The Thing from Another World

Rating:
Summary: Not Bad......
Review: Eat your vegetables before they eat you? Some parts of this film are a bit dull and the characters aren't too interesting (Title character exempt), but it's a great movie to sit back and unwind with. Take a trip back to those movies like this on Saturday morning TV. I would like to see this in the theater someday.

Rating:
Summary: ESSENTIAL VIEWING FOR SCI-FI FANS.
Review: This ground-breaking, innovative 1951 flick concerns a series of rather unearthly sightings by men stationed at a North Pole Air Force base. Long considered one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, THE THING will still startle those who enjoy a good shudder. THE THING is sweet simplicity. James Arness - who would later be immortalised in TV land as Matt Dillon, the Dodge City, Kansas sheriff in GUNSMOKE - has the title role: he's seen only intermittenly in dark, shadowy glimpses - which leaves the imaginitation to fill in the terrifying details. Harlan's cinematography and Tiomkin's weirdly eerie musical score (he used a theramin) provide enough chills to satisfy any horror fan. No ray guns, strange costumes of futuristic inventions are shown here: even the spaceship is suggested rather than actually seen. Surprisingly, this all makes for a rather ingenious foray into where our imaginations can take us when given half the chance - sans all the special effects and gadgets which all too often spoil the journey for us. Based on a novel by John Wood Campbell, Jr. entitled WHO GOES THERE.

Rating:
Summary: Who Goes There?
Review: A spaceship crash-lands in the Arctic, and a nearby scientific research station finds itself threatened by a creature from beyond the stars. Sci-fi/horror flicks of the 1950s fall into two broad categories: so bad, it's good, and very good, indeed. This film is near the top of the second group. It clearly shows the influence of producer Howard Hawks. The lean script, the snappy dialogue, and the emphasis on professionalism blend well with chilling suspense. The bare bones creature-feature story may seem trite by current standards, but not in the context of 1951. Stalwart monster-movie veteran Kenneth Tobey is the only truly familiar face in the cast. What the cast lacks in marquee value, it compensates for in deft performances. The plot quickly unfolds and there is a refreshing absence of subplots. The occasional reference to a sometime romance between Capt. Pat Hendry (Tobey) and Nikki (Margaret Sheridan) barely qualifies, and is mainly for comic relief. There is a stark difference of perspective in the forward-looking thinkers of the science contingent and the pragmatists of the military group. Dr. Carrington and Capt. Hendry vie for control of the space creature, which they believe they have captive. The Thing, however, has plans of its own. The Thing (James Arness) uses human blood from unwilling donors to cultivate progeny in the Arctic station greenhouse. The title character is on camera only a short amount of time. Even so, the lurking, unseen terror of the unknown adds to the delightful sense of raised hackles. It is wonderful what one can do with minimalist special effects, and B&W photography. Collectors of classic sci-fi/horror flicks definitely need this one. ;-)

Rating:
Summary: The best sci-fi movie of all time
Review: Whether the 80 or 87 minute versions, whether the black/white or colorized versions, simply the best sci-fi movie ever made. Still brings chills even after all these years. A must own movie. But where is the DVD?

Rating:
Summary: The Thing: The First Anti-Political Correctness Movie
Review: THE THING has been justly called one of the finest science fiction movies of all time. Based on a story by by John Campbell called 'Who Goes There?', this movie is a cracklingly enjoyable combination of the very best attributes of director Christian Nyby: men under stress, humorous dialogue, a strong female lead, rapidly varying camera angles, and a truly effective use of music to heighten tension. Further, horror writer Stephen King even saw in this movie a political allegory of the dangers of communism gaining a foothold in an unsuspecting society.
The movie begins in an arctic base with the hero, played by Kenneth Tobey, as an airforce officer who is just getting over a busted romance with the witty Margaret Sheridan. They soon learn of the crash of an aircraft and are sent to investigate. As Tobey's crew approaches the crash site, Nyby uses both visual and auditory queues to produce one of the most astonishing scenes in any movie. Tobey tries to determine the size and shape of the craft, so he tells his men to place their bodies over the craft's outline. As they begin to do so, Nyby begins to use the music of Dmitri Tiomkin to coincide with the stunning realization that Tobey's men are standing in a circle. Clearly, they are poised over a flying saucer. It is at this point, that Tobey is seen as a flawed hero. True, he is dashing, handsome, brave, and resourceful, but repeated viewings indicate that as a leader of men, he consistently makes boneheaded decisions. Nearly all that he directs either winds up as disaster or he allows the Thing, a blood drinking mobile intelligent plantman to outwit him at every turn. Tobey uses a firebomb to free the craft of ice, but the bomb works only too well and blows up the ship, thereby eliminating the possibility of gaining knowledge of alien technology. The crew spot a body under the ice. They dig it out with shovels and bring it to the base, where, predictably it escapes and threatens to kill them all. The dramatic tension comes from a cat-and-mouse approach, although it is not clear who is the cat.
The best parts of the movie involve the struggles between the humans and the plantman and the political subtext suggested by the weird actions of one of the scientists who wish to 'understand' the creature. Nyby wisely never gives the viewer a clear look at the monster. In one gut-wrenching scene, the airmen open a door and, without warning, there it is! In another scene, Tobey uses a geiger counter to herald in clicks the approaching plantman. Each click resonates like a Countdown to Doom. An astounding fiery confrontation between the creature and the airmen follows this countdown. The plantman, played by James Arness of 'Gunsmoke' fame, makes the most of his limited screen time as he manhandles Tobey and his crew.
Yet the key to the movie lies in the attitudes expressed by scientist Dr. Arthur Carrington, who espouses what would later be known as the politically correct attitude that the needs of the few must always outweigh the needs of the many. Carrington, played chillingly cold by Robert Cornthwaite, demands that Tobey spare the life of the plantman. The creature, he argues, has a lot to teach us, and if necessary, we should allow ourselves to die at its hands rather than fight back and kill it. Such a suicide-pact argument sounds suspiciously like what lies at the core of most current PC beliefs. At the finale, when Tobey plans to cook the creature with electricity, Carrington dashes out to save it and pleads with it by telling it that it is wiser than we and that the dastardly humans behind him are plotting to kill it. The plantman listens for a few moments to this drivel and casually swats Carrington aside to get down to the real business at hand. The creature is killed, and the closing scene includes a grim warning to all people of the earth: 'Watch the skies.' Clearly, they may come again.
THE THING works well on nearly every level that a film should. The viewer never questions the few lapses since he is plunged with suddenness from scenes of male bonding to scenes of truly suspenseful action. Yet, the closing warning to watch the skies made me think that perhaps Stephen King had it right after all.

Rating:
Summary: The Thing From Another World
Review: I saw this movie at the theater when it first came out. I have enjoyed seeing it many times since. The movie is a true science-fiction classic that must be preserved, and it should be made available on DVD!!! I recently saw the modern remake "The Thing", and it will not stand the test of time like the original.

Rating:
Summary: How Green Was My Monster
Review: My cousins from the Bronx (dabronx) called this movie "da Ding" -I liked that title because it made the whole thing less scary. But not much! Great plot, perfect stiff, '50's SciFi acting and a really bad bad guy. The pace never slows once they defrost the alien asparagus - you never get a break and the edge of your seat is where you need to be for this one. While the realities of daily life provide us with enough awful shocks, this one is a timeless classic and can serve as an escape in a time where escape is much needed. Buy it and watch it with your kids - it's a lot better for them than almost any shoot-em-up or slasher film out today. too bad it's not on DVD!

Rating:
Summary: Different from Carpenter's and not as good
Review: If you are familiar with John Carpenter's rendition of the story, you may be disappointed with this movie. The American military find an unusual crater artifact in the Arctic ice and plan to surface whatever it is under the ice by blasting with some kind of new explosive. Instead, because of their haste they end up sinking the spacecraft, and get a good laugh out of it.The alien, which was thrown from the craft as it crashed, is brought back to the base in a large box. Due to stupidity on the part of one of the soldiers, the alien is thawed out and begins to wreak havoc on the base and its occupants. In this film,
scientific progress is relgated as the military men take over managing the demise of the vegetable-man alien. One of the things that is bothersome about the film is that the actors are often all talking at once (the screenplay must have been a nightmare to interpret). The captain and his cohorts find that ingenuity and bit a muscle can, as usual, solve any problem as long as the time is the 1950's. I am not a film expert by any means, but I felt the the direction and attitude of this film was stereotypically post WW II and hackneyed.

Rating:
Summary: Military Good!! Science Bad!!
Review: This is one of my favorite flicks from the 50s. The plot is simple-An Arctic crash of an alien ship, Air Force recovers the alien's supposedly dead body for study, alien comes to life and begins killing humans to feed its invading army, scientists incapable of help so military destroys alien with electricity, the hero gets the girl, and everyone lives happily everafter.
While predictable, the real fun is in deciphering the 50s propaganda.
1)The alien threat lands in the arctic. In the 50s, the only threat in the arctic were the nuclear missiles from the USSR. The alien is described as a giant carrot, red and inhuman, concerned with conquering the world. The parallels to the Soviet threat are deleberate and too close for coincedence.
2) a scientist tries to communicate with alien but gets killed. Obviously, since the alien is different from us (US), talking will get no where. The military destroys his experiment raising the alien's spores in the interest of security. Only the military can protect us (US) from foreign invaders, i.e. Russia.
3) the only woman is a secretary and is always dressed and coiffered for her man. A woman must rely on a man to guide her actions, for the 50s, and Sheridian chose the military hero over the brainy scientist. Again, to get the girl, get the uniform, sort of a recruiting ploy, I guess.
If I didn't know better, I would think the Pentagon financed this movie with script control, too.
It's campy fun but, like many of the 50s sci-fi flicks, filled with social and political commentary, usually anti-intellectual. James Arness does a good job as the murderous, grunting alien, tho.

Rating:
Summary: the thihg from another world
Review: one of the best sifi out of 2 todate number 2 the day eath stood still . You can,t beat b/w for comfort fooded for the mind!