Sci-Fi The Thing from Another World (1951)

[BudBrewster]

This post comes with a music soundtrack!

Click on this link and let YouTube play the original motion picture soundtrack of The Thing from Another World while you read this post.

Enjoy!

Remember the first time you saw The Thing from Another World?

My first time was in 1961 on an Atlanta late show, with Mr. George Ellis as the host of The Big Movie Shocker – a character called (get this – ) Bestoink Dooley.

I was a member of his fan club – with a button and everything.

Bestoink was the perfect master of ceremonies for The Thing from Another World, which was laced with both humor and horror, dancing the audience back and forth with it’s fancy cinematic footwork. And the dialog is so tight and perfectly performed, it’s almost like song lyrics, complete with some lines being delivered by three actors at once – like a chorus.

Hey, there’s an idea! A musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber called . . . Carrots!

Naw, on second thought, it’s been done already . . . sort of.

Anyway, The Thing from Another World delivers a helluva show. That scene at the landing site is spectacular, and I’ve always had trouble accepting that it wasn’t really filmed outdoors. The sky and background just do not look like painted backdrops. I’ve searched high and low for a behind-the-scenes photo which shows the cyclorama and the set, but I’ve never found one.

And then there’s big Jim as that scary alien. We sit on the edge of our seats, waiting for a really good look at him through the whole movie . . . and never get it . . . even when they light him on fire!

That was a brilliant touch on the part of the filmmakers. Almost seeing something really good is sometimes better than seeing it well, because you never get tired of it that way.

The characters are another big plus, of course. We like ‘em so much we hate the idea that somebody might get their blood sucked out and fed to the alien’s kids who are growing up so tall and strong in the greenhouse – not to mention the ones being nurtured in Dr. Carringtion’s Dandy Day Care Center.

Which brings up an interesting point: where did the alien actually plan to land the ship? A vegetable creature wouldn’t choose the North Pole as the best place to land, and the movie makes it clear that it crashed, so we know something went wrong with the ship.

Imagine what would have happened if the ship had made a nice three-point landing in the corner of some Kansas farmer’s corn field and set up a nursery in the barn after recruiting the farmer’s family as a food source – along with all the cows and pigs and chickens.

Somebody should use this idea in a “reboot” of this movie!

The climax is both spectacular and very satisfying. The alien gets just what it deserves after showing so little respect for the men in uniform, not to mention the men of science.

Anyway, back in 1961 I finished watching this movie on the late show about 1:30 AM and had to make my way down a dark hallway from the den to my bedroom, keepin’ quiet so I wouldn’t wake my father and be in more trouble than the people in The Thing from Another World.

When a movie can leave you feeling nervous about walking down the hallway in your own house . . . it’s scary.

When are they going to give us a Blu-ray of this great movie – with special features that include behind-the-scenes photos of that so-called “set” where the saucer crashed?

 

[Tom]

The famous scene when the crew formed a ring around the flying saucer frozen in the ice, was actually filmed at the RKO Ranch in the San Fernando Valley in 100-degree weather.

Visible crew/equipment: When the airplane flies over the area where the saucer skidded in and became buried in the ice, you can see the equipment used to clear the snow and smooth out the ice (at the narrow end of the ice). You can also see the tracks from the machine criss-crossing the circular portion from the aerial shots.

Campbell's own story "Who Goes There?," first published in 1938 under the pseudonym Don Stuart, was decidedly more paranoid than the 1951 film version of The Thing. For the screenplay, scenarist Charles Lederer actually discarded most of the original story except for the basic premise. He even changed the basic physical nature of the alien (in the story it's a shape-shifter). By the time The Thing was ready for filming, several gruesome sequences had already been trimmed from the script such as a human decapitation scene.

Partly filmed in Glacier National Park and at a Los Angeles ice storage plant.

James Arness as The Thing, behind the scenes of The Thing from Another World.

“I bring you a warning. Every one 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!”

And You Call Yourself a Scientist! - The Thing (From Another World) (1951)
Nice review!

When they are all flying out to the crash site for the first time, they see where the aircraft has landed and discuss it. It touched down, skidded and then came to stop and melted through the ice. They show a long shot of the skid and where it finally stopped. If you slow motion the film or stop it, it reveals the following: At the beginning of the skid, the touchdown point, there is what looks like a guy in a hat knelt down by a machine of some sort. That could be the ice cutting machine that made the entire etching for the scene.

There is a version which shows Dr. Carrington wandering through his "nursery" of baby "things" on his way to the generator to shut it down as the others prepare to fry the creature. The "things" have grown to a height of over 12 inches.

 

[BudBrewster]

Well, ya got me, Tom!

I actually rescued that review a little while ago from a thread on "Pushing the Envelope". It was a copy of my original post from the now-vanished All Sci-Fi. But that version was written by me way back before one of All Sci-Fi's members corrected my disbelief about the set-and-background painting when he discovered pictures of the "cyclorama" like the one you included above.

Here's a remarkable ground-level view I found, later. The amazing thing about this shot is that the big background painting actually extends all the way across the background, not just halfway, as it appears. Those clouds on the left are part of the painting.

I added a blue line across the top of the left half of the background painting in the version below, to keep it from being mistaken as the actual horizon and sky.