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The Thing




Yesterday, one of my friends on Facebook posted that she was in the mood to watch an old sci-fi movie from the 1950’s and was looking for suggestions. A lot of people suggested The Day the Earth Stood Still, which is a fine movie in its own right, but the first thing that popped into my mind was The Thing, or as it was originally titled: The Thing from Another World.

In the movie, Captain Hendry is ordered to fly to an Air Force base at the North Pole and investigate the crash of a strange aircraft. The craft turns out to be a flying saucer (the movie was made in 1951 when flying saucers were all the rage). From the wreckage, they recover the body of an alien frozen in ice. Of course, the ice thaws, the alien comes to life and general havoc ensues. It is a cracking good monster movie.

The Thing was either directed by Christian Nyby or Howard Hawks depending on who you wish to believe. Hawks was credited as the producer and Nyby as director. Some say that Hawks directed it but gave Nyby the credit so he could earn his Directors Guild membership. In any event, Howard Hawks certainly contributed a lot to the film. The movie was loosely based on a 1938 novella by John W. Campbell Jr. entitled “Who Goes There?” Campbell was a giant in the early days of written science fiction. He was known not only for his writing but as editor of Astounding Science Fiction, later called Analog Science fiction and Fact (I believe Analog is the only magazine from the Golden Age of science fiction that still survives to this day).

The last time I saw The Thing was some years ago. My wife was away. I was alone in the house. As I got into this movie, it really started affecting me. I was getting creeped out by a 1951 movie! The dialogue may be a bit corny here and there, but most of the time it feels very real (unusually so, for a film from that time). The characters are well-developed and you actually want to spend time with them. The tone of the movie is expertly crafted. It is a taut, tension-filled thriller that could teach a few things to modern film makers. And in fact, it has been imitated by many other horror films that came later. In 1982 John Carpenter made a remake of The Thing. This one is closer to the original novella. The 1982 film has its merits, but for me, I would rather watch the old film. It was remade again in 2011. I have not seen the 2011 version, so I can’t comment on it.  There was also that episode on the X-Files called “Ice” which seemed to me to draw a lot of ideas from the Campbell story.

Now in the time of quarantine, it is a good time to find some old movies and watch or rewatch them. It is interesting to see how/or if these movies shaped things that came after them. As I was thinking about The Thing, I realized that my novel Star Liner had some unconscious similarities to the film. At least I was going for a similar sense of claustrophobic paranoia that comes from being in a confined space with an unknown evil. Whether I succeeded or not is up to my readers.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available in paperback or as an e-book through Amazon and other online sources).


Link to Star Liner

Comments

  1. pious agnosticMay 23, 2020 at 2:27 PM

    The scene early on where the men spread out above the craft until they form a circle: perfect!

    ReplyDelete

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