ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

This post comes with a music soundtrack -- an All Sci-Fi exclusive Special Feature!

Click on this link and let YouTube play the original motion picture soundtrack of The Thing from Another World while you read this post.

Enjoy!





Remember the first time you saw The Thing from Another World?

My first time was in 1961 on an Atlanta late show, with Mr. George Ellis as the host of The Big Movie Shocker — a character called (get this — ) Bestoink Dooley.



I was a member of his fan club — with a button and everything.



Bestoink was the perfect master of ceremonies for The Thing from Another World, which was laced with both humor and horror, dancing the audience back and forth with it's fancy cinematic footwork. And the dialog is so tight and perfectly performed, it's almost like song lyrics, complete with some lines being delivered by three actors at once — like a chorus.





Hey, there's an idea! A musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber called . . . Carrots!

Naw, on second thought, it's been done already . . . sort of.



Anyway, The Thing from Another World delivers a helluva show. That scene at the landing site is spectacular, and I've always had trouble accepting that it wasn't really filmed outdoors. The sky and background just do not look like painted backdrops. I've searched high and low for a behind-the-scenes photo which shows the cyclorama and the set, but I've never found one.









And then there's big Jim as that scary alien. We sit on the edge of our seats, waiting for a really good look at him through the whole movie . . . and never get it . . . even when they light him on fire!







That was a brilliant touch on the part of the filmmakers. Almost seeing something really good is sometimes better than seeing it well, because you never get tired of it that way.

The characters are another big plus, of course. We like 'em so much we hate the idea that somebody might get their blood sucked out and fed to the alien's kids who are growing up so tall and strong in the greenhouse — not to mention the ones being nurtured in Dr. Carringtion's Dandy Day Care Center.



Which brings up an interesting point: where did the alien actually plan to land the ship? A vegetable creature wouldn't choose the North Pole as the best place to land, and the movie makes it clear that it crashed, so we know something went wrong with the ship.

Imagine what would have happened if the ship had made a nice three-point landing in the corner of some Kansas farmer's corn field and set up a nursery in the barn after recruiting the farmer's family as a food source — along with all the cows and pigs and chickens.

Somebody should use this idea in a "reboot" of this movie!

The climax is both spectacular and very satisfying. The alien gets just what it deserves after showing so little respect for the men in uniform, not to mention the men of science.





Anyway, back in 1961 I finished watching this movie on the late show about 1:30 AM and had to make my way down a dark hallway from the den to my bedroom, keepin' quiet so I wouldn't wake my father and be in more trouble than the people in The Thing from Another World.

When a movie can leave you feeling nervous about walking down the hallway in your own house . . . it's scary.



When are they going to give us a Blu-ray of this great movie — with special features that include behind-the-scenes photos of that so-called "set" where the saucer crashed?
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pow]

This film is one of the greats!

Watch the scene where the crew is flying to the research station.

They radio Tex at the station to speak with him. We clearly see a window behind Tex in the Radio Room.

Later on Tex is told that their 'visitor' is roaming around the base & he should come to the barracks where everyone is hold up. Tex replies that he's secured the RR & will remain there as there aren't any windows for the Thing to get through!

[Bud Brewster]

I watched it again recently, and I paid close attention to this matter about the windows in the radio room and Tex's puzzling claim that there were no outside windows in the radio room.

After doing so I realized there was only one explanation. Tex does NOT have tobacco in those cigarettes we see him reaching for right after talking to the guys on the radio for the first time.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

I think that Captain Carrot was the pilot of the ship with the pods for Invasion of the Body Snatchers!

[Bud Brewster]

That's a funny idea.

"The inhabitants of the planet Vegeton are planning to invade the Earth, and the evil Vegetarians want to eat mankind!"
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Pye-Rate]

Would their enfeebled persons animate instead of vegetate?

[Bud Brewster]

They intend to squash mankind, and they don't carrot who they hurt!

Lettuce not forget the hard lesson we learned the last time ruthless aliens came to Earth. We asked God to a-spara-gus, and he did!

It was an aMaizing experience. The world was in turmoil, with everybody completely cornfused!

Mankind will have to unite against these invaders, for without a strong onion we cannot survive!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Robert (Butch) Day]

I agree. I was trying to point out an alternative that someone might have posted. BUT it cannot be Al because in that time period he was under contract to 20th Century-Fox.
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Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

As always, I appreciate your original thinking and your thoroughness, sir.

I should point, however, that we seemed to be faced with two simple, but interesting, choices.

(1) The scene really was filmed in California in 100 degree heat with a gigantic cyclorama surrounding an area that appears to be much larger than the sound stage on which Forbidden planet was filmed, despite the fact that absolutely nobody seems to have a single BTS photo showing any of this -- a fact which amazes me all by itself.

--- or ---

(2) The widely held belief that the scene was filmed on a set with a false background is totally bogus, and the truth has never been revealed for unknown reasons.

Ummm . . . but there's one thing I've deliberately neglected to mention before now, a rather damning bit of evidence against my "It was really filmed outside" theory.

That bit of evidence is the fact that the cloud patterns in every shot never change.

We all know that a complex scene that lasts five minutes on screen takes hours, days, or weeks to film. If this scene actually was filmed outdoors and the backgrounds we see are real, the cloud patterns behind the actors would be constantly changing from one shot to the next.

But they don't. In fact, there's one distinctive cloud pattern that is visible in several scenes. Notice the unusual T-shaped clouds in the background of the picture below.

Just before the thermite is detonated, that cloud is seen directly behind the men -- even though it shouldn't be there.

Here's what I mean. That cloud pattern is locate in this direction, relative to the saucer's fin.





But when the men position themselves to detonate the thermite, they head off to the right of the fin --



-- and then they turn around to face the saucer. Even though they are seen walking away from the T-shaped cloud a moment before, that cloud is now located behind them.



Unfortunately the camera couldn't be positioned to face them with the saucer behind the camera if they were standing here, the spot they're seen walking towards --



--- because their was no cyclorama in that direction. The cyclorama evidently did NOT go all the way around the set (just like the one in Forbidden Planet), so there were certain directions the camera could not face.

Therefore, in the medium close-up of the men facing the saucer, they were actually positioned over on the snow bank in front of the T-shaped cloud. The audience doesn't know this. One snow bank looks pretty much like another.

Notice that from this position, the T-shaped cloud looks much large than at any other time. That's because it's a painting located roughly 50 feet behind the men -- not a real cloud located miles away. A real cloud would not get noticeably larger just because we're seeing it from a few dozen feet closer than before.



In the scene above, the men were actually standing at the spot marked by the green X in the picture below, right in front of the T-shaped cloud, while they faced the camera and looked at the saucer before detonating the thermite.



And finally, there's this. The very fact that this distinct cloud formation is unchanged in all these shots proves it isn't real. No real cloud formation would remain in the sky for hours like this while the various scenes were discussed, set up, and shot.

So . . . it IS a cyclorama.

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

[Robert (Butch) Day]

I'm wondering; is it possible that they took their backdrop up to Big Bear Lake and filmed there?
_________________
Common Sense ISN'T Common

[Bud Brewster]

Boy, that's the part that still bugs the hell out of me, Butch!

I've heard from various sources that the scene showing the crew forming a ring around the flying saucer was actually filmed at the RKO Ranch in the San Fernando Valley in 100-degree weather!

That just doesn't seem possible.

Even though I've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the shooting location used a giant backdrop, I still find it hard to believe that the snow wasn't real and the actors were just acting when they kept rubbing their hands together, shaking them to get the blood flowing, and blowing on their gloves, as we often see Douglas Spencer doing.



And there's still the mystery of what we're really seeing when the camera tilts up during the explosion! Since the background really is a cyclorama, why do we see the wavy upper surface of a cloud layer, instead of the straight edge of a very tall painted backdrop?

We see nothing like that in the shots below. Could the cyclorama have actually been taller than the highest point we see here?

Really?





The green arrow marks the upper surface of the cloud that everybody has assumed was the top edge of the cyclorama.





The camera tilts upward so far that the edge of the cloud goes out of frame a split second after this screen grab was made, and apparently stopped tilting up at that point.



So, since we now all agree that there is a cyclorama providing the background for this shot —



— why don't we see it when the camera tilts much higher than we can reasonably expect the backdrop to be?

However, I think I can make a guess as to how far away the backdrop is from the camera and the actors. Look at this shot of the men gazing at the crash site for the first time.



If you look closely at the "bottleneck" of the long path the ship melted while sliding on the snow, you can see a horizontal white band across it towards the far end.



And you can also see that the left-and-right edges of the long path change angles at the white band.



I submit that the cyclorama was located at the white band (marked with the yellow line), and the part of the "slide path" that was painted on the cyclorama doesn't quite line up with the path that actually existed on the set.

This also suggests that the bottom edge of the cyclorama was cleverly hidden by the white snow that led up to it. There was a painted white area from the bottom of the cyclorama that went up a few feet, creating an invisible boundary between the snow covered ground and the painted version of the landscape!



That's why we see the horizontal band of white across the distant "slide path". It hides the fact that the actually ground ends there and the cyclorama is located at that point.

Smart! No wonder we can't see where the cyclorama meets the ground.
_________________
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[scotpens]

[Bud Brewster]

[Randy]

The film was partly shot in Glacier National Park and interior sets were built in a Los Angeles ice storage plant.
This is according to Bill Warren as stated in Keep Watching The Skies Vol I: 1950 - 1957, pgs. 151 - 163, McFarland, 1982. ISBN 0-89950-032-3.