Hey, Welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb. Today's episode, originally published September twenty fourth, twenty twenty one. Oh, it's a fun one because we are discussing the Thing from Another World. This, of course was the original adaptation of John W. Campbell Junior's short story Who Goes There, and it would of course be remade years and years later in John Carpenter's The Thing. But this is a pretty terrific movie in its own right from nineteen fifty one.
Let's jump right in. This episode of the Stuff to Blow Your Mind Radio Hour is brought to you by Thermid. If you need a high temperature burst of heat, then this pyrotechnic composition of metal powder and metal oxide is for you. Metal refining, fireworks, munitions burning through the ice to retrieve down spaceships and alien beings. Thermite does it all, Am, I ask for it by name.
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Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
And I'm Joe McCormick, and it's finally time on the Weird House Cinema podcast to cover the Thing No, not that The Thing, not the one you're thinking of, the horror classic, the other The Thing, the Thing from another world.
Yes, this is a film that I had never seen prior to this week, and I think part of it was because John Carpenter's nineteen eighty two film The Thing is just this masterpiece of science fiction and horror for so many obvious It's visceral but intelligent. It's well acted, it's effectively scored, it makes great use of sets and locations, and just features a bounty of legendary and grotesque practical effects.
Totally, without a doubt, an absolute masterpiece, one of the best horror movies ever made. Can't say enough good stuff about Carpenter's The Thing, from the effects, to the acting to the music, it's just it's pretty much pitch perfect.
But of course, one of the things we always have to remind ourselves, especially perhaps if we're becoming getting a little too judgmental about remakes and reboots and so forth, is because I have to remind myself of this is that John Carpenter's The Thing is also essentially a remake or a reboot, if you will, based on the story who goes there by John W. Campbell Junior, an author from like the sci fi so called pulp Golden Age, and Carpenter's film is the second official adaptation of this story,
but the first is the film we're talking about here today, nineteen fifty one's The Thing from Another World.
I had also never seen this movie in full before, though I'd seen some scenes from it, and I had seen it because it is briefly featured on a television in John Carpenter's Halloween.
Oh that's right, I forgot about that.
Yeah, one of the kids who's being babysat is watching it. I think he's I think maybe he's not quite old enough for this movie.
So this is a film I've always known this was around, you know. At some point after being exposed to Carpenter's The Thing, I learned about this older version, and maybe I would even occasionally see it in the schedule or catch part of it on like Turner Classic Movies or something. But I never sat down and watched it. And we'll get into some of the reasons why, but basically they all roll down to me thinking, oh, this this film
is a modern film. I don't want to see this earlier like proto Thing Vision I'm going to stick with perfection. But then I was looking through Michael Weldon's and the author of the Psychotronic video and film Guides, I was looking at his ride up on First on John Carpenter's The Thing, which was glowing and you know, and says, oh, you know this is this is a wonderful, grotesque, monstrous film.
Not surprised that he would love that one. But of course Welden's also a fan of older genre films as well, And I was reading this really high praise for this nineteen fifty one film, talking about it having intelligent dialogue and a strong female lead, and so that that really got me thinking, well, maybe I should give this a look.
You know, the strong female lead being sort of doubly interesting because on one hand, it's nineteen fifty one, You don't you know that you don't necessarily think of of this being the era of strong female leads. And then also you think about John Carpenter's adaptation, and there are no women in it at all. It's an entirely male cast.
Yeah, And Carpenter's version, the all male cast of characters, somehow fits the miserable bleakness of the Antarctic bass in the movie, but I would say that having watched it now I know what Michael Weldon is talking, though I think it might be slightly over selling Margaret Sheridan's role in the movie, though she is fantastic and I really like her character. She does a great job with it. But I was expecting her to be the main character of the movie based on this, which she is not.
But in her scenes she is great.
Yeah, and we'll get into this a bit later. It basically comes down to this idea of the Haxian woman, and well you'll find out what that means.
But in terms of differences between the Thing and the Thing from Another World, I think we're sort of burying the lead because the one major way in which The Thing from Another World nineteen fifty one differs from Carpenter's movie is that the original film does not involve impersonation. People who are familiar with Carpenter's movie will remember the main thing about it is that the alien can assume the forms of the humans or the animals that it kills.
So it is this polymorphous being that can sort of sample the tissue of an organism it comes into contact with and then make its own body into a copy of that being, which is a wonderful plot device. The central mechanic of Carpenter's movie gives rise to the paranoia that doesn't really exist in the original. Or maybe there is a kind of sense of paranoia, but it's powered by different factors that I want to discuss in more
detail as we go on. But in this movie, the Thing is simply a big, hulking alien that thaws out of a block of ice and then attacks the base where all the characters are stationed. It doesn't assume the form of anyone if you're actually able to get a good look at it, which you're not really in the movie, And in fact, that's a really good thing about the movie. The movie obscures the form of the monster for most
of the runtime in a highly effective way. But if you were able to get a really good, well lit gander at it, it just looks kind of like James Arness in a big, creepy Frankenstein makeup and spacesuit.
Yeah, and this was a huge reason why I had never checked out a film before, because I'd see that famous publicity shot of James Arnez in the Thing costume, and I would think, well that that looks kind of lame. I don't really want to see a movie about that, especially when John Carpenter's version of it is this amorphous, ultimately formless thing that takes on just a number of just grotesque and shifting forms.
Yeah. And in fact, I mean I've said this on the show before, I think one big mistake a lot of horror movies make is letting you get too much of a look at the monster. I mean, horror movies should be sparing in letting you see the monster. It's good, it's good to heighten the tension and make it more mysterious by usually keeping the monster off screen, I'd say Carpenter's The Thing is a movie that breaks that rule to great effect. You get tons of great shots of
the monster and it looks fantastic. So, you know, if you're kind of the thing about rules with artistic media is you have to obey the rule unless it's just really good anyway. Yeah, but yeah, I know what you're talking about. With the way the monster looks in this movie. This is a major thing I wanted to talk about. I was shocked how scary the creature was in this movie, and I really mean that like movies of this era are I really appreciate them, but they're rarely viscerally disturbing
on a visual level to modern audiences. And that's not a knock on them. And in fact, like at the time they might have had people fainting in the aisles or falling out of their cars with drive in, but makeup effects from before roughly the I don't know, the seventies or so, I think, rarely pack a strong punch with audiences today. We've just sort of standards have been updated. And so even if the way Boris Karloff looked and his Frankenstein makeup was terrifying to people at the time,
I think it looks beautiful. I think it looks amazing. I love to look at it, but I don't find it really really terrifying. And I would say that the baseline monster in this movie is no exception to that rule that if you just look at the makeup effects of the time, they're usually not going to pack a very strong punch. If you look at well lit still photographs of James Arnest that the actor who plays the monster in the Thing, in his alien makeup and costume
for the movie, I think he looks goobery. He just looks kind of like an EGA guy. He looks like Frankenstein, sort of in a space in a jumpsuit, and yet somehow, on the screen within the narrative, he is so much more than that. This is a movie monster that benefits immensely from really strong staging, lighting, and camera work more so than makeup effects. So most of the time you see the monster in the movie, his appearance is sudden
or brief or obscured in some way. So maybe the characters are looking out at him through frosted glass on a snowfield, or he or somebody opens a door and he suddenly reaches out through it as they try to slam it shut, or he's just a menacing silhouette at the end of a corridor, you know, and his features
are covered in shadow. So really hats off to the team that came up with the staging for all these scenes and the lighting and the framing and all that, because even though the makeup effects kind of fall short, the monster on screen within the narrative looks wonderful. He's really frightening.
Absolutely, Like, for instance, in the movie, you never get a sense that this character is wearing partially ragged space pajamas. But if you look at the still, you're like, those are space pajamas, clearly. Yeah.
Yeah, So they took a kind of goober Frankenstein and turned him into this truly menacing being a really excellent, excellent filmmaking technique.
Well, I'd like to get into this more. Let's go ahead and just give the basic elevator pitch of the plot, especially for people who, you know, did they just know the Carpenter version. They maybe don't know how much in common this one has with that film, aside from the details of the monster.
Okay, well, maybe I'll do the straight elevator pitch first and then we'll see if we have any variations on it. The straight plot description, I would say is a mysterious object from space crashes near a remote Arctic research base. When a team of scientists and military men go to investigate, they find a humanoid body frozen in the ice, and they have to bring it back to the base with them, and I guess you just better hope it doesn't thaw out.
I like that. Let's go ahead and listen to a little bit of that trailer audio.
The thing from another world. This is the spot where it was first seen, and these are the first people who saw the thing. How did it get here? Where did it come from? What is it? That being alive? So I saw it, I shot it, I hit it, I know it. Nothing happened, but just kept coming up me, making it noise like codn It was awful, those hands and those eyes. So you've got to tell you about it. You've got is it human or inhuman? Earthly or unearthly?
Baffling questions, astounding questions that not even the world's greatest scientific minds can answer. Gentlemen, do you realize what we've found? A being from another world's different from us, is one pole from the other if we can only communicate with it?
All right? So I want to come back to something you were just talking about, and that was the idea of doors opening. So yes, the research base in this movie feels it's more or less in keeping with the spirit that Carpenter had in his version of the film. You know, there are these a lot of these long corridors. There are doorways separating different sections of it. Everything feel doesn't feel super modern. It feels very very rough. In places.
There's this idea that outside of this compound there's just frozen death awaiting any creature, and it's inside that we have this slim, artificial version of life, sustaining temperatures.
And that makes actually for a killer twist later in the movie, where you haven't even really been thinking about this while they're coming up all these different ways of battling the thing. The thing is sort of laying siege to the humans in the base, and then at a certain point they're like, oh no, somebody turned off the heaters.
Yeah, so it's a wonderful set piece in which to engage with this monster. But one of the things that I was really taken by watching it is just how scary all the doors are. There's a lot of characters going in and out of doors in this film, often very quickly, and even before a monster the monster jumped out from behind a door. I was feeling anxious whenever a door would open like it was. It was really effective.
And then eventually a monster is coming out from behind the door, and there's worry about things jumping out behind doors. I don't think doors have ever been quite this scary.
One hundred percent agree, Yeah, this movie does something really special with like portals, openings, doors, windows, It's really good.
Also lots of scenes where like the door to the outside has been opened and you know there's the sense of that crushing cold coming in. So it works on several levels.
I think since we're not going to do a scene by scene breakdown on this one, I guess to make more sense for people who haven't seen especially either movie, it might make sense to do a quick, fuller rundown on the plot. So the basic cast of characters is that you have a journalist and then a group of military commanders who fly by plane up to a remote Arctic research base where there is some scientific research going on.
And then, like I said in the elevator pitch earlier, there is a crash of some kind of object near the base, and the scientists and the soldiers go out to investigate it, and it looks like what they have encountered is a crashed flying saucer, a crash Dailien spacecraft. And then they're frozen in the ice. On the ice field is a humanoid figure. So they chip that they dig that out of the ice with ice axes and
with thermite. Yes, this movie is a big fan of thermite, of course, and the thermite thing kind of goes wrong. I think they end up sort of melting the ship by accident while they're trying to get it up out of the ice. But they do get this body out of the ice and they bring it back to the base, and then through a series of mishaps, this body in a chunk of ice is accidentally thought out, and what they come to discover is that this is a being from another planet that is not an animal, but is
in fact an animate of vegetable. They sort of explore the alternative evolutionary history of this creature and say, what if plant life on Earth had evolved the ability to move quickly and have intelligence and have a mobile body instead of animal life. And so that's sort of what we're dealing with. And there's a lot of discussion about
the creature's mindset toward humans. It apparently needs to consume us, it wants to drink our blood, but it doesn't have any It doesn't really have any remorse for us or understanding of us as fellow creatures. Instead, as one character so eloquently puts it, he regards us the same way we would regard a field of cabbages.
Yeah. Yeah, this idea that the dog is just the short, furry blood container and then the humans are just the larger, hairless blood containers. Yeah, and it just needs the blood.
It's just calories.
Yeah. Yeah.
But so within this plot, a number of interesting themes emerge, and maybe we can talk more about those as we go on. But I guess here's where we would typically get into some of the people involved in this and talk about some connections. Now, Rob, you might have read more about the production of this film than I did.
I'm to understand. I think there's some disagreement or confusion about what the level of control, like who basically was in charge of making this movie, who was the director, and what was their relative level of control.
Yeah, there's kind it's kind of an open question or a matter of debate that'll probably never be fully settled, especially since I think everybody involved with this film or most of them, have passed on. But the basic situation, I'm going to talk about who is the credited director first.
So the credited director on this is Christian Nibe who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen ninety three, is a TV and film director who served as editor on such films as Howard Hawke's nineteen forty six adaptation of The Big Sleep. This had Humphrey Bogart in it, and William Faulkner actually co scripted this adaptation of the Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe novel, which is a really good novel by the way.
Interesting I've actually never read it.
However, this film, The Thing from Another World is Nibby's. It was his first directorial credit. It's easily the biggest film, or at least biggest, you know, the most well remembered film that he did, although he worked an entire career afterwards as a TV director up until the mid nineteen seventies.
Okay, so Nibee is credited as the director of the film, but for some reason, I've always heard this described as having been directed by Howard Hawks, who of course is an acclaimed filmmaker of the time. So what's the deal with that?
Okay, So Howard Hawks, who we just alluded to, had worked with Nibe. Nibe was his editor. So Hawks was also known as the Silver Fox, and if you look up pictures of it you can see why, you know, dashing sort of silver looking hair.
I guess it looks like somebody who would be in like a whiskey a Scotch commercial on TV in the fifties or something.
Absolutely dashing. Character and director of sech films is Red River, Rio Bravo, nineteen thirty two, Scarface, El Dorado, and Hatari, as well as the aforementioned The Big Sleep. He was nominated for an Academy Award for nineteen forty two Sergeant York, and he received an Honorary Academy Award in nineteen seventy four. He's considered a legend of the classic Hollywood era, and while he was not the credited director or the credited co writer on The Thing From Another World, you'll often
see it looks like. For instance, you'll see him listed on IMDb as uncredited director, uncredited writer. Basically, various accounts indicate that he was the director and he, for some reason or another, let Christian Nibe take the directing credit, which again would be his first. John Carpenter among others,
have echoed this view. However, various other folks, including some people involved with the actual production of the film, have said otherwise, and they say no, Nibe was the director, So ultimately, you know how can you say one way or the other. It does seem like Hawks greatly valued Nibe, and it's said that Nibe was an instrumental editor in
many of his films. So it's been argued that perhaps Hawks thought that sci fi was beneath him and didn't want his name on it, and or he gave the credit to Niby so that he could get into the director's guild, you know, like, let's go ahead and put your name on this film and this will help your career. It's hard to say what exactly was going on here, but I doubt we're going to get a definite answer on it ever. But it does not say I want
to stress though. I've seen no accounts that indicate that this was some sort of This was a situation of animosity or like one director being replaced. We often see that in this in production stories where I this this
guy's out on the outs, bring in this guy. No, it seems like something else was going on here, and you know, if anything, it was probably Hawk's helping out Naiby, or it's just been a situation where Hawks was involved in the production and Nibee was still the director, and maybe people were more inclined to give Hawks more credit than he perhaps deserved for it. I mean, I don't know what the answer is here.
Sure, I guess we'll have to leave that one sort of unanswered.
That being said, folks that are familiar with Hawks, they do point to various things about this film that have his fingerprints on it. So and you put you can of course explain that, explain. You can explain that away a bit by saying, well, Hawks and Nibe worked together so much. You know, they had similar interests, they worked together to make these previous films. So who knows. We're not going to reach an answer today.
Well, I will emphasize yet again that I think pretty much across the board in terms of technical filmmaking, this is an excellently made movie, especially for science fiction films at the time. I mean, there are definitely things that you can criticize about it, and we will as kind of kind of like quaint or product of their era. But a lot of that's in the actual sort of
story content. In terms of a technical exercise in filmmaking, I think the Thing from Another World just is awesome for nineteen fifty one.
Absolutely. Yeah, if you're hesitant to watch this just because it is an early nineteen fifties film. Just know that it is in many ways ahead of its time. All Right, So we mentioned already that this was based on a short story based on a short story by John W. Campbell Junior, who lived nineteen nineteen through nineteen seventy one. Pulp era sci fi writer and editor of Astounding Science Fiction. He wrote numerous short stories in several novels, though Who
Goes There? The story that this is based on is perhaps his best remembered, and I believe it was recently re released in an expanded form, like they went back to an old manuscript, and there's stuff in that original manuscript that in some cases is actually present in the film version, but not in the original story, if I'm correct on that.
Now, having read only a little bit about Campbell, it seems to me that his life sort of breaks into a couple of different parts that like early on, it seems like most of what you read about him is that he's just sort of like an output machine, Like he's just writing tons and tons of very influential science fiction and editing tons of people and like cultivating the early careers of a lot of people who would become
later science fiction writers. And then it seems like the other half is that he descends into increasingly bizarre interest in pseudoscience and right wing politics.
Yeah. Yeah, that seems to be the case.
You know.
Some accounts indicate that he could always be a bit of a blowhard and would was prone to just talk a lot, like if you were going to go in and chat with them about anything, you were going to get a monologue. But yeah, in life, he apparently increasingly espounded ideas that did not set well with more progressive sci fi authors of his time, such as Isaac Asimov.
Yeah, the main things I've seen picked out are increasing interest in hard right politics, and then like belief in psychic powers and stuff, and being into sort of the Dianetics nexus of alternative psychiatry.
Yeah. Plus, I was reading about him in a twenty nineteen piece in The New York Times by Peter Libby about the renaming of a science fiction writing award that had been named for Campbell and how they changed it because the reason was it like Campbell supported racial segregation during his life, and he has founded numerous racist and inflammatory viewpoints, like the kind of guy who would not only hold hold racist viewpoints, but also would like seem to go the extra step in just trying to rile
people up and shock people with his opinions. So yeah, that's that is John W. Campbell Jr.
Now do you know if Campbell does he have any involvement with the film or was it just that he wrote the story and then it was adapted to a screenplay with without his involvement.
I don't know the details of his involvement, but I know that he's not credited with any screenwriting credits on this. Instead, we have the credited screenwriter is Charles Letterer, who lived nineteen eleven through nineteen seventy six. This is somebody who's a screenwriter on Hawks's Gentleman Preferred Blondes as well as the original Oceans eleven in nineteen sixty that was not a Hawks film, but just another credit for a Letterer here.
There's also an uncredited writer listed on IMDb, Ben Hesched, who lives lived eighteen ninety four through nineteen sixty four. And this is a guy who'd also worked with Hawks writer on Scarface as well as Alfred Hitchcock's film Notorious.
Now I guess we're about to talk about the cast a little bit, and again I will say, as great as this movie is, one of the top criticisms I would lodge about it is it has way way too many characters, way too many characters. This movie could have had seven or eight characters at the base, I think, and achieve the same factional dynamics. Instead it has like
thirty seven characters. There's way too many. I could not keep track of who was who among the minor characters, you know, I could recognize like like three or four people, and then everybody else. I was just getting mixed up.
Oh yeah, Like you're immediately just thrown into a cast of a very interchangeable looking like clean cut white military guys yea, and you're just scrambling to figure out for a little bit, because again, the writing is really tight on this thing. You pretty quickly figure out who your main character is, and you can sort of tell who matters and who doesn't. But there are a lot of They are a fair number of characters on the screen who ultimately don't matter, and they're not even there to
be cannon fodder for the monster or anything. Right, Like, most everybody survives this thing.
I think the monster only kills like two or three people.
Right, yeah. Yeah, So if you see this many people and you're like, oh, it's gonna be a blood bath. No, no, it's it's not. Even the smaller teams like Team Science get into that in a bit. But there were like three characters that stood out. Well, there were two that were important characters, one who stood out, and two that were just interchangeably in the background.
Yeah, so maybe we should talk about the actor playing our hero.
All right, this is Kenneth Toby playing Captain Patrick Hendry.
Ooh, Patrick Hendry, this is our hero. This is the all American lug. He is a handsome, blonde man of action who holds his liquor. He thinks fast, and he brooks. No sympathy for bloodsucking aliens or any such nonsense.
Yeah, yeah, he's It doesn't take long to realize this guy's our lead. He's an interesting actor, though two hundred and twenty three acting credits on IMDb. I'm not sure if I gave his dates yet, nineteen seventeen through two thousand and two. He in his later career, Oh, he played air controller Newbauer in nineteen eighties Airplane, the parody film,
but back in the day. He was in nineteen fifty five's That Came From Beneath the Sea, and he has quite a few interesting cameos and uncredited bits, especially from later in his life, including playing a hologram priest and hell Raiser Bloodline. He was a projectionist in Grimlins two. He had another cameo in Grimlins playing a different character. He was in Big Top Peewee, he was in The Howling, he was in Inner Space.
You know, I'll say, I think he very much fits the mold of a leading man character of these nineteen fifties sci fi movies where the leading character is often just this kind of lug this you know, macho cigarette ad man. But you know what, he's good. He's good with this role.
Yeah, yeah, And it seems to be the like he was in a lot of stuff before these more recent films. I'm naming here. But what seems to be the case is that he had a long career, so he was still active by the nineteen eighties. But also he was in the Thing from Another World. He was part of this era of TV that this new generation of directors had grown up on. So you see folks like Joe Dante using him a lot. John Carpenter used him in
I Want to Say Starman. So you know, they look back and they're like, this is the star of the thing from another world. If he's looking for work, I want to put him in my film. Have him. I'll just give hi him a cameo something. Let's get him on the screen. I just want to be in his presence.
Now we mentioned that in this movie he's a ruggedly handsome lug. He is also the love interest of Margaret Sheridan in this movie, playing a character named Nicky Nicholson.
Is that right, yep, Yeah, So Sheridan's interesting. She lived nineteen twenty six through nineteen eighty two. Hawks apparently discovered her while she was still in college, and Hawks was just convinced that this was going to be the next big star, that she was like a once in a generation talent. So he wanted to cast her in nineteen forty eighth Red River. That's the Hawks film, but apparently
she was pregnant at the time. She passed on it, and she ended up being in this film, which, you know, depending you know, whether Hawks directed it or not, it's still very much a Hawks film, you know, but her career ultimately didn't take off quite like Hawks had imagined it. She was in five more films and she did some TV, but this is the one she's best remembered for. Other credits include nineteen fifty three's I've a Jury in nineteen fifty four's The Diamond Wizard.
I'd like that name.
It's a cool name. I think I looked at it. I think maybe it's like a diamond heist kind of a film. Oh so, nothing that stands out to modern viewers perhaps so much.
Well, Margaret Sheridan's wonderful in this movie. She has such a ry, jolly energy. I love the way that she was a win Kenneth Toby's talking and she's got scenes with him. I love the way she's constantly either kind of laughing at him or visibly trying to hold back laughter while he's There's something kind of powerful and almost kind of threatening about the way she just laughs at him, and I love it. But then also it's very clear
that she does like him. So yeah, she's got a wonderful screen presence.
Yeah, you can see what Hawks saw in her. She has this great energy and the role is really good for really well written for nineteen fifty one. You know, she's not a damsel in distress, she's not a fem fatale. You know, she is this this strong, capable professional woman in this you know, outrageous scenario, and she you know, stands toe to toe with her male counterparts in the film. And this is where we get to something that was
apparently one of Hawk's trademarks. And I have to admit I haven't seen any other Howard Hawks film, so I can't really speak to this personally, but apparently in film theory this is known as the hawksy and woman, an archetype of sort, you know, a tough talking or fast talking woman that converbally spar with male care on her parts. And that's certainly something we see in.
This role his girl Friday.
Yeah, I guess so, you know, not to say, I want to be clear, it's not like there are no nineteen fifty sensibilities in this character or in the film entirely, but I feel like it's it's a shockingly strong role for a film from this time period, certainly a genre film. Yeah, so far we've spoken about two characters in depth here, and Nikki is very much on team Science and and Toby is one of the military men. You off, Mike here, you talked about this film essentially being about jocks versus nerds.
Oh, totally. Yeah, this is a jocks versus nerds movie, though there's some crossover because ultimately, I will I would say that while Margaret Sheridan is playing a scientist, her real loyal are more on the jock side. She's with the military guys in the end. But yeah, this is a movie in which the jocks the military represent a tough common sense and the nerds the scientists represent an unhealthy and ill advised curiosity, you know, a mind that
is a little too open for its own good. And this brings us to the next character that we wanted to talk about and the actor who plays him, and that's if this movie has a human villain, this is the human villain. This is doctor Carrington. I would say he is the main figure in the movie representing the villainous potential of the nerds among us. He's so curious to know more about the life forms from other worlds
that he forgets his loyalty to this one. And I think this is a good jumping off point to talk about some of the historical political context of the film. So I want to be clear, I do not know if it is intended this way by the filmmakers. This could be something that is just an artifact of interpretation. But it's easy to see how this has been interpreted
as a Cold War paranoia movie. You know, it was released early during the Second Red Scare, and it involves sort of commie coded intellectuals who betray their loyalty to the home team in a spirit of suicidal interplanetary cosmopolitanism. So doctor Carrington, there's something kind of off about him in his esthetics. He dresses in these strange slacks that look I'm not sure what they were. They look kind of like pajama pants with a strange pattern on them.
And he wears a turtleneck sweater and a double breasted jacket, and he has a pointy beard. So he looks almost like the classic Looney Tunes caricature of the Freudian psychiatrist, you know what I'm talking about. He looks like the archetype of an untrustworthy godless in a li actual like somebody that John Wayne would slug in the mouth in Big chim McLean.
Yeah, almost like like a stereotypical communist sympathizer intellectual of the day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There are a number of sci fi movies of this time interpreted as Cold War paranoia movies, and they tend to feature plot devices of either or one of two mechanisms, either mind control or body snatching. And what this means is that you end up with enemies who look like your friends and neighbors, but secretly they're working for the other side. And you can see examples of this in the nineteen fifty six Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers. There was a remake
in seventy eight that I think is absolutely fantastic. If you've never seen the seventy eight version, that's another remake from I guess a few years before, but around the same time as Carpenter's Thing remake.
That is a.
Remake that is at least as good as the original, and probably better.
I've never seen the seven remake. I've only seen the nineteen fifty six version, which, as a child like scared the crap out of me. A bet like something about just the black and white nature of it and just how just frenzied Kevin McCarthy's character is towards the end like he's just completely losing it with well, it's not even paranoia in the context of the film, because people are being replaced by pod people and he's the like the only sane man left trying to warn us.
Oh, well, you really should see The seventy eight Body Snatchers because it's also just fantastic. It's it's got a great cast, Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Veronica Cartwright, Jeff Goldblum, Leonard Nimoy.
There.
Yeah, it's a wonderful cast and excellently scripted, like really good.
So.
But anyway, in those cases, especially the original fifty six Invasion of the Body Snatchers, because it's in this sort of red scare period of the fifties after World War Two, it's it fits into this mold. You've got people who look like your friends, but actually they work for the enemy.
And on the Hammy or b movie side of things, you've also got movies like It Conquered the World, which I think you could say the same thing about also came out in nineteen fifty six, a Korman special Roger Korman, And how would you describe it? Conquered the world. It's a movie where like a giant communist mind control arto Choke from Venus conquers a military base in a nearby town by like making a brain thrall out of Lee van Cleef.
Yeah, it's an interesting film. It has a ridiculous monster in it, but a lot of it revolves around around Peter Graves's character having these conversations with Lee van Cleef's character kind of like it just a philosophical arguments about how we should be treating the aliens that are invading the world, you know, with Lee van Cleef, you know, since he tends to play the more villainous role as though he's not really an outright villain, not an unsympathetic villain in.
This he comes through in the end.
Yeah, he comes through in the end, but he also seems to be he has a very logic based approach to everything into why he is essentially with the aliens, and that's kind of the heart of it. Like the alien threat exists, and it's about how are we as a as a as a as a culture responding to it and are we engaging in dangerous sensibilities and dangerous ideas regarding the treatment of alien beings.
Will we learn only too late that man is a feeling creature.
Right, And that's a big that's a big theme in all of these right, the idea that this this dangerous ideology or you know, or or alien presence, whatever the infection happens to be, it will rob you of your individuality. You're just going to be made into you'll be a pod person, you'll be a you know, whatever the thing is. You're going to be robbed of your individuality and your personality.
And that this alien persuasion, this alien frame of mind, or the sympathies to the enemy are not visible from the outside, right, that the enemy, whether it's mind control or body snatching, either way, the effect is the same, which is that the enemy is among us, blending in, you know. And this is very much in the political spirit of the age. It's like, you know Mcarthy's speech when he stood up in nineteen fifty and he said he had a list of Communist spies who were secretly
working in the state departments. They're just blending in with everybody else. And so the main mood or theme of these movies a little bit less than outright terror is instead paranoia, right, It's this thing of like who can
I trust? Who is not what they seem? And there's an irony here because I think Carpenter's adaptation of the Thing accomplishes this theme of paranoia much more powerfully than the original Thing from Another World, even though I don't think Carpenter's version has any of that red scare political DNA. I don't think that's it's concerned with that at all.
It's just sort of like more free floating paranoia, and I think it accomplishes that because specifically it involves an alien who impersonates people who can look like your co workers, and you wouldn't know it was actually an alien until
you test their blood. Unlike this movie, instead of having somebody who's an alien body snatcher or someone under alien mind control, it has just the suspect loyalties of the scientists and the intellectual because they're hungry for knowledge and they're open minded to a fault, and because of that, they will flirt with dangerous forces from outside the zone of safety. And that's who that's the role that doctor Carrington, this character plays in the movie. And for the record,
the actor Robert Cornthwaite is great in this role. I love him as the godless, untrustworthy nerd.
Yeah, he's pretty great, even though at times it feels like they're laying on a bit thick with him.
But oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a little cheesy.
Yeah, cause he says, he's like everyone else is like this, this thing's murdering people and it's drinking blood. And he's like, yes, but I think we should reason with it. There's so much we could learn from this murderous carrot.
Yeah.
And even right up there at the end, you know, they're trying to lure it into a high tech track to shock it to death, and he's like, wait, let me speak to the creature. It must not be hurt, you know.
And we get to see the nerd get punished for his foolishness. You know, he's so naive that he thinks he can he can form a relationship with the alien, you know, Unlike he doesn't have the rough common sense of the of the captain and the army, who's like, well, you just got to kill this thing. Yeah, So he goes squatted. Yeah, he gets smacked down. I think they say he survives. I think they say that he does just ends up with some broken bones.
Yeah, broken bones in a wounded spirit. But perhaps he'll he'll now he knows that he shouldn't, he shouldn't put science first, right. So this actor, cornth Waite, he was born in nineteen seventeen died in two thousand and six. He did a lot of TV and film work throughout his long career, including Future World that was the one of the sequels to Westworld. He was in nineteen fifty three's War of the Worlds. Nineteen sixty two is whatever Happened to Baby Jane? He was in The Ghost Mister Chicken?
And is that we don't know to ghost? To mister Chicken? I do not know the ghost just like it was a Don Notts comedy. Oh okay, I think I saw it a lot as a kid for some reason. But anyway, this actor was on a He was on tons of famous TV shows from the old day, stuff like Andy Griffith,
Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock. This was his first credited film or TV acting gig, though, and he often played lawyers and scientists because he had that kind of like intellectual air, you know, that intellectual delivery that lent itself well to those roles.
Yeah, maybe a nasal voice and a pointy beard, and you just look at that guy and you're like, I don't know if I can trust him.
Now. We also have a very amusing journalist character who has a lot of screen time. That's our character, Ned Scott, and I enjoyed this character a lot because he's He's very stereotypical in many ways, but is so well written, has a lot of snappy.
Dialogue, fast talking journalist, has some extremely cheesy lines. He gives the final the final speech at the end of the movie. So this movie's version of the he learned too late that man is a feeling creature is instead him like talking over the military radio to I don't know, some command post and like dictating a news story off the top of his head.
Yeah.
It starts off with some line like, thousands of years ago, a man named Noah saved the earth with an arc made of wood. Today a man named Captain Whatever saved the earth with an arc of electricity.
Yep, yeap, great lead, great lead.
Ned, really really good.
The interesting thing about that ending with the keep watching the skies is I sometime having never seen it before, but being familiar with that ending line. I kind of combined that knowledge with the ending to Invasion of the Body Snatchers, where there's like a crazed urgency to it, and there's no crazed urgency here. He's not like, for God's sake, keep watching the skies because this is gonna
happen again and again. And he's just kind of like in generally saying, keep watching the skies just in case. I don't know, there might be who knows, Just keep watching the skies.
Yeah, watch those guys, keep watching them.
Anyway, This character though very amusing Ned Scott. He was played by Douglas Spencer, who lived nineteen ten through nineteen sixty, so you know, ultimately didn't it didn't have as long ago a career as as he could have, given that his life was a bit cut short there. But he was in, among other things, This Island Earth, The Diary of Anne Frank, and the classic Western Shane. And speaking
of westerns, let's talk about Team Monster here. Oh boy, now you mentioned already the James Arnez plays the Monster, and it is indeed James Arnez lived nineteen twenty three through twenty eleven. This is the guy that's mostly mostly well known and well remembered for one or two things. First of all, he played the lead character Matt Dillon on the long running gun Smoke Western TV show. That show aired nineteen fifty five through nineteen seventy five and
then was just always in syndication afterwards. It seems like, I remember my grandpa would watch it like every day on TV.
I've never seen gun Smoke. I really don't know anything about it.
I mean, all I know, I don't think I ever actively watched it, because I mean I was a kid. I wasn't interested in gun Smoke so much, but it was on and he was like a you know, cowboy sheriff or whatnot in it.
He's like, let me guess. Is he the new sheriff who comes into a lawless town and has to fix everything?
I guess, But it's I mean, the show ran for like twenty years, so you'd think he'd get into a pattern there after.
Eventually the people would be like, you've had fifteen years to fix this town and it's still lawless.
Yeah, Like does he have to run for reelection? How does it work? I don't know. Gunsmoke fans, let us know but it wasn't just Westerns for James Arnez. He was also in nineteen fifty four's Them, a Giant bug movie. Have you seen this one?
Actually a shamed to say no, I have not. I know it's a classic.
The other interesting thing about James Arnez is that he was born James King of Arness, and he was the older brother of a guy by the name of Peter Duesler Arness who acted under the name Peter Graves. I just mentioned, Yeah, so this is Peter Graves brother.
So you could have literally had a brother to brother conversation about how you learn too late that man is a feeling creature.
Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting though, I mean this is often the case with siblings, right, I mean, this is nothing remarkable, but you don't think of James Arness and Peter Graves as being is playing the same sorts of characters. There's like a there's a ruggedness to James Arnest, like he's
just always going to be that cowboy. And Peter Graves, on the other hand, often played these more you know, these thoughtful characters, sometimes villainous, but there's like a sternness today it's just sternness to both actors, but I don't know Peter Peter Graves different type of roles. I can't imagine them ever, like competing for the same character and in being like the same character. If either of them played it, well, if.
It's been Peter Graves as the thing from another world.
I don't know, you know, I wonder. I don't know if Peter Graves ever played a monster. He might have early in his career. I'd have to go through his filmography. Now another going back to Team Science, there's one guy that stood out to me. I was just gonna skip over all the rest of them, but there's a character by the name of doctor Stern. Did he stand out to you, Joe.
I don't remember which one he was. Oh wait, was he one of the scientists who had black hair?
He was, no, well, he might have had black hair. He was tallish and was had kind of like a subdued but seeming like thoughtful delivery. He had some good lines here and there. Played by this actor by the name of Edward Franz. He lived nineteen oh two through nineteen eighty three. Again not a main character, but his screen presence impressed me, so I thought i'd include him here, a stern faced character actor whose many credits include The Ten Commandments. He was in Hatari Johnny Got his Gun,
and also he was in Twilight Zone the movie. So the sequence with the you know about the monster on the wing of the plane was John lithcow Edward Franz plays the old man on the flight.
Okay, now I just looked him up. I do remember him, but I don't remember what he did in the movie, you know.
Sorry, Doctor ser in some of the science conversations, he kind of was a voice of reason and skepticism. I kind of I liked his presence there. Okay, again, the dialogue is pretty tight and in this in this movie, and even like bit characters like him, he has a chance to shine. Okay, one more actor I want to include, and that's the character the character doctor Vorhees was played by this guy, Paul Freese, who lived nineteen twenty through nineteen eighty six. And I'm including him because he had
a long career as of voice actors. So he played a radio reporter in War of the Worlds. He did several voices in the animated The Last Unicorn. Other credits include The Wind and the Willows, The animated version of the Return of the King and the Hobbit. Then also just various Rankin and Bass holiday specials, and then finally we'll get to the music here. The music was provided by Dimitri Tiompkin, who lived eighteen ninety four through nineteen
seventy nine. The music in this film is largely what you'd expect from the time period, but this Russian born composer, it was a major name during this era. Here in twenty two Academy Award nominations and won four Oscars, and most notably for this film. Again, it's very standard in a lot of brass in it, but you do hear the theremen from time to time to provide a little bit of sci fi intrigue. And I've seen this score singled out as one of the works that helped cement
the electronic music instruments placed in sci fi cinema. The other big one was nineteen fifty one's The Day the Earth Stood Still, scored by Bernard Hermann.
Oh, so that's interesting. I didn't realize that these two movies came out the same year. The Thing from Another World and The Day the Earth Stood Still, And I think it would also be interesting to kind of compare them. I haven't seen The Day the Earth Stood Still nearly as recently, but I would say that The Thing from Another World is probably a much better movie, just on a technical level in terms of like how effective and scary, like the shots and the horror and everything is in it.
But I think The Day the Earth Stood Still is probably a more thematically interesting movie.
Yeah, yeah, I think they're both examples of sort of you know, the high minded early nineteen fifties sci fi film. Yeah, and this was in an era where I the genre films of this caliber were not generally elevated to that level. They certainly weren't getting nominated for Academy Awards and so forth.
But you know what should have been nominated for an Academy Award is the opening title of The Thing. For goodness, Yeah, absolutely ballistic, best opening title I've ever seen. Probably, of course it inspired I think some things that came afterward, but it's the one where it starts with, you know, the black screen, and then you just see the word thing lettered in a large, jagged script that burns through a black sheet like it's been like like spelled in kerosene.
And then set ablaze absolutely amazing.
I love it, and I imagine Carpenter loved it as well, because they didn't they basically recreate the same title card for that kind asssion. Yeah, where it sounds burning through the screen. It's beautiful. I have no idea how they did it. It's beautiful.
Though.
There's another thing before we wrap up that I wanted to talk about with this movie, which is that it has an interesting dialogue. So this film has what you might call naturalistic dialogue or overlapping dialogue. So maybe there are other examples of movies like this from the time,
but if so, I'm not really aware of them. I think filmmaking conventions of the early fifties would have overwhelmingly favored the clear, crisp delivery of stage drama conventions, where you know one character speaks at a time and you can hear every word they say because the lines are important. They're meant to develop the character or move the plot along.
But this movie is trending toward a more naturalistic and atmospheric approach to dialogue, where characters sometimes mumble, sometimes talk over each other at the same time, more like you'd get in a later movie like Robert Daltman movies, where a lot of the dialogue is it's clear that you're not supposed to hear and take in every single word, but get a mood or get an atmosphere from the chatter of the characters as they go about their business.
Yeah, like sometimes they are just incomplete thoughts, like one character is talking about something they're interrupted, or yeah, there's crow talk and you don't you don't always make out what some of the characters are saying it. So it feels, yeah, it has this very natural feel to it and also just moves right along like it's a snap. It's snappy dialogue. You know, it keeps you engaged, and it feels relatively real.
Though of course, at the same time, it's nineteen fifty one reel, so you know there's gonna be a bit of like dames and cigarettes, you know, that's sort of thing going on. Another aspect of the dialogue that instantly reminded me, there's one shot in particular of this there's
there's a nice walk and talk sequence. Again, we have these long hallways between these rooms and this and this snowy base, and we got some scenes where like scientists or military men walking down the hallway and the cameras in front of them filming them talk to each other, and of course this would this just becomes a staple, especially of like police procedurals and it shows like the West Wing and here it is present the thing from another world?
What's that guy who does the way Aaron Sorkin loves the walk can talk, which I, frankly personally often find irritating.
Imagine if Aaron Sorkin did a remake of the Thing.
I think I would hate that all walk.
And talk, you never even see the monster. I bet it would have a great cast.
Though.
Yeah, okay, Rob, I know we can't finish without talking about There are a number of scenes in this that are so good, but one that just had my jaw on the floor was the fire attack scene.
Oh my god, this scene is so solid and terrifying. Like afterwards, I'm just I was just like, like, I think I audibly said something like, oh crap, Like that sequence was. It was literally on fire because it's a scene where the thing busts into a room and they what They throw some kerosene at it, and they then they throw some fire at him.
They figured out that it's in vulnerable to bullets.
Yeah, yeah, that shooting it didn't work earlier, so they're using fire against it, and it's just it's rampaging and it's on fire. There's like, from an effects standpoint, terrifying, you know, because it's like there's all this visible, real fire on the set. There are multiple shots of somebody
doing a man on fire stunt. And then within the context of the film, Yeah, it's just this intense feeling of danger, both the environmental danger of of their of of where they are in the world, but also the fact that now things are increasingly on fire and there's a rampaging, you know, blood drinking alien that's also on fire. Tremendous.
Yeah, and the fact that it something about that scene and the way that it's scary heightens something that's a sort of progressive tension throughout the plot, which is that the characters are having to make strategic decisions really fast that you know, they're not given time to like compile everything they know and try and figure out what's going on. I recall that the set up to that scene is just like we think he's attacking the door, Okay, what are we going to do?
You know?
The bullets don't work, what if we try fire? And so they just like arranged this fire trap for it in real time pretty much. It happens really fast, and then it all goes to hell and it becomes clear that you can't kill this thing with fire, or at least maybe you heard it with fire, but it like, it's not like us. Each of it sells is kind of independent, so you might be able to burn its outer layer, but it's ultimately going to be okay.
Yeah, yeah, And then afterwards they've lost an entire room of the facility and they have finite resources there, which I thought was also a great touch.
You know, it's an old standby, but I gotta admit I'm really a sucker for setting a trap for the monster. That's just a kind of set piece that I always enjoy.
Yeah, and that's where we wind up towards the end. Here, they develop a trap, they explain how it's going to work, and so you know that this is always the case. If a trap is fully explained, something is going to go wrong, or if a plan is fully explained, something is going to go wrong. So, yeah, it doesn't quite go off as they're planning it to. But it also is not doesn't go off the rails disastrously. I don't think that would have been allowed in nineteen fifty one.
No, I guess not. No, you couldn't. I don't know at the time. Could you have an ending like you have in Carpenter's Thing?
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. How would audiences have reacted to that.
I don't know the answer to this question, Listeners right in. Are there examples you can think of of sci fi or genre movies from say the fifties with an utterly bleak ending, just ending where the alien wins and Earth loses.
I mean the main example that comes to mind instantly, and perhaps part of it because we already talked about it, is the fifty six Body Snatcher's film. Like at the end of that film, it's like, we have one sane man left and everyone thinks he is insane. And I guess you could also have looked to various like short form of Twilight zones Twilight Zone type stuff where yeah, you'll definitely have the downer ending and all, but yeah, this one, this one does not. This one leaves things
on a positive note. Humans were tested and they were they were up to the test.
It's easier to end on a downer note. I think after like a sub thirty minute story than it is to end on a downer note after a ninety minute story. You know, you've got more investment on a feature length and so people are going to feel really mad if you get a downer ending at the end.
Of a movie. Yeah, you got to send them home happy. Yeah, and that's what this film does.
I was.
I was happy with the film after we were done here. It has some terrific sequences, you know, great dialogue, a lot of interesting things about it. So you know, older films like this are not everybody's cup of tea, but I wouldn't. If you're all tempted, I encourage you to give the Thing from Another World a chance.
I'm still thinking about this thing I just talked about. Wait a minute, this might be developing into a broader theory, Rob would you generally agree then? When it comes to horror literature, it's way more common to have horror short stories where the monster or the evil entity wins in the end, but horror novels where the hero wins in the end.
Yeah, Yeah, I would say, by and large, that's the case. You know, I've seen, I've certainly seen examples where longer works that have dark endings, those dark endings are not always that well received, even if the audience tends to be into darker, grittier stuff. You know, I've seen. I've seen that time and again. So I think that probably
holds true. And I don't know how much of that is yet investment in a longer work, or sort of expectations of a longer work, or or also just like effective storytelling, if you stick with it that long, like you you're rooting for the good guys or what whoever is, you know, the protagonists happen to be like you want them to overcome the adversary, and generally, I guess in those longer works you to have a protagonist that you're genuinely rooting for and not like in short fiction you
sometimes have, you know, very problematic characters and you know something terrible is going to happen to them. Basically the Tales from the Crypt model short stories, bad people, bad endings.
Yeah, yeah, Tales from the Crypt exactly. It is short enough that you don't need to like anybody.
Yeah, like I hate everybody in this I know something bad is going to happen. I'm probably going to celebrate it when it does. And it's a short ride to get there.
Well, I guess we got kind of sidetracked there, but I'll come back to my original recommendation. I say, thing from another world. Yeah, this one's really really good horror filmmaking, especially for nineteen fifty one.
Absolutely, and if you would like to see this film, you're in luck because it I think our last one that we covered, is widely available. You can easily pick up a DVD or Blu ray of it. You can also digitally rent or buy it pretty much any place you you digitally buy or rent films.
Watch the Skies.
I know that there was also a colorized version of this film. I can't imagine watching it colorized. I feel like the black and white is essential. Yeah, all right, we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up there. But hey, if you would like to listen to other episodes of Weird House Cinema, you'll find it every Friday in the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. We have core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a listener mail on Monday's Artifact on Wednesday, and a rerun on the weekends,
and hey, keep watching the skies out there. If you've got a sky keep watching it.
But what would that have done if you've seen it, you just you'd be like, I see something crash landing you at.
Alert the sight.
I guess you're like, oh, we got to get all the thermite really quick.
That is one more thing. It's this terrible time in the episode to remember it. But we have some great sequences too of plotting where the character is trying to track it with like a Geiger counter. Oh yes, an enclosed space. Very reminiscent of films to come much later, like like Alien and Aliens.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
So. Yeah, this film feels ahead of its time in a number of ways.
Okay, we got a stop gushion about the thing. Okay, okay, yeah, so what we're were saying, Oh yeah, we're ending the episode all right. Well anyway, thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other to suggest topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.