The story behind the “knife trick” with Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen in ALIENS

I’m sure you all remember the hilarious “knife trick” scene in the director James CameronThe 1986 movie aliensit was such a funny scene!

The scene involved the characters of Bishop (played by Lance Henriksen) and Hudson (played by Bill Paxton). The knife trick is also often referred to as the “bishop’s knife trick” or “five-finger snaffle”.

In the scene, the crew members of the Sulaco are relaxing and joking around in their cafeteria when Bishop is called in to demonstrate a trick. He places his hand palm down on a table, fingers spread. Hudson’s hand is then placed under his and Bishop uses a combat knife to rapidly stab the spaces between his fingers, moving back and forth in a sequential pattern. The gimmick is a demonstration of Bishop’s superior android reflexes and accuracy.

However, Bishop accidentally cuts his finger, losing a small amount of white android blood, but not injuring Hudson.

The scene was originally intended to be shot by Bishop alone. It was Henrickson who suggested to Cameron that Hudson’s hand be involved as well, and Cameron agreed. Paxton has entered the scene. Rumor has it that Paxton didn’t know he was going to be involved in the scene, but he knew what was going to happen.

Henriksen says he and Paxton were only given two takes to shoot the scene and one take when Henriksen hit Paxton. While their first take of the knife trick went almost flawlessly, Cameron called for one more round, and that’s when the game was over for Paxton. henriksen said:

“I gave Bill a blister of blood; he moved his little finger to the line of fire and I pinched it. I didn’t even punch a hole in the [his finger], and acted like I stabbed him with an ice pick! It was actually quite fun. … I felt bad about it … but not really.”

As for how the scene was shot, Cameron explained that the first time they shot it, they tried to shoot it with the internal camera trick of lowering the camera to make Bishop’s speed look superhuman, but it ended up feeling too fast.

Cameron then says that what we see in the final cut is Henricksen’s throughput, which is pretty impressive! In another interview, Henriksen backs up Cameron’s claim, saying, “What you see in the film is pretty much all of me. They sped up one of the long shots we used towards the end of the scene, but that was about it. It was good fun.”

After Henriksen read the script, he went out and bought a bunch of knives to practice his trick with, and got pretty good at it. When it came time to travel to London to shoot the film, Henriksen didn’t know what kind of knife Cameron would want him to use. So he brought them all in his luggage. Unfortunately, the customs took him aside and detained him because of the knives he brought. He was arrested and questioned until they contacted Fox and explained the situation.

The knife used in the scene was a Gerber Mark II combat knife. Production of the knife ran from 1967 to 2000. A limited run of 1500 units was produced in 2002. Then it went back into production in 2008.

When I was growing up I was always practicing this trick! I started with a pencil eraser, but eventually started doing it with a real knife. I still have a couple of scars on my fingers from doing that!

You can watch the clip below along with a Comic-Con panel of Cameron, Paxton and Henriksen discussing the scene.