The Thing From Another World
Uploaded by Scott Free on Mar 31, 2009
The Thing From Another World A Fun Romp Through 50’s Sci-Fi
The Thing from Another World (“The Thing”) has a simple but effective plot in the science fiction genre. A flying saucer crashes in the arctic and a group of military personnel return to their base with the craft’s occupant frozen in a block of ice. Once free of the ice, the creature terrorizes the arctic station while the group tries desperately to stop it. While the main focus of the story is their efforts to stop the rampaging killer creature, we also find conflict between the military who would just like to just kill the creature and the scientist running the station who wants the being to remain alive so it can be studied. The movie should appeal to science fiction fans and, to a lesser extent, fans of horror as well.
Although a low budget movie, The Thing makes great use of what it does have: a well written script featuring the use of overlapping dialogue which I love. Through the years too many times I’ve watched discussions or arguments depicted on the screen which feature the back and forth, give and take of a conversation. One person stops talking in the middle of a sentence and the next one starts. No interrupting, no talking over each other’s words like real life. This movie throws that out the door, and the characters speak in a flow more like real people. The music is also an important part the film, its particularly effective in scenes with the monster. In fact, the music is so creepy it’s hard to tell if a portion of the sound is actually the score or if it’s merged with spooky-type sound effects.
While the movie does have its standard clichés with the tough straight-laced military captain, who is backed up by a crew of various ranks and the female romantic interest (although the typical 50’s woman in film has been replaced here with a female character who is a smart and capable woman and not simply a screamer as found in films like Attack of the Giant Leeches, or The Hideous Sun Demon). In fact, it’s her suggestion of “boil it, bake it” that gets...