This one is, of course, a classic of science fiction horror. It is indelibly burned into the memories of those of us who saw it on television or, lucky souls, in theaters, at an impressionable age. It still holds up as arguably the best of the Fifties genre movies.
Tagline: “It Creeps… It Crawls… It Strikes Without Warning!” [Actually, it walks, but that’s okay.]
WTF Factor: ** for the sprouts making baby noises
Notable Comments:
Scotty: “An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles!”
Carrington: “There are no enemies in science, only phenomena to be studied.”
Synopsis: Iconic credits where the screen burns away to reveal the title.
We start at the Officers Club at the Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska. Reporter Ned Scott (Scotty, played by Douglas Spencer) enters and greets Captain Pat Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) and his flight crew, Lts. Eddie Dykes (James Young) and Ken MacPherson (Robert Nichols). General Fogerty [“Close the door!”] sends Hendry’s crew plus Scotty and a dog sled team to the North Pole to investigate Dr. Arthur Carrington’s (Robert Cornthwaite) report of an unusual aircraft down in their vicinity. On the way there’s a mysterious magnetic disturbance that causes the plane’s headings to be inaccurate. They meet up with the team of scientists at the North Pole, including a young lady who apparently interests Hendry.
Carrington’s assistant Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan) and Hendry are circling each other playfully. Apparently Hendry invited Nikki to Anchorage and she played a practical joke on him while he was drunk (he was trying to get her drunk). When Hendry gets to the lab, he finds that Carrington has discovered radioactivity in the vicinity of the aircraft, which had a flight path inconsistent with a meteor.
The group flies to the site and finds a tear-shaped area of smooth ice that is recently frozen over. Apparently no one cares that the area is radioactive. They can make out a dark mass beneath the ice and everyone fans out to determine the shape of the object. It’s round, in the first chilling moment of the movie.
Scotty is particularly excited about finding a flying saucer, but Hendry says he can’t file the story yet. When they try to melt the saucer out of the ice the ship ignites and burns. Oops. They find a humanoid figure buried nearby and chip out a large block of ice. Carrington wants to thaw the body and study it immediately. Hendry says no, until he receives orders, and the scientists are not pleased.
Unfortunately the radio is not working properly and they are only getting partial messages. General Fogerty has notified Washington but no decisions have been made. Meanwhile Hendry pretties himself up to see Nikki. After a bit of banter, he says she can tie his hands so he’ll behave, and he’ll bring the rope. He’s good as his word.
Nikki: “Why, if you weren’t tied up, I wouldn’t dare have told you how much I liked you.”
Hendry releases himself but still keeps his hands to himself.
The watchman Barnes gets spooked by the creature’s open eyes and unknowingly throws an electric blanket over the block of ice. Oops. The Thing thaws and escapes. Barnes warns the group that the Thing is alive, which they weren’t expecting.
<Warning: Violence against dogs> The Thing goes after the sled dogs and kills at least two. The men find the creature’s arm ripped off. Carrington and his team study the arm and discover no animal tissue. Scotty describes it as a “supercarrot,” which is okay with Carrington. He speculates that life on the Thing’s planet was characterized by the evolution of plant life. He speaks admiringly of the lack of emotions to hold these lifeforms back.
Carrington: “No emotions, no heart. Our superior, our superior in every way.”
His team describes the century plant and telegraph vine, which exhibit a form of “thinking,” to the military men [this was actually rather forward-thinking for the era; plant communication studies were in their infancy]. They find seed pods stored in the palm of its hand.
The hand begins to move; it has warmed up by ingesting the dog blood it was covered in. Apparently the creature feeds on blood. Hendry mobilizes the men with axes, while Carrington begs for a chance to communicate with it, to no avail. Bob realizes they can track it by its radioactivity. They enter the greenhouse and search but there’s no sign of the Thing.
Carrington holds back several of the scientists in the greenhouse; he has noticed that some of the molds are wilted, probably from a blast of cold air. They find that the back door has been forced and then relocked from the outside [sneaky!]. They then find a dead dog with no blood in a storage bin. Carrington figures that the Thing will come back and they will have a chance to communicate with it. Carrington and two scientists will stand guard until morning; three scientists will relieve them. Everyone is sworn to secrecy.
The military men go out and search in the morning, with no success. As they report, Dr. Stern bursts into the mess hall, badly injured. When he revives, he says he was in the greenhouse, there was a burst of cold air, and then the Thing attacked the three scientists. Olson and Auerbach were dead and strung from the rafters upside down, but Stern managed to get out.
Hendry sends men to seal the back door of the greenhouse from the outside and then heads to the main door. He opens it and the Thing is…right…there.
Hendry wisely slams the door and they nail it shut. Hendry confronts Carrington about keeping the dog a secret and allowing his colleagues to be killed. Carrington is confined to quarters and his lab. He gathers the scientists because he believes that only science can save them. He has planted the seeds found on the arm and fed them with blood plasma from the medical supplies. The seeds sprouted within hours.
With a stethoscope, the plants sound “almost like the wail of a newborn child that’s hungry.” Carrington sends Nikki away to type his notes in secret. The scientists realize that the Thing is using the greenhouse similarly to grow thousands of infants.
When Hendry asks about the missing plasma, Nikki shows him Carrington’s notes. Hendry isn’t pleased. Nikki points out that the scientist is exhausted and not thinking straight. Then orders come through by radio; Hendry is to keep the Thing alive. Hendry is really not pleased. The military men meet in their quarters and Nikki brings them some coffee as an excuse to be part of the discussion of what to do when the Thing gets loose.
Notable dialogue:
Scotty: “Here’s the sixty-four dollar question – what do you do with a vegetable?”
Nikki: “Boil it.”
Scotty: “What did you say?”
Nikki: “Boil it… bake it… stew it… fry it?”
Just then the radioactivity levels start to go up; the Thing has left the greenhouse. The men set up buckets of kerosene and douse the creature when it breaks in. They set it (and most of the room) on fire. The Thing clearly doesn’t like it but still escapes into the snow.
Nikki stays with the men while they plan a strategy. One of the men suggests electrocuting the Thing. Suddenly Nikki realizes that they can see their breath; the heat isn’t working. The Thing has cut off the oil supply to the station. Hendry figures it will come for the generator next, so everyone crowds into the generator room [??]. They wire up the main hallway to destroy the Thing. Carrington wants to prevent this but Hendry overrules him.
While the men try to lure the Thing into their trap, Carrington turns off the generator, but he is overpowered by the other scientists. Carrington leaps forward and tries to communicate with the Thing and gets clobbered.
Eddie tosses a pickax to center the Thing on the electrical wire. Once the current is turned on, the Thing shrivels away to ashes.
The radio works now and Scotty can finally file his news report. Nikki, Eddie, and Mac tease Hendry about getting married. Scotty sends out the warning,
“Tell the world. Tell this to everybody, wherever they are. Watch the skies everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.”
Thoughts:
It was not my original intention to write up classic genre movies, but I was shocked by a conversation I had with my horror-minded students, who were either unaware that 1982’s The Thing had a predecessor or had never seen this movie because, you know, black and white.
This movie stands out from its peers starting with the opening credits. Not many movies of the time spent a lot of imagination with the title card or credits. Here the title comes into view as the screen ‘burns’ away. It is obvious in this sequence that the movie was originally entitled “The Thing” and the “From Another Planet” part was tacked on after the credits were designed. This was probably to distinguish it from the popular 1950 novelty song, “The Thing,” which was unrelated to the movie. Also unusual for the time, no cast credits are provided in the opening titles, or on the original movie posters.
The movie was ostensibly based on the novella, “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell, Jr., first published in 1938. However, the novella focuses on the shape-shifting ability of the alien, a plot point that is entirely dropped from the 1951 movie. The only ideas that remain from the novella are the frozen setting (although the novella takes place in Antarctica) and digging a humanoid alien from the ice. The 1982 version retains the shape-shifting elements along with the paranoia of not knowing which personnel have been replaced, as well as the source’s character names. The novella ends on an upbeat note, though; very different from the 1982 movie.
One thing that originally drew me to the movie was the assertive female lead, Nikki. Forget the poster; this is no helpless screamer/fainter/shrinking violet (and at no time does she get her blouse ripped). She wears sensible slacks and boots. She has no trouble handling Hendry’s advances and making her own intentions known. Sure, she’s the scientist’s assistant, but when she makes the coffee, it’s for the purpose of insinuating herself into the frontline personnel. She even comes up with the idea for the method of killing the creature. She might not entirely fit into today’s vision of a feminist role, but for the time and genre, she was an extraordinary character.
In fact, in that era there was one director who was particularly known for his strong female characters who could dish it out as well as they take it: Howard Hawks, the producer of this movie. There is an ongoing controversy about whether the credited Christian Nyby or Hawks himself directed “The Thing From Another World.” By all accounts, Hawks was centrally involved in the movie-making process, and his trademark touches can be found throughout: The central theme of science versus the military, the frequent wisecracks, and the use of overlapping dialogue, something that was simply not done in that era. In interviews, star Kenneth Tobey was adamant that Hawks himself directed the movie. Others on the set insisted that Nyby was indeed the director. At this point, everyone integrally involved in the process has passed away, leaving us with a question that will not likely be answered. The modern consensus is that Nyby did direct, but with significant and constant guidance from Hawks.
Now I’ll throw in some real nit-picking on a genre classic. One thing that does argue for a novice director is some of the continuity gaffes found in the movie. While “The Thing From Another World” was always considered a “B” movie at the time, it also had an “A” level budget, so the number of mistakes is surprising. Certainly this was not something characteristic of a Hawks film. A few obvious examples:
- On at least two occasions the actors address other characters by the wrong name.
- The Marvelous Moving Pickax™, thrown at the Thing by Eddie at the movie’s climax, keeps changing position and even reappears in the actor’s hands.
- The Ken MacPherson character is credited as Ken Erickson at the end of the movie.
- The dramatic overhead shot of the trail and landing site of the alien spaceship is marred by the presence of the Zamboni that presumably cleared the area.
It’s a tribute to the movie’s quality overall that these glitches are only noticeable after repeated viewings.
Quick bits:
- Multiple close-ups of the Thing were filmed, but later removed, wisely, I think.
- The scene with the kerosene was the first filmed full body burn stunt.
Suggested double feature: If you are in the mood for this movie, you probably are not in the mood to also watch The Thing (1982), which has a very different vibe. Keeping with the theme of snow and ice, a better match might be The Abominable Snowman (of the Himalayas) (1957). For snow and ice coupled with claustrophobia (and a human monster), this might also pair well with The Shining (1980).
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “The Monster More Mighty Than Godzilla”
