Doompunk Dispatch

Alien would've been a decent sci-fi movie with a generic alien monster and a generic alien ship where they found the eggs.

But instead we got treated to the wildly confusing, oddly sexual, biomechanical ship and creature that STABBED itself into the cinematic world. I still say that hiring the late, great, H.R. Giger held that ENTIRE movie together like glue.

Great direction, great action, great plot, but his weird shit is what really GRABBED people. And if I recall, this is the specific piece that made Ridley Scott want to hire him: Necronom IV

Not just scary and gross and ugly, but upsetting, weird, uncomfortable to look at. So confusingly phallic that men were just as scared by it as women (that, in addition to the fact that it was already established it was born when a weird hand/spider impregnated a man down his throat).

Brian Froud on The Dark Crystal (1982)

Moebius on The Abyss (1989)

Alexander Juhasz on The Babadook (2014)

Joseph Avery on Possum (2018)

These are all very different films (aside of being classified as "horror" in some form), but a common theme between all of them is their unique aesthetic identity, brought into the film majorly by outsider artists artists that don't fit the pathologically standardized mold of Hollywood concept artist work, where artists are rarely treated as, well, artists with a unique vision of their own capable of bringing something fresh and new to a project, and instead are seen as nothing more than grunt physical work to fill in the gaps of visual flair in a movie; instead these films have artists that were approached for their intriguing, evocative and unique ideas and sets of skills, rendering results that easily stand out amongst the crowd, and not just for the superficial appeal of the aesthetics, but often in cases for the way these artists' work consciously or unconsciously drive the movies' themes, psychology and symbolism. This is sadly still a rare occurrence, and I would argue it is even more so nowadays with more and more of the film industry becoming a cold corporate machine where artistry is secondary and maximization of profits is first, but I don't lose hope, I know there are still film directors out there, both established and up and coming, that prioritize art and understand the value of the collaborative nature of film, and I hope to one day be able to work with one of these filmmakers and bring my art into a new format.