The Thing from Another World

A UFO crashes near an isolated military base in the far Arctic. Scientists recover the craft’s now-frozen alien pilot and take it back to their base. While debating whether to study the alien, try to communicate with it or kill it, the pilot awakens …. And the scientists’ question of if it is friend or foe is quickly answered. Now, they’re trapped in a frozen wasteland with an unstoppable, nonhuman creature that sees them as prey. The small band of scientists come face to face with The Thing from Another World.

The Thing from Another World (1951) starring Kenneth Tobey, Margaret Sheridan, Robert Cornthwaite

Review

The Thing from Another World is proof that a well-done ‘B’ movie can be a true classic. Better than many of the ‘A’ movies from the same time period. All of the characters are interesting, and memorable. There’s a lot of the banter among fellows that you’d expect from military men, working far from home and isolated. As is the semi-romantic relationship between Nikki and the captain.

The hallway trap

Towards the end, the Thing has killed several of the members of the expedition, cut off their communications, and shut off the heat, so the humans will all freeze to death! So, they come up with a daring, final plan to stop The Thing. It’s proven invulnerable to extremes of temperature, so they’ll try to electrocute it. If they can keep it on the walkway …

Ned “Scotty” Scott: All right, fellas, here’s your story: North Pole, November Third, Ned Scott reporting. One of the world’s greatest battles was fought and won today by the human race. Here at the top of the world a handful of American soldiers and civilians met the first invasion from another planet. A man by the name of Noah once saved our world with an ark of wood. Here at the North Pole, a few men performed a similar service with an arc of electricity. The flying saucer which landed here and its pilot have been destroyed, but not without causalities among our own meager forces. I would like to bring to the microphone some of the men responsible for our success… but as Senior Air force officer Captain Hendry is attending to demands over and above the call of duty… Doctor Carrington, the leader of the scientific expedition, is recovering from wounds received in the battle.
Eddie: [Softly] Good for you, Scotty.
Ned “Scotty” Scott: And now before giving you the details of the battle, I bring you a warning: Everyone of you listening to my voice, tell the world, tell this to everybody wherever they are. Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies.

Cast of characters

• Margaret Sheridan as Nikki Nicholson. Carrington’s secretary, and Hendry’s love interest. She supplies critical information at the right time, to prevent the Thing from killing the protagonists.
• Kenneth Tobey (It Came From Beneath the Sea) as Captain Patrick Hendry.
• Robert Cornthwaite (The Ghost and Mr. Chicken) as Dr. Arthur Carrington. A well-meaning, but misguided, scientist. He feels that the primary goal should be to preserve the thing from another world. Despite the murders it’s committed. Extremely sleep deprived.
• Douglas Spencer (This Island Earth; The Diary of Anne Frank) as Ned Scott (Scotty). The journalist looking for a story, and finds one. An excellent portrayal of the 1950’s reporter type. One of the highlights of the movie
• James Young as Lt. Eddie Dykes
• Dewey Martin (Ten Thousand Bedrooms) as Bob (Crew Chief)
• Robert Nichols (Call Me Bwana) as Lt. Ken MacPherson
• William Self as Corporal Barnes
• Eduard Franz (The Story of Ruth) as Dr. Stern
• Paul Frees (The Time Machine) as Dr. Voorhees (uncredited)
• John Dierkes (The Premature Burial) as Dr. Chapman (uncredited)
• George Fenneman (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) as Dr. Redding (uncredited)
• Everett Glass as Dr. Wilson (uncredited)
• Edmund Breon (The Woman in the Window) as Dr. Ambrose (uncredited)
• Norbert Schiller (Frankenstein 1970) as Dr. Laurence (uncredited)
• Sally Creighton as Mrs. Chapman
• Nicholas Byron as Tex Richards (uncredited)
• David McMahon as General Fogerty (uncredited)
• James Arness (Them!; Gunsmoke) as “The Thing”

Amazon.com

With its modest special effects, lean plot, and small cast of lesser stars, this 1951 thriller remains a sturdy blueprint for fusing horror and science fiction. The formula has been employed countless times since, fleshed out with more extensive and elaborate production values, and manned by higher profiled marquee names, but the results have yet to improve on The Thing from Another World, Howard Hawks’s lone foray into sci-fi.

The story begins as military airmen are dispatched to a remote Arctic research station where scientists have detected the crash of a spacecraft. An effort to retrieve the saucer-shaped vehicle fails, but the team returns to the station with the frozen body of its sole occupant. When the extraterrestrial pilot is accidentally thawed, the crew, headed by a tough-talking pilot (Kenneth Tobey), grapples with a massive, chlorophyll-based humanoid (James Arness) thirsty for blood and in no mood for galactic diplomacy.

Hawks takes only a production credit for this low-budget exercise, but his filmmaking style transcends Christian Nyby’s nominal direction: rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue, an ensemble of comrades whose professionalism is tempered by wisecracks, and unsentimental female characters (embodied by feisty romantic interest Margaret Sheridan) recall Hawks’s signature works, while propelling the plot over any potential gaps in credibility. It’s hardly surprising, then, that The Thing from Another World remains among the most influential science fiction movies ever shot, or that it remains exciting entertainment a half century later. –Sam Sutherland