Rating: 
Summary: The Definitive 50's B&W horror flick!
Review: I am a sucker for old Black and White horror/Sci-Fi. This is one I bought on VHR and then on DVD. I am sure years from now when they have another format, I shall buy it once again. I just enjoy it that much.The Special Effects are not too much. The great winter scene they filmed when finding the spacecraft was filmed in the desert!! The Thing is Matt Dillon (no, not the actor but Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke - James Arness! Marshall Dillon what wuz you doin' at the North Pole?). Where this film keeps is high rank and respect, is through taut direction, fast pace and strong performances from character actors such as Kenneth Tobey, Dewey Martin and Robert Cornwaithe. Based on John W. Campbell Jr.'s story "Who Goes There?", it's a handful of Air Force lads against the evil menace battling to the death to save the world. Christian Nyby is credited with directing this, though many swear it was really Howard Hawks (and it has the trademark of many Hawks films). It's interesting to compare John Carpenter's version done in 1982. Carpenter how did previous take off on Another Hawks' film, and in this one reversed the sense of US against IT, by making his crew doubt each other (more true to Campbell's story). Both film are interesting on many levels, but the main 'THING', they are great fun!
Rating:
Summary: Everyone! Everywhere! Keep watching this movie!
Review: Nifty premise: An Air Force crew recovers a frozen extraterrestrial from an Arctic crash site and accidentally thaws it out to wreak havoc on a remote scientific base. The notion of a physically superior "intellectual carrot" species from outer space with the potential to wipe out mankind, but requiring human blood to propagate itself, must have been unsettling indeed to a public still recovering from a world war and just beginning to hate and fear the threat of communism. It's a white knuckle ride as the flyboys (led by the stolid Kenneth Tobey) plot to destroy the murderous vegetable over the protests of a haughty professor, who just wants to make nice with his otherworldly guest. In the end, Boy Scout know-how wins out over science's insatiable curiosity, as the carrot creature is literally cooked by an ingeniously contrived electrical arc. In my humble opinion, this is one of the three best thinking man's B-movie sci-fi classics (the other two being "The Day the Earth Stood Still" and "Invasion of the Body Snatchers") from a decade that saw half-baked alien invader flicks churned out by the dozen. The acting is natural, the script - chockablock with witty, often overlapping dialogue - is intelligent, the atmosphere is nail-bitingly claustrophobic and the effects are actually pretty darn good for 1951. Douglas Spencer nearly steals the show as a wisenheimer reporter with all the best lines who, after forgetting to snap a picture of James Arness's rampaging creature in the flick's whiz-bang climax, executes what is probably the best dead faint in film history. (That's midget Billy Curtis, by the way, playing the alien in its final death throes.) Lingering controversy dogs the flick's directorship, with contemporary wisdom holding that Howard Hawks, rather than the credited Christian Nyby, called the shots. (Orson Welles is even rumored to have been involved in some capacity.) Whoever's responsible: Bravo, and pass the popcorn.
Rating:
Summary: Better in Black and White
Review: After watching The Thing at least a dozen times over the years in BW, I thought I'd give the colorized version a try. Not bad; in fact, the creature looks pretty good in (guess what) green. Of course the direction and acting remain outstanding. So my rating is for the BW version with the color getting four because it distracts from the plot's tension and suspense.
Rating:
Summary: Finish your vegetables...before they finish you!
Review: Please do yourself a favor and don't dismiss this as low tech or as an antique. The dialogue is superb, I can't remember any other film like it. Hawks was a genius. I respectfully ask for a comparable form of actor's dialogue. It is the closest to reality that I could imagine.
Classic soundtrack, solid acting and character actor roles that successfully cross over from the 40's and still work.
If you love truly classic Sci-Fi this should be a part of your library.
P.S. - Margaret Sheridan is hot! (I was born 25 yrs. too late.)
Rating:
Summary: One of the all time greats!
Review: As Mel Brooks found with "Young Frankenstein," you don't need color to make a great flick. "The Thing" is one of my favorite Sci-Fi movies -- it has the perfect combination of good acting, snappy dialogue and chlorophyll. What more could you want? The direction, whether by Howard Hawks or Christian Nyby (who really knows or cares at this point?), is genius. It is wonderful to view a movie that doesn't rely on (or need) modern computer generated special effects to scare you silly. The Thing belongs in your collection, right beside "It Came From Outer Space" and "War of the Worlds."
Rating: 
Summary: "Keep Watching the Skies"!
Review: Okay, I'll admit that I love old 1950's sci-fi movies. Yes, the budgets were often meager, the special effects were primitive by today's standards, the acting could be wooden and/or melodramatic, and the dialogue was often lame and (to modern ears) politically incorrect. But the best of these movies had an undeniable giddy charm to them, and they managed to combine both the innocence and Anti-Communist paranoia of that era in a way that no modern sci-fi movie can touch. "The Thing" (1951), which was officially directed by newcomer Christian Nyby but which in reality was directed by the great Howard Hawks, is one of the best of the fifties sci-fi offerings. The film is set in the frozen Arctic of northern Alaska, where Dr. Arthur Carrington, a scientist at a US research station, has been getting some strange readings and photographs from what he thought was a crashed meteor. The US military sends Capt. Patrick Hendry and his crew to investigate, and tagging along is Scotty (a marvelous Douglas Spencer, who steals every scene he's in), a newspaper reporter who's desperate for a "big story". At the station Capt. Hendry meets Nikki (Margaret Sheridan), Dr. Carrington's attractive assistant, and they quickly hit it off. After traveling to the "meteor's" crash site, they are stunned to learn that it's actually a crashed UFO trapped underneath the ice. The UFO is destroyed in an attempted retrieval, but they do rescue a supposedly dead "crewman" encased in a block of ice, and take him back to the station. Bad move - the alien (James Arness, later of "Gunsmoke" fame) is accidentally thawed out and comes back to life. Vengeful and seeking food, he kills some sled dogs and then goes after the station's human residents. Meanwhile, a raging debate breaks out between the military personnel (who want to kill the creature), and Dr. Carrington (who acts increasingly like a typical mad scientist as the film progresses). Carrington believes that the alien could help humanity make great strides technologically and wants him to be preserved, no matter what the cost. Carrington loses the argument, but the alien turns out to be difficult to kill - bullets, subzero temperatures, and fire all prove to be ineffective in stopping him. Partly this is because the alien turns out to be made from plant matter - thus shooting it is like shooting part of a plant - it has no effect on the other parts. (This revelation leads to one of the film's most memorable lines: "An intellectual carrot - the mind boggles"!). What's worse is that the creature lives on warm blood, and it won't hesitate to kill everyone at the station to survive. I won't give away anymore of the plot, but this film is definitely worth watching if you like suspense, tension, and a few scares. This movie has also had a real influence on pop culture - just listen as, early in the film, Capt. Hendry and his men talk about the US government's coverup of UFO sightings, and Scotty's grumblings about the military refusing to let him publicize the discovery of the crashed UFO (Roswell, anyone?). In John Carpenter's original "Halloween" (1978), Jamie Lee Curtis's character watches "The Thing" while Micheal Myers stalks her friends across the street (Carpenter was a great admirer of "The Thing", and of course did a remake with Kurt Russell in 1982). And a popular book debunking the UFO mystery is entitled "Watch the Skies" after Scotty's famous last lines at the end of this movie. Overall, "The Thing" is a great way to spend a couple of hours on a dark and rainy night. Recommended!
Rating:
Summary: This one still sends chills up my spine!
Review: I first saw this movie as a little boy, mostly with my hands covering my face. Since then I watched it many times. The plot has been well described in other reviews included here.The acting is excellent, the plot is beyond reproach,the local(desolate and isolated)is the perfect setting,and with a very intelligent well written script. I get chills remembering the open door,the blast of cold air and the monster(James Arness)standing in the doorway. This, my friends, is the science fiction movie to beat. They don't come any better than this!
Rating:
Summary: what can i say? howard hawks is the man...
Review: i won't bore you with what so many others have stated more eloquently here. suffice it to say that this dvd belongs in every film buff's collection. the dvd itself is nothing special, no extras, etc. but the film itself has apparently been nicely restored including all the footage deleted from the original theatrical release. like all howard hawks films, it includes a great script with overlapping dialog, and a strong female character. the nyby vs hawks debate may rage on but i know who directed this film. hawks was an amazing director. he could direct ANY kind of film from screwball comedy, to westerns, to, here, sci-fi, and do it better than just about anyone else. he is definitely in my top 5 directors of all time. i have promised myself that someday i'll make a dvd of all my favorite scenes from my favorite films. the ken tobey door opening scene will be close to the top of the list. yeah, you're expecting the guys will meet up with the thing, just not that soon... i guess the budget on this film was low. that sure didn't hurt it at all. the highest compliment i can pay it is to call it the "casablanca" of sci-fi. it's in my top 100 best of all time.
Rating:
Summary: "Is it human or inhuman? Earthly or Unearthly?"
Review: One of the first of the many aliens to invade our world in a film
that is holds the test of time. The story is of an artic Air Force
team sent out to investigate a strange signal received by scientist
What they find is what appears to be a structure of a flying saucer
buried beneath the ice. The team of men(lead by Kenneth Toby)try to
unearth the saucer with thermite bombs and fail destroying the ship
in the process. But they also find that near the craft is what seem
to be human sized figure that might have been thrown clear during a
rough landing. The crew mananges to dig up the foreign vistor, cart
him back to their artic base decide what to do him. Those decisions
are cut short as for "unforseen circumstances"defrost their alien
guest abrubtly ahead of plan. And so begins the first cat & mouse game between man and Alien a
long way before Sigorney Weaver picked a flamethrower or Marshall
Thompson fought "IT" And still remains a classic in sci-fi story telling Mostly due to Howard Hawks great Direction and rapid fire
dialoge and a good cast of characters & Include a 7ft intelligent carrot and you have a classic sci-fi film worth repeated watching The dvd is good but a lightweight which as one other reviewer did
mention should have had extras like interviews with the surviving
cast members or anyone associated with sci-fi for a retrospective
But while beggers can't be chosers I'm just glad Warners put this
film out on a good print not a scratch or burnmark to speak about
& best of all the Kenneth Tobey "hands tied behind my back" scene
has been restored for most vhs print that I had were missing this
particular light weight interlude with him and Margaret Sheridan. *One of the actors in this film is a young Paul Frees who is not
really known for his acting career (this and "War of the worlds")
but became one of the most disinguished voiceover men to ever put
his talents to a microphone Narrating 100's of feature films and movie trailers to come.
Rating:
Summary: The Thing from Another World should be in COLOR
Review: I bought this DVD from AMAZON.COM last month primarily because it is UN-EDITED. I also have this movie on VHS cassette that was COLORIZED and given STEREO sound. TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES did the work on this about 25 years ago. The picture COLOR and STEREO sound in my opinion really improved the presentation but unfortunately they edited out so much of the movie that parts of it didn't make complete sense. If they could add color and improve the sound quality then, I know that they could do a better job now without REMOVING any of the original scenes. I gave it 4 stars because it's mono and in black & white. I'd give it 5 stars +++++++++++++ if it was re-released in color with enhanced sound!
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