One of the coolest stories out of the Hollywood history books is that of Steven Spielberg’s Night Skies, his horror-themed alien movie that was set to follow his 1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

The movie never came into fruition, and eventually was worked into both Poltergeist and E.T.

But before the movie was placed in the shredder, effects legend Rick Baker had been working diligently on the film’s three main aliens. More on that in a second…

Explains Wikipedia:

Spielberg based the story on the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter, where a Kentucky family claimed that they had been terrorized by gremlin-like aliens. Spielberg had heard the story from UFOlogist J. Allen Hynek while doing research for Close Encounters. In Spielberg’s original treatment for Watch the Skies, eleven malicious extraterrestrial scientists try to communicate with chickens, cows, and other livestock in an attempt to discover which of Earth’s animal species are sentient, before turning their unwelcome attentions on the human family and dissecting their farm animals.

The most interesting story behind Spielberg’s decision to not direct the film was Melissa Mathison’s reaction to the screenplay, which actually gave birth to E.T.

While Baker worked on the aliens, Spielberg was having second thoughts about Night Skies. “I might have taken leave of my senses. Throughout [the production of] Raiders, I was in between killing Nazis and blowing up flying wings and having Harrison Ford in all this high serialized adventure, I was sitting there in the middle of Tunisia, scratching my head and saying, ‘I’ve got to get back to the tranquillity, or at least the spirituality, of Close Encounters.'” While on the set of Raiders, Spielberg read the Night Skies script to Melissa Mathison (who was there to see her then-boyfriend and future husband Harrison Ford) and she cried after hearing it because “the idea of an alien creature who was benevolent, tender, emotional and sweet… and the idea of the creature’s striking up a relationship with a child who came from a broken home was very affecting”.

Anyways, there’s a whole lot about Night Skies over at Wikipedia, and I think many of you would highly enjoy the “what could have been” story.

But what promoted this entire news post is that Rick Baker decided to share a series of shocking behind-the-scenes shots of the in-progress aliens! From 1980, it’s incredible to see what was in the works, and how terrifying these aliens were. But what’s most interesting are the shots of the more caring E.T.-esque alien, also shown below.

This is historic stuff guys, really take a moment to relish this!

As requested The Night Skies alien. Not finished, no eyes. Cover the top of his head and tell me who he looks like. pic.twitter.com/r3PxK1T98A — Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 22, 2014

He does look like Edward G and the others.But painting out the top of the head, adding eyes,and small tweaks.ET"S dad pic.twitter.com/XOdbSNDmAd — Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 23, 2014

Here was a quick clay sketch that I did in 1980 for one of the nicer younger NIGHT Skies aliens pic.twitter.com/NKHVXrGNLu — Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 23, 2014

Happy days sculpting the prototype arms for the Night Skies alien back in 1980 pic.twitter.com/x2z2ftL1ll — Rick Baker (@TheRickBaker) May 24, 2014