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)

High Noon

From Miller To Post

High Noon
US 1952 Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Eureka Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray Zone B

High Noon really is one of the all time great American Westerns. It’s been a fair few decades since I’d watched it last (I used to love it as a kid) but I recently bought my father the new Eureka - Masters Of Cinema Blu Ray and, of course, I sat down to watch it with him. I was blown away all over again by it’s stark, black and white photography, the driven Dimitri Tiomkin score with the important song Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling and some interesting actors doing their thing - including Gary Cooper, Grace Kelly (later Princess of Monaco), Katy Jurado, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr (the monster man is billed here as simply Lon Chaney, for some reason), an uncredited Jack Elam and, not forgetting, the screen debut of one Lee Van Cleef... as one of the four men gunning for Cooper’s Marshal character Will Kane.

Actually, I have to say, I didn’t realise this was Van Cleef’s debut until after I watched it again and looked him up. I mean, it’s a pretty rare debut. Okay, so he’s not the bad guy... Frank Miller (played by Ian McDonald) or even the main villain of the three gunfighters waiting for Frank to return to town on the noon train (that would be Frank’s brother Ben, played by Sheb Wooley)... but he has a large portion of the opening credits solo, while he gets ready and joins the other two gunmen to ride to the railway station. He really looks like a villain and, with his scarred face and wild eye reactions, which feature a couple of times in the film, I have to wonder if Sergio Leone maybe looked at this film long and hard over the years before making the actor a household name and using him in two of his famous Spaghetti Westerns. When we think of those Leone movies, we think of the stylised poses, the expressive eyes and the constant waiting and... well, it’s all here in High Noon, long before the Italians started doing it, mostly, better than the Americans. Or at least as interestingly. As the three wait for the train, you will certainly be reminded of Leone’s later masterpiece Once Upon A Time In The West and I would bet this is one of the films he looked at for inspiration.

The plot, if you’ve never seen the film before, goes something like this...

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) marries his quaker lover Amy (Grace Kelly) but finds out that the murderous Frank Miller has just been released from jail (from up north!) and is returning on the noon train to get together with his fellow thugs to gun down the marshall in an act of revenge and then, as implied, take over the town with their hoodlum ways. The town’s folk try to get Mr and Mrs Kane to leave in a buckboard but Kane soon turns back to pick up his tin star (the new marshal doesn’t get into town until the day after) and try to get help to fight off these four cold blooded killers in an attempt to protect the community. Amy doesn’t understand this course of action and tells him she will be on that noon train when it arrives. His former girlfriend, the Mexican Helen Ramírez (played wonderfully by Katy Jurado) also ends things with the marshal’s deputy, played by Lloyd Bridges. She is also set to leave on the noon train.

Meanwhile, in a searing metaphorical indictment of the Hollywood anti-communist black list as experienced by one of the producers about to be put on that list, Kane calls on the various friends and acquaintances in town, only to be met with inaction or untenable conditions to the required help. Bridges character quits over the matter and, even the one man qualified enough to help, changes his mind just before the villains show up. Which leaves just Kane and, as one of two strong female characters in the film, his wife Amy... who shows up to aid him in ways which I won’t spoil for you here if you’ve never seen it.

And it’s a staggeringly good movie. There are probably a fair few moving camera shots in the film but the absolutely beautiful 1.33:1 black and white photography set ups coupled with the pacing make the film appear static and, it has to be said, feel somewhat claustrophobic, as the characters and audience count down the minutes until the train gets into town. Which is something the audience can actually do in this film because, aside from some stuff at the start (and we’re only talking minutes), the entire film is shot... or at least edited... in real time. The various shots of clocks of all shapes and sizes included in the visuals to give you a constant reminder (and surprisingly accurate one, considering how a Hollywood movie is shot) of just how long you’ve got until the shooting starts... underlined by the fairly regular, tick tock percussion of the main title theme which, actually, I think was the first time a movie song had been written into the actual score to add emphasis. Can you imagine a Bond film that didn’t do this? Well, okay, there have been a few of them over the last decade but they’re all the poorer for it.

It’s also a film of mounting tension and unsaid or understated plot points. Nothing is directly said and, though there are some dense sections of scenes heavy with dialogue, a lot of the film plays out like a silent movie in terms of lack of conversation and it’s stronger for it (something else I suspect Sergio Leone learned from films like this). For instance, it’s never explicitly stated that Helen is the marshal’s ex but, as various comments are thrown about a picture is painted that she has history with the main antagonist of the film and you can piece together that the main protagonist, Will Kane, got her out of some problems before hitching up with her himself. It’s something an audience can sew together in their mind, just as Will’s new wife Amy does about half way through the film.

So, yeah, brilliantly minimal but carrying a lot of meaning in a way which almost seems a forgotten art in Hollywood nowadays, where teen audiences have lit a fire which ignorantly blazes through the subtlety of the art of cinematic implication and helped boil things down to a lowest common denominator of clear but stifling explanations and clarifications before the latest heroic incarnations can even get their clothes on. In this way the film is, perhaps, of its time but, honestly, it also feels strikingly timeless, especially with it’s criticisms of the common people on the street failing to do their duty and arguing their way out of harms way by justifying their stance in inventive rhetoric which never, quite, seems all that convincing.

And that’s me done on High Noon. One of the all time great movies that Hollywood ever put out and as entertaining a film as you’re likely to see. It holds up really well over the years and this new Blu Ray from Eureka is stacked with some interesting extras which, alas, I probably wont have time to watch for a very long time, if ever. But, as a recommendation, my dad absolutely loved it too and so do I and I reckon it’s a ‘must see’ for any fans of the art of the medium in general. Do not forsake this new release of an all time classic Western because, honestly, you’d be missing out.