by Glenn Lovell

Here’s a riddle for you. What came first, the creature or the alien egg?

Put differently, is “Alien,” 20th Century-Fox’s $9-million release, the innovative shock show critics from coast to coast have rushed to call it? Or, is it simply a flashy retread of a number of low-budget 1950s creature features, like “The Thing from Another World” and “It! The Terror from Beyond Space”? With the alien-hitches-a-ride movie already well over the $40 million mark and reaching daily for a spot beside “Jaws,” “Close Encounters” and “Star Wars,” a backlash has begun among onetime admirers who are now asking, “Just how original is ‘Alien’ anyway?”

What they’re discovering ‒ with a little help from horror/sci-fi aficionados ‒ is that “Alien” is not only a first cousin to some of the seedier ’50s monster movies, it is also something of a rip-off of these exploitation numbers.

Although other titles have been bandied about ‒ like “This Island Earth” and “Forbidden Planet” ‒ the two films “Alien” most resembles are “It! The Terror from Beyond Space” (1958)  and “Planet of the Vampires” (1965). The storyline, almost scene for scene, comes from “It!”; the eerie lighting and stylized, expressionistic landscapes are pure “Planet,” an Italian SF/fantasy shocker by Mario Bava.

For those of us who can recall the summer of 1958 and the release by United Artists of a $110,000 quickie titled “It! The Terror from Beyond Space,” watching “Alien” for the first time evoked a strong sense of déjà vu. The new script, credited to Dan O’Bannon, seemed nothing less than a verbatim replay of what director Edward L. Cahn and screenwriter Jerome Bixby had supplied in the way of extraterrestrial fright.

Briefly, in “It!” a spaceship lands on an uncharted planet to search for survivors of a downed rocket and, unbeknown to the crew, picks up a deadly, blood-sucking hitchhiker. As in “Alien,” the thing from another world hides in the ventilation shaft, is warded off by a crew member with a blow torch, and is finally sucked into deep space where it dies from lack of oxygen. What the makers of “Alien” have done is change the shape of the creature (theirs is insectoid, Cahn’s was humanoid with reptilian features) and assault us with more sophisticated shock effects.

Still, the stories bear an uncanny resemblance.

Aware of this, we contacted 20th Century’s “Alien” office for the official word on whether the brains behind the hit were conscious of copying an earlier film or had latched onto a project they assumed was original. British director Ridley Scott escapes complicity because he is unacquainted with most American sci-fi. His U.S. collaborators, however, are another matter. At least three were aware of the striking similarities between “Alien” and “It!” One of the film’s producers even admitted screening portions of “It!” during production “to make sure we weren’t  doing a bald remake.”

Producer David Giler: “We only began to hear about ‘It!’ toward the end of production. I haven’t seen it, but t I know of the film. We were convinced we were doing something new stylistically, even if the basic outlines were the same. I gather the alien-hiding-on-a-spaceship idea is pretty much a classic premise with science fiction writers, like the gunfight in the Western. So the similarities you refer to didn’t bother us.”

Interestingly, Giler was only too happy to brand O’Bannon “a fake” and “rip-off artist.” Giler said he and co-producer Walter Hill wrote most of the script but lost out to O’Bannon in an “idiotic” Writers Guild arbitration. He called O’Bannon’s original draft “amateurishly written ‒ just awful! Basically, it was a pastiche of ’50s movies thrown together. If we had shot the original script we would have had a remake of ‘It! The Terror from Beyond Space.’ ”

When pressed, Giler confided: “I know some of the more esoteric SF magazines have commented on tie-ins between ‘It!’ and ‘Alien.’ But I’m not a regular reader of these magazines. Personally, I think that’s a question you ought to put to O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett (co-author of the ‘original story’). If somebody is responsible for stealing the idea, it’s them. They signed a paper saying it was an original idea. If it isn’t, they lied to us. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that Dan O’Bannon stole the idea, I must tell you.”

For a different perspective, we contacted “It!” screenwriter Jerome Bixby. He had not seen “Alien” but, through his sons, was aware of plot similarities. We talked him into viewing the film, then reporting back to us. He called two days later.

“Frankly, I feel like the grandfather of ‘Alien,’” chuckled Bixby, whose credits include 1,300 short stories and segments of “Star Trek” and “The Twilight Zone.” “There’s a whole roster of similarities between what I wrote and the new film. They’re both about a small group of people trapped aboard a spacecraft with an inimical creature out to get them and which, in fact, knocks them off one by one. No problem there; that’s a pretty general plot outline. In both stories the creatures use the ship’s air ducts. In both stories they are held off with gas and electricity. And at the end of both stories, they’re dispatched by suffocation, by evacuating the creatures from the ship and depriving them of air.”

Although Bixby wouldn’t say whether he intended to take action against O’Bannon and 20th Century, he did say he was in touch with his lawyer about the matter.

“In all honesty, my story was also derivative,” he allowed. “Essentially what I did was take Howard Hawks’ ‘The Thing’ and play it aboard a spaceship. But I didn’t copy the storyline; I used the film ‒ a masterpiece in the genre ‒ as inspiration for my story. The Hawks film has long been a model for SF writers.”

Bixby said he enjoyed “Alien” but believed the film’s extravagant budget and f/x covered for a weak storyline. “When I think what we could have done with that kind of money …,” he mused. “A lot of people saw our little grade-B flick because there was something of a science-fiction boom back then. But it was nothing like we have today.”

When news arrived of Donna Summer’s cruel passing at age 63, I reached for my Summer Greatest Hits CD. But I didn’t play the thumping disco anthems “Last Dance” and “Love to Love You, Baby.” I went to the swoony “On the Radio,” her Casablanca collab with Giorgio Moroder that was used in the mostly forgotten “Foxes” (1980), co-starring the 17-year-old Jodie Foster as one of four vaguely rebellious Valley girls and Sally Kellerman as Foster’s lost, unassertive single mom.

Directed by Brit Adrian Lyne (“Fatal Attraction”) from a script by Gerald Ayres, “Foxes” is very definitely a guilty pleasure, much like “Cat People,” “Flashdance” and other films wed to the pulsating synthesized sound of Moroder. Still, for all its dated, Day-Glo glitz — think skateboards and Scott Baio in cutoffs — there’s something achingly sad about “Foxes,” and much of the credit for this belongs to the dreamy photography, Cherie Currie as the most at-risk of the high school clique … and Summer’s yearning rendition of “On the Radio,” at least the piano prelude ‒

          Someone found a letter you wrote me, on the radio

          And they told the world just how you felt

          It must have fallen out of a hole in your old brown overcoat

          They never said your name

          But I knew just who you meant

Yes, “Foxes” — set in a San Fernando Valley P.T. Anderson would never recognize — is one for the time capsule, but, for a few of us, Summer’s lilting “On the Radio” will remain timeless.

For those of us who spent a good part of the year in the dark — blinking through as many as four or five films a week – the news that annual ticket sales were at a 16-year low hardly came as a shock. Half the time Hollywood seemed to be in a haze, the other half running scared, cranking out one CG-driven escape after another. It got so bad during the summer months that titles and alternate universes blended. Did I experience that rogue planet in “Thor” or “Green Lantern” … or “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”?

Of course it didn’t help matters that in 2011 we had more alternatives to the tiresome, cell-phone-friendly megaplexes than ever before. I lost count of the number of films I discovered on PPV, a week or two before they were reviewed in the local paper. Add to this streaming Netflix, a boon to adventurous souls looking for interesting indies that somehow went without distribution. (This is how I discovered South Korea’s tricky “I Saw the Devil,” Italy’s rapturous “Come Undone,” and, from 2008, the French-U.S.-Mexican “Julia,” starring Tilda Swinton as the most unrepentant drunk since Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas.”)

Not surprisingly, the best films were the smallest, in terms of budget not originality. In no particular order, the titles that reawakened my passion for flickering celluloid:

The Best ... "The Artist"

1. “The Artist.” A clever homage to silent Hollywood, circa 1927, that beseeches, “Open your eyes – and listen!”

2. “Win Win.” A low-budget charmer starring Paul Giamatti at his rumpled best. (The sadly overlooked “Terri” could easily share this spot.)

3. “The Help.” Sure it’s slick, old-fashioned storytelling, but Tate Taylor’s adaptation of the Kathryn Stockett bestseller about segregation in 1960s Mississippi proved the year’s most engrossing melodrama. Expect scads of Oscar nominations, starting with Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain.

5. “The Debt.” A rich, multilayered mystery-espionage thriller that commented on the nature of courage. Helen Mirren and Chastain played the same women separated by 30 years of lies ‒ and a nasty facial scar.

6. “Melancholia.” Lars von Trier’s meditation on encroaching Armageddon, when madness proves the only sane response.

7. “Drive.” A retro crime thriller – Jean-Pierre Melville meets “Bullitt” starring the new King of Cool, Ryan Gosling.

8. “Limitless.” Like Alice, Bradley Cooper pops a pill for the ultimate out-of-body experience. Credit director Neil Burger for the year’s most novel sci-fi allegory, told with just the right blend of humor and suspense.

9. “Shame.” The seemingly everywhere Michael Fassbender in a dark, stripped-down tale of guilt and addiction. Academy, when filling out your nomination ballots, don’t forget Carey Mulligan as Fassbender’s even needier sister.

10. “The Descendants.” Alexander Payne’s long overdue follo to “Sideways” is a quirky dramedy about second chances. George Clooney is wonderful as a preoccupied Hawaiian attorney juggling, very badly, family tragedy and in-fighting.

Year’s best foreign film: Takashi Miike’s “13 Assassins,” a stunning, subversive variation on Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai.” Does anyone now going stage battle scenes better than Miike?

Year’s biggest disappointment: “The Tree of Life,” Terrence Malick’s most personal and, thanks to a fragmented, jump-cut-happy narrative, least accessible movie. Think the Scopes Monkey Trial battled to a draw. Both creationists and atheists had reason to grumble.

As usual, there were enough bow-wows to fill a large kennel. Ten that barked loudest:

1. “Cowboys & Aliens.” Like baked beans on freeze-dried ice cream.

2. “Super 8.” Spoof or homage? Only diehard Spielberg fans knew for sure.

And the worst ... "Super 8"

3. “The Rite.” Anthony Hopkins’ excuse: “Devil made me do it!”

4. “Arthur.” The old drunk act, minus a modicum of charm.

5. “The Thing.” Prequel or remake? Who cares.

6. “Hall Pass.” We didn’t expect anything of this Farrelly brothers farce and weren’t disappointed.

7. “Dream House.” When it comes to ghosts, who ya gonna call? Not Daniel Craig.

8. “Just Go with It”/“Jack and Jill.” For those Adam Sandler fans craving seconds.

9. “Straw Dogs.” Peckinpah gutted for stock home-invasion thrills.

10.  “Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows.” The game’s afoot! NOT!

Following a carefully orchestrated send-off, the Ben Stiller-Eddie Murphy comedy caper failed to secure the top spot at the box office its opening weekend. (Adding insult to injury, it was bested by the kidpic “Puss in Boots” ‒ its second week in release.)

Certainly timely enough ‒ Stiller, Murphy and four others exact payback for a Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme ‒ the $85 million crime farce surprised industry prognosticators with its less-than-stellar showing.

I asked a couple of my film classes at De Anza College if they’d rushed out to see the comedy. En masse, they shot me one of those “Huh? What planet are you from?” looks.

Stiller, Ratner and Murphy

Almost to a one they agreed the film had a tired ‘boomer vibe. Though I liked it, I could see their point. Besides its ersatz “Mission: Impossible” jazz theme, the film is crammed with pop culture references from the 1970s and ’80s, including Steve McQueen, Tina Turner, “Boys from Brazil,” “The Doberman Gang” and, from TV Land, “Matlock.” The casting of Alan Alda as the villain conjures memories of another time-capsule experience: CBS’s “M*A*S*H.”

If the comments by my students are indicative of how today’s target audience feels, producer Brian Grazer, director Brett Ratner and Murphy, who developed the project, would have done well to canvass campuses before going into production.  The interaction would have been eye-opening, leaving the trio to conclude, Hey, maybe the audience we should care about doesn’t want to see this film.

My classes, I’m sure, wouldn’t have minced words. They sure didn’t Tuesday.

“The trailer looks incredibly cheesy and washed-out, like a boring version of ‘Ocean’s 11,’” volunteered Sharif Elrefaie.

“Eddie Murphy gives off a family vibe,” observed Erik Ard. “It’s hard to take him seriously in a crime plot.”

“Eddie Murphy?” shot back an incredulous Roderic Wilson. “He hasn’t been funny since the ’80s. He needs to get his mojo back!”

Of course, “Tower Heist’s” reception wasn’t helped by Ratner’s gay slur during a preview-screening Q&A. Asked “What was your rehearsal like?,” Ratner replied, “Rehearsal? What’s that? Rehearsals are for fags!”

Talk about clueless! Ratner not only offended the entire LGBT community, he demonstrated what my students already knew ‒ how really out of touch he is.

Hey, guys, thanks for those new cell phone PSAs ‒ the ones using the Muppets and those cute flying apps.

They’re funny and creative. I love seeing Fozzie Bear talking on a banana as Miss Piggy shushes him.

One problem: The spots are next to useless.

After sitting through “Footloose” at one of your San Jose houses and watching cell phones pop on one after another like Christmas lights, I’d go further ‒ your new spots are not only useless, they encourage cell phone use during the movie by making a joke of the practice.

Cell Phones: No Laughing Matter

The thinking now among repeat offenders: If management thinks it’s funny, it’s obviously no big deal.

In other words, you’re contributing to a problem that’s grown to epidemic proportions and caused a noticeable drop in movie attendance.

What you should be doing is taking a tougher, less conciliatory stance, like the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Austin. Management there lays it out, plain and simple: “If you talk or text during a movie, we kick you out.”

And they do, as an angry voicemail — turned into a hilarious Drafthouse PSA — attests.

Why don’t you follow suit? I’ll tell you why. You’re afraid of offending your worst customers and losing their business. You’ve capitulated by accepting cell phones as a minor nuisance.

Worse, you’re in bed with the cell phone companies. That Kermit and Miss Piggy PSA, besides being a promo for Disney’s new Muppet movie, is brought to us by Sprint, the very folks who profit from cell phone use in theaters.

You need to get control of this problem. Fast. A while back the National Association of Theater Owners petitioned the FCC to follow France’s lead and block cell phone reception in theaters. That effort went nowhere as NATO yielded to pressure from special interest groups. Their tired argument: We need our cell phones with us at all times, in case of an emergency. Phone jammers, they also protested, infringe upon our First Amendment right to act like jerks in public.

If you want to do something worthwhile, AMC, scrub the lip-service PSAs and make your theaters no-reception zones. Sure, you’ll lose some customers. But you’ll win back better ones.

Looking back, I can remember savoring “Five Came Back” and the original “Flight of the Phoenix,” about downed planes in the Amazon and Sahara. Others in this sub-genre that spring to mind: “Inferno” with Robert Ryan, “The Naked Prey” with Cornell Wilde, “Man in the Wilderness” with Richard Harris, “The Emerald Forest” with Powers Boothe, and Lee Tamahori’s much-underrated “The Edge,” with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin being pursued by a particularly nasty Kodiak bear.

Neeson (far right): What price survival?

If one were to analyze our attraction to these movies, it would probably come down to some atavistic yearning to return to nature … or reading “Robinson Crusoe” and “Coral Island” as a kid.

That certainly would account for the more recent successes of “Cast Away” and “127 Hours.”

All of this is a roundabout way of saying I’m looking forward to Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey,” starring Liam Neeson and Dermot Mulroney. The good news: Neeson, Mulroney and four other oil-rig workers have survived a hellacious plane crash. The bad: They’re in the middle of the frigid Alaskan wilderness and a pack of timber wolves have their scent.

Here’s the preview for “The Grey,” which made me salivate like a schoolboy. The film opens Jan. 27. We’ll report back then.

Today I called up a trailer at IMDb.com for “Human Centipede II (Full Sequence)” and what did I see as a lead-in?

A preview for Disney’s Blu-ray edition of “The Lion King.”

That’s right, the most popular G-rated animated feature of all time was paired with IFC’s  unrated sequel to Tom Six’s “Human Centipede,” now being promo’ed as “the sickest movie of all time.” In the new installment, a chubby, pop-eyed sadist named Martin seeks to improve on Dr. Heiter’s experiment in gastrointestinal fusion by suturing a dozen human guinea pigs butt to mouth.

I may be wrong but I don’t think this is what “Lion King” songwriters Elton John and Tim Rice meant by “Circle of Life.”

Postscript: “Human Centipede II” — determined to be utterly reprehensible and without a shred of redeeming social value — has been banned in the U.K., a distinction it shares with Tod Browning’s “Freaks,” Brando’s “The Wild One,” Roger Corman’s “The Trip,” Tobe Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and Wes Craven’s original “Last House on the Left.”

“Banned in Britain!” — the trailer proudly trumpets. You’re right, you can’t buy this kind of advertising.

Word arrived yesterday of an incident that brought a queasy sensation and again raised the question: Are our megaplexes a potential terrorist target waiting to happen?

The Columbus Dispatch reported an 8-year-old boy was rushed to the hospital Sunday after being jabbed in the back by a needle that had been wedged in a theater seat. It was no accident. The sewing needle, protruding from the top of a ballpoint pen, formed a makeshift hypo. Authorities said that the boy, apart from being “a little shaky,“ was fine and that they were testing the needle.

No doubt a teen prank or the work of one very twisted individual, the incident nevertheless points up how vulnerable our nation’s theaters are.

Stuck in our seats, for real?

Who among us hasn’t felt a twinge of anxiety when something brushed up against his leg in the dark of a theater? We are, for all intents and purposes, totally exposed to whatever’s out there.

As far as I can tell, local theaters are only protected by exit signs, smoke detectors, ushers and the occasional rent-a-cop. The National Association of Theater Owners has been surprisingly mute on the topic, choosing instead to concentrate on movie piracy and the closing gap between theatrical openings and VOD. Little wonder Homeland Security has designated movie houses, along with malls and hotels, “soft targets.”

This, despite the fact that theaters in Pakistan and other Asian countries have become easy terrorist targets. Karachi, 2001: “A bomb exploded in a crowded movie theater Sunday, killing at least one person and wounding five others.” Peshawar, 2009: “A powerful car bomb blast at a movie house … killed six people and injured 75.”

At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, the little boy in Columbus reminds us that we can never be totally sure what awaits us in the dark. William Castle, the master of gimmick horror, played on this innate fear with his “Emergo” skeleton and vibrating seats. Last weekend’s stunt, however, left no one giggling. It was like “The Tingler,” only for real.

As a friend so correctly noted, one can’t visit Italy without making a pilgrimage to the Maestro’s home turf, a stone’s throw from the Trevi Fountain, where, in “La dolce vita,” the zaftig Anita Ekberg bid Marcello Mastroianni, “Come here!”

When in Rome ... : Allen and Benigni

So, on this muggy August evening, we’re off to Via Margutta, where Fellini kept an apartment with wife Giulietta Masina. We dodge the tourists camped on the Spanish Steps, hang a right at the foot of the steps, and then another right, then a left down a quiet, cobblestone street of upscale homes and galleries.

And who should we bump into? Woody Allen, shooting his new comedy, “The Bop Decameron,” starring Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Penelope Cruz, Alec Baldwin, Greta Gerwig, Judy Davis and ‒ yes, we’ve missed him in front of the camera ‒ Allen himself, this time as a harried father in Rome to meet his daughter’s future in-laws.

At a Cannes press conference, Allen described the film as a broad vignette comedy loosely inspired by Boccaccio’s “The Decameron.”

Holding court for the small crowd of journalists and onlookers as the 76-year-old Allen takes a break between setups: Roberto Benigni. Benigni plays a man mistaken for an Italian movie star and, like a character out of “La dolce vita,” pursued mercilessly by the paparazzi.

Riding high after solid numbers for the Oscar-bound “Midnight in Paris,” Allen still finds himself a prophet in his own land who’s more respected in Europe than here. Which is why his financing these days often comes from abroad. “Bop Decameron’s” relatively chintzy $25 million budget was raised by an Italian company.

Makes perfect sense then that Allen, nearing the end of his career, should visit Fellini’s old haunts (he drew a crowd even at daybreak at the Trevi Fountain earlier in the shoot). Fellini, along with Ingmar Bergman, ranks high on Woody’s list of favorite directors, with his “Stardust Memories” and “Celebrity” acknowledged homages to “8 1/2” and “La dolce vita.”

As a daily newspaper critic, I slammed the second and third installments in the “Star Wars” Trilogy and paid the price: I received obscene phones calls and “F … you, Mr. Lovell!” fan mail.

When it comes to our passionate likes and dislikes, we can brook no opposition. It’s either “Side with me” or ‒ horrible gnashing of teeth here ‒ “Die, die, die … the death of a thousand cuts!”

I’m reminded of this as I scan the near-rabid response to New York Press critic Armond White’s review of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.” White, known for his often contrarian positions, had the gall to not only pan the last Potter movie but slam the entire series in the process, grumbling, “This will go down as the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises.” (Some pronouncement, especially when you take into account the “Porky’s” and “Chucky” franchises … but let that go for now.)

Not surprisingly, White’s review, excerpted on RottenTomatoes.com Wednesday, ignited a firestorm of complaint. By Saturday morning, there were more than 200 comments, the majority of which, to be kind, were testy. In an occasionally intentional play on words, readers declared White an (Internet) troll and suggested he “jump in front of a moving train.” Brian B admonished, “Go back under the bridge, Armond.”

Other choice epithets: “imbecile,” “pea-brain,” “hack,” “buffoon,” “douche-bag.”

Echoing Rowling’s Dark Forces, these Potter fans demanded White’s head on a platter. Fire him! Blacklist him! Ostracize him! They were clearly outraged that anyone could not champion their hero, avatar of reason and harmony … Chosen One.

Far worse were the racist slurs, evoking memories of the persecutory, anti-Muggle Ministry of Magic in the first half of “Deathly Hallows.” A number of comments alluded to White being black. Ed D. wrote, “Armond White don’t like white people.” Another reader: “If the main character in these films were black, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” By Friday at 5:44 p.m., the conversation had degenerated into hate-speech and the n-word: “F‒king racist …!”

In 2005, upon the publication of “Half-Blood Prince,” Rowling said that it would be great if her books made people talk about racism and bullying but that she wasn’t naive enough to think of Potter as a panacea for “deeply entrenched prejudice … If someone (is) a committed racist, Harry Potter is not going to have an effect.”