31 Years, 31 Screams: #1 The Thing (From Another World)
Posted by J.D. Dunn on 10.31.2005
No One In This World Can Match The Menace Of "The Thing"
What do you get when you're in the middle of a Cold War with the threat of nuclear annihilation hanging over your head, and fears of Soviet infiltration seeping into the entertainment landscape? The most frightening film ever made, according to many.
Based on John W. Campbell's pulp short "Who Goes There?", The Thing tells the story of a group of scientists and Army soldiers trapped in an Arctic scientific outpost with a giant man-eating carrot. Sure, it doesn't sound like much of a logline, but under the production (and many say the direction) of sure-handed Howard Hawks, the film burrows into your heart with suspense and doesn't let you breathe until it's over.
The Thing (From Another World) (1951) D:Christian Nyby W:Charles Lederer (Based on the story "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell Jr.) Starring:Kenneth Tobey, Robert Cornthwaite, Margaret Sheridan, and James Arness. MPAA: [NR] Runtime: 87m
The Film:
We open in Anchorage, Alaska at a snow-socked military base where a number of soldiers and a newspaper reporter sit around playing cards and shooting the shit about the tropics and girls and such. When genial-but-strong Captain Patrick Hendry gets orders to investigate a strange crash near a scientific outpost at the North Pole, he fears it may be Russians. He's happy to go, though, because it means he can hook up with Nikki, the pretty scientist who beat him in a drinking contest the last time he was in town and left him with a note on his chest that said he had pretty legs. Don't think he didn't take a ribbing from the boys on that one.
Hendry takes a crew of about ten along with Scotty, the reporter to the outpost. He renews acquaintances with Nikki despite barbs from his crew members. Dr. Carrington, the head scientist at the outpost, turns over his observations of the crash near the post. Carrington estimates whatever crashed at 20,000 tons of steel. It's too big to be a plane, so Hendry posits that it's a meteor. They show Hendry a series of pictures automatically triggered when radiation was detected that show the object rocketing toward earth, rising, and then finally falling to earth. Obviously, this isn't the behavior of a meteor.
A handful of scientists and soldiers fly out to the site of the crash. Whatever it is, it's giving off massive amounts of radiation despite being buried underneath the ice generated when the tremendous heat melted the snow and then froze over. The men spread out to determine the shape of the object -- circular. "Holy cats," says Scotty the reporter. "We found a flying saucer."
Knowing that a small crew couldn't possibly chop through that much ice, Hendry decides to use thermite to blast it out. Of course, that doesn't work and, in fact, melts the ship. Carrington derides the loss of something that could have started a whole new science. Scotty derides Hendry's boneheaded move, which cost him the biggest story every. Fortunately, there is still some residual radiation — from the occupant. The boys get to choppin' and bring the occupant, still frozen in a block of ice, with them back to the outpost. It's too snowy and windy to fly back to Anchorage, so the crew is stuck there for a while. Also, there's too much interference to get clear radio signals.
The situation causes a philosophical rift between the soldiers and scientists. The scientists want to chip through the rest of the ice and examine the space man, which appears to be about 7-feet tall. Captain Hendry won't allow it, though. He wants permission from Washington before okaying anything. After all, this is a national security issue. Hendry has the men lock it in a storage room with the guards taking two hour shifts to make sure nothing happens.
"It's got crazy hands and no hair, and the eyes…well, they're open and they look like they can see," says one crewman. He takes the guard an electric blanket because they're keeping the temperature low so the ice won't melt. Unfortunately, the chills that the guard is getting are from the creature, not from the cold. He decides to throw the electric blanket over the block of ice so the creature will stop staring at him. See, that's why he's not the captain.
The ice melts without shorting out the blanket and the creature breaks out. (This montage sequence is particularly menacing. We see the blanket, pan to the electric dial, dissolve to an hour or so later where the water is dripping onto the floor, and finally to the snow dogs waking up outside and yelping. They know something's wrong!) Barnes, the guard, hysterically races to the mess hall and informs Hendry that he shot it, but it just kept coming. (It should be noted that we still haven't seen a clear shot of the creature. We just know it's big).
When the crew arrives at the storage room, the door is open. They hear a struggle outside, but when they look through the window all they can see through the din of blowing snow and darkness is a giant being attacked by the snow dogs and running off into the night. By the time Hendry and his crew get out to the dogs, they find two of them torn to bits and…an arm.
Carrington performs an examination of the arm. He describes it more as an evolutionarily developed vegetable. Instead of animals evolving on its home planet, plants evolved to dominate. Another scientist gives the story of the century plant, a plant that captures and eats small animals, to lend this bizarre fiction some empirical weight.
"At 12:10 am, the hand became alive," says Dr. Carrington. Indeed, as they are watching the arm, it begins to wriggle. Carrington theorizes that the arm was able to reanimate itself after absorbing the canine blood in which it was covered.
Hendry and the Army crew split up and try to hunt down the creature in case he's returned to the outpost. Carrington, who is becoming a thorn in Hendry's side, believes that the creature is just running scared after being captured by an alien race and shot at. He wants a chance to communicate with it. Hendry just wants it dead or captured.
When Carrington and his scientist friends find another of the sled dogs inside the camp, drained of its blood, he refuses to tell Hendry. After all, if the creature was able to master interstellar travel, it must also be friendly -- intelligence equals moral superiority, after all.
The next morning, a few of the scientists are attacked by the Thing in the greenhouse. When Hendry investigates, the Thing nearly takes his head off. They seal the Thing in the greenhouse, but Hendry is irate. He tells Carrington that because of him there are two scientists hanging in the greenhouse upside down like in a slaughterhouse. Like the dogs, the Thing has been feeding off them.
Carrington, who by now is confined to his lab, begins experimenting with the severed arm. He uses the outpost's blood supply to grow new hatchlings from the seed pods in the arm. Though they are fascinated by his research, the rest of the scientists believe Carrinton has gone too far -- trying to grow new enemies to Earth. Carrington believes there are no enemies in science, just phenomena to study.
Hendry asks Nikki why they are giving the injured scientist transfusions instead of the plasma supply already on hand. She turns over Carrington's notes. Matters are complicated, though, when General Fogarty sends a radio message to keep the Thing alive and unharmed until he can get there.
One crewman has the idea to throw kerosene on it and light it on fire. It's a good thing too, because the Thing has escaped from the greenhouse. Hendry and crew hear it breaking a window in the next room. It bashes in the door and attacks. The crew tosses buckets of kerosene at him and fires a flare gun, lighting him up. The Thing brushes them aside and crashes through a window, running off into the night once again.
The scientists and soldiers put their heads together and decide to hook into a generator and torch him with electricity. Unfortunately, as they set up, the temperature starts to drop. The Thing has sabotaged their heating system. Now, all it has to do is wait until they freeze to death and feed off the dead bodies.
Carrington is still upset that Hendry is planning on destroying it. It doesn't matter if they die, according to Carrington. If they pass on their knowledge, they live on. Knowledge and science are the important things.
Hendry and crew set up a pair of poles, which will electrocute anything that winds up in between them. The idea is to stand in the hallway and let it chase them back to the generator room where it will be electrocuted. Carrington turns off the power and runs out to the Thing, begging it to listen to him. Instead, the Thing brushes him aside like an insect and continues on toward the soldiers. The soldiers repair the power and electrocute the Thing as it stalks toward them. It slowly melts down into the ground, dissipating into the air.
Scotty, who has been desperate to get his story out to his editor, sends out a warning to the world. "Watch the skies!…Keep watching the skies!"
The 411: It's not hard to see the influence of Howard Hawks on this production. Most scholars concede he, at the very least, had a hand in its direction. The rapid fire dialogue is reminiscent of "His Girl Friday" and "The Big Sleep", and it works just as well in horror as it does in comedy and drama.
But there is also a socio-political subtext in there that isn't all that hard to find. It was only a generation earlier that our wonderful, wonderful scientists had given us the atomic bomb and the assembly line of banal carnage that was the Holocaust. For obvious reasons, scientists weren't exactly high on American's Christmas card lists.
The military, on the other hand, was riding high. We had just whupped us some Gerries and Japs and it would be another 15-20 years before Vietnam wrecked the national confidence in the military.
As with all great horror stories, "The Thing" works with a slow, deliberate pace, setting up a peaceful world then reigning madness down upon it. The scientists' north pole outpost is such a bleak, merciless area that one gets claustrophobic by the end of the second act. Along with "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", it ranks as one of the two most frightening films of all time.
Hendry takes a crew of about ten along with Scotty, the reporter to the outpost. He renews acquaintances with Nikki despite barbs from his crew members. Dr. Carrington, the head scientist at the outpost, turns over his observations of the crash near the post. Carrington estimates whatever crashed at 20,000 tons of steel. It's too big to be a plane, so Hendry posits that it's a meteor. They show Hendry a series of pictures automatically triggered when radiation was detected that show the object rocketing toward earth, rising, and then finally falling to earth. Obviously, this isn't the behavior of a meteor.
Knowing that a small crew couldn't possibly chop through that much ice, Hendry decides to use thermite to blast it out. Of course, that doesn't work and, in fact, melts the ship. Carrington derides the loss of something that could have started a whole new science. Scotty derides Hendry's boneheaded move, which cost him the biggest story every. Fortunately, there is still some residual radiation — from the occupant. The boys get to choppin' and bring the occupant, still frozen in a block of ice, with them back to the outpost. It's too snowy and windy to fly back to Anchorage, so the crew is stuck there for a while. Also, there's too much interference to get clear radio signals.
"It's got crazy hands and no hair, and the eyes…well, they're open and they look like they can see," says one crewman. He takes the guard an electric blanket because they're keeping the temperature low so the ice won't melt. Unfortunately, the chills that the guard is getting are from the creature, not from the cold. He decides to throw the electric blanket over the block of ice so the creature will stop staring at him. See, that's why he's not the captain.
Carrington performs an examination of the arm. He describes it more as an evolutionarily developed vegetable. Instead of animals evolving on its home planet, plants evolved to dominate. Another scientist gives the story of the century plant, a plant that captures and eats small animals, to lend this bizarre fiction some empirical weight.
