ALL SCI-FI

[Pow]

John Dierkes, six-foot & six-inches tall (1905~1975) who played Dr. Chapman was an agent of the U.S. Treasury Department. He was sent to be an advisor on a film in Hollywood, and ended up staying to pursue an acting career.

Ten actors & twenty-seven crew members were sent to Cut Bank, Montana to shoot the scene where the alien flying saucer is discovered encased in ice. The naturally occurring snow required for the scene kept getting blown away by high winds. It became necessary to film most of the saucer scenes again in the San Fernando, Valley.

Budget for the movie: $1,257,327.

Scenes for the film were edited. The scene where the Thing kills 2 scientists and a sled dog and then injures another scientist (Eduard Franz) in a green house was cut from the final print. The scene included seeing the 2 dead scientists hanging from rafters and the Thing drinking blood from the throat of one of the murdered scientists.

Censors and preview audiences rebelled at this gruesome scene.

Also excised was a scene where the Thing hurls a guard into the base's oil pipeline, which plugged up the system.

[Bud Brewster]

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Isn't it strange the way audience in the 1950s were deeply troubled by those graphic scenes, while modern audience frequently watch more more graphic violence . . . aren't overly bothered by it! ;?

I think Hollywood has desensitized us by presenting increasingly graphic scenes over the years, and our emotional "skin" has toughed up from the constant exposure to all that blood and guts!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

If I was a conspiracy theory believer, it almost seems like it was a orchestrated plan by the government to make the public less and less affected by violence so that we'd have ample military recruits for our endless wars.

[Bud Brewster]

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An interesting idea, Pow.

Even if it isn't actually a deliberate plot by the government, I think the movie violence does indeed have that affect on the population.

We've also been desensitized to violence by disreputable police officers, fatal school shootings, and destructive rioters like the one on January 6th.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Andrew Kidd]

At Bud's request, I'm posting my own personal fan theory regarding the film, one that may help resolve nagging problems with certain, seemingly illogical character decisions: not only can The Thing read minds, but it can reach out to them, the way the one in the novella can. It was able to mentally "grab" not just Carrington but Barnes as well, specifically because they were sleep deprived. Carrington had a temporary moment of lucidity (not unlike John Emery's in Kronos) in which he was seemingly behaving out of character but was really briefly relived of alien influence; the alien was using him to help it reproduce on Earth and protect it from hostile actors. Barnes, meanwhile, only did something as foolish as putting an electric blanket on the frozen alien because he himself was also mentally commanded to do so; once he fulfilled his purpose he was allowed to sleep and control was broken.

[Bud Brewster]

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Thanks, Andrew!

Here's the reply to your post that I made on the Classic Horror Film Board.
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Andrew, that's brilliant! You've explained one of the scenes that has always bothered me — the idea that Barnes was foolish enough to put a warm electric blanket over the block of ice, and then not hear the sound of several hundred gallons of dripping water during the hours he was in the storage room.

And, as you said, Carrington was aware of the danger the alien posed, and he could have delayed his experiment with the seed pods until after the alien was captured or killed. But he was (as you proposed) driven to cultivate the alien offspring because of the telepathic influence the alien was having on him.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[WadeVC]

[Pow]

Trivia: Did you know that in interviews Isaac Asimov always held to the claim it was John W. Campbell who created the Three Laws of Robotics? Campbell always argued that Asimov already had the idea for the laws, he just helped him focus them. Asimov disagreed with this and explained Campbell had created them during their many conversations.

The Thing: A History of the Franchise by Phil Hore.

[Pow]

Bud disagrees with me that the compositing scene of the stop-motion animated skeleton with the live Sinbad actor Kerwin Matthews is less than realistic looking with both the actor and the model in the same scene together.

I won't dispute that it isn't photo-realistic. It was probably the very best that the iconic Ray Harryhausen could do back in 1958 with the budget & technology available to him then.

If you compare this scene to his 1973 film The Golden Voyage of Sinbad where he stages a battle between Sinbad & his men with the six-armed statue of Kali, you will be awed at how fantastic the mixing of live actors and the Kali model are within the same scene. The technology to achieve this feat had come light years in 15 years.

I still submit though, that it would have been intriguing if Howard Hawks had employed RH for specific scenes for The Thing From Another World, but not all scenes.

Even though the Thing is a terrific movie, and one of my favs, we know that it is not entirely faithful to John W. Campbell's classic novella. In the book the alien is described as possessing rubbery blue skin, 3-red eyes, many writhing, worm-like tentacles. Egads! What Ray could have done with this depiction of the alien! If you look at his giant octopus from It Came From Beneath the Sea, the giant ammonite from Mysterious Island, and even his demo reel of Martians for his unrealized project for The War of the Worlds, you get an idea of just what he could have conjured up for Hawks' Thing, given a decent amount of money and time to execute the task.

Now some scenes did work beautifully with the Thing as a live actor/stuntman. One of the most powerful scenes was when the soldiers set the alien on fire. 74 years later and you still gasp at the image as the creature is set ablaze and still attempts to kill the humans before crashing through a window and running out into the darkness and the blizzard while still enrapt by flames.

I don't believe that such a scene would be well served by Ray's stop-motion animation. How could they possibly do it? You could not set the expensive model on fire; and Ray could not put his hands upon it to work his magic.

Could they somehow employ animation onto the model. Like the way they used animation to depict the fearsome ID on the superlative Forbidden Planet film? Possibly. However, while it worked well for FP, I doubt animated flames would have appeared realistic looking in the Thing on Ray's creation. Could they matte real flames upon the model? Maybe. But I also doubt that it would look nearly as stupendous as the scene we have in the film.

So, yes, that particular scene required a live performer & fire to pull it off so magnificently.

What about the scene where Captain Hendry opens a door and we jump because there stands the alien looking right back at Hendry and company. It's unexpected, it's brief, and its scary! I would submit that having a RH creature in that scene that looks like the one described in the novella might just work. It is so rapid that the imperfect compositing of the actor with the Thing would not be glaringly obvious. Also, such a creature with its tentacles and 3-red eyes would be more frightening than Jim Arness in a bald cap. Let's be real, the Thing makeup when you see pictures of it close up truly isn't all that horrific. The lumbering Arness alien also isn't unique to films. We had the same situation with Boris Karloff's Frankenstein Monster. A Ray Harryhausen creature as described in the novella would have been something entirely original and more horrifying. That's why they were wise to keep its appearances on screen short throughout the film. I realize that they had a limited budget for the makeup and I'm really not judging them. They did the best that they could in 1951.

The final scene with the Thing is when we see it walking down the corridor to its doom as the humans spring their electrical trap upon the monster.

Again, stop-motion could have been utilized for the scene in the dim passageway. Dr. Carrington does run up to the alien to attempt to reason with it. So there would be a scene where you would need to have to place the live actor with Ray's creature. I'm not saying it would be perfection. However, it is another brief scene that would not look atrocious with a writhing thing & live actor together for less than a minute.

The electrical bolts striking the alien could be done with Ray's model. As the creature shrinks away they could have smaller and smaller versions of the model until it is eradicated.

Would this iteration of mine work brilliantly? Maybe not. But it would have been fun to see it done.

[Gord Green]

In an interview I read ( or saw on Youtube? ) Ray said that stop motion gives a "fantasy" aspect to a scene. I can say this though, Ray's stop motion looked damn realistic to my 12 year old eyes!
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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.