The Thing From Another World

Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks
1951

While Christian Nyby is credited for directing this lil' paranoid slice of cold war era science fiction many believe that it was producer Howard Hawks who was responsible for the lion's share of the film's creation. For the purposes of this review (based on my own personal opinions) I am treating Hawks as the film's director.

Set entirely in military outposts in the frosty north a group of well meaning air force boys thaw out a malevolent extra terrestrial while attempting to recover its frozen craft (which they oafishly blow up). Once the blood drinking beastie is unleashed the research scientists and military personnel are thrown into a fight for their lives in inhospitable circumstances.

"The Thing From Another World" has all the trappings of a Hawks picture: a perfect male protagonist who is only ever outdone by a perfect (albeit masculine) female protagonist, and quick paced, highly pervasive, and often suggestive humor. Hawks' funnybone works to negative effect however in a film that by all accounts should rely on horror, claustrophobic suspense, and character tension. The biggest disappointment the picture has to offer comes in the form of "the Thing" itself. Being made entirely of vegetable matter, and comically referred to as an "intelligent carrot," the monster's design should have encapsulated the brilliant and wildly imaginative script elements. The idea of a stalking vampiric vegetable deserves much better treatment than just a tall dude with a neanderthal brow and clawed mitts.

One of the film's most interesting elements is its flat-out unsubtle denouncement of scientific progress and process. In cold war era sci-fi films science usually acts as a double edged sword: it is cause and the solution of all man's problems. "The Thing From Another World" offers us a scenario where the solipsistic and quixotic scientist Dr. Carrington will happily let everyone die in the name of scientific breakthrough. Carrington is a maniacal crackpot mad-scientist that needs to be put in line by the good old boys working for Uncle Sam before the monster can be subdued. In this Hawks makes a radically conservative, anti-progressive, anti-intellectual (not to mention anti-pacifist) pose that feels like a scared, defensive position based on the paranoid climate of the times.

Review By Brett Scieszka