For ALIEN fans who've been anxiously anticipating seeing Ridley Scott's classic monster movie return to the silver screen, Wednesday is their big day. With two days left until the scariest night of the year, 20th Century Fox will release ALIEN: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT into theaters, hoping to scare up some Halloween box office receipts. So what's the difference between the DIRECTOR'S CUT and the original '79 version of ALIEN? Good question.

Scott and his team of filmmakers have gone back and sifted through film negatives, assembling a brand new print of the film that has been digitally cleaned up visually. Additionally, a newly re-built sound mix for Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack has been created for the new cut.

The biggest inclusion in THE DIRECTOR'S CUT is Scott adding new scenes that were edited out of the original cut of ALIEN, the most infamous being "The Nest". It's during this moment that Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) comes across the remains of the adult Alien's first two victims, Brett and Captain Dallas. To her horror, Ripley finds that the men weren't killed outright by the creature but instead they were cocooned and left to transform into alien eggs. If Scott had left this dark revelation in his original cut of the film, James Cameron's 1986 sequel ALIENS would have likely been a very different film.

Scott has also added other new scenes including a distraught Lambert coming to blows with Ripley and the crew of the Nostromo listening to the alien transmission broadcast by the "space jockey" vessel on the surface of the alien planetoid. The director has also chosen to trim certain scenes from the original cut. "In looking at the film again, I became impatient with what I call my 'preambles'," explains Scott of his decision. "I was, perhaps, too in love with the sets and the lighting. We shaved things a bit which creates a slight difference in energy from the 1979 version."

Whether you're an first generation fan of ALIEN or someone who has never seen it before in a dark theater, here's your chance to see the movie the way it was meant to be seen. Click on any of the images below to preview some of the scenes to be found in ALIEN: THE DIRECTOR'S CUT.