The Thing from Another World

∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗∗ 

(9/10) The film that finally blew the doors open for science fiction in Hollywood was the 1951 picture The Thing from Another World. Directed (uncredited) by legendary Howard Hawks and starring an unknown ensemble cast, this film about a walking, murderous alien vegetable inspired a generation of filmmakers like John Carpenter, James Cameron, George Lucas, Joe Dante and Ridley Scott. The suberb overlapping dialogue, the strong female character, the great special effects and the claustrophobic atmosphere make this one of the all-time greats, even if you don’t agree with the jingoistic right-wing science bashing.

The Thing from Another World (1951). Directed by Christian Nyby and Howards Hawks. Written by Charled Lederer, Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht. Starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James Arness. Produced by Howard Hawks for Winchester Pictures Corporation and RKO Radio Pictures. Tomatometer: 88 %. IMDb score: 7.3

The iconic title of The Thing.

After a tentative start in 1950, Hollywood finally sank its claws deep inside science fiction in 1951, releasing two of the most influential and acclaimed science fiction films in the history of cinema. The second of these was the liberal, pacifist epic known as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, review), about an alien landing in Washington to deliver a message of warning and of intergalactic peace. Five months prior to that, a completely different beast, set on destruction and world domination, crashed in the glaciers of the Arctic. This Thing from Another World gave birth to the later movie’s ideological counter-part, steeped in red-scare, militarism, science-bashing and paranoia. Despite the ideological differences, the films are equally revered by both camps, and the jury still seems to be out on which was the better entry. It has, however, reached the conclusion that few, if indeed any, sci-fi films of the following decade came even close to the quality of these to trail-blazers.

Poster.

Let’s start with the plot. The film opens in Anchorage, Alaska, when wise-cracking reporter Ned ”Scotty” Scott (Douglas Spencer) arrives at an airbase looking for a story, at the invitation of his old friend Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey), leading man and hero of our film. Hendry and his team, along with Scotty, head out to a secluded research station in the Arctic to investigate what they believe is a plane crash, but turns out to be a UFO, that’s embedded itself in ice. After accidentally blowing up the spaceship, they find the pilot, also embedded in ice, hack it out in a frozen block and take it back to the research station, where the film really begins.

A heated argument starts between the military on one side, opting for taking the Thing back to the United States for analysis, ice block and all, and on the other side the scientists, led by the arrogant and calculating Dr. Arthur Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite). The argument resolves itself as the crewman left watching over the Thing accidentally throws an electric blanket over the ice block and gets to fiddling with his notes. The ice block melts and the creature comes to life (off-screen), and escapes the crewman’s gunshots out to the North Pole, and soon the crew see a silhouette out in the freezing cold attacked by the sled-huskies. The creature escapes sans an arm, which the scientists take in for analysis, only to find out that the Thing is in fact a walking vegetable in humanoid form, leading to the film’s best remembered line, delivered by Scotty: ”An intellectual carrot! The mind boggles.”

Awaiting he Thing at the science station.

Dr. Carrington is beside himself with joy over the realisation that they have discovered ”a perfect life-form”, as the intellectual carrot reproduced asexually and is unhampered by human emotion or sexuality. Turns out it feeds on animal blood and spawns through seed-pods. Carrington and some of the scientists feel the creature should be kept alive for study and communication, while the military chaps feel it is a threat not only to those at the station, but humanity as a whole, and opt for killing it outright. But the problem is that the Thing is well on the way killing all the people at he station before they may get their chance of offing it. Lurking in the freezing night or in Dr. Carrington’s greenhouse, the Thing slowly advances, striking in the shadows only to disappear again, and the team is at loss for a way to kill it. Until Carrington’s assistant Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan) says the thing you usually do with a vegetable is ”boil it, bake it, stew it, fry it”, which leads to one of the resourceful air force men coming up with the idea of dousing it with gasoline and lighting it on fire.

SomeThing’s burning! Tom Steele did the stunts for movie industry’s (probably) first full-body burn.

Said and done, in film history’s first attempt at a full-body burning stuntman, the crew set the Thing alight, only to watch it careen out of the station and put itself out in the snow. Not only that, they burn the whole room down and one of the men breaks his arm when tripping on a bunk. Adapting, they then opt for electrocuting it in one of the halls, making a huge ”fly-trap”. And that’s where I’ll leave you with a little bit of suspense.

Cover for Campbell’s novella.

For a lesser film, the above might have really been all of the story, but I omitted quite a lot, which I’ll get to later. As most sci-f fans know, the film was remade by John Carpenter in 1982 as The Thing, one of the finest science fiction films ever made. The story itself came from a 1938 novella called Who Goes There, written by lauded author and sci-fi editor John W. Campbell. The 1951 film is a very loose adaptation, taking only the very basic premise of an alien crashlanding in the Arctic and wreaking havoc on a science station, and pretty much make up the rest from scratch.

The novella, sometimes called the best work of horror sci-fi ever written, and winner of numerous awards, is a claustrophobic, paranoia-drenched horror piece describing the proceedings on a science station after the science team find a UFO, accidentally blow it up and then dig out a frozen alien pilot. No army is involved, and the debate over whether to keep it alive or killing it quickly dissipates after it kills one of the huskies – or rather tries to shape-shift using the body of one of the dogs. The paranoia of the novella comes from the fact that the Thing is able to take on the form of any and all of the scientists, and has obviously done so to some extent, and on top of that, is telepathic. There’s seemingly no knowing who is human and who is a monster, and while the Thing plays Ten Little Indians with the crew, stout meteorologist McReady must try and find a way to save what is left of his scientists, and prevent the Thing from leaving the science station and enter the bustle of the outside world. If you’ve seen Carpenter’s film, you pretty much know the story, as that was a very faithful adaptation, as opposed to the 1951 film.

Kenneth Tobey (second from left) as aptain Hendry.

The movie was scripted by none other than producer/screenwriter/director Howard Hawks, known for legendary films like Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), The Big Sleep (1946), Monkey Business (1953) and Rio Bravo (1959). On the writing team were also two of his favourite screenwriters Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht, who contributed to many of the above mentioned movies, as well as Underworld (1927) The Front Page (1931), Gone with the Wind (1939), Wuthering Heights (1939) Notorious (1946), Ocean’s 11 (1960), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) and Casino Royale (1967). The trio’s only other connection with real sci-fi is Ben Hecht’s work on Queen of Outer Space (1958), perhaps not his proudest moment.

Howard Hawks.

The hard-boiled crime thrillers and screwball comedies of Hawks and Hecht in particular, were characterised by their quick pace, their witty, naturalistic, street-smart and slang-infused dialogue, friendly macho banter and male camaraderie, as well as at least one tough-as-nails female character per film. All this is present in The Thing from Another World. It is a huge accomplishment of the script that it actually turns the ridiculous idea of a walking vegetable monster into a viable – and horrifying – idea without the film falling into the ”so bad it’s good category”. Instead it’s so good it’s one of the best sci-fi films of the fifties.

Hawks was first and foremost the producer of the film, and it was made by Winchester Pictures Corporations for RKO, with whom Hawks had a two-film deal. Although the premise looks like something fit for a B movie, the budget was actually A film standard, making The Thing from Another World the first actual A-list science fiction film made in Hollywood. The film cost 1,6 million dollars to make, which with project-based inflation makes 11,8 million dollars today – 1,8 millions more than Carpenter had at his disposal when making The Thing.

Christian Nyby.

One of the most enduring debates in sci-fi film history is the one concerning who actually directed The Thing from Another World. On paper, director was Christian Nyby, the editor who had been nominated for an Oscar for his work on Hawks’ film Red River (1948), and had previously worked with him on The Big Sleep. However, Hawks’ directorial fingerprints are all over the movie, most notably in the wonderful dialogue, which is one of the best aspects of the film. Here, actors are not patiently waiting for someone to finish his sentence, but interrupt, cut off, overlap dialogues and sometimes three or even four characters are talking over each other at the same time. It lends the film a wonderful sense of reality and bounce. According to actor Robert Nichols, much of the dialogue was made up on rehearsals, and to get the naturalistic feel of things, Hawks would often take actors aside during filming and give them new lines to throw in while other actors were speaking, without telling anyone else – which led to a lot of real reactions, ad-libbing and adjusting. There’s also the noir-influenced lighting and the swift pace of the film, all bearing Hawks’ trademark – not to mention the themes of group dynamics, people working under pressure, the blending of humour and grim seriousness, etc. There is no doubt that Hawks had his hand in much of the direction.

A classic shot of James Arness (the Thing) in a doorway.

It has been speculated that Hawks nominally let Nyby get the directorial credit because Hawks didn’t want to be associated with a sci-fi B film. Hawks himself said that he did it out of courtesy for Nyby, who strived at becoming a director himself, and needed a direction credit ro register with the Directors Guild of America. Hawks said that Nyby had been of such help on his previous films, that he owed it to the editor to give him a go at directing. Hawks did, however, admit that he did rigorous rehearsals with the actors before shooting, especially concerning the overlapping dialogue, but always maintained that it was Nyby who directed. But cast members have since said that although Nyby was the designated director, Hawks was on set every day giving instructions, and according to some sources he took over much of the directing from Nyby. This is backed up by the fact that Nyby mostly worked on TV shows after this film, with the exception of the odd film, none of which came even close to the quality of The Thing from Another World. In the book Eye on Science Fiction Nichols says that Nyby was ”present” at all times, but that it was basically Hawks who did all the directing.

The Thing saplings of Dr. Carrington (played by Robert Cornthwaite, left).

Thematically it’s a rich soup. There’s the red-scare, with the Thing representing the invading communism, snatching up people like Dr. Carrington, who starts breeding little communist saplings of his own in his laboratory, and there are the brave patriots who stand up against the red (or in this case green) menace. But the most prevailing theme is one that had been around for decades: science scepticism. In many later films, perhaps most blatantly in Red Planet Mars (1952, review), religion was pitted against science, and within religion was also embedded the notion of American values. Thankfully, The Thing from Another World neither waves the flag nor thumps the bible. Instead it brings in the military. At the one hand you have Hendry and his men, set on destroying what could potentially be a threat to humanity, ignoring the scientific value of keeping the Thing alive. On the other hand you have Dr. Carrington and some of his men, set on keeping the Thing alive for the sake of science, willing to sacrifice a few human lives for a utilitarian purpose.

Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) by his infernal machines.

Unless you’re one of those crazy anti-vaxxers, you might ask yourself why one would go to such lengths to discredit not only some scientific branch or claim, but science itself. This was a rather new phenomena in sci-fi films – in earlier movies and stories the emphasis was almost always on scientists trying to play god; science itself was not the problem, rather scientists who tried to upset the balance of nature (or god, if you will). But the early fifties brought an increasing amount of movies that revolted against the concept of science altogether, in many ways mirroring the public debate. The main reason for this hostility was the afore-mentioned atomic bomb. This was not so much in outrage over the happenings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but rather because of the fear of a nuclear attack on USA. Blame was laid for this threat on the scientists who had created the bomb in the first place – and as an extension on science as a whole. ”Science” was more often than not linked with shady foreign organisations and ”scientists” tended to have foreign-sounding names and accents. More emphasis was laid on the fact that two of the great minds behind the bomb were Einstein and Oppenheimer, and films conveniently forgot that the Manhattan project that employed the scientists and financed the science was a US government project, and the only organisation in the world that had ever deployed a nuclear weapon, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, was the US military. Instead, as in this film, the US military was often portrayed as the pure, moral counterpart of the calculating, moral-free science.

Robert Cornthwaite going through the script on set.

The handling of this conflict is the film’s biggest flaw, mainly because it is the one thing in the film the viewer just doesn’t buy, and that is mainly because of the character of Dr. Carrington. That Carrington will be the secondary villain in this film is clear from the moment we set eye on him, decked out as he is in his flamboyant turtleneck jumper, cruise ship captain’s blazer, Russian-styled fur cap and gaudy fur coat, sporting s slick-back and a goatee. While it is never explicitly implied that he may have Soviet connections, the image the filmmakers are trying to convey is clear. Not only that, but his taste in clothes and certain mannerisms also makes it feel like the filmmakers are hinting at homosexuality, equally looked down upon by the greater public at the time. Combine this the with the third “negative” aspect – he is a scientist – and you’ve got your ready-made villain. But the problem with the character is that in the first half of the film Carrington comes off as quite a sympathetic and reasonable person. There is a great scene in which the teams are discussing the biological makeup of the Thing, where Carrington shows no signs of arrogance, humbly deferring to his colleagues in matters that he feels they are more knowledgeable about, chatting amiably with all involved. He doesn’t revolt against the military’s decisions during the first half of the film, but rather courteously lays down his arguments in a civilised manner, arguing for the scientific value of keeping the Thing alive – and pointing out that they are located in at a civilian science station on international territory, and the US military doesn’t have any authority to order the scientists around or confiscate research material – which is absolutely true. That’s also why it’s so hard to reconciliate the image of Carrington later in the film, where he outright refuses to have any harm done to the thing – even after it has killed several of his scientists.

The giant block of ice containing the Thing.

Robert Cornthwaite does the role of Carrington with grace and wit, making the best he can out of the difficultly written character. As a modern viewer you actually often find yourself sympathising with Carrington rather than with Hendry and the military men, despite Carrington’s sometime obnoxious traits. Carrington even comes off as a heroic character in the final scene, where he tries to save the Thing’s life by jumping between it and the killing squad, making a last effort to communicate with it. In the end, he also receives the forgiveness of the military – this was a last minute script change, as Hawks probably also thought that Carrington had been rather mistreated throughout the movie. The original script had the Thing kill Carrington.

James Arness in makeup.

There’s also the fact that the film – if you simply look at the plot – is a resounding praise of the scientific method. The odd thing is that the screenwriters have completely reversed the structures of the two groups involved. The scientists are a strictly top-down led entity. Dr. Carrington is the indisputable general, whose word is law, and all other scientists are clearly subordinates. Those who disagree are viewed as deserters and shunned. As proceedings get going, Carrington never engages in discussions, but gives orders, and refuses to listen to advice. This is usually the way the military works. On the other hand, the military group is led by Captain Hendry, but his authority lies in the respect his subordinates have for him as a man, rather than his rank. The whole group seems to work more or less on democratic principles and the subordinates frequently make fun of Hendry, jeering and taunting his romantic escapades, and he, in reverse, frequently asks his men for advice and often admits he doesn’t know how to handle a certain situation. Almost all of the conclusive ideas come from someone else than Hendry. Furthermore, despite the fact that the military wants to kill the Thing, they go about the project in a very scientific manner. First of all, it is the actual scientists that work out exactly what sort of enemy they are dealing with, and without them, the army guys would have been dead in minutes. Second, in working out a plan, the military group first gather the data, then work out a hypothesis, weighing different factors, put together theories that they lay out for peer review, as it were, and only when they think they have an actionable plan, they set about testing it. After their first plan backfires, they scrutinise what went wrong, what parts of it worked and what parts didn’t, then revise it from evidence they have gathered, and formulate a new plan. This is exactly how science works. Dr. Carrington, however, works from a dogmatic point of view and refuses to take in new information or change his plans even though his claims are scientifically refuted. Despite the fact that the Thing has shown no interest in communication, despite the fact that all signs lead to the fact that the whole team will be killed, he stubbornly believes that the alien is benign and willing to communicate. This is not the way science works. Added to this is the fact that Hendry never questions the basic idea that keeping the thing alive and gather information from it would be a wonderful thing. It’s just that in his mind, the danger the alien represents outweighs the possibilities of future knowledge.

Cornthwaite in the middle.

Theatrical actor Robert ”Bob” Cornthwaite became something of a fixture in sci-fi films, appearing in a number of classic movies, and some not so classic. He often played scientists of authority figures. He appeared in The War of the Worlds (1953, review), Reptilicus (1961), Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), Futureworld (1976), Time Trackers (1989), and reprised his role as Dr. Carrington in the spoof The Naked Monster in 2005 (he actually filmed his part in 1984, along with Kenneth Tobey, but that’s a story for another time). He also appeared in a large number of sci-fi series, including Men Into Space (1959), The Twilight Zone (1963), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1965), Batman (1966), and The Pretender (1998). Apart from his stage career, he appeared on around 150 TV series in his career.

Margaret Sheridan.

What I haven’t covered much yet is the character of Nikki Nicholson, who is a major character in the film, as opposed to a lot of other female leads in sci-fi. Altogether, the romantic features of the movie are unparalleled in fifties genre film. Even before the military team sets out for the science station, Captain Hendry’s men start making jokes about Hendry going to visit Nicholson, and when he finally meets her in her office, he confronts her about their previous encounter. Turns out that Hendry has tried to drink Nicholson under the table in an effort to seduce her, only to find out that she had the better stomach for booze and he passed out, and when he awoke in the morning she was gone, leaving him angry with her for not giving an explanation – only a note on his chest telling him he had nice legs, which all of his men had the chance of seeing. But, she confronts him, she did tell him: she had to leave for an early flight. Rather ashamed, Hendry admits that he was probably so drunk that he didn’t remember her telling him this. And Nicholson goes on to say that ”You had moments of making like an octopus. I’ve never seen so many hands!” That a woman puts a leading man on the spot for being a grabbing sonofabitch like this in a genre movie is certainly without precedent. And it goes on: Hendry humbly apologises, and asks if they can’t try and start over again, and says that this time she can even tie his hands when they have a drink. And that scene actually happens: Nicholson ties Hendry to a chair and starts pouring drinks down his throat in a sexually charged scene with a not so subtle dominatrix allusion. Astounding feminism in a sci-fi movie from the fifties.

Captain Hendry (Kenneth Tobey) and Nikki Nicholson (Margaret Sheridan) discuss past transgressions.

Before you get the idea that this is some feminist epic, I should point out that Nicholson still goes around asking the boys if they want coffee, and seems to be the one worrying about the house-work (apart from the Asian chef that shows up in the background and is never seen again) on the station. When attacking the Thing with fire, she is the one taking cover behind a mattress, and her one great contribution about what to do with vegetables is of course derived from her experience from cooking. Nevertheless, her character is probably the strongest and most independent of all female characters in science fiction films of the fifties – and the reverse is that Hendry is one of the most nuanced heroes in terms of male stereotypes in a science fiction film of the fifties.

A promo still of Sherridan and Tobey.

Both Margaret Sheridan and Kenneth Tobey put in very strong performances, perhaps in Tobey’s case the performance of his life, aided hugely by the superb dialogue coaching from Hawks. It is hard to believe this was model-turned actress-to-become-real estate agent Sheridan’s first ever film role, after being snatched up by Hawks, who had extremely high hopes for her career. However, The Thing remains her crowning achievement, as she only appeared in a handful of more films and a few TV series before leaving the movie business in the mid-sixties. According to Hawks, marriage, parenthood and early divorce changed Sheridan, and she ”just wasn’t the same girl anymore”. Someone on Wikipedia has explained the failing of her film career with the fact that she appeared in The Thing – and that ”the quality of the film and her acting” would have been a negative factor in her career. The claim is without reference and I personally think this is utter bull – considering the sort of Z movies that other ”glamour girls” have started their careers with. She appeared in another sci-fi film, The Diamond, in 1954.

Kenneth Tobey was a theatre actor who made his film debut in 1947 and appeared in mostly uncredited bit-parts or supporting roles. The Thing did launch his career, although he was never quite able to surpass the B swamp, and was mostly stuck with supporting roles or playing ”the other man”. He had a major role in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (review) in 1953, and played the lead in Sam Katzman’s 1955 rip-off It Came from Beneath the Sea (review), and had another major role on The Vampire (1957). That same year he produced his own (non-sci-fi) TV series, Whirlybirds, where he played an adventurous helicopter pilot assisting authorities like the police and the fire department on different fantastical missions. The series was a major hit and ran for three years. In the sixties and seventies he concentrated on his Broadway career, and appeared as a guest star on over 100 TV shows, like Perry Mason, Lassie, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Night Gallery, Kung Fu, Columbo, Starsky and Hutch and Little House on the Prairie.

Kenneth Tobey in Innerspace.

When the third wave of sci-fi kicked in in Hollywood in the late seventies, The Thing From Another World was rediscovered, and Tobey started getting cameos in films made by filmmakers who had grown up watching the movie in TV reruns, like the Zucker-Abrahams duo that put him in Airplane, and Joe Dante who cast him in The Howling (1981), Gremlins (1984), Innerspace (1987) and Gremlins 2 (1990). A whole new generation found The Thing from Another World in 1982 when John Carpenter made his remake, and Tobey found himself in cameos in sci-fi films like Strange Invaders (1983), Honey I Blew Up the Kid (1992) and Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996). He also appeared in the TV series The Twilight Zone (1986) and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994). He played a character called Captain Hendry in the fantasy-action cheese-fest The Lost Empire in 1984, and reprised his famous role along Cornthwaite in what was first filmed as a fan film called Attack of the B-Movie Monster in 1984, and was turned into a feature film called The Naked Monster in 2005.

Douglas Spencer as Scotty.

The comic relief of the film is the wise-cracking reporter Scotty, but even the comic relief carries a lot of weight and seriousness in this movie. Between all the wise-cracking and the failed attempts to get a photograph of the thing, he also gets into the action. And when told to get lost for his own good, because he ”doesn’t belong” in the heat of battle, he gets offended and quips: ”I didn’t belong at Alamein or Bougainville or Okinawa, either. I was just kibbutzing!” At other times he comes off as a bit too much of a comic book character, as when he excites ”Oh, boy, what a story!” with an actual fist pump after they discover the UFO, or indeed when uttering his ”intellectual carrot” line. But he does bring a very lively energy and some lightness in the grim proceedings. He also gets to utter the famous last line of the film: ”Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies! Everywhere! Keep looking! Keep watching the skies!”

Douglas Spencer in This Island Earth.

Balding, lanky actor Douglas Spencer started his career as a stand-in for film star Ray Milland, and had a number of extra jobs or bit-parts in big and small films in the forties. Scotty in The Thing from Another World is probably his best remembered role, although he did also appear as The Monitor, the big boss baddie in This Island Earth (1955, review) and played the two-headed 1st Martian in the memorable episode Mr. Dingle, the Strong, starring sci-fi series staple Burgess Meredith, in The Twilight Zone (1961).

The whole remainder of the cast is at least capable, even if all are not quite top-notch actors, and there’s really not any point in bringing out individual performances, since this is a group effort. Despite some slightly stiff or hammy moments, Hawks’ rehearsals have brought out the best in all involved, and the dynamics of the cast is a joy to watch. Robert Nichols co-starred in This Island Earth and had a number of credited or uncredited bit-parts in other major sci-fi films. William Self appeared in 28 films, but was better known as production manager on series like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968), Lost in Space (1965-1968), The Green Hornet (1966-1967), The Time Tunnel (1966-1967), Batman (1966-1968), and Land of the Giants (1968-1969). David McMahon plays Brigadier General Fogarty in Alaska – a brilliantly written little role. Bit-part actor McMahon appeared in small, sometimes uncredited parts in The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds, It Conquered the World (1956), The Creature Walks Among Us (1956), The Deadly Mantis (1957) and The Monster that Challenged the World (1957), playing military men in all but two of the films.

Finding the UFO embedded in the glacier.

Some reviewers claim that Nikki Nicholson was the only woman on the science station – but this is wrong! There are several scenes with a Mrs. Chapman (Sally Creichton), a tall blonde woman who definitely isn’t Margaret Sheridan. Although she hasn’t got many lines, I can’t understand how so many reviewers seem to have missed her completely. Creichton only appeared in three films.

The monster itself was created by makeup artist Lee Greenway, best known for working on comedy and soap opera TV shows (he was the on-set makeup artist on The Andy Griffith Show from 1960 to 1968). He reportedly made 18 small-scale models of the Thing before Hawks was satisfied. To many modern viewers, the Thing – a man in a rubber suit – is disappointing. Actor James Arness hated the suit, not only because it was hot, but because he thought it made him look like a ”giant carrot” – which inspired Scotty’s famous line mentioned above. Of course, with the technology available at the time, it would have been impossible to do the sort of morphing character that Campbell described in the book, and one can suppose that Hawks instead looked back at the sort of monster movies that were available at the time – things like Nosferatu (1922) Frankenstein (1931, review), The Mummy (1932), etc. Some have argued that the Thing looks like a cross between Nosferatu and the Creature from Frankenstein, and the notion isn’t far off.

James Arness, makeup artist Lee Greenway and Billy Curtis.

Reportedly all close-ups of the monster were removed in edit, since Hawks thought the makeup didn’t hold up . This actually works well for the film, as the Thing is almost always seen as a menacing presence in the distance, often obscured by shadow or as a silhouette. In the final scene, the monster shrinks when it is electrocuted, and was then played by short actor Billy Curtis, star of The Terror of Tiny Town (1938), and featured as one of the Mole-Men in Superman and the Mole-Men (1951, review). . He was a robot operator in Gog (1954, review), appeared in The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), played a Martian in Angry Red Planet (1968) and a child ape in Planet of the Apes (1968).

Tall actor James Arness reportedly hated the role so much that he refused to show up for the premiere. Arness, of course, would later find everlasting fame for playing the lead in the legendary TV series Gunsmoke, which ran for 20 years on US TV from 1955 to 1975. In the late seventies and eighties he became a huge star in Europe for another series, How the West Was Won. Arness also played the lead in the lost world film Two Lost Worlds (1951) and had a major role as Robert Graham in another genre-defining sci-fi film, the first giant insect movie Them! in 1954 (review).

The influence of The Thing from Another World has been rightly noted. It was the first actual alien monster film and its claustrophobic atmosphere of chasing – or being chased by – an alien in the dark of cramped hallways or tunnels in an inescapable environment (space, under water or in the arctic cold). It’s also the first feature film containing the sort of alien spawning that would later turn up in movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, although in this film it simply feeds on blood, rather than take over human bodies. The influence on Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) is unmistakable.

Scotty arriving at the air force camp – in a nod to The Invisible Man.

However, no films are created in a vacuum, and it would be misleading to credit the film of coming up with all these concepts. Alien invasions had been a staple in sci-fi stories since the late 19^th century, most notably in H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), but perhaps even more interestingly for this film, in Australian writer Robert Potter’s The Germ Growers from 1892, in which incorporeal aliens take over the minds of humans and start cultivating deadly germs to use on humanity. Wells, of course, added the first actual alien monsters. And since then, pulp magazines and comic books had been full of monsters in all imaginable shapes and sizes, so the idea was hardly novel. What was novel, though, was the way in which Hawks and Nyby incorporated one in a serious A-list movie, which was completely without precedent. However, there isn’t much in terms of look or behaviour that distinguishes the Thing from the Frankenstein monster of latter Frankenstein films in the late thirties and early forties. The fact that it feeds on animal blood feels like a somewhat unimaginative solution, making the creature – in effect a Dracula-Frankenstein hybrid. The one novel thing about it is making it a vegetable and having it spawn through seed pods and saplings, a concept that hasn’t been used in too many sci-fi films through the years, although a few instantly spring to mind.

In Campbell’s novella, the alien’s true form was much different from what ended up on screen in both this film and the 1982 remake. Campbell described it as biped with a terrifying, evil face, three red eyes and a skin that was covered in some sort of fur-like substance that looked like ”blue, writhing worms”, and describes it as having tentacles shooting out from below its neck.

The dog-Thing from John Carpenters movie, actually present in Campbell’s novella.

The setting and the mood of the film – an isolated building (or science station or spaceship) with an unseen killer on the loose, blanketed in shadows and torn by howling storms and rain (or a blizzard), harkens back to the late twenties and early thirties. It is basically the setting for an old dark house movie, like The Bat (1926) and The Cat and the Canary (1927), films that inspired James Whale and Robert Florey to create the setting of Frankenstein (or indeed Tod Browning to create the setting of Dracula in 1931). But these films had even earlier precedents. What is the scene of Nosferatu’s shadow approaching Ellen Hutter in her bed in 1922, but a classic scene for an old dark house film. The expressionistic lighting in this German classic, along with other movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Alraune (Destiny, 1922) inspired the American horror movies of the twenties and thirties, and also influences the film noirs of the forties and fifties, a genre in which Howard Hawks was well versed. Agatha Christie of course perfected the Ten Little Indians trope with her 1939 novel Ten Little Niggers, a title which for obvious reasons was changed to And Then There Were None upon its 1940 release in the US, although similar plot elements – people getting killed off one by one by an unseen murderer – had been prevalent for decades in both literature and film. Some have pointed to Dr. Carrington as the archetype of the mad scientist, but that honour should probably go to Rotwang in Metropolis (1927, review), and the character was perfected in the shape of Victor Frankenstein in 1931. This does in no way diminish the quality of the film, nor the brilliance of the filmmakers that took all these familiar elements and created something new and fresh out of them – in the same way that it doesn’t diminish the brilliance of Alien that it took some inspiration from The Thing and Who Goes There?

Electrocuting the Thing.

The special effects of The Thing from Another World are few but effective. The scene of the spaceship blowing up is well done, and an early scene where they inspect the Thing’s arm that’s been ripped off by the dogs – and the hand suddenly starts moving on the table. Nichols says in the book Eye on Science Fiction that the stunned reactions of the actors are absolutely real. The arm was simply a plastic prop, but unbeknownst to the actors, Hawks had drilled a hole in the table, and a hole through the hollow arm, and had afore mentioned small actor Billy Curtis hide under the desk and stick his hand up the ”glove”, and start moving it at the end of the shot. This technique of surprising the cast with an unexpected effect was famously used – and turned up to 11 – in the famous scene in Alien where the chest-burster explodes out of the chest of John Hurt.

James Arness doing special effects tests.

One of the most effective scenes of the film is when the Thing is set on fire – head to toe. This was probably the first full-body burn seen on film, and the Thing was then played by stuntman Tom Steele, wearing an asbestos suit and a fibre-glass helmet with an oxygen mask. According to Nichols, the actors were replaced with stuntmen in a continuous shoot without cutting and resetting, because not only was the Thing on fire, but the whole set.

The music by Dimitri Tiomkin has been much praised and rightly so – a lot of the movie is actually without music, but Tiomkin uses his bombastic orchestral score as emotional cues and throws in screaming, high-pitched notes at fright heights and action scenes, much like Bernard Hermann would later do with Psycho (1960) or John Williams with Jaws (1975). The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954, review) did this to the point of absurdity. In other scenes Tiomkin just lays in a barely audible, soft track of music to set the mood to either eerie (using oboe), or romantic (with a mellow jazz tune). During the course of his career he won four Oscars, several Golden Globes and Laurel Awards and was nominated for a Grammy and dozens of other awards. When you’re the one making the music for a biopic about Chaikovsky, you know you’ve done something right.

The iconic scene of the team measuring up the spacecraft underneath the ice, done on a Hollywood backlot on a blazing hot day. That background is a matte painting.

Cinematographer Russell Harland does a wonderful job with tracking shots and superb setup and lighting. Harland was nominated for 6 Oscars. The art direction is superb, not least in the matching of studio-bound sets, backlots and actual snowy Glacier National Park in Montana, where the crew spent time waiting for snow – which is why The Man from Planet X beat the movie to cinemas by a month. The science station is just as cluttered and realistic as you would expect it to be, the actual snowy glacier park adds some great sense of space and loneliness and the snow is ever present even in indoor scenes – it comes blowing in from open doors, it stays on top of caps and coats and flies by windows in the background. For interior sets chilled by broken windows or smashed generators the team built sets in a Los Angeles ice storage plant to get shots of steaming breaths. There’s also some use of matte paintings and fake snow – as in the scene where the teams find the UFO in the ice – I actually thought it was filmed in Alaska or somewhere, until I read it was filmed on a very hot day on a Hollywood backlot with a huge, curved matte painting in the background – a perfect illusion.

There’s apparently also some visual effects and process photography at work, although I can’t rightly point out where else it would be than the very last creature scene. However, Linwood G. Dunn, the creator of the visual effects, would later work on Star Trek (1966-1969), and was part of the huge special effects team of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Process photographer Harold E. Stine worked on several episodes of Adventures of Superman between 1953 and 1955 and the film Project X (1968).

Linwood G. Dunn shooting a miniature of the starship Enterprise for Star Trek.

I am now nearing the end of this very long article/review on The Thing from Another Planet, I can only commend you if you read through it all. I do feel though, that a nine-star rating deserves a good write-up. Some of you will disagree with the high marks I give for this film. You may feel this is basically an over-produced B film, in which case you are partly right. But so was The Bride of Frankenstein (1935, review), and I gave it 9 stars as well. Some of the best science fiction movies in history were B movies – Alien and Terminator (1984) included. Hawks & co do almost everything right in this film, and even manage to turn the weaknesses to their advantage. Despite the hokey costume, the Thing set a new template for how sci-fi monsters were supposed to look. Out went the bubble-headed little green men, and in came the Frankensteinean monsters – again, only now they started to have green skin, sometimes reptilian scales and always distinctly rubbery. Hawks’, Lederer’s and Hecht’s dialogue elevates the film above its B movie roots and brings in a grubby realism from their crime and comedy backgrounds. The banter and the comic relief characters bring a sense of not taking matters too seriously, without ever losing the dark edge of the film – and the action sequences are absolutely beautifully handled. One of the all-time great sci-fi films.

Janne Wass

The Thing from Another World. Directed by Christian Nyby and Howards Hawks. Written by Charled Lederer, Howard Hawks and Ben Hecht. Starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, James Young, Dewey Martin, Robert Nicholls, William Self, Eduard Franz, Sally Creichton, James Arness, David McMahon. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin. Cinematography: Russell Harlan. Editing: Roland Gross. Art direction: Albert S. D’Agostino, John Hughes. Set decoration: Darrell Silvera, William Stevens. Makeup supervisor: Lee Greenway. Production manager: Walter Daniels. Sound: Phil Brigandi, Clem Portman. Special effects: Donald Steward, Ardell Lytle (pyro). Visual effects: Linwood G. Dunn (special photographic effects), Harodl E. Stine (process photography). Stunts: Tom Steele, Billy Curtis, et. al. Produced by Howard Hawks for Winchester Pictures Corporation and RKO Radio Pictures.