Should I be reading Cracked more often?

Or, What, more tentacles?

Back in the days when magazines were actually printed on paper, I remember Cracked was a lame imitation of Mad (the real thing, accept no fershlugginer substitutes). Now, on the Web, come articles like this one: 7 Terrible Early Versions of Great Movies. (Not for kids! Rated R for unnecessary bad language.)

Hollywood is full of screenwriters moaning about how the studio ruined their original vision. But what we never hear about is the opposite side of the tale, where some truly horrific piece of writing gets turned into an awesome film.

In fact, it turns out some of your favorite movies started out as truly awful screenplays that somebody had the good taste to rewrite before the cameras started rolling.

Which movies? Oh, let's see, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Alien … here's the original Alien concept, if you believe it:


Not sure I see the problem. Squamous, rugose, possibly, um, eldritch? Might be more Lovecraftian than stf-nal, yet a fair number of Lovecraft's stories were sf, strictly defined. I like the way the two lower-most tentacles fold into Don Martin-style hinged feet.

I saw this at Ace of Spades. Maybe I'll just keep reading Ace, and let him notify me when there's something good at Cracked.