THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, THE (director: Christian Nyby; screenwriter: Charles Lederer/1938 story by John W. Campbell Jr. "Who Does There"; cinematographer: Russell Harlan; editor: Roland Gross; cast: Kenneth Tobey (Captain Patrick Hendry), Margaret Sheridan ("Nikki" Nicholson), Robert Cornthwaite (Dr. Arthur Carrington), Douglas Spencer (Ned "Scotty" Scott), Dewey Martin (Bob-Crew Chief), James Arness ("The Thing"), Eduard Franz (Dr. Stern), David McMahon (Gen. Fogarty), James Young (Lt. Eddie Dykes), Robert Nichols (Lt. MacPherson ), Bill Self (Corporal Barnes), Sally Creighton (Mrs. Chapman), Nicholas Byron (Radioman Tex Richards); Runtime: 87; 1951)
Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz
"The Thing" was long suspected of being directed by Howard Hawks--much later on this was confirmed by the actors. Christian Nyby was Hawks's longtime editor and was looking to advance his career, but had trouble handling the directing chores, which induced Hawks to step in and help his friend out.
This is one of the better science-fiction cheapie films, one that became a cult classic. It is a wonderfully banal film about a flying saucer landing on the North Pole and a superior alien, who looks like Frankenstein, being thawed out. The alien will attack a group of scientists and Air Force personnel in the scientists' Arctic outpost. Hawks wastes no time with any liberal messages about why this creature came here, instead the film has a jovial Air Force crew snappily banter at each other, a sparring romantic relationship develop between the womanizing captain and the scientist's independent-minded secretary cut through the fierceness of the monster story, and for quirkiness, we see plants as monsters crying for more blood to spawn more monsters. The cast is perfect, their non-chalant attitude gives the film its raucous mood and allows the warlike atmosphere between beast and man to be a battle of both wits and brawn.
The film opens with General Fogarty (McMahon) at the Air Force base in Anchorage, receiving an urgent call from Dr. Carrington (Cornthwaite) at his scientific outpost for botanists and experimental lab scientists at the North Pole, telling him to send a search party, that an unidentified metallic flying object crashed near-by. Captain Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) is dispatched there with his genial crew and with a wisecracking journalist, Scotty (Spencer).
The bumbling military men detonate the found spacecraft but accidently destroy it, but they capture the alien (James Arness) who is frozen in a lump of ice and bring it back to their outpost to await orders from General Fogarty. They store the monster in a freezing store room, but accidently, while on guard duty, their electric blanket gets too close to it and it thaws out, whereby it escapes, killing their sled dogs in the process, but losing an arm.
After the brilliant but misguided Carrington experiments on the recovered arm, he sees no blood or nervous system and boldly concludes it is some form of a vegetable, that through evolution lives on human or animal blood and has developed a more superior intelligence than humans.
A nice little confrontation takes place between the Air Force men and the scientist over what to do with the monster. Dr. Carrington wants to communicate with this superior being, he states, "There are no enemies in science, only phenomena to study." But the Air Force is only interested in the safety of everyone concerned and see no redeeming value in communicating with the alien. Captain Hendry takes charge of the outpost; and because of his professional duties, he curtails his romantic advances on the pretty secretary, Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), who is trapped in the Arctic with the brainy scientists. He says the scientists are like kids with a new toy, making a big fuss over this alien, and he proceeds to treat them like children who need a father to discipline them, while he waits for further orders.
While Carrington retreats to the greenhouse and discovers the alien was there, he decides not to tell Hendry where it is and goes ahead trying to raise new monsters by feeding them with frozen bags of blood plasma. Meanwhile, Hendry can't kill the monster by shooting it, so he asks aloud, "How do you kill a vegetable?" Nikki snaps back, "You boil it." When the inept military men try to douse it with kerosene and set it on fire, they nearly burn down their building and hardly harm the creature in the process, though they do incur its wrath.
The monster comes back to the greenhouse and kills the two scientist doing guard duty. Then, as an ironic twist, the monster cuts off the heat in the building. Hendry now follows the advice of a scientist, who suggests they electrocute it with the power from their generator. But Carrington has gone crazy, clammoring "I want to understand it," and has shut off the generator. The monster rewards him by swatting him away, as if he were a fly, but in its pursuit of blood, it steps on the electric trap and sizzles to death.
The film closes with the excited Scottie breaking the story to the world, screaming into the microphone: " I bring a warning--to every one of you listening to the sound of my voice. Tell the world, tell this to everyone wherever they are: watch the skies, watch everywhere, keep looking--watch the skies! "
This is a fast-paced and enjoyable B-film, giving us a feel for the cold war paranoia taking hold of the country at the time. It is about how anyone different is viewed as an enemy, and how there is a sense of isolation for intellectuals in the country. It also shows how rational people when just trying to do their professional jobs, still act irrationally. This is evidenced by the conflict between the scientists versus the military, with this reactionary film clearly looking at the common man types who are in the military as a better alternative than the arrogant intellectual-minded scientists, who are skeptically viewed as being so different from the man in the street that they are not to be trusted.
REVIEWED ON 7/17/2000 GRADE: A
Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"
http://www.sover.net/~ozus
ozus@sover.net
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