An Alien-Themed… Cuckoo Clock?

If you are a follower of the sci-fi horror film genre then it is likely that you will be familiar with the Alien series of movies. Images of Sigourney Weaver bearing a significant amount of firepower, or of John Hurt’s chest being rent asunder by an emerging creature will be brought to mind, it’s one of those franchises which seems to have entered the public consciousness.

With the release of another movie in the series fast approaching, [Keith Elliott] resolved to mark the occasion with his own Alien themed tribute. What, you might ponder, could he choose? Surely there must be plenty of iconic moments in the films that could provide fertile ground for a tribute project!

So  presumably after a significant period of reflection, he’s built an Alien themed cuckoo clock. Something of an off-the-wall choice, you might say, but he persevered with it. The main body of the clock is the torso and head of an unfortunate human crew member, the face of the clock is formed by an alien facehugger on his face, and the cuckoo is not a bird in the manner of the Alpine originals, but a chest-bursting alien that issues forth from the torso.

There is a video, which we’ve posted below. Perhaps the chestburster action needs a little more spontaneity and to be a little less rhythmic, but we’ll leave it to you to decide whether it is inspired or merely kitsch.

Alien props have been a little thin on the ground hereabouts, but we do have on to show you from 2011, a recreation of the motion trackers from the original movie.

17 thoughts on “An Alien-Themed… Cuckoo Clock?

  1. Errrrr…welllll…I, I guess it’s very imaginative. It does harken back to the original H.R Giger artwork. A little erotica focused. Instead of the cranking noise maybe a wet sucking sound when the hour stricks.

        1. Sorry I seem to suffer the same freudian complex. Pop out of the chest and then do something like turning the head or biting or whatever might have done a better job. But this one looks – strange.

    1. Haha, I didn’t realize just how phallic it was until I had printed it out. When I was working on the (for lack of a better term) thrusting mechanism at my local hackerspace I got quite a few double-takes.

  2. Funniest idea I’ve seen in a while. So f-ing absurd and I love it! I would seriously consider making one myself if I had anywhere to put it. But the chestburster really needs a soundeffect for the joke to land. Either a classic “coo-coo” sound or just a sample of the chestburster snarl would work equally well I think.

    1. Yeah I was having a lot of trouble getting good audio on the Arduino and I was rushing to finish for the Sci-Fi contest deadline so I scrapped it. I agree that it’d make it much better. I’d like to go back and use Adafruit’s sound effects board to get some sort of sound effect. Right now I’m debating between the classic “coo-coo” like you suggested or some sort of Xenomorph noise from the movie.

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