DOUBLE FEATURE: THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) & THE THING (1982)

“Keep watching the skies!” This is the famous last line of this 1950s monster movie and sci-fi classic. While tame by modern standards, this was quite the thrilling picture upon its release in the early 1950s. While I went into this film being far more familiar with the 1982 John Carpenter remake, I was impressed by how much this film still holds its own to this day.

A journalist gets a lucky break and tags along with some Alaskan Air Command soldiers tasked with traveling to a North Pole research facility to investigate the crash landing of an unidentified aircraft. The scientists discover a large spaceship buried in the arctic ice, along with what can only be an alien’s body. The body is brought back to the research station and accidentally thawed out. The alien creature awakes and begins killing everyone who stands in its path.

This is a straight-up thriller for its time, though a few aspects are bit clunky all these years later. The monster is too humanoid to be scary in and of itself. Its strength is intimidating, but it doesn’t look otherworldly enough to instill fear. On the human side of things, the only female characters aren’t used effectively, but this is a modern criticism. Back in the 50s, it was acceptable to have women be damsels in distress in these sorts of pictures, even if they do have a little fight in them.

The setup is straightforward- stop the alien creature or be killed and risk letting it loose on the rest of humanity. The seriousness of the situation is portrayed quite well. These soldiers and scientists take their jobs seriously and think beyond the immediate situation. It’s dramatic without being melodramatic, which sets it apart from some of the campier genre films of the same era.

The Thing From Another World plays it safe on the violence and intensity, but these kinds of films were still hampered by the censorship restrictions of the Hays Code. In some ways, those restrictions are the reason the monster movies of the Hays Code era seem so quaint and enjoyable- bad things may happen, but without gritty realism, these sorts of pictures were just escapist entertainment full of interesting possibilities.

By the end of 1968, the Hays Code was dead, and Hollywood had a new rating system for film content. Films got darker, scarier, and much more intense. The 1982 remake takes full advantage of its R rating and crafts a story that is both dramatic and gruesome.

Based more closely on the original novella Who Goes There?, the setting switches to the South Pole. Members of an American research station investigate a destroyed Norwegian research station after its last living members die trying to shoot a sled dog approaching the American station. They discover the Norwegian team’s notes, which lead them to a large spaceship frozen in the ice shelf. They also learn that the Norwegian team brought an alien being back to their base, but it escaped from its icy prison and began assimilating itself to the people and dogs at the Norwegian base. Faced with the reality that the dog they allowed into their camp was an assimilated and hostile alien creature, the Americans engage in a paranoia-fueled game of cat-and-mouse with the interplanetary threat, trying to determine who among them is still human and who is something else.

This movie was a flop when it was released, but it had the misfortune of competing against the other two big sci-fi films of 1982- E.T. and Blade Runner. Spielberg and Harrison Ford were bigger draws than the motley crew of supporting actors The Thing offered to audiences. Thankfully, this film became a cult classic and its greatness was recognized slowly over the ensuing years. I remember watching the edited-for-TV airings of this film several times back in my youth. I had never watched it in its uncensored glory until just last year. Much of the film still lands with the impact it had on me as a kid, and the added gore of the unaltered theatrical version enhances its showcase of special effects brilliance.

This movie contains so many appreciable small touches. I love that the characters aren’t all clean-shaven duty-bound men. Here we have a ragtag crew of sloppy men in a very lived-in looking research station. It makes them far more human, which makes the threat far more frightening. Most of the actors deliver terrific performances as men desperate to understand the situation and to survive it. Kurt Russel does a splendid job portraying his character’s growing paranoia, determination, and resignation to the awful things that must be done to ensure the creature’s demise.

The star of the show here is the special effects team. While the alien creature’s true form is unknown, it takes a variety of haunting appearances, be it as part dog, part human, or something with multiple legs creeping across the floor. In the few key scenes involving clashes with the Thing, the terror is magnified through the use of pretty graphic gore. This turned some people off back when it was released, and I can understand why. These scenes are shocking, but the gore involved helps the audience feel the same fear and terror the actors convey. I argue that it’s necessary because it ups the stakes each time and pushes the characters deeper into desperation.

While I prefer and will revisit The Thing again more often, you can’t go wrong with either of these tales of terror from outer space. The original has a solid foundation, and the remake pushes content boundaries for an edgier experience. Both are worthy of their status as classics of their respective eras.


THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD – FINAL RATING: 3.5 OUT OF 5

THE THING – FINAL RATING: 4 OUT OF 5