I've always been a monster kid, staying up past midnight watch a scary movie every Saturday night on one of the four channels our antennae picked up from the cornfields of Illinois. If my mom was there (she loves scary movies), we'd watch them together.
In 1979, the first Alien movie arrived in theaters. My mom loved it and saw it several times before asking if I wanted to see it. In 1979, I was all of 12 years old and in fifth (maybe sixth?) grade, and this would be my first Rated R movie. So my mom, me, and a friend of the same age went to go see it.
Holy. Crap.
I was scared shitless but LOVED it. I still consider Alien the most intense movie I've seen (if you get a chance to see it in the theater, YOU MUST!!!). My friend was seriously traumatized, having intense nightmares (and associated bedwetting) for years afterward. As a consequence, our two families had a falling out.
Anywho... When I saw that the H.R. Giger Museum was on the way from Basel to Lausanne in the knobby hamlet of Gruyeres (that's right: cheese!), I knew we had to stop.
Gruyeres sets atop a picturesque hill topped with a castle and the associated glommy village. The village is a bit on the touristy side, but not overwhelmingly so. And then, oddly, horribly out of place, there's the Giger Museum and Cafe.
Located in the gate-building of the outer castle, the Giger Museum occupies one wing while the cafe occupies the other. We first toured the museum, splayed with Giger's challenging art. I had to chuckle at the room of "adult only" art after touring several rooms of decidedly family-unfriendly art. There are the Alien xenomorphs, something he was doing before Alien and its subsequent franchises, as well as other artwork in the same vein. And it turns out Giger was a cat man.
The cafe is built like the set of an Alien movie. I tried the H.R. Giger mixed bev, which looked and tasted like antifreeze. And we enjoyed a tray of sausage and cheese including (drumnroll please...) Gruyere cheese. Not shown here is the castle, which we also toured. All in all a worthy visit.
