THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951)

"Watch the skies everywhere! Keep looking! Keep watching the skies!"
The Thing from Another World was released in 1951 and was a smash hit, playing on fears generated by the Cold War, the Soviet Union’s possession of the atom bomb, a populist antipathy towards science in the nuclear age and the UFO flap in 1947 starting with Kenneth Arnold’s sighting at Mount Rainier, Washington and the ‘incident’ at Roswell, New Mexico.

Set in an Arctic research station, the film tells the story of a group of American Air Force personnel and scientists who investigate a crashed UFO buried under the ice. Attempting to free it, they accidentally blow up the craft but retrieve the pilot frozen in a block of ice. When the body is taken to headquarters, it is inadvertently thawed out and it attacks the guard before escaping.

The military, led by Air Force Captain Patrick Hendry (Kenneth Tobey), decide to destroy the creature, but the science community led by Dr. Carrington (Robert Cornthwaite) feel it is a living member of the carrot family that subsists on blood. Carrington uses the alien’s arm, torn off when it attacked the sled dogs, to grow alien plant buds, but after it has attacked again, female scientist Nikki (Margaret Sheridan) suggests they ‘boil’ it. Although Carrington wants to communicate and reason with the creature, the military, with the help of the other scientists, rig up a method of passing electricity through it and boiling it away to nothing.

Officially credited to Christian Nyby, this sci-fi/horror movie is thought to be the work of Howard Hawks. Nyby had been Hawks’ editor on Red River and when the latter refused to re-edit Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw, Nyby had stepped in. Hawks’ company, Winchester Pictures, produced The Thing and allegedly, Hawks gave Nyby the directorial credit for this past favour; indeed, existing production stills indicate Hawks is in charge of the actors. Nyby’s future career also raises questions about his role: the movie was a critical and commercial hit, but it was five years before he directed his next one, Hell on Devil’s Island and none of his later works come close to the quality of The Thing. Hawks was also involved in the script: while credited to Charles Lederer, it is known that it underwent re-writes by Hawks and Ben Hecht.

People familiar with Hawks’ films will recognise various aspects of his style, particularly the pacing, overlapping dialogue, humour,a concentration on a group of people working together calmly under considerable pressure and the female character who finds her place in the group.

Although Kenneth Tobey is the star, it’s more of an ensemble piece and the other actors, most of who would only ever be seen in supporting roles, are excellent, particularly at conveying a sense of actually listening when the dialogue overlaps and not just waiting for their turn to talk. Their naturalistic manners and light humour help create a feeling of grace under pressure while reflecting the sense of camaraderie that unites the characters. Nikki is a typically assertive Hawks woman who skilfully spars verbally with Hendry, jokes with him like his male colleagues and proves her worth by suggesting the way to kill the creature. At one point, in a scene reminiscent of the one in The Big Sleep where Vivian Rutledge (Lauren Bacall) puts a cigarette in the lips of the tied-up Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart), she ties his hands behind his back, as if indulging in some kind of fetishistic foreplay as she feeds him drinks before kissing him once he is passive.

The source for the film is a short story, Who Goes There?, by John W. Campbell, Jr., first published under his pseudonym, Don A. Stuart; unlike the movie monster, however, Campbell’s alien had the ability to shape-shift – something that is picked up in John Carpenter’s remake, The Thing (1982) – and the soldiers begin to suspect each other of being the creature. To reflect the themes evident in his other films, Hawks and Ben Hecht took Charles Lederer’s script and fashioned a work that dealt more with the dynamics of the group under pressure, as exemplified by the shot of them joining hands in a circle on the ice to show the circumference and size of the UFO and the various group shots inside the base, including one that involves 17 characters interacting.

For the exterior shots before the alien ship is discovered, Hawks shot in North Dakota in winter when the plane lands, but the scene with the craft was shot in fake snow and ice and with a fake sky backdrop; in fact, the same piece of sky can be seen in several shots regardless of the situation of the cameras. However, when the craft is destroyed, the camera pans up, following the smoke and travels- rather obviously, unfortunately - beyond the sky backdrop onto the real sky!

The Thing from Another World is one of the first big science-fiction films of the 1950s and unlike many later efforts, does not rely heavily on special effects. Even though the characters and the audience are aware of the size of the space ship, it is not seen; the monster (James Arness, later of Gunsmoke fame) is only glimpsed in shadows and on his first full appearance, a matte is used to obscure his face. In fact, to help create suspense, the original poster does not feature the alien at all, but rather the title as if burned into some object, and several wires as if hinting, in a rather obtuse fashion, at the ending of the movie.

From the open spaces of the arctic seen in the early sequences, the action shifts to the enclosed environment of the base, where a raging snow storm serves to reinforce the notion that the characters are trapped. Adding to the suspense is Dimitri Tiomkin’s score, using a theremin to accentuate the shocks; for example, when the men find the monster’s arm after it has been ripped off by the dogs. However, rather than increase the pace of the editing to engender a sense of action and panic, Hawks relies more on having the characters talk more briskly, as if they are in control but hurrying to get the job done. In the final encpunter, they are cornered in the dark, waiting for the alien, yet he is in their trap.

Eventually, the scientists and the airmen make their stand in the generator room and construct a trap using high voltage electricity on overhead leads as a weapon. Carrington attempts to stop them, first by closing down the power on the base and then by trying to reason with the creature, but he is brushed aside before the others pass electrical current through it, shrivelling it down to nothing.

The film can be read as a Cold War parable with the men fighting a single-minded entity with no sense of morality, bent on destruction in an suitably icy environment: the journalist, Scotty, exhorts people to “Watch the skies” – presumably for invading Soviet aircraft - while Hendry fears the Russians may well be “all over the pole like flies” and has to deal with Carrington, a McCarthy-era “enemy within”, who, like contemporary liberals, wants to talk to the enemy and tries to deceive the military men.

A typical concern of the science fiction films in the 1950s is the conflict between the military and the scientists. Carrington thinks the alien is an intelligent, superior being, not led by emotion and his intellectual concerns subsume rational sensibility, but in keeping with the Hawks admiration for the group under pressure, there is no choice: its survival is paramount and the other scientists try to persuade him that he is wrong.

However, this is not as straightforward as it seems. That Carrington is prepared to sacrifice anything to pursue scientific knowledge reflects another key theme – the mistrust of science in the atomic age. Early in the film, it is noted that Carrington was at Bikini Atoll where atomic tests were carried out and when he refers to the atomic bomb as an example of scientific progress, one soldier retorts, “That sure made everybody happy.”

More than this, there is a traditional American dislike of the elite, whether this is Carrington, who with his trimmed facial hair and the smart manner in which he dresses, physically stands apart from everyone on the base, including the other scientists who help the soldiers, or the military commander, General Fogarty, who is physically, emotionally and intellectually distant and advises Hendry to do as Carrington wishes.

It may be that in the end it is American servicemen and sensible scientists who win the day, but ultimately, for a ‘conservative’ film, it is only because the group, both soldiers and scientists, pull together and act as one in their common interest that they are able to defeat the Thing and when they do so, they employ scientific methods to finally kill it. Furthermore, although Carrington has put everyone’s life on the line, he is readmitted into the Hawksian group and Scotty is praised by one of the airmen for noting that he is making a recovery from “injuries sustained in the battle."

With: Kenneth Tobey (Captain Patrick Hendry), Margaret Sheridan ("Nikki" Nicholson), Robert Cornthwaite (Dr. Arthur Carrington), Douglas Spencer (Ned "Scotty" Scott), James R. Young (Lt. Eddie Dykes), Dewey Martin (Bob, crew chief), Robert Nichols (Lt. Ken McPherson), William Self (Corporal Barnes), Eduard Franz (Dr. Stern), Sally Creighton (Mrs. Chapman), James Arness (The Thing), George Fenneman ( Dr. Redding), John Dierkes (Dr. Chapman), Edmund Breon (Dr. Ambrose), Paul Frees (Dr. Vorhees), Everett Glass (Dr. Wilson), David McMahon (Brigadier General Fogarty)
Director: Christian Nyby, Howard Hawks (uncredited)
Screenplay: Charles Lederer, Ben Hecht (uncredited), Howard Hawks (uncredited), (based on the story "Who Goes There" by Don A. Stuart, aka John W. Campbell Jr.)
Producer: Howard Hawks
Associate Producer: Edward Lasker
Director of Photography: Russell Harlan, A.S.C. (b/w)

See also:

John W. Campbell’s original short story, Who Goes There?:
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Highrise/3756/jc/who/bonusid.htm

Charles Lederer's initial draft of the script: http://leonscripts.tripod.com/scripts/THING51.htm

'The Great Disillusionment’: H.G. Wells, Mankind, and Aliens
in American Invasion Horror Films of the 1950s by Leslie Sheldon http://irishgothichorrorjournal.homestead.com/Wells1950saliens.html

'Polar Paranoia and Generic Invention: The Thing (From Another World) (1951)’

by Roderick Heath
http://ferdyonfilms.com/2009/05/polar-paranoia-and-generic-inv.php

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044121/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_From_Another_World

Howard Hawks: American Artist edited by Jim Hillier and Peter Wollen (British Film Institute: London, 1996)

Seeing is Believing or How Hollywood Taught Us to Stop Worrying and Love the 50s by Peter Biskind (Bloomsbury: London, 2001)

John Carpenter's commentary on the 2-disc special edition DVD of the film released in 2003.