In anticipation of the release of Mank on December 4th, this week Collider will be presenting original essays and features diving into the work of David Fincher.

For a brief, glorious period of time, the titular creature in Alien 3 was to be portrayed by a small dog in a costume.

Most Alien fans have known this for years, but it’s a piece of history that grows no less astounding with age. The debut film of renowned auteur David Fincher, Alien 3 was a notoriously turbulent production even before he got on board as director. The sequel went through several different iterations, including a script by sci-fi legend William Gibson that has since been adapted into an audio production and a graphic novel, and a version in which series hero Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) crashes into an inexplicably wooden spaceship that is also a monastery. The point is, nobody had any idea what an Alien 3 should be, which is one reason why there was a six-year gap in between it and James Cameron’s Aliens. But not knowing what a movie is has literally never stopped Hollywood before, which is how you end up with a dog in a monster costume.

The creature you see in the finished film is none other than special effects guru Tom Woodruff Jr. wearing a prosthetic suit that he designed alongside Alec Gillis via their newly formed effects studio Amalgamated Dynamics (ADI). (They also designed the worms in Tremors and would go on to build more seriously cool shit, including their Oscar-winning work in Death Becomes Her.) Certain other shots of the alien were completed using digital effects and puppetry. However, Fincher had initially wanted the monster to be more bestial, and original Alien designer H.R. Giger even drew up some sketches along those lines, transforming the traditionally bipedal creature into a brutalist rendition of a quadruped. And while you could get some poor stuntman (or visual effects artist) to shamble around on all fours draped in 60 pounds of prosthetics, Fincher figured the more practical solution would be to put that shit on a dog instead.

You can follow his thinking here. Dogs are trainable, and are generally way less expensive than elaborate puppetry and digital effects. And he wanted a specific look that you can’t really get from a person in a suit, which actually does make it into the finished film (the alien leaps and bounds and sprints on all fours during the entire third act, an extended chase sequence in which the prisoners are trying to lure the beast into a trap). Fincher’s intent was to use the dog for coverage shots – stuff that would typically be done with digital effects or puppets – presumably in the interest of saving time and money and creating a monster unique to the ones already featured in the series. In practice, this translates to “they put a bunch of rubber boogers on a whippet, which is like a greyhound but worse.”

Now, to ADI’s credit, they did as good a job as you could possibly do dressing up one of the world’s least frightening animals as a terrifying space ghoul. They even feature photos and footage of the process on their own YouTube channel, and while you can watch it and respect the craftmanship, it is literally impossible not to laugh your ass off once you see this thing trot amiably around the room in a demon suit. The footage of them trying to put a little alien helmet on its tiny head knocked me out of my chair so hard that my neighbors called the police. Much like a gestating interstellar parasite, I emerged on the other side of this video forever changed, a new being.

It seems like the intent was to use the dog as the newly-birthed chestburster, which means it would’ve only been in the film for a few seconds. But imagine a perfectionist like Fincher, a man infamous for making his actors perform dozens of takes of every scene, coming into the effects studio to look at this monstrosity. Trying to picture Fincher directing Charles Dance through take 38 of wrestling with a man in a giant rubber alien suit is enough to keep me occupied for the next several weeks. Conjuring a mental image of the notoriously meticulous filmmaker quietly melting down as his crew trots out the fucking Pinterest post that is supposed to be the horrifying villain of his movie is an exercise I simply do not have the imagination to do, and I spent the majority of the early aughts fan-casting Craig Bierko in literally everything.

Obviously the idea was scrapped, because even if the doglien had only been onscreen for 2 seconds, that would’ve been long enough to completely ruin the film. (As it stands, Alien 3 merely wound up being mostly ruined.) But the notion of a painstaking craftsman like Fincher struggling to wrangle a dog on set has got me thinking – what if David Fincher made dog movies? Can you imagine Fincher taking the reins of a franchise like Cats and Dogs or Air Buddies? I can’t decide whether such a film would destroy or improve children. While I go ponder this mystery, I will leave you with a brief thought experiment: Which David Fincher Movies Would Most Benefit From a Dog in Costume?

Se7en

Obviously, the way to make the end twist even more memorable is to have Sommerset slice that horror gift open and have a Jack Russell terrier dressed like a pirate ghost leap out at him. Mills is startled and accidentally shoots John Doe, thus making the seventh deadly sin “sending your friends a festive Halloween puppy.”

The Game

Sean Penn is a labradoodle. I don’t know, it just feels right. Put a smart bow tie on him and teach him how to stand on his hind legs when Michael Douglas comes crashing down through the skylight into his birthday party.

Fight Club

Recast Holt McCallany’s character as an American bulldog with an eyepatch, but the bulldog will speak with Holt’s voice. (Yep, Holt McCallany is in Fight Club!)

Panic Room

Jared Leto is a feisty Chihuahua that Dwight Yoakam brings to the heist. The Chihuahua also has cornrows.

Zodiac

Brian Cox is a fuzzy old sheep dog that dispenses wisdom to the three investigators. Like in the movie, his character still appeared on Star Trek, but as a sheep dog instead of a human man.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Briny sea captain Jared Harris is a boxer mix with a little sailor hat that accompanies Brad Pitt on his fantastical adventure. The dog is still killed by Nazis.

The Social Network

Andrew Garfield is a soulful rescue greyhound that inspires Jesse Eisenberg to create Facebook for people to share photos of their dogs wearing costumes, only to be abandoned in Act III in favor of Justin Timberlake. Andrew Greyhoundfield shows up at the Facebook offices to bite Justin Timberlake and pee on the floor, and the audience cheers.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Fuck it, everyone is dogs.

Gone Girl

The part of police detective Patrick Fugit will be played by a beagle in a sweater. The rest of the cast will never acknowledge or address this, because no explanation is required.