Other Titles • The Thing From Another World • The Thing (1951) • Das Ding aus einer anderen Welt (1951)
Synopses for The Thing From Another World (1951)
1.
From Another World! Arctic researchers discover a huge, frozen spaceling inside a crash-landed UFO, then fight for their lives after the murderous being (a pre-Gunsmoke James Arness) emerges from icy captivity. Will other creatures soon follow? The famed final words of this film are both warning and answer: "Keep watching the skies!"
A snappy ensemble. An eerie theremin-infused Dimitri Tiomkin score. Rising suspense. Crisp Christian Nyby direction. All merge in an edgy classic produced by Howard Hawks (Bringing Up Baby, Rio Brave) and filled with Hawksian trademarks of rapid-fire dialogue and of people united by do-or-die stress. Keep watching the skies and the screen. Don't miss a moment of "one of the best sci-fi thrillers of the '50's" (John Stanley, Creature Features).
2.
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
3.
One of the great science fiction classics made in the 50s -- the period when the genre thrived.
A group of US scientists and servicemen, stationed on the North Pole, encounter an odd magnetic phenomenon that confuses all of their instruments. When the crew goes out to investigate, they find a block of ice containing an odd life form. But this is no archeological discovery -- because when the block melts, an invincible, grotesque creature, smarter and more powerful than humans, rises and goes on a rampage, almost destroying the polar station. Now the occupants of the station have to stop The Thing before it kills them... and embarks on its plan to destroy the planet.
4.
Members of an Antarctic research team are killed off by a frozen alien they uncover.
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