Harkonnen Castle

Dune (2021) dir. Denis Villeneuve

St. Abbondio, Switzerland, near Lake Maggiore

From H.R. Giger’s

H.R. Giger

Detail from The Spell I (1974)

In 2003 Levi Strauss & Co. aired a commercial featuring a train designed by H.R. Giger

The TV Spot, directed by Johan Renck, features American model Brandon Merrill, wearing Levi’s jeans, riding a black stallion along railroad tracks across a desert landscape. An oncoming train approaches, which she rides full speed towards. She then hitches her jeans to her saddle, and at the moment before she and the train collide, leaps across the full length of the train, landing safely on the other side.

The ad ran internationally on MTV and VH1 as well as in movie theaters.

Featured song: No Pain No Gain by Unkle ft Keith Flint

H.R. Giger’s concept design sketches for the train, the saddle, and the opening of the train tunnel:

Giger’s train was brought to life by visual effects company The Mill, and designed by Ben Smith.

Digital Model:

In 2004 H.R. Giger and his agent Leslie Barany commissioned UK based company Scales & Models to create a physical model of the train, to be exhibited for his show “H.R. Giger’s Retrospective” at the gallery Halle Saint-Pierre, Paris, France.

Photos of the scale model and H.R. Giger admiring it at the gallery exhibition:

Sadly, the commercial would only be shown in the USA for a few short weeks after airing in July of 2003. It was pulled from broadcast in August after complaints from train safety lobby Operation Lifesaver. The president of Operation Lifesaver, Gerri Hall, wrote a letter to Levi’s chairman Bob Haas, requesting the ad be pulled, stating; “[the ad] trivializes the dangerous, illegal and all-too-often tragic activity of playing on railroad tracks.”

Plan For Biomechanoid I

Plan For Biomechanoid II

Homage to S. Beckett III

Li Tobler with Biomechanoid sculpture

Under the Earth (Unfinished), 1968

The Mummy of

Princess Ta-Di-Isis

“When I was a young lad there was a time when I went to the Rätisches museum in Chur on my own every Sunday morning. In it’s catacombs they kept the mummy of an Egyptian princess. I was enormously drawn to that mysterious black body, but it scared me too. The absolutely elementary process of life such as birth, death, sexuality have always fascinated me.” - H.R. Giger. The Oeurve Before Alien. (2007)

- Ta-Di-Isis in Dark Star: H.R. Giger’s World (2014) Dir. Belinda Sallin

“At the age of five, his sister, who was seven years older, brought Hans to an exhibit about ancient Egypt at a local museum. Down in the cellar was the mummy of an Egyptian princess, with blackened bones still covered in patches of skin. His sister laughed at him because he was so frightened but he told me that he went there almost every Sunday after that, alone, to sit with the mummy. That experience accompanied him all his life, and those themes: the black abyss of the cellar, the bones, and Egyptian culture influenced his work massively. If you look at the monster from Alien, it’s not only black, with bones protruding from under the helmet, but it has this elongated head that you see throughout Egyptian culture.” - Interview with Carmen Giger. (2019)

- H.R. Giger’s Nubian Queen (2002)

- Debbie Harry & H.R. Giger posing with the sarcophagus he made for her Backfired music video (1981)

H.R. Giger

Lovecraft and His Pets

Lovecraft’s Visit

Spacetrip I

Spacetrip II

Cthulhu III (1967)

Armoire Door for Mia (1979)

Lilith (1977)

Operettamoral 2005

“HR Giger contributed with the cover artwork, one of his recent Xenorotica sketches [pictured below], and can also be heard on the CD reciting one of his most favorite Brecht poems, Seeräuber-Jenny.”

“The song depicts Low-Dive Jenny, a character based on Jenny Diver (1700–1741). Low-Dive Jenny is a lowly maid at a "crummy old hotel", imagining avenging herself for the contempt she endures from the townspeople. A pirate ship enters the harbor, fires on the city and flattens every building except the hotel. The pirates come ashore, chain up all the townspeople, and present them to Jenny, who orders the pirates to kill them all. She then sails away with the pirates.”

Unfreiwillige Begötterung (Involuntary Idolatry) 2004

Giger’s Verse [Translated from German] :

And this afternoon it will be silent at the ports, And when they ask me who must die, You'll hear me say "All of them!" And when the heads fall I'll say "Whoops!"

1979 Magazine Covers for