The Thing From Another World

The Thing And I

The Thing From Another World
USA 1951 Directed by Christian Nyby
HMV Premium Collection Blu Ray Zone B

The Thing From Another World is based, somewhat loosely (although not as loosely as many believe, by all accounts... in many ways it’s more faithful on story progression and mechanics than the remake), on John W. Campbell Jr’s novella Who Goes There? And I’m going to make some very clear statements to start off this review by way of caveats which may well put some of you off from reading on but I’m going with what I see as the facts on this one.

My least problematic point is that I’ve not actually read the original novella (although I do intend to at some point... just saw a free copy online). So I can’t tell you blow for blow how great it is as an adaptation other than what I can gather from the comments of others, which I’ve encapsulated in the paragraph above. My next two statements might anger some, though.

The Thing From Another World was not, as people seem to want to believe these days, directed unofficially by auteur Howard Hawks. Sure, he had a hand in it as he produced it and turned directing chores over to one of his editors but any good producer makes suggestions on the set and I suspect Nyby directed it just as much as Steven Spielberg directed the Indiana Jones movies with producer George Lucas on the set making suggestions (remember, it was Lucas’ wish that Temple Of Doom starts off with Indy in a tuxedo, which is something Spielberg really didn’t like the sound of). There are varying conflicted reports by actors and crew members as to how things went... including from Hawks himself who originally said he just made a few suggestions on set but, over the decades, his perceived involvement in it seemed to grow. So, yeah you may think that some of the signature, directorial flashes come from Hawks but, then again, people often don’t credit the work of a close collaborator when it comes to picking up on certain stylistic similarities (take Ennio Morricone’s famous, early scores, for example, which were orchestrated by Bruno Nicolai and vice versa).

One of the reasons that Hawks chose Nyby was that, as his editor, he knew that he was familiar with the kinds of cuts and rhythms that were synonymous with the visual language that Hawks used. In fact, it was apparently Nyby who came up with the suggestion of using damn near no close ups in the film whatsoever because, as a former editor, he knew that the film could easily change shape in the cutting room if they were not careful so... he decided to go more for master shots or mid range shots so that it couldn’t be cut any other way. Hawks agreed with the idea and that’s why there are very few close ups in the movie... and it really doesn’t hurt it at all.

So in terms of responsibility for the movie... let me say I think it’s time we gave Nyby his due as the man listed as the director on the credits. It’s my belief it’s him to whom the ownership of the film belongs... as much as a collaborative venture like the piecing together of a major motion picture could be birthed as anything like the work of an auteur anyway, that is.

Lastly, and many people are really going to disagree with this one too... of the three adaptations (or two adaptations and one prequel, if you prefer) of this story, this 1951 version is by far the superior version. Yes, I do love John Carpenter’s remake, The Thing... I think it’s an utterly brilliant movie and, although he threw out a lot of the story points (he kept a couple of nice homages to this one in, more on those when I review that version), his version addresses the shape shifting nature of the alien. In this original version it’s just James Arness (future Sherif Matt Dillon from Gunsmoke) in a pseudo-Frankenstein monster suit. However, as much as I absolutely adore Carpenter’s version with it’s gory and surrealistic, body horror tone and paranoia... I find this 1951 version much more entertaining on every other level. The Carpenter version is an absolutely brilliant, classic piece of sci-fi horror... and so is this one. They’re just very different and, for me, the 1951 marginally scrapes to first place for the win in terms of sheer watchability.

The film starts off with a slowly materialising piece of typography saying The Thing (followed quickly by From Another World once it’s done it’s... err... thing). Carpenter’s version totally echoes this typography and the way it materialises in his version. The first of a few very blatant homages to this original. Here’s it’s underscored by Dimitri Tiomkin’s fine score, which was the first of two very important science fiction films in this year to make use of the infamous electronic instrument the theremin (the other would be Bernard Herrmann’s score to The Day The Earth Stood Still, which used a whole bunch of them). This popular 1920s musical instrument (which has a whole story of intrigue and 'long game' espionage attached to it in its own right, due to the antics and shenanigans of the musical inventor from which it takes its name) was popularised in film by Dr. Miklos Rozsa, who used it in two of his scores for 1945 movies, The Lost Weekend and Spellbound.

Then we get to meet some of the main players. Kenneth Tobey as Captain Hendry and some of his men are sent to an Arctic research station to check up on an unexplained air crash and some strange magnetic field readings. He takes with him his new acquaintance Scotty, played by Douglas Spencer, who is a newspaper reporter he meets in the opening scene, while playing poker with two of his men. There’s a terrible cut in this scene, actually. I’ve seen this film maybe five times now in my life and this time I noticed that Hendry deals out two rounds of cards for a hand and then it cuts to them picking up five cards each. So what went on between cuts (or retakes or alternate cuts) I guess we’ll never know. It’s a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment because the conversation continues over the cut as normal.

We then follow these people as they fly to the arctic and meet the team... including lead professor and ever-so-slightly human villain (misguided by science, I guess you would say) Professor Carrington, played by Robert Cornthwaite and, in her debut movie, Margaret Sheridan as his assistant Nikki. Actually, she didn’t make that many movies or TV show appearances after this but, somehow, she is first billed in the cast list and, all I can say is, good job too. I can’t believe this lady didn’t make major stardom because she’s an absolute hoot in this movie. Her personality really shines through and, although a female presence was not in the original novella, she is not just a fifth wheel here. Asides from an early BDSM reference where she ties Hendry’s arms behind him to a chair to have a drink with him... it’s she who comes up with the idea of what you do to a vegetable when the creature of the title is found to be an advanced form of humanoid plant life (it even grows a new arm back after one of the husky dogs it kills bites one off). She’s just amazing and I wish she’d been in many more movies.

After more introductions and slow burn character enhancement we get the scene where the crew find the crashed saucer and, in a famous moment, determine its size by circling the shape under the ice (another thing Carpenter homages on a video diary of what happened to ‘the other’ base camp in his version). After inadvertently destroying the saucer, the crew chop a block of ice carrying ‘the thing’ free and take it back to base. Then, the inevitable happens and a mistake with an electric blanket accidentally thaws the creature out and it wants to conquer the earth, using the blood of two hanging, slain scientists (a visceral image we never see but hear described) to feed some native vegetation the plasma to create an army of creatures like itself. From then on it’s humans versus thing as the alien enemy tries to freeze our heroes out from the base while they try to defend and destroy.

And it’ a really great film. Most especially because of the razor sharp, witty dialogue which has a lot in common with some of Howard Hawk’s screwball romantic comedies of the 1930s such as the excellent Bringing Up Baby (on which Nyby didn’t work but, then again, Hawks didn’t write this script either, okay?). The dialogue in this film is very slick and the other thing... and I’m always impressed with this each time I watch it because it’s a trick which has always been attributed to what Robert Altman was doing in film in the 1960s and 70s... is that there’s lots of overlapping dialogue in the movie as different groups of people in the same shot hold different conversations. It’s absolutely brilliant for giving the scenes a naturalistic feel and it really helps to ground a film which, in the words of Scotty, involve the bloodthirsty, rampaging shenanigans of ‘an intellectual carrot’.

And because of the way the characters are built up and, additionally, because they’re all such nice and pleasant people who you would happily hang out with in a bar (even Dr. Carrington), it really helps you to identify with them and root for them against the title villain as the film accelerates to its electrifying climax. It really is one of the best science fiction/horror movies of the 1950s and I think more people these days, especially those who worship the Carpenter classic (which is also a good thing to do), should check this out because it’s fun, doesn’t outstay its welcome and is just so expertly crafted. Even Dimitri Tiomkin’s B-movie style score, which nobody could ever accuse of being subtle (not a term I’d ever associate with this composer), works towards unsettling the viewer and even ramps up some red herring moments which are totally created by the music to sow unease where they wouldn’t be seen as such by another composer, maybe.

So, yeah... that’s my take on a film that, with it’s much quoted ‘Watch the skies!’ end monologue from Scotty, has become so well loved and so influential to other directors... you can’t get to Ridley Scott’s crew of the Nostromo tracking down the Alien by counters recording micro changes in air density without the main protagonists here using a Geiger counter to track down the creature, I suspect. Yeah, I know, a Geiger counter to an H. R. Giger counter, for sure. But there you have it, The Thing From Another World is still one of the greatest sci-fi/horror movies of the 1950s and absolutely one I will continue to watch over the years as death approaches. A masterpiece of cinema monster movies... as is the remake.

The Thing at NUTS4R2

The Thing From Another World (1951)
The Thing (1982)
The Thing (2011)

The Thing (2011)

Thingin’ In The Brain

The Thing 2011 US

Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.

Screening at UK cinemas.

Warning: There’s probably a thing or two in here that will mimic "slight" spoilers... but which ones are the spoilers?

Back in 1951, director Christian Nyby, under the assured production of one Mr. Howard Hawks, released into the world a science fiction/horror movie called THE THING From Another World and, quite frankly, no modern version has ever bettered this. I will probably watch this again next year some time and review it, along with Carpenter’s excellent 1982 homage, so I won’t go into too much detail about it here. However, I will need to reference these two films quite a bit for this review, I suspect, so beg the reader’s forgiveness a little about possibly carping on about the 1951 version a fair bit, with it’s tremendous quick-fire and often overlapping dialogue and portrayal of the camaraderie of the human spirit in a claustrophobic, survival situation.

I also need to make the reader aware that, although I’m familiar with the movie versions of this little landmark of the combined genres, I’ve never actually read John W. Campbell Jr’s 1938 novella Who Goes There? on which the three movies were based (it was originally published as part of an issue of the famous pulp magazine Astounding Stories)... so I can’t really give an accurate assessment of which, of any, of the movies is the most successful adaptation of this. However, it’s generally accepted that the original version strayed a fair bit from the source material... it goes as far as to make The Thing a humanoid alien and so the important paranoia element of a shape-changer who could be any one of the protagonists at any time is missing. The movie still manages to kick all kinds of ass even without that ingredient though.

John Carpenter’s version, just called THE THING, but with an opening title logo that aped the original version (and is in turn aped by the new movie, but only in it’s method of appearance and not the actual font, I think), is generally regarded as a much more closer adaptation of the novella and, to be fair to one of the great directors of the genre, Carpenter’s version also kicks all kinds of ass... and really ramps up the terror and gore effects. All in all though, I still prefer the original... but that’s not to detract from Carpenter’s homage, which I could also watch at least once a year if I didn’t have such a big backlog of movies to get through.

And now we have a new version of THE THING for 2011 and, to quote Amy Pond in Doctor Who... “This is where it gets complicated.”

Here we go then... first thing you have to understand is that John Carpenter’s THE THING is as much an homage to the original 1951 version of the story as it is an adaptation of the original novella. In some ways, in fact, it can be seen as “kind of” a sequel to it because the titular alien entity which is dug up from the ice in the original and accidentally thawed out is already on the loose right at the start of Carpenter’s version (albeit the shape shiftin variant). And when Kurt Russell’s main protagonist, McReady, goes to investigate why they suddenly have two dead Norwegians on their hands and why they came to the American base camp in Antarctica, aggressively pursuing and shooting at a dog from a helicopter, he discovers the carnage of a deserted Norwegian base camp where a battle against the creature has already taken place. It also includes some video footage of the Norwegians circling around the ice, trying to get some sense of scale and shape of the crashed alien spaceship beneath them and this, itself, is a recreation of an iconic moment from the original THE THING From Another World. Some of the stuff McReady finds is recreated during the course of this new 2011 version of it but it’s just a shame that the iconic, circling around the ice moment was not recreated for this third version... it would have been a very welcome moment for fans of the previous two.

Now the new 2011 version is pitched to audiences as a prequel to Carpenter’s 1982 remake/homage/adaptation, even going as far to have Marco Beltrami’s score echoing the two note pulse of the Morricone/Carpenter/Howarth mash-up score in a couple of notable places... although I noticed that some of the audience I saw it with seemed to be oblivious that there were any previous versions of the movie. However, it could also be classed just as much as a remake of the original 1951 version of the movie and an adaptation in its own right of the novella because it has elements from both the previous two versions in it.

Since this is a prequel, of course, the movie makers have been quite blatant in making sure all the action and paraphernalia of the 1982 version (which is when this modern version is also, of course, set) is retrofitted in this incarnation and matches up or works towards matching up with it by the end of the movie (more on that later). However, some of the elements from the original are also quite blatant... if you’re are old enough or well versed enough in film to have bothered to watch the original. Three things I noticed which are of note in this and the 1951 version are...

1. Both the 1951 version and this new version have a couple of female characters... Carpenter’s has none (as I suspect the original novella didn’t, but don’t know that for sure at time of writing this... I’ll grab it next year and have a read).

2. Another thing the first and last versions have in common is the fact that they both dig up a big block of ice holding the alien creature in it... and of course, it’s not too long before that creature is on the loose!

3. Okay, there’s an actual, proper scientist in both versions (not including the female lead of the new version). They are both different characters but both are blinded by their need to research THE THING in the name of science and to the endangerment of the other characters in the movie... and there’s even a scene in the new one where the scientist is wearing exactly the same kind of silly hat that his predecessor did in 1951. Nice little reference right there which I’m sure a lot of fans didn’t fail to notice.

So how does the new version measure up to the previous two? Well I’ll make no bones about it, and this is not a negative review by the way, but the new version is neither as good as the original or the 1982 version it is “prequeling”. However, that being said, the new one is definitely still a great little gem of a movie... a scifi/horror movie which will probably get just as much play on my DVD player when it comes out as the previous two... so even though it’s not as great as those two... it’s well worth a watch for any genre fan out there.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the main female lead is absolutely excellent and certainly does a good deal to carry the movie all on her own (and there’s no way I would have pegged her as the girl who played Ramona Flowers in Scott Pilgrim Vs The World unless I’d just looked her up on the internet)... but even if she wasn’t such a strong and charismatic lead (which, again I stress, she is), she wouldn’t have to be as this is a real ensemble piece... like the two versions before it. It’s got more in common with its 1951 predecessor though, on that level, because everyone really gets on well for most of the time and seem to be enjoying themselves and having a great time where they are... as opposed to Carpenter’s take where everyone seems isolated and alienated from each other in their day-to-day life, even before the paranoia begins to set in.

The weak points are that the creature and gore effects are, as a necessity, inspired by Carpenter’s and very similar... and although they are actually better executed than those in Carpenter’s version to some degree, they are not nearly as creative as the 1982 version and so don’t seem quite as interesting as those ones. Not quite by the numbers either, though, and the way the characters and creatures are moved and manipulated to eventually match up with the carnage that McReady discovers in the next/previous film in the sequence is rather cleverly done. They’ve even got a character which bears a strong resemblance to Kurt Russels character in this one... who ends up throwing his lot in with Mary Elizabeth Winstead’s character by the end of the movie (as you knew he would).

It also has some fairly weak points. When one character is revealed at the end to be an offshoot of the creature... it makes absolutely no sense given that character’s actions and motivations up to that point... right then, that’s it for specific weak points... only one that I can see at the moment then.

The film has two endings. The first, natural ending sets it up for a sequel. When the idea of a sequel to this was first mooted before the filming of the “prequel” was even under way, people assumed that this sequel would just be a cash-in remake of Carpenter’s version. But here we have an ending which allows for a new, original sequel involving the Russian base camp. And it’s also at this point that fans of the Carpenter version will want to know what the heck is going on... this can’t be the ending, surely, if it’s supposed to be a prequel. Fear not, wait until the credits have started playing out and we get a mini additional ending intercut with the end credits... so a few credits... another bit of the movie... a few more credits... then another bit of the movie... an so on. And it’s here that the writers brilliantly bring in a brand new character and another character from the movie, who by now I had completely forgotten was still alive and on the loose somewhere, returns into the narrative. The two characters meet and then we see... the dog/thing. It runs... the two Norwegian characters pursue in a helicopter trying to shoot the dog and... well, watch the 1982 movie to see what happens next.

At the end of the day, the new version of THE THING is a great little scifi/horror movie which is nowhere near as good as the previous two but also, in no way, drags the other two down... it’s a good little genre movie. Take a look at it because, if this kind of movie is your thing, you won’t be disappointed.

The Thing at NUTS4R2

The Thing From Another World (1951)
The Thing (1982)
The Thing (2011)