The Thing from Another World (1951)

I have mixed feelings about The Thing from Another World, but it is a classy production with some sensational scenes of action and thrills. But I would say that Carpenter succeeds better telling the story of “Who goes there?”. I guess my main problem is that it’s way to narrow and conservative. Science is something bad and women are only reduced to serving coffee and being pretty. I guess that was a normal thing in 1951, but it felt like an obviously smart movie like this could have done better in that department. I’m not saying that other movies from the same time and later in this genre did it better, but it’s a very obvious thing and it’s stated very clearly several times that, for example, science and thinking just causes problem. Kill is the best opinion, not communication.

But now I’m whining too much, The Thing From Another World is a great monster film, a wonderful slice of fifties sci-fi and has so many good things to, because what we expect from a movie like this is monsters and mayhem and it really deliver a lot of that using the claustrophobic and atmospheric sets as a background.

It’s quite different than Carpenters The Thing and gone is the excellent paranoia, just a classic and well-made monster movie with some really cool ideas. A few scenes here and there is brought over to the eighties by Carpenter, but his movie very much feels like a sequel to this one – which makes the upcoming prequel even more interesting, because it will probably be closer both to the original movie and the original short story at the same time.

James Arness as the monster is both silly and cool at the same time, and thankfully they let him stay far from the camera and often slightly in shadows or with clever editing making us have problem looking at his face to long. One scene that’s excellent is when they open the door to the greenhouse and the monster is standing there, close to the door, trying to grab them. This reminded me of the door-sequence, and the first kill, in Tobe Hoopers The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Another scene that is very impressive and looks damn dangerous is when the actors are throwing gasoline all over the place and trying to set “the thing” on fire. This is in the same class as the fire scene in the remake! I wonder if someone got hurt, but it’s a very risky sequence!

One thing that makes this film stand out compared to other genre movies is the extremely witty and fast dialogue, which is non-stop. This could be a damn Tarantino-movie for what I know, because people are talking constantly and often interrupting each other, changing subjects in mid-sentence, utter just one or two words before getting distracted. It’s like a dialogue-ballet, very carefully written and makes the scenes move fast like the lightning. Never seen anything like this actually, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Maybe the hype took the movie down a notch for me, and my love for Carpenters version (one of the best movies ever made) made me love this movie less and made it easier for me to see the faults, but it’s still a magnificent sci-fi classic and a must for fans of the genre. I hope to see it out on blu-ray someday, to be able to enjoy the black & white photo even more.