ALL SCI-FI

[johnnybear]

[johnnybear]

Excellent piece of work! Sakourra looks very much like Torin Thatcher as do the monsters and the skeleton resemble their own originals!
JB

[alltare]

[Bud Brewster]

[Bud Brewster]

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Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
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~ A Question for the Members: With the whole world now alerted to the fact that a hideous and hostile alien race sent an invader to turn mankind into it's own food supply, would America and her allies band together to develop a fleet of spacecraft to launch a counter attack?

~ My Theory: We damn well better! The lone invader almost established beachhead on Earth, despite the fact that it's a "vegetable creature" struggling to survive at the North Pole while using sled dogs and human beings to nurture a growing crop of lethal offspring!

If one creature at the North Pole could do that, imagine what a hundred of them could do if they landed in Oklahoma and slaughter all the citizens of a small town!


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(I just tossed this out to encourage a discussion. I hope I get one.)
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

I believe we would see a world united to battle such an alien threat, Bud.

Mind you, it would parallel WWII in that such a coalition would have serious internal strife due to political issues, varying ideas as how to wage battles, cultural differences, ego, and just the general contrary nature of humans.

However, like WWII we'd somehow through miracles, grit and understanding manage to pull it off.

The sad reality though is that as soon the alien invasion was quelled our individual nations would go right back to their power politics and petty squabbles.

Reminds me of the excellent Outer Limits episode "The Architects Of Fear" from September 30, 1963.

Synopsis } A group of scientists hope to unite a divided world by presenting a common enemy that will result in the nations of the Earth uniting.

One of the scientists will undergo radical surgery based upon an alien from the planet Theta. Once that is completed the "Thetan" will arrive on our planet posing as the first invader of a race coming to conquer Earth.

This, so the scientists believe, will unite our planet and its nations once and for all.

The ending narration beautifully sums it up : "Scarecrows and magic and other fatal fears do not bring people closer together. There is no magic substitute for soft caring and hard work, for self~respect and mutual love. If we can learn this from the mistake these frightened men made, then their mistake will not have been merely grotesque. It will have been at least a lesson---a lesson at last to be learned."

[Bud Brewster]

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I'm not a big fan of the original Outer Limits series, but that particular episode is still powerful, and that closing narration is worthy of the story.

Great post, Pow.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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At last!

It's finally here!!

The Blu-ray of . . .

The Thing from Another World!!!

Okay, so it came out three years ago and I just found out about it. Where's Brent Gair when you need him?

__________ <— link

The price is $13.45, and it arrives the day after the order is placed. Mine will be here tomorrow!!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Pow]

Let's see what Bill Warren's book Keep Watching the Skies! (one of the final lines in The Thing From Another World) has to say?

The Thing is widely regarded as one of the best science fiction films and, with The Day the Earth Stood Still, is the most serious attempt in the 1950s by a major filmmaker to work with science-fictional ideas.

The script for The Thing was written by Charles Lederer, although producer Howard Hawks undoubtedly had a hand in its construction.
Hawks & Lederer jettisoned much of the detail of John W. Campell's scary novella. Instead of a shape-changing monster, they created a Frankenstein-shaped vegetable creature that drinks blood. This far more a creation of elementary horror fantasy than science fiction, but for audiences in 1951, it probably made the film more credible. And credibility was what Hawks was striving for.

The characters in The Thing are more varied than in most science fiction movies and they are also amusing and at least somewhat colorful.

It's the situation and the story that make The Thing From Another World so compelling, so much fun.

The Thing hasn't dated except in details; the swift, involving style of Howard Hawks makes the picture almost as powerful today, in fact, even after such gut-wrenchers as The Exorcist (1973), that The Thing must have been almost overwhelming in 1951.

Science fiction and horror are basically melodramas, tales of situations, not stories about people. What we need in most SF and horror movies are basically serviceable, acceptable characters, not solidly realistic human beings. Stories about people are best told in familiar surroundings, with uncomplicated plots, so we can concentrate on the characters.

The story of The Thing is a strong, straight-line narrative.

The dialogue is excellent, and Hawks uses his frequent overlapping technique to increase not only a sense of verisimilitude but one of headlong movement through the story. The dialogue doesn't particularly characterize the performers; Kenneth Tobey speaks much like Dewey Martin.

One of the most effective sequences in the picture has almost no dialogue at all. When the ship is frozen in the ice, Hendry orders the men to spread out, each standing over an edge of the ship as seen through the ice, to get an idea of its general outline. As the music builds, the men slowly form a circle, and stand for a moment in stunned silence as the music (by Dimitri Tiomkin) abruptly ceases.

The sequence of wild surmise, as they all stare at each other for a moment and realize they have found a flying saucer (though they try to avoid that term), is one of the best scene in any science fiction films.

Some commentators have felt that The Thing is anti-intellectual and pro-military. In the original script, Carrington is killed and Scotty says, "Both monsters are dead."
Carrington is allowed to live in the final print, in an effort to make him seem misguided rather than evil.

However, the military doesn't come off any better.

As John Brosnan says in Future Tense, "Hendry....only succeeds when he abandons the Army rule book and uses his own common sense and that of his men....Some of the scientists are made to look foolish because they too are bound by a scientific rule book of their own; as The Thing is intelligent, they believe there has to be some common ground between it and them, but there isn't."

If the film is anything, it's anti-dogma. The other scientists in the film are reasonable and intelligent; Carrington himself, in fact, is not even supposed to be wrong in principle, just in this particular instance.

Also contrary to hero type, Hendry makes several mistakes.
Unfortunately, Margaret Sheridan's Nikki is not central to the story. She's a strong personality but not strongly used, and Sheridan's intelligent performance is somewhat lost in the shuffle.

Douglas Spencer as Scotty has some of the best lines in the film, but his performance is somewhat a throwaway. It's not the actors who make The Thing so entertaining anyway.

Dimitri Tiomkin's score, is mostly effective although overly dramatic at times.

The vividness and excitement of The Thing from Another World have made it a classic. Whatever the quality of the remake, the old version will remain a high point in science fiction movies.

Sidebar: I should note that when Gene was writing this book, it was announced that John Carpenter was going to helm a new version. Hence his mentioning the remake which had not been produced when Gene was putting together his book.

I like a lot of what Warren says. I disagree when he writes that it's not the performers who make the movie entertaining. Oddly, he praises the fact that they are "varied," "amusing," and "somewhat colorful." Captain Hendry "makes mistakes," Carrington is not entirely wrong, are also observations by Warren.
Doesn't that translate into the fact that we are seeing characters with dimension and humor as opposed to just a bunch of stiffs? I know I found 'em more intriguing than the usual cardboard characters we usually see in these 1950s SF movies.

You can find one-dimensional characters in Ray Harryhausen's 1950s movies as an example. And I say that as a huge fan of the incredible man's stop-motion work. Do you really recall anything special about the casts from 20,000,000 Miles to Earth, Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, or It Came From Beneath the Sea? I don't. They were all competent actors with zero personality or any real distinctiveness to them. They drove the plot of those films and that was it.

The cast from The Thing are more memorable for me because the writer & director invested them with some interesting dialogue and moments between them. They seemed realer to me and I liked them better for it. You could even see Carrington's points as he foolishly attempts to protect the alien. That kind of complexity was missing from the bulk of these 1950s movies.

I think that the producers of those SF movies felt that it was all about the alien, mutant, dinosaur, whatever and the visual effects. The actors were there to give exposition in order to move along the story, so they didn't really require fleshing out the characters.

I think that Hawks and Lederer just might have thought why do they have to follow a tired, old prescribed formula? Where's it written in a rule book that you can't entertain the audience with both the creature and with some cool human characters? Let's break the mold.
I'm glad that they did.

I also did not find Tiomkin's score overly dramatic. It grabs you right from the opening credits and is used effectively throughout the movie. It never gets in the way, nor does it slide into becoming musical wallpaper that you hardly notice.

[Pow]

You gents are correct, the scene where Tex is first seen talking to Captain Hendry in flight appears to be a control tower and that's where we see windows behind Tex.

The Radio Room we later see Tex in has no windows and that's when he mentions he will be safe from the Thing getting in to him.

Do those stairs in the background of the Radio Room (I think they were spiral) lead up to the control tower room? If so, why doesn't Tex, or anyone else, suggest that the alien just might crawl up the tower and smash in those windows and then climb down the stairs and kill Tex?

Also, why couldn't the alien simply smash in the door of the Radio Room if he wanted? Was it a metal door? Even so they cannot be sure as to the exact strength of this creature.
And why did Tex say he'd be safe in the Radio Room when earlier there was a scene where they told him to lock himself in and guns don't kill the intruder. Tex sure seemed frightened over all of that, odd that later on he's fine staying in the Radio Room all alone.

I believe it is Nikki who is the only one to refer to the alien as "that thing." The rest of the people refer to him as "our friend," and "our visitor." Never as the Thing.

Tropical Tilly is the name of Captain Hendry's plane.

The scene where the flying saucer explodes under the ice has a funny blooper. Watch as Hendry, Carrington, Scotty and all the men duck for cover when the second explosion takes place.
The men all hurl themselves to the ground but the sled dogs behind them are all standing up as calmly as can be with no reaction to the explosions.

At the end of the movie we see many people gather into the Radio Room and they are now in contact with the military base in Anchorage. Scotty asks if there are any newsmen there and is told the room is full of 'em. He asks Captain Hendry if he can report the story of what happened at the scientific outpost with he alien. Hendry gives him the go ahead. And Scotty gives the iconic line in his report "Keep watching the skies!"

Whoa Nellie! General Foggerty, Hendry's superior, hasn't given permission for Scotty to divulge what has happened regarding the Thing. We don't see Hendry ask Foggerty. We don't know if Foggerty has even received any orders from the Pentagon at this point on the matter.

[Gord Green]

[Bud Brewster]

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Okay, okay, I can fix this. Lemme think . . . ummm . . . what are the reasons a group of sled dogs would NOT shit right there in the snow when a colossal bomb blast went off?

All right . . . try these possibilities.

~ All the dogs were frozen with fear! After all, they're arctic sled dogs. They're half frozen all the time!

~ All the dogs were deaf. The constant barking they do while "mushing" across the tundra left them hard of hearing.

~ All the dogs were too dumb than the people. They didn't realize that a giant explosion was something that might be harmful. After all, how smart would these dogs have be when they only need to obey two command: "Mush!" and "Whoooa!"

~ All the dogs were smarter than the people! They knew damn well it was stupid to use thermite to melt the ice around a crashed aircraft which would be immersed in all the flammable fuel that spilled out of the wreck!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

The movie makes it clear that Doctor Carrington was impaired, and not thinking clearly due to fatigue and lack of sleep. He was too tired to see the situation clearly.

Captain Hendry wasn't winging it alone, the other Scientist stated that sought out their advice, knowledge and help.

When the book doesn't cover the situation, then you toss the book, improvise and pray you make the correct decisions.

Even as a Kid, I thought they should have kept some of the Alien Buds, and seeds for study. Know thy enemy.

The question is, did the Aliens know about Earth's climate, or was it just a shot in the dark? Was it a one Carrot colonizing mission, or the first of a wave? Or even not the first, but they just haven't found out about the others? It was only by chance that they discovered this one.

David.

[Bud Brewster]