more Dan O’Bannons instead.