- DVD cover artwork - image courtesy of Podnapisi
There are many who herald the 1951 production of The Thing as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, and if you could rewind time by about a decade, I'd be among those in their ranks.
The first of three (and counting) adaptations of John W. Campbell's 1938 story "Who Goes There?" (followed by John Carpenter's 1982 remake and the 2011 prequel) this efficient, sporadically effective little movie is certainly among the most influential of the genre.
Before helming the aforementioned remake, director Carpenter gave his indebtedness to the original film due credit by affording it a cameo appearance in his breakout hit Halloween.
The screenplay makes numerous changes to the source material, although this itself is not a detriment. Originally (and in subsequent films) a being capable of transforming itself into the make of other lifeforms, the titular "thing" here is actually a highly evolved form of plant life, one that relies on blood to grow and reproduce.
The core of the story remains the same. Scientists and servicemen stationed at the North Pole discover a crashed ship of unusual proportions ("Twenty thousand tons of steel is an awful lot of metal for an airplane"), one that melted through the ice and is now encased below the surface, the vegetable baddie waiting to be released.
What is perhaps the most famous shot of the movie is also one of head-slapping irrelevance. Attempting to outline the perimeter of the newly discovered craft, the men spread out, forming a circle. Dawning realization, they are collectively dumbfounded at the flying saucer beneath them, oblivious to the fact that the ice tempered by the heating, cooling, and re-freezing is itself perfectly round.
Although much of the film is an exercise in genuine terror, this and other attempts at building tension reveal a work of frequently cheap calculation. Similarly surface deep is the film's depicted rivalry between science and self preservation, both rendered as unsatisfying caricatures, and what appears to be a vague allegory of the communist scare of the day.
Unsurprisingly, The Thing is best when the thing itself is on screen, or during the nail-biting moments when its impending presence is made palpable (you'll never find a blinking light as nerve-racking as this film's Geiger counter). But a few minutes of screen time are astonishingly effective for the creature, whom we are only afforded a good look at during the climax.
These sequences are so good that it pains me to give a pass on the film entire, which is overrun by a generally superficial ideology and a banter-heavy script that the cast fails to give organic life to--the dialogue sounds rehearsed and unenthusiastic. If the entire movie were as compelling as Dimitri Tiomkin's menacing score (to say nothing of the bodacious, burn-out title shot), I'd be able to eat it up entirely, not unlike how the thing draws blood from its victims. Such as it is, I respect it, but seem to have sadly outgrown it.
The Thing from Another World. Dir. Christian Nyby. Perf. Margaret Sheridan, Kenneth Tobey, Douglas Spencer, Robert O. Cornthwaite, James Arness. RKO Radio Pictures, 1951. Running Time: 87 min.
